Critical Phenomena in a Heterogeneous Excitable System
I chose to continue this project in my PhD.
In this project I modelled the changes in the muscular wall of the uterus during the course of labour and parturition. The changes are thought to be the result of a phase transition from a state where a local excitation does not spread over the entire tissue, to a state where the muscle has become globally excitable.
The model considered an infinite lattice of excitable elements connected by resistors (as shown below) with each element obeying FitzHugh-Nagumo dynamics.
I gave a talk and presented a poster about this project at the MOAC Annual Conference in 2011. My presentation and poster can be downloaded and viewed below.
MOAC Annual Conference Presentation