Tuesday, June 22, 2004

What is there to say?

Not much motivation today, it's been a sleepy time lately. I've finished writing my program, at least most of it, mostly. I've still got a couple things to do with it, like.... wait a minute. I probably haven't really explained all of what the program does.

Here's the poop:

I was 'contracted' by a professor of mine to program a simulation for her. She, herself, was hired by Agri-Foods Canada (a goverment agency) to come up with a mathematical model of codling moths and their behavior with and without traps. I haven't actually seen or heard anything of her research but I trust she's been doing her job. Insofar, I've been doing mine.

Back on topic, my professor hired me to write a model of the moths and their behavior in the presence and non-presence of pheromone traps. Starting around the second week of May, I've now nearly completed the program.

The moths I've created in the program respond to pheromone plumes created by the traps I've created. The traps are placed in a networked fashion across a grid of specified length and width. You can choose to place the traps every 100 'meters' or '50' or any other number you may come up with, providing it is a whole number.

The traps dispense pheromone, which reacts accordingly with the weather about it. If the wind is blowing from the east to the west, the pheromone is stretched to the left, the trap placement is no longer centered in the pheromone; the pheromone is now placed farther to the left of the trap. The area remains the same regardless the shape of the pheromone.

Moths, when in a pheromone plume, sniff out areas of higher concentration. If they are interested, the moth then moves itself to occupy a space of higher concentration. The test continues until the moth has either found the trap or 'escaped' the pheromone plume.

If a moth maneuvers its way to a trap it then runs the test to see if it becomes trapped or not. To be as accurate to life as possible, the program still needs to be tweaked so only about %5 of the moths actually get trapped. Then we as researchers can tweak the strength of the trap and experiment with that.

-I've lost my train of thought

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