Glossary
Numerical Methods of Modeling in Biomedical Applications

Nucleotide; nucleotide

The basic building block of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (ribonucleic acid). There are five varieties: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T), present in DNA, or uridine (U), present in RNA.

Limit cycle

A mathematical notion, coined by Henri Poincaré, that designates the asymptotic behavior of a dynamic system, corresponding to the infinite repetition of a state sequence, observed after a more or less long transient period. The length of this sequence, in the discrete case, and its duration, in the continuous case, is called the period of the limit cycle. The latter is sometimes referred to as a periodic or oscillatory attractor. This is, for example, the usual behavior of a normal heart or a standing-wave transmitter. It was in the latter case that Poincaré highlighted...