Modeling nerve cells can facilitate formulating hypotheses about their real behavior and improve understanding of their functioning. In this paper, we study a discrete neuron model introduced by Courbage et al. [Chaos 17, 043109 (2007)], where the originally piecewise linear function defining voltage dynamics is replaced by a cubic polynomial, with an additional parameter responsible for varying the slope. Showing that on a large...

Birth–and–death models are now a common mathematical tool to describe branching patterns observed in real–world phylogenetic trees. Liggett and Schinazi (2009) is one such example. The authors propose a simple birth–and–death model that is compatible with phylogenetic trees of both influenza and HIV, depending on the birth rate parameter. An interesting special case of this model is the critical case where the birth rate equals the...