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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Geographic tongue (GT) is a medical condition affecting approximately 2% of the population, whereby the papillae covering the upper part of the tongue are lost due to a slowly expanding inflammation. The resultant dynamical appearance of the tongue has striking similarities with well known out-of-equilibrium phenomena observed in excitable media, such as forest fires, cardiac dynamics and chemically driven reaction-diffusion systems. We explore the dynamics associated with GT from a dynamical systems perspective, utilizing cellular automata simulations. Our results shed light on the evolution of the inflammation and suggest a practical way to classify the severity of the condition, based on the characteristic patterns observed in GT patients.
