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Researchers Find a Mathematical Pattern Used in City Planning Hidden in the Leaves of a Common Houseplant
Key takeaways
- But they might not know that their roundish greenery holds a well-known geometric pattern.
- The major veins follow something called a Voronoi diagram, an arrangement found elsewhere in nature and used in city planning, researchers report in the journal Nature Communications on May 12.
- Voronoi diagrams are used to divide a space into smaller regions, each of which contains a relevant point, such as a school.
But they might not know that their roundish greenery holds a well-known geometric pattern.
The major veins follow something called a Voronoi diagram, an arrangement found elsewhere in nature and used in city planning, researchers report in the journal Nature Communications on May 12. The discovery might help solve an enduring mystery about some plants’ mesh-like veins.
“We think of these algorithms in nature as an explanation for how organisms will behave and as a way to try to make sense of the world,” says study co-author Saket Navlakha, a computer scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, in a statement. “This example is a nice merger of classical geometry, modern plant biology and computer science.”
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