nr. 477 - 2011 - Institut for Natur, Systemer og Modeller (NSM)

6 Introduction
because I had to make preparations for staying in Canada during the fall-semester, and
Lars had to defend his thesis before the beginning of said semester, which he did on
August the 31. 2009.
Since then I have added new parts (chapters 11 and 12, the subsection on activation
by necrotic β-cells in section 5.7 and appendices A.1, A.2, A.3 and B.6) cut out and/or
replaced other parts (e.g. the bifurcation analysis of the DuCa model (section 7) has
been totally redone as well as the following discussion in chapter 9) and reworked
virtually the whole thesis. Nevertheless I have chosen to keep my writing in a “weform”
as opposed to an “I-form” to honor the initial collaboration between Lars and
I.
The reader may wonder why so much time and space has been devoted to the analysis
of the DuCa model instead of the expanded model. My answer is that: when you write
a project or a thesis such as this, where you work within a time-limit, it is often the
case that the most interesting work is done toward the end, thus leaving little time
to incorporate and analyze discoveries that arise from said work. I have also included
all the model-variations of the expanded model to illustrate how the final model came
about; i.e. another insight into the work process.