We consider a Keller–Segel model that describes the cellular chemotactic movement away from repulsive chemical subject to logarithmic sensitivity function over a confined region in ${{\mathbb{R}}^n},\,n \le 2$ . This sensitivity function describes the empirically tested Weber–Fecher’s law of living organism’s perception of a physical stimulus. We prove that, regardless of chemotaxis strength and initial data, this repulsive system is globally well-posed and the constant solution is the global and exponential in time attractor. Our results confirm the ‘folklore’ that chemorepulsion inhibits the formation of non-trivial steady states within the logarithmic chemotaxis model, hence preventing cellular aggregation therein.

We propose and study a class of parabolic-ordinary differential equation models involving chemotaxis and haptotaxis of a species following signals indirectly produced by another, non-motile one. The setting is motivated by cancer invasion mediated by interactions with the tumour microenvironment, but has much wider applicability, being able to comprise descriptions of biologically quite different problems. As a main mathematical feature constituting a core difference to both classical Keller–Segel chemotaxis systems and Chaplain–Lolas type chemotaxis–haptotaxis systems, the considered model accounts for certain types of indirect signal production mechanisms. The main results assert unique global classical solvability under suitably mild assumptions on the system parameter functions in associated spatially two-dimensional initial-boundary value problems. In particular, this rigorously confirms that at least in two-dimensional settings, the considered indirectness in signal production induces a significant blow-up suppressing tendency also in taxis systems substantially more general than some particular examples for which corresponding effects have recently been observed.

In this paper, we investigate the global boundedness, asymptotic stability and pattern formation of predator–prey systems with density-dependent prey-taxis in a two-dimensional bounded domain with Neumann boundary conditions, where the coefficients of motility (diffusiq‘dfdon) and mobility (prey-taxis) of the predator are correlated through a prey density-dependent motility function. We establish the existence of classical solutions with uniform-in time bound and the global stability of the spatially homogeneous prey-only steady states and coexistence steady states under certain conditions on parameters by constructing Lyapunov functionals. With numerical simulations, we further demonstrate that spatially homogeneous time-periodic patterns, stationary spatially inhomogeneous patterns and chaotic spatio-temporal patterns are all possible for the parameters outside the stability regime. We also find from numerical simulations that the temporal dynamics between linearised system and nonlinear systems are quite different, and the prey density-dependent motility function can trigger the pattern formation.

The paper is devoted to the existence and rigorous homogenisation of the generalised Poisson–Nernst–Planck problem describing the transport of charged species in a two-phase domain. By this, inhomogeneous conditions are supposed at the interface between the pore and solid phases. The solution of the doubly non-linear cross-diffusion model is discontinuous and allows a jump across the phase interface. To prove an averaged problem, the two-scale convergence method over periodic cells is applied and formulated simultaneously in the two phases and at the interface. In the limit, we obtain a non-linear system of equations with averaged matrices of the coefficients, which are based on cell problems due to diffusivity, permittivity and interface electric flux. The first-order corrector due to the inhomogeneous interface condition is derived as the solution to a non-local problem.

The propagation of gradient flow structures from microscopic to macroscopic models is a topic of high current interest. In this paper, we discuss this propagation in a model for the diffusion of particles interacting via hard-core exclusion or short-range repulsive potentials. We formulate the microscopic model as a high-dimensional gradient flow in the Wasserstein metric for an appropriate free-energy functional. Then we use the JKO approach to identify the asymptotics of the metric and the free-energy functional beyond the lowest order for single particle densities in the limit of small particle volumes by matched asymptotic expansions. While we use a propagation of chaos assumption at far distances, we consider correlations at small distance in the expansion. In this way, we obtain a clear picture of the emergence of a macroscopic gradient structure incorporating corrections in the free-energy functional due to the volume exclusion.