Recently, I have been working alot on updating my natural selection simulator. I modified my code a little bit so that you can watch a graph change as the simulation progresses, allowing for a quicker frame rate (because you no longer need to render all the plants, pollen, ect), and giving you results quicker. Using this new tool, I was able to run simulations at a quicker rate, allowing me to re-balance the simulation to prevent species from becoming extinct. One of the trends that I noticed was that herbivore populations were not sufficiently impacted by the number of plants, as they could continue to reproduce, creating offspring with full health without eating. To account for this, I added a parameter that requires a specific fullness level before a herbivore or carnivore can reproduce. After a lot of balancing, I managed to create an equilibrium where the different populations responded to each other’s sizes. While the system is not perfect and species will die out over time, I have managed to keep populations stable for a longer duration. Recently, I have fixed a bug in my code with dividing by zero after a population size has been reduced to zero, and I am now working on adding abilities to graph more quantities (such as radius). Other than this, I have been working on college applications. My first deadline is October 15th for UT Turing and Dean’s scholar programs. I am working on getting these projects into shape so that I can show them to colleges, but I am primarily working on this because they are fun and interesting simulators.