A recent model of bursting electrical activity in the pancreatic beta cell is examined. A nondimensionalized version of this model has two slow calcium processes one of which describes a slow inactivation of voltage-gated channels. From a mathematical perspective the model is bistable and has two-dimensional slow subsystems. Numerical computations on the model will be used to show how the bursting cycle can be described and a rough outline of a perturbation construction of the cycle will be given.

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