Using LaTeX:

(A) How to get the software?
If you are math or physics major, you may have an account in Unix server in these department (domain: *.math.wm.edu or *.physics.wm.edu). All these Unix systems have LaTeX system installed. Most Linux systems also include TeX systems. If you are a PC user, then there are not so many PCs in the on-campus labs currently running a good TeX system. (As I checked in one lab, it did have a TeX system, but seems corrupted.) But if you have a PC in your dorm or home, it's not very hard to install a perfect TeX system in your PC in about 10 minutes (if you have downloaded all required elements.) All necessary softwares are free except a popular editor WinEdt which is a shareware and you can use for 30 days free, and all software are available online. Here is a list of softwares which you need to download if you want to install TeX system on a PC:

1. MikTeX (download or install MikTeX 2.4 Basic system, size: about 24M, free software)
2. WinEdt (download WinEdt 5.4, size 6M, you can use the evaluation copy for 30 days)
3. GSView and Ghostscript (Download GSView 4.7 and AFPL Ghostscript 8.51 for Win32, size: about 8M, free software)
4. Adobe Acrobat Reader(Download AAR 5.0, size: about 6M, free software)
Once, you have all the softwares downloaded or get a CD-ROM containing all softwares, you should install the softwares in this order: 1)  Ghostscript 8.51 for Win32, 2) GSView 4.7, 3) Adobe Acrobat Reader, 4) MikTeX, 5) WinEdt. The key is that you have to install WinEdt last. Then start WinEdt, you will start your LaTex adventure. An alternative of downloading all these softwares is to check out a CD-ROM from Prof. Shi which contains all these softwares.

(B) How to use LaTeX? There are plenty LaTeX tutorial on the web. Once you have typed a LaTeX file in WinEdt window, this is the way of compiling it into a postscript file or pdf file: (suppose your LaTeX file is mypaper.tex)
1. Click "LaTeX" button, it will produce mypaper.dvi (which you can click the 2nd "dvi" button to preview.)
2. Click "dvi->ps", it will produce mypaper.ps (which you can click the button on the right side of 2nd "dvi" to start GSView 4.0 to view it, and you can print it from GSView.)
3. In GSView, click "File"->"Covert" to convert mypaper.ps to mypaper.pdf.
(In Step 2 and 3, you can also use the options "dvi->pdf", or "pdflatex" to directly generate pdf file, but it seems that these procedures will miss the postscript graphs in your paper.)

Matlab, Maple or Dfield Graphs:
There is a good chance that you would like to include some computer generated graphs in your paper. One way is to print the graph and cut and paste by hand into your paper. A better way is to include graphic files in your LaTeX or MS Word file. First you need to export your graphic files from Matlab or Maple. In Matlab, click "File"->"Export" in the window of graph, then save it as "***.eps" if you are using LaTeX or "***.jpg" if you are using MS Word. In a LaTeX file, you can imbed an eps file by command

\usepackage{graphicx}  %%in the heading

\begin{center} %%in the body of paper
\includegraphics*[scale=0.4]{logistic.eps}
\end{center}

scale is the relative size of the graph, and the default is 1 (original size). Jpeg file can also be embedded:

\usepackage{graphicx}  %%in the heading

\begin{figure}\begin{center}
\includegraphics[height=2in, width=3in]{bifurcation.jpg}
\caption{A bifurcation diagram}
\end{center}\end{figure}