Group items tagged

Behavioral variations in fruit fly are not due to randomness but rather to decisions taken by the animal. Seems like free will.... also: http://brembs.net/spontaneous/

ultrathin needles from mosquitos - finally these animals are of some use to mankind

Functional classification of knowledge is a very effective way of stripping away boundaries between different industries and scientific disciplines. The function database provides descriptions, examples and animations for all known effects that can produce a function.

Again me. This time a series of animals eyes. Visual enough for everyone to see nice things and maybe have nice thoughts about it.

A kind of wiki with all the animals that are out there. Newly launched and currently down due to overload.

Electron microscope studies reveal that the electron bombardment leads to polymerization of the outer layer of some insect larva's skin and protects them from dehydration. Artificial method to create this effect tested as well. Allows observation of living animals under electron microscope! Question: can the insects still breath after they are back in air? :-S

The way that Mexican jumping beans move by detecting temperature gradients could be applied to designing robotic beans. Most animals move around by using their appendages, such as legs, wings, or fins. But a few exceptional creatures employ rolling as a mode of locomotion.

Again, amazing insects! Scientists have discovered that Polistes fuscatus paper wasps can recognize and remember each other's faces with sharp accuracy, a new study suggests.

Nice animation...

Cool - reminds me of the cockroach ARIADNA study see the videos in supplementary material

:-D Tom and me had just exchanged emails about this last night. Fascinating how adaptive organisms can be!

Now this is an interesting hypothesis! Would make terraforming a bit easier 

Having an ocean on Mars would solve so many problems... btw, again this guy? Isabelle take a look at that : Tim Lenton is everywhere, last time he wrote half of our literature references on the tipping points study.

Nice overview and animation of what that means for the Solar system.

Finally good news!

Wingdings!

"CERN management also decreed that especially important physics results would from now on be accompanied online by animations of little clappy hands. The changes will take effect 1 April 2014."

What is the best (wisest) size for a group of individuals? Couzin and Kao put together a series of mathematical models that included correlation and several cues. In one model, for example, a group of animals had to choose between two options-think of two places to find food. But the cues for each choice were not equally reliable, nor were they equally correlated. The scientists found that in these models, a group was more likely to choose the superior option than an individual. Common experience will make us expect that the bigger the group got, the wiser it would become. But they found something very different. Small groups did better than individuals. But bigger groups did not do better than small groups. In fact, they did worse. A group of 5 to 20 individuals made better decisions than an infinitely large crowd. The problem with big groups is this: a faction of the group will follow correlated cues-in other words, the cues that look the same to many individuals. If a correlated cue is misleading, it may cause the whole faction to cast the wrong vote. Couzin and Kao found that this faction can drown out the diversity of information coming from the uncorrelated cue. And this problem only gets worse as the group gets bigger.

Couzin research was the starting point that co-inspired PaGMO from the very beginning. We invited him (and he came) at a formation flying conference for a plenary here in ESTEC. You can see PaGMO as a collective problem solving simulation. In that respect, we learned already that the size of the group and its internal structure (topology) counts and cannot be too large or too random. One of the project the ACT is running (and currently seeking for new ideas/actors) is briefly described here (http://esa.github.io/pygmo/examples/example2.html) and attempts answering the question :"How is collective decision making influenced by the information flow through the group?" by looking at complex simulations of large 'archipelagos'.

Omg - they will not only murder you, but also suck on your bones.

Marcus, might be up your street? http://www.giraffobia.com/news.htm

Fantastic! Although my recent encounters with the species helped me control my giraffobia...

After exploring the shrews' swampy palm forests habitat, the researchers also have a new guess about why the spine evolved: They suggest that the creatures might wedge themselves between the trunk of a palm tree and the base of its leaves, then use the strength and flexion of their muscular spine to force open this crevice, revealing insect larvae-a food source that other animals can't access. However, no hero shrew has yet been observed busting its back for a snack.