Localization and Orientation in Biology and Engineering
Localization and Orientation in Biology and Engineering

Author: D. Varju

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 3642693083

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The German Society of Cybernetics organizes international conferences on selected interdisciplinary topics in regular 3-year intervals. The aim of these meetings is to bring together scientists who work in quite different disciplines, but are confronted with related problems and use the same or similar approaches. The topic of the 1983 conference which was held on March 23-25 at the University of Tiibingen came from a typical field of research in which engineers, biologists, and phYSicists share a common interest. We do not want to discuss here in detail the common principles which are used by nature and by engineers to solve the problems associated with localization and orientation, since the reader will find enough examples in this volume. The question, however, whether the participants of such meetings can really profit from each other, deserves some further consid eration. First, there is the difficulty of finding a common language. This still seems to be a problem, although in some fields the language of engineers and biologists has become very similar over the years, an impression we also gained during the conference. Most of the authors made a great ef fort to use a vocabulary which is understandable to people outside their own field of research, but, admittedly, not all succeeded.

Biological Motion
Biological Motion

Author: Wolfgang Alt

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 616

ISBN-13: 3642516645

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" . . . behavior is not, what an organism does itself, but to what we point. Therefore, whether a type of behavior of an organism is adequate as a certain configuration of movements, will depend on the environment in which we de scribe it. " (Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela: El arbol del conocimiento, 1984) "A thorough analysis of behavior must result in a scheme, that shows all regularities that are to be found between the sensorical input and the motorical output of an animal. This scheme is an abstract representation of the brain. " (Valentin Braitenberg: Gehirngespinste, 1973) During the 70ies, when Biomathematics (beyond Biomedical Statistics and Com puting) became more popular at universities and research institutes, the problems dealt with came mainly from the general fields of 'Population Biology' and 'Complex Systems Analysis' such as epidemics, ecosystems analysis, morphogenesis, genetics, immunology and neurology (see the first series of Springer Lecture Notes in Biomathematics). Since then, the picture has not considerably changed, and it seems that "a thorough analysis of behavior" of single organisms and, moreover, of their mutual interactions, is far from being understood. On the contrary, mathematical modellers and analysts have been well advised to restrict their investigations to specific aspects of 'biological behavior', one of which is 'biological motion'. Until now, only a few Conference Proceedings or Lecture Notes have paid attention to this important aspect, some of the earlier examples being Vol. 24: 'The measurement of biological shape and shape changes' (1978) or Vol.

Modern Bioelectricity
Modern Bioelectricity

Author: Andrew A. Marino

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2020-08-27

Total Pages: 1080

ISBN-13: 1000146995

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This book presents an overview of the field of bioelectricity by demonstrating the biological significance of electromagnetic fields, electrical properties of tissue, biological effects of electromagnetic energy, and therapeutic applications and health hazards of electromagnetic energy.

Animal Sonar
Animal Sonar

Author: Paul E. Nachtigall

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 822

ISBN-13: 1468474936

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The first meeting on biosonar that I had the opportunity to attend was held in 1978 on the Island of Jersey in the English Channel. That meeting, organized by Professor R.G. Busne1 and Dr. Jim Fish, was my introduction to an exciting and varied group of hard-working and dedicated scientists studying animal echolocation. They are, by nature, a very diverse group. They tend to publish in different journals and rarely interact despite the fact that they all work on echolocation. When they do interact as a group, as they did in Frascati Italy in 1966, in Jersey i~ 1978, and during the meeting reported in this volume, the meetings are intense, interesting, and exciting. This volume is a composition of a series of contributed papers written to foster an interdisciplinary understanding of the echolocation systems of animals. The echolocation pulse production studies in bats and dolphins have recently been concentrated on the ontogeny of infant pulses, other studies, with three-dimensional computer graphics and x-ray computed tomography, have concentrated on finally resolving the old controversy concerning the site of dolphin echolocation click production. Much has been accomplished on the analysis of bat neural structure and function. The intense effort directed toward understanding the structure, connections, and functional properties of parallel auditory pathways and the parallel and hierarchical processing of information by the mustached bat, has lead to dramatic breakthroughs in understanding brain function.

The Mechanosensory Lateral Line
The Mechanosensory Lateral Line

Author: Sheryl Coombs

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13: 146123560X

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This volume represents the published proceedings of an international conference on the Neurobiology and Evolution of the Mechanosensory Lateral Line System held August 31 to September 4, 1987, at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld, West Germany. The goal of this confer ence was to bring together researchers from all over the world to share informa tion about a major aquatic sensory system, the evolution and function of which have largely remained an enigma since the 18th century. The "lateral line" or "lateralis" system has been used as an umbrella term to describe what originally (without the aid of modern anatomical techniques) looked like a series of pits, grooves, and lines on the head and trunk of fishes and some amphibians. For at least the past 30 years, however, it has been recognized that the lateralis system comprises not one, but at least two functional classes of receptors: mechanoreceptors and electroreceptors. The relative ease with which the appropriate stimulus could be defined and measured for the electroreceptive class has resulted in an explosion of information on this submodality during the past 20 years. As a result, there is little ambiguity about the overall function of the electrosensory system, now generally regarded as an independent system in its own right. A similarly clear definition for the function of the mechanosensory lateralis system has not been as forthcoming.

Insect Flight
Insect Flight

Author: Graham J. Goldsworthy

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2018-02-01

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1351082035

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Insects are the most numerous class of animals or earth, both in terms of their number and their variety. There are 800,000 recognized species, with between 1 and 10 million estimated species yet to be classified. This book will discuss, mechanics of flight, Wing structure, Hovering flight, flight in smaller and larger insects and wing polars.

Feral Pigeons
Feral Pigeons

Author: Richard F. Johnston

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 0195084098

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This definitive monograph focuses on the population, biology, and behavioral ecology of feral pigeons, a familiar but seldom studied bird. Includes a thorough listing of primary references of U.S. and European scholarly literature.

Rodent Bioacoustics
Rodent Bioacoustics

Author: Micheal L. Dent

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-08-28

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 3319924958

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By far, the most widely used subjects in psychological and biological research today are rodents. Although rats and mice comprise the largest group of animals used in research, there are over 2,000 species and 27 families of rodents, living all over the world (except Antarctica) and thriving in many different habitat types. The vast environmental diversity that rodents face has led to numerous adaptations for communication, including vocalizing and hearing in both the sonic and ultrasonic ranges, effectively communicating in the open air and underground, and using vocalizations for coordinating sexual behavior, for mother-pup interactions, and for signaling an alarming situation to the group. Some rodent species have even developed foot drumming behaviors for communication. Comparative studies from around the globe, using both field and laboratory methodologies, reveal the vast differences in acoustic communication behavior across many rodent species. Some rodents are amenable to training and have been domesticated and bred purely for research purposes. Since the early 1900s, rats and mice have been indispensable to research programs around the world. Thus, much of what we know about hearing and vocalizations in rodents come from these two species tested in the laboratory. The sequencing of the mouse genome in 2002, followed by the rat genome in 2004, only increased the utility of these animals as research subjects since genetically engineered strains mimicking human diseases and disorders could be developed more easily. In the laboratory, rats and mice are used as models for human communication and hearing disorders and are involved in studies on hearing loss and prevention, hormones, and auditory plasticity, to name a few. We know that certain strains of mice retain hearing better than others throughout their lifespan, and about the genes involved in those differences. We know about the effects of noise, hormones, sex, aging, and circadian rhythms on hearing in mice and other rodents. We also know about normal hearing in many families of rodents, including the perception of simple and complex stimuli and the anatomy and physiology of hearing and sound localization. The importance of acoustic communication to these animals, as well as the significance of these mammals to biomedical research, are summarized in the chapters.