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Guest revnev

ignoble awards..

By Guest revnev, in The Nesting Box

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tonight it's award night - for improbable (but genuine) science research..

 

past winners..

 

a study of the effects on locusts of watching Star Wars

a study of homosexual necrophilia in mallard ducks

a study of male testicular asymetrics (why one is lower than the other) and ancient Greek sculpture

a study of the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.

a study to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin, as detailed in their report "Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh -- Calculations on Avian Defaecation.

 

I always look out for this... beats the UEFA cup draw any day...

 

8)

 

Phil

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Apparently homosexuality is just as common in other creatures as in humans - but necrophilia is very rare - especially in birds.. and a combination of the two is even rarer!!

 

how much do you want to know?? :wink:

 

Phil

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OK - since you asked!! it was about collision avoidance - how come locusts can travel in massive swarms without the need of accident insurance? - and how come humans (supposedly more intelligent) cannot travel round the M25 without seeing at least one bump?

 

here'a an interview with the scientist concerned...

 

 

LOCUST-INSPIRED CAR SAFETY - Dr Claire Rind, University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne

 

Chris - When we say compound eye, how does the insect actually process the light coming in? It's got loads of images of the world coming in at once. That must take a lot of processing.

 

Claire - It does take a lot of processing but that isn't the way the insect looks at it. They don't have thousands of complete images. Their whole image of the world is pixelated and broken up. Every little lens looks out at a particular region in space and then it just has to put together all the information from that particular region in space. There is some beautifully engineered circuitry and it's repeated many times over the eye.

 

Chris - You actually won an Ig"Ooops, word censored!"el Prize for showing episodes of Star Wars to locusts. Why?

 

Claire - Because I could!

 

Chris - Who was funding this research?!

 

Claire - The BBSRC. Star Wars had a huge array of visual scenes and looming motion, and that's why we chose Star Wars. Looming is when an object is coming straight for you, like a spaceship. The other thing is that they have spaceships moving directly over you. They were coming very close but weren't actually having a collision. So we could test the different responses of the neurones to a near collision and a collision.

 

Chris - And this is your locusts' anti-bumping device.

 

Claire - Yes.

 

Chris - How does that actually work?

 

Claire - It detects objects which are approaching and expand over the eye. There are circuits that extract those image cues and will give a warning when the system detects very rapidly expanding edges, which are features of objects approaching on a collision course.

 

Chris - So how could you apply that to the automobile industry, as this is the stance you're taking on this?

 

Claire - The way we're applying this is that we've got a little silicone chip which is inspired by the insect eye and it has small photocells rather like the cells in the insect eye. The signals are passed through various layers of circuitry, and eventually after much computation, the signals are summed up and a collision warning is issued if there is sufficient evidence for there being an object on a collision course.

 

Chris - But how is this better than a driver at the wheel of a car anyway? Or are you thinking now of a car that has autopilot or something?

 

Claire - They could have an autopilot, but at the moment the driver is not very good at reacting quickly enough. This is especially so if a child or something steps out quickly in front of the car and the accident is imminent.

 

Chris - Say a child steps out but there's a child coming the other way. How does your computer resolve that?

 

Claire - The most salient features, or the ones that give the biggest responses , would be the ones the system would react to.

 

Chris - So it would hit the kid and ignore the car coming the other way then.

 

Claire - No it wouldn't hit the child. That would be the image that was expanding most rapidly over the sensor and the collision alerting system would be switched on by that image. It ignores a lot of other movement, like flow fields, or images flowing back over the sensor. It's specifically looking for an object which is on a collision course. The car coming straight for you will be a problem for you as well!

 

[Rind, F.C. and Simmons, P.J. (1992). Orthopteran DCMD neuron: a re-evaluation of responses to moving objects. I. Selective responses to approaching objects. Journal of Neurophysiology 68, 1654-1666.]

 

in case you want to look up the whole thing - but I wouldn't recommend it!

 

Phil

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Louise Feathery Fanatic

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No Gina the locust project was paid for by BBSRC who are telling all of the Research Institutes they are now flat funded for 5 years ie we get the same cash each year now for the next 5 years and we make up the shortfall by cutting costs shedding staff and getting grants which are now not available :evil:

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Louise is referring to the locust research - they have to get funding for their research which is then completed and can then be entered for the awards...

 

the locust research was funded by the BBSRC...

 

Phil

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Louise Feathery Fanatic

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That was the only bit i looked for with the which idiot actually paid for that :roll:

 

You have no idea how expensive that sort of work is to do so it will probably have cost upwards for £50,000 to do :evil:

 

I feel like emailing head office and complaining but i had better not :oops::lol:

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nah - louise - it probably cost nowt..

 

locusts are just about free of charge and you can get the star-wars trilogy and a bag of popcorn from Blockbusters for a fiver...

 

the bit about monitoring their neurones was probably all made up.. after all, you can't really monitor a locust's neurones, can you? :wink:

 

Phil

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Yes you can actually Phil I won't describe how you do it here (family forum :shock: ) if you want to know PM me but I am on a half day from 12 so it may have to wait until Monday :lol:

 

I'm sure you can Louise...

 

 

:wink:

 

Phil

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I know you know... (err...) :lol:

 

(six people to stay???? perhaps you could get the star-wars trilogy out and monitor their neurones.. you might even get a grant!!)

 

Phil

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