The larynx of roaring and non-roaring cats.

Consistently faster and smaller compressed bitmaps with Roaring

Compressed bitmaps indexes are used in databases and search engines. A wide range of bitmap compression techniques has been proposed, almost all relying primarily on run-length encoding (RLE), including BBC and WAH. However, on unsorted data, we can get superior performance with a hybrid compression technique that uses both uncompressed bitmaps and packed arrays inside a two-level tree. An inst...

The descended larynx is not uniquely human.

Morphological modifications of vocal anatomy are widespread among vertebrates, and the investigation of the physiological mechanisms and adaptive functions of such variants is an important focus of research into the evolution of communication. The "descended larynx" of adult humans has traditionally been considered unique to our species, representing an adaptation for articulate speech, and deb...

Female choice for high roaring rates in red deer, Cervus elaphus

Red deer males roar loudly and repeatedly during the breeding season. A series of playback experiments, carried out on farmed red deer in New Zealand, revealed that females preferred a high to a low roaring rate, but not low-pitched to high-pitched roars. In free-ranging red deer, fundamental frequency (the main determinant of roar pitch) is not related to body weight or reproductive success, w...

The Roaring Nineties Can Full Employment Be Sustained?

Better bitmap performance with Roaring bitmaps

Bitmap indexes are commonly used in databases and search engines. By exploiting bit-level parallelism, they can significantly accelerate queries. However, they can use much memory, and thus we might prefer compressed bitmap indexes. Following Oracle’s lead, bitmaps are often compressed using run-length encoding (RLE). Building on prior work, we introduce the Roaring compressed bitmap format: it...