We have previously shown that the sparkling gene, which like mammalian Pax2 plays an important role in eye development, is encoded by the Drosophila homolog of Pax2. Here we demonstrate that D-Pax2 also encodes the shaven function, which is crucial during bristle development. Both sv and spa alleles, previously thought to represent different genes, are mutations in two widely separated enhancer...

The Hubble Deep Field (North) and the flanking fields are used investigate the occurrence of multiple weak lensing deflections along the line of sight in relatively deep imaging data (zlens ∼ 0.6, zsource ∼ 1.2). Ray tracing simulations of galaxy–galaxy lensing in the HDF-North show that proper inclusion of multiple weak deflections is important for a correct prediction of the net shear for mos...

The smallest flying insects commonly possess bristled wings and use drag to provide flight forces. A wing, with a wing area about 10% of that flat-plate operating at the relevant Reynolds number 5–15, produces close plate wing. How this is done not well understood. Here, detailed flows around each bristles are investigated numerically using simple model wings, following results shown. (1) produ...

Weak-lensing distortions of the cosmic-microwave-background (CMB) temperature and polarization patterns can reveal important clues to the intervening large-scale structure. The effect of lensing is to deflect the primary temperature and polarization signal to slightly different locations on the sky. Deflections due to density fluctuations, gradient-type for the gradient of the projected gravita...

Rodent whisker sensation occurs both actively, as whiskers move rhythmically across objects, and in a passive mode in which externally applied deflections are sensed by static, non-moving whiskers. Passive whisker stimuli are robustly encoded in the somatosensory (S1) cortex, and provide a potentially powerful means of studying cortical processing. However, whether S1 contributes to passive sen...

Negative Poisson ratio (NPR) materials based on a re-entrant honeycomb structure expand in the direction perpendicular to an externally exerted tension. This feature makes NPR structures attractive for use in microsensors and actuators as versatile motion transformers. When implemented in microdevices, where slender and flexible micromachined elements are widely used, the NPR material can toler...

Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) use information from surrounding electric fields to make foraging decisions. Electroreception in air, a nonconductive medium, is a recently discovered sensory capacity of insects, yet the sensory mechanisms remain elusive. Here, we investigate two putative electric field sensors: antennae and mechanosensory hairs. Examining their mechanical and neural response, we...