Swifts regularly spend the night flying at high altitude. From previous studies based on tracking radar observations, we know that they stay airborne during the night and prefer to orient themselves into the wind direction with an increased angular concentration with increasing wind speed. In this study, we investigated the orientation relative to the wind of individual swifts by frequency (dis...

Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) consist of accelerometers, gyroscopes and a processor that generates position and orientation solutions by integrating the specific forces and rotation rates. In addition to the accelerometers and gyroscopes, magnetometers can be used to derive the user heading based on Earth’s magnetic field. Unfortunately, the measurements of the magnetic field obtained with ...

Observations of the fast, high-latitude solar wind throughout Ulysses’ three orbits show that solar wind power correlates remarkably well with the Sun’s total open magnetic flux. These observations support a recent model of the solar wind energy and particle sources, where magnetic flux emergence naturally leads to an energy flux proportional to the strength of the large-scale magnetic field. T...

Optic flow, the pattern of apparent motion elicited on the retina during movement, has been demonstrated to be widely used by animals living in the aerial habitat, whereas underwater optic flow has not been intensively studied so far. However optic flow would also provide aquatic animals with valuable information about their own movement relative to the environment; even under conditions in whi...

Some motor tasks can be completed, quite literally, with our eyes shut. Most people can touch their nose without looking or reach for an object after only a brief glance at its location. This distinction leads to one of the defining questions of movement control: is information gleaned prior to starting the movement sufficient to complete the task (open loop), or is feedback about the progress ...

Small animals typically localize sound sources by means of complex internal connections and baffles that effectively increase time or intensity differences between the two ears. However, some miniature acoustic species achieve directional hearing without such devices, indicating that other mechanisms have evolved. Using 3D laser vibrometry to measure tympanum deflection, we show that female les...

In this study, quantitative trait loci (QTLs) controlling rice heading date were detected in a F2:3 population derived from a cross between an indica rice variety, Tarom Mahalli, with early heading date, and an indica variety, Khazar, with late heading date. SSR linkage map was constructed using 74 polymorphic markers and 192 F2 individuals and covered a total of 1231.50 cM of rice genome. QTL ...

  Background: Abnormal angulation of the lunate can be an indication of intercarpal pathology. On magnetic resonance images (MRIs) the lunate often looks dorsally angulated, even in healthy wrists. The tilt on individual slices can also be different and might be misinterpreted as pathological, contributing to inaccurate diagnoses and unnecessary surgery. The primary aim of this study was to det...

This paper describes a prototype system for attitude and heading determination. A L1-only GPS receiver is integrated with microelectromechanical gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers. In contrast to a multi-antenna/multi-receiver GPS attitude determination system, this system uses a single antenna/single receiver configuration to derive standalone velocity and acceleration solutions from...