Games of chance are often used as conceptual models of random processes in nature. For example, an exhibit on the heart in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry includes a kind of pinball machine. After the balls bounce somewhat randomly through this machine, they fall into bins symbolizing the different states of health of one's heart. One can bias the outcomes for better or for worse by tu...

An absolute plate motion (APM) model is required to address issues such as the thermochemical evolution of Earth’s mantle. All APM models have to rely on indirect inferences, including those based on hot spots and seismic anisotropy, each with their own set of uncertainties. Here, we explore a seafloor spreading-aligned reference frame. We show that this reference frame fits azimuthal seismic a...

In this paper we consider the problem of extended object tracking. An extended object is modelled as a set of point features in a target reference frame. The dynamics of the extended object are formulated in terms of the translation and rotation of the target reference frame relative to a fixed reference frame. This leads to realistic, yet simple, models for the object motion. We assume that th...

Visuospatial attention is strongly biased to locations that frequently contained a search target before. However, the function of this bias depends on the reference frame in which attended locations are coded. Previous research has shown a striking difference between tasks administered on a computer monitor and in a large environment, with the former inducing viewer-centered learning and the la...

The Price equation shows the unity between the fundamental expressions of change in biology, in information and entropy descriptions of populations, and in aspects of thermodynamics. The Price equation partitions the change in the average value of a metric between two populations. A population may be composed of organisms or particles or any members of a set to which we can assign probabilities...

As a physical chemist or chemical physicist, I've often had to react to uncomprehending or unkind re­ marks about chemistry delivered by physicists_ Typical of such remarks are "A diatomic molecule has one atom too many" and "A topic is dead when it has been turned over to the chemists." Both those dicta are attributed to Arthur Schawlow. Coming from him, though, such comments seem incon­ gruou...

Figure-ground assignment involves determining which visual regions are foreground figures and which are backgrounds. Although figure-ground processes provide important inputs to high-level vision, little is known about the reference frame in which the figure's features and parts are defined. Computational approaches have suggested a retinally based, viewer-centered reference frame for figure-gr...

Repetitive experience with the same visual stimulus and task can remarkably improve behavioral performance on the task. This well-known perceptual-learning phenomenon is usually specific to the trained retinal- or visual-field location, which is taken as an indication of plastic changes in retinotopic visual areas. In previous studies of perceptual learning, however, a change in stimulus locati...

Stephen D. Bartlett, Terry Rudolph, 3 Robert W. Spekkens, and Peter S. Turner School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia Optics Section, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BZ, United Kingdom Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BW, United Kingdom Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretica...

‘ ... a simple system is one to which a notion of state can be assigned once and for all, or more generally, one in which Aristotelian causal categories can be independently segregated from one another. Any system for which such a description cannot be provided I will call complex. Thus, in a complex system, the causal categories become intertwined in such a way that no dualistic language of st...