BACKGROUND The coordinated action of genes that control patterning, cell fate determination, cell size, and cell adhesion is required for proper wing formation in Drosophila. Defects in any of these basic processes can lead to wing aberrations, including blisters. The xenicid mutation was originally identified in a screen designed to uncover regulators of adhesion between wing surfaces [1]. P...

The neural circuits that mediate behavioral choices must not only weigh internal demands and environmental circumstances, but also select and implement specific actions, including associated visceral or neuroendocrine functions. Coordinating these multiple processes suggests considerable complexity. As a consequence, even circuits that support simple behavioral decisions remain poorly understoo...

An unprecedented combination of simula-tive and metaphor based reasoning about beliefs is achieved in an AI system, ATT-Meta. Much mundane discourse about beliefs productively uses conceptual metaphors such as MIND AS CONTAINER and IDEAS AS INTERNAL UTTERANCES, and ATT-Meta's metaphor-based reasoning accordingly leads to crucial discourse comprehension decisions. ATT-Meta's non-metaphorical mod...

Mechanisms of aerial righting in juvenile chukar partridge (Alectoris chukar) were studied from hatching to 14 days-post-hatching (dph). Asymmetric movements of the wings were used from 1 to 8 dph to effect progressively more successful righting behaviour via body roll. Following 8 dph, wing motions transitioned to bilaterally symmetric flapping that yielded aerial righting via nose-down pitch,...

As one of the most important components of a flapping-wing micro air vehicle (FWMAV), the design of an energy-efficient flapping-wing has been a research interest recently. Research on insect flight from different perspectives has been carried out, mainly with regard to wing morphology, flapping kinematics, and unsteady aerodynamics. However, the link between the wing morphology and kinematics ...

The complex morphology of an insect campaniform sensillum is responsible for transforming strains of the integument into a displacement of the campaniform dome and subsequently a deformation of the dendritic membrane. In this paper, the first step in this coupling process was investigated in identified campaniform sensilla on the wing of the blowfly by stimulating the sensilla with chord-wise d...

Insect wings demonstrate elaborate three-dimensional deformations and kinematics. These deformations are key to understanding many aspects of insect flight including aerodynamics, structural dynamics and control. In this paper, we propose a template-based subdivision surface reconstruction method that is capable of reconstructing the wing deformations and kinematics of free-flying insects based...

Wing geometric parameters govern the aerodynamic performance of insects and micro aerial vehicles. Previous studies of wing shapes have been limited to rigid wings. The aerodynamic hovering performance of rigid and flexible wing shapes for aspect ratio AR = 1.5 is evaluated computationally at the Reynolds number (Re) of 400. The three-dimensional viscous incompressible Navier-Stokes equations a...

Differential gene expression is the major mechanism underlying the development of specific body regions. Here we assessed the role of genes differentially expressed in the Drosophila wing imaginal disc, which gives rise to two distinct adult structures: the body wall and the wing. Reverse genetics was used to test the function of uncharacterized genes first identified in a microarray screen as ...