Available behaviors are determined by the fit between features of the individual and reciprocal features of the environment. Beyond some critical boundary certain behaviors become impossible causing sudden transitions from one movement pattern to another. Parkour athletes have developed multiple movement patterns to deal with their momentum during landing. We were interested in whether drop dis...

Waves and sea levels have been modelled for the storm of 31 January-1 February 1953. Problems in modelling this event are associated with the difficulty of reconstructing wind fields and validating the model results with the limited data available from 50 years ago. The reconstruction of appropriate wind fields for surge and wave models is examined. The surges and waves are reproduced reasonabl...

Predicate abstraction provides very simple formal machinery that represents some of the ideas connecting intension and extension. It has been investigated and applied for many years now. Here we do two things with it. First, we present some natural examples, and show how predicate abstraction can be applied to them. Second, we give a formal proof procedure for predicate abstraction, based on ne...

We present a system for haptically rendering large height field datasets. Inasmuch as, height fields are naturally mapped to piecewise bilinear patches. We develop algorithms for intersection, penetration depth, and closest point tracking using bilinear patches. In contrast to many common haptic rendering schemes for polygonal models, this approach does not require preprocessing or additional s...

We review seven methods for adult height prediction (AHP) based on bone age, ranging from the BayleyPinneau method, published in 1952, to the BoneXpert method, published in 2009. These models are based on four different methods for bone age assessment including Greulich Pyle, Tanner Whitehouse, Fels, and the automated BoneXpert method. The aim of this chapter is to convey an understanding of th...

We present a novel surface reconstruction algorithm which can directly reconstruct surfaces with different levels of smoothness in one framework from height fields using 3D discrete grid ray tracing. Our algorithm exploits the 2.5D nature of the elevation data and the regularity of the rectangular grid from which the height field surface is sampled. Based on this reconstruction method, we also ...

We define the notion of height-deterministic pushdown automata, a model where for any given input string the stack heights during any (nondeterministic) computation on the input are a priori fixed. Different subclasses of height-deterministic pushdown automata, strictly containing the class of regular languages and still closed under boolean language operations, are considered. Several such lan...

During oogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster, the cells in the follicular epithelium of the ovary undergo a transition from a cuboidal to a squamous shape. In this issue, Gomez et al. (2012. J. Cell Biol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201207150) show that the kinase Tao promotes the endocytosis of the cell adhesion molecule Fasciclin 2 from the lateral surface of the cell and is critical for the...

At the core of political economy theory is the claim that income drives political preferences, yet empirical estimates of income’s effect on political behavior range widely. Drawing from a tradition in economic history and anthropology, we propose the use of height as a proxy for economic well-being. Using data from the British Household Panel Study, we find that taller individuals are more lik...