Join the dactyl club

The stomatopod dactyl club: a formidable damage-tolerant biological hammer.

Nature has evolved efficient strategies to synthesize complex mineralized structures that exhibit exceptional damage tolerance. One such example is found in the hypermineralized hammer-like dactyl clubs of the stomatopods, a group of highly aggressive marine crustaceans. The dactyl clubs from one species, Odontodactylus scyllarus, exhibit an impressive set of characteristics adapted for survivi...

Shear wave filtering in the Mantis Shrimpâ•Žs dactyl club

We propose that the presence of Bouligand-like structure in the dactyl club of the stomatopod lead the material to exhibit wave fi ltering in addition to the already known mechanisms of macroscopic isotropy behavior and toughness. We use a propagator matrix approach, earlier introduced to study layered materials to simplify the treatment of the boundary value problem. The periodic nature of the...

Join the Club: Enabling Self-Organizing Groups on the Net

The goal of this project is to establish how social agents can help humans form groups and achieve beneficial outcomes in their task-oriented use of cyberspace. To achieve this goal, the social challenges faced by humans trying to form groups, and the design problems of creating agents that can operate effectively in a mixed human-agent context, must both be addressed. The approach in the propo...

Why you should join the Elks Club rather than go to the Health Club

Smart Taxes: An Open Invitation to Join the Pigou Club

Many economists favor higher taxes on energy-related products such as gasoline, while the general public is more skeptical. This essay, based on a talk given at the March 2008 meeting of the Eastern Economic Association, discusses various aspects of this policy debate. It focuses, in particular, on the use of these taxes to correct for various externalities — an idea advocated long ago by Briti...