THE DISTORTING MIRROR

Distorting the sarcomere

One of the goals of cardiovascular science is to create a mathematical model of the heart that can predict ven-tricular function in healthy and diseased states, and that can be used to help improve treatment options for patients with heart disease. To be clinically useful, the model will have to include structural information about the shapes of the chambers and the action of the valves, and ab...

Distorting Reason

Interacting with Distorting Targets

Explorations into visual distortion techniques from information visualisation have not been matched by research into human performance in distorted visual spaces. Systems implementing distortion techniques have not consistently borne out the promise of distortion techniques; however, the studies have demonstrated that users are often disoriented by the unnaturalness of the mismatch between the ...

Distorting sex ratios.

D uring sperm production in mammals, the process of meiosis generates sper-matozoa that are genetically different but functionally equivalent. So, with respect to the sex chromosomes, for example, equal numbers of sperm are produced carrying either an X or a Y chromosome. Because X and Y sperm are equally capable of fertilizing an egg, equal numbers of male and female embryos are produced, and ...

Distorting Mixed Tsirelson Spaces∗

Any regular mixed Tsirelson space T (θn, Sn)IN for which θn θn → 0, where θ = limn θ n , is shown to be arbitrarily distortable. Certain asymptotic `1 constants for those and other mixed Tsirelson spaces are calculated. Also a combinatorial result on the Schreier families (Sα)α<ω1 is proved and an application is given to show that for every Banach space X with a basis (ei), the two ∆-spectrums ...