Nature’s coordination

Learning to signal: analysis of a micro-level reinforcement model

We consider the following signaling game. Nature plays first from the set {1, 2}. Player 1 (the Sender) sees this and plays from the set {A,B}. Player 2 (the Receiver) sees only Player 1’s play and plays from the set {1, 2}. Both players win if Player 2’s play equals Nature’s play and lose otherwise. Players are told whether they have won or lost, and the game is repeated. An urn scheme for lea...

Adaptive Memory: Evolutionary Constraints on Remembering

Human memory evolved subject to the constraints of nature’s criterion— differential survival and reproduction. Consequently, our capacity to remember and forget is likely tuned to solving fitness-based problems, particularly those prominent in the ancestral environments in which memory evolved. Do the operating characteristics of memory continue to bear the footprint of nature’s criterion? This...

Controlling Dynamic Motions of Biped Robots with Reflexes and Motor Patterns

Despite many efforts in the development and control of two-legged robots, nature’s solution of biped walking is still unequaled. Both the mechanical side and neural control surpass what robotics research has come up with. While the properties of the biological locomotion apparatus are fairly well understood, still there seems no technical solution for an equivalent actuation system. Unfortunate...

Nature’s Configuration of Melanoma Colonies in Pulmonary Parenchyma: Historical Lessons

In 1889, the great German pathologist, Julius Conheim, pronounced that necropsy reveals Nature’s footsteps in cancer colonization as opposed to animal experimentation. Accordingly, the easily discernible pathways of the highly colonized melanoma are worthy of tracing as regards the configuration of the colonies formed in the lungs. Perhaps, the historical aspects are best evaluated with reports...

The Gavarnie Cirque : a celebrated ”nature’s colossus