Every injective function has an inverse, although constructing the inverse for a particular injective function can be quite tricky. One common instance of inverse-function pairs is the binary encoders and decoders used to convert in-memory data into and out of a structured binary format for network communication. Ensuring that a given decoder is a proper inverse of the original encoder is parti...

Spoken-word recognition in a nonnative language is particularly difficult where it depends on discrimination between confusable phonemes. Four experiments here examine whether this difficulty is in part due to phantom competition from "near-words" in speech. Dutch listeners confuse English /æ/ and /ε/, which could lead to the sequence daf being interpreted as deaf, or lemp being interpreted as ...

Non-random mating in plant populations can be influenced by numerous reproductive and demographic factors, including floral morphology and inter-plant distance. Here, we investigate patterns of outcrossed mating through male function in Narcissus triandrus, a tristylous, bee-pollinated wild daffodil from the Iberian Peninsula, to test pollen transfer models which predict that floral morphology ...