As part of of the ARPA MADE initiative, we are beginning to develop ACORN, an Advanced Collaborative Open Resource Network, ACORN will provide the infrastructure to create an electronic community which will be able to design and sell engineered products in competitive markets as well as conduct research and development by collaborating through a network. Creating such a community is a task of n...

Acorn Woodpeckers live in extremely stable kin groups. Nonetheless, only 59.9% of birds caught in roosting aggregations gave distress calls or fear screams. Distress calling was highly repeatable among individuals and apparently heritable. However, the incidence of distress calling did not vary seasonally or according to age, sex, or status. Also, with two marginally significant exceptions, dis...

We illustrate Archimedes’ method using models produced with 3D printers. This approach allowed us to create physical proofs of results known to Archimedes and to illustrate ideas of a mathematician who is known both for his mechanical inventions as well as his breakthroughs in geometry and calculus. We use technology from the 21st century to trace intellectual achievements from the 3rd century ...

Question: What mathematical discovery more than 1500 years ago: • Is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, single discovery in the field of mathematics? • Involved three subtle ideas that evaded the greatest minds of antiquity, even including geniuses such as Archimedes? • Was fiercely resisted in Europe for hundreds of years after its discovery? • Even today, in historical treatments of ma...

In the childrens' book The Phantom Tollboothh by Norton Juster one can nd the following passage: Yes, please,, said Milo. Can you show me the biggest number there is?? I'd be delighted,, the Mathemagician] replied, opening one of the closet doors. We keep it right here. It took four miners just to dig it out.. Inside was the biggest 3 Milo had ever seen. It was fully twice as high as the Mathem...

W e describe the implementation and performance of Archimedes 2, an integrated mechanical assembly planning system. Archimedes 2 includes two planners, two assembly sequence animation facilities, and an associated robotic workcell. Both planners use fully 3 dimensional data. A rudimenta y translator from high level assembly plans t o control code for the robotic workcell has also been implement...

We wish to comment on two issues relating to a prediction raised in the article by Randolph1 about our work2. Randolph argues that because ‘low acorn production and moderate mouse densities are the norm [our] data do not explain the cause of the severe acorn failures and contingent crash in mouse populations that might initiate [gypsy] moth outbreaks’. We made no attempt to explain masting peri...

Larval stages can be astonishingly different from their adult forms. A new study in acorn worms shows that the whole larval body is patterned only with a subset of anterior genes, revealing the intricate developmental bases that underlie the evolution of larval forms.