The complex morphology of an insect campaniform sensillum is responsible for transforming strains of the integument into a displacement of the campaniform dome and subsequently a deformation of the dendritic membrane. In this paper, the first step in this coupling process was investigated in identified campaniform sensilla on the wing of the blowfly by stimulating the sensilla with chord-wise d...

Introduction: We have completed analysis of a new near-field rock count at the Mars Pathfinder landing site and determined that the previously published [1,2] rock count suggesting 16 % cumulative fractional area (CFA) covered by rocks is incorrect. The earlier value is not so much wrong (our new CFA is 20%), as right for the wrong reason: both the old and the new CFA’s are consistent with remo...

Insect wings demonstrate elaborate three-dimensional deformations and kinematics. These deformations are key to understanding many aspects of insect flight including aerodynamics, structural dynamics and control. In this paper, we propose a template-based subdivision surface reconstruction method that is capable of reconstructing the wing deformations and kinematics of free-flying insects based...

Wing geometric parameters govern the aerodynamic performance of insects and micro aerial vehicles. Previous studies of wing shapes have been limited to rigid wings. The aerodynamic hovering performance of rigid and flexible wing shapes for aspect ratio AR = 1.5 is evaluated computationally at the Reynolds number (Re) of 400. The three-dimensional viscous incompressible Navier-Stokes equations a...

Differential gene expression is the major mechanism underlying the development of specific body regions. Here we assessed the role of genes differentially expressed in the Drosophila wing imaginal disc, which gives rise to two distinct adult structures: the body wall and the wing. Reverse genetics was used to test the function of uncharacterized genes first identified in a microarray screen as ...

The unsteady-state aerodynamic performance results of various MEMS-fabricated titanium-alloy wing designs are presented. These wing are tested in a high-quality low-speed wind tunnel with velocity uniformity of 0.5%.. For the first time, we have identified the importance of spanwise stiffness effect in generating the leading edge vortices. These vortices, generated around each wing, cause a low...

Signaling through the Drosophila EGF receptor (DER) is important for the growth and differentiation of the wing. These processes may be mediated by different DER ligands including Spitz (Spi) and Vein (Vn). Here I investigate the roles of these ligands and other DER pathway components in wing disc development using in vivo culture to produce mutant discs from genotypes which are normally embryo...

We report on a calculation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the partonic cross sections contributing to single-inclusive high-pT hadron production in collisions of transversely polarized hadrons. We give some predictions for the double spin asymmetry ATT for the proposed experiments at RHIC and at the GSI.

A detailed approach has been developed for core aspects of the task of understanding a broad class of metaphorical utterances. The utterances in question are those that depend on known metaphorical mappings but that nevertheless contain elements not mapped by those mappings. A reasoning system has been implemented that partially instantiates the theoretical approach. The system, called ATT-Meta...