Biologically-inspired robots have been studied with respect to biological intelligence which can provide complex behaviors. The humanoid robot is a trend that has been used to investigate how the human body works (bipedal walking, for instance). In this research, however, we focus on on-demand planning and rescheduling within a dynamic environment. In the object pursuit task, experimental resul...

The amazing disparity of living birds is self-apparent, yet immensely challenging to fully quantify. After all, birds are represented by nearly 11,000 living species, comprising a mind-boggling spectrum of shapes, sizes, and colors (1). This incredible variability manifests in an incalculable number of ways (from habitat type to diet to life history), but adequately characterizing any of these ...

Perhaps more than any other biological discipline, the study of animal viruses is confined to the present. Virions are simply not the stuff of which robust fossils are made. Phylogenetic analysis can help by revealing deep relationships between extant viral lineages, yet such reconstructions lack detail (telling us nothing about transitional or extinct viral forms, the movement of viruses betwe...

People with metabolic syndrome and obesity are at an increased risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease. Over the past decade, there has been intensive research into new ways to stimulate weight loss to lower this risk. One of the key tissues is the metabolically active brown adipose tissue (BAT). Given that this is a thermogenic tissue, it can be stimulated by cold and is suggested by som...

Implantable cardiac pacemakers restore normal heart rhythm by delivering external electrical pacing to the heart. The pacemaker software is life-critical as the timing of the pulses determine its ability to control the heart rate. Recalls due to software issues have been on the rise with the increasing complexity of pacing algorithms. Open-loop testing remains the primary approach to evaluate t...

In this paper, an extension to the traditional method for creating video textures is presented. By exploiting the symmetric properties of the frames in a given video sequence, a new endless video stream or video loop is generated by reversing video playback when appropriate. We aim at a larger set of possible input video’s for video texture creation, including captured motions containing no smo...