Synchronous flashing occurs in certain species of Southeast Asian and North American fireflies. Most Southeast Asian synchrony involves stationary congregating fireflies, but North American synchrony occurs in flying fireflies that do not congregate. Southeast Asian synchrony is usually continuous, but North American synchrony is interrupted. Photuris frontalis, the only member of the North Ame...

The firefly algorithm (FA), which is usually used in optimization problems, is a stochastic, population-based algorithm inspired by the intelligent, collective behavior of fireflies in nature. In the standard FA, each firefly in each neighborhood is compared with other fireflies, and the less-bright firefly moves toward the brighter one (in the maximization optimization). In fact, in the standa...

This paper describes an embedded computing and sensing system developed to serve the needs of the Autonomous Unmanned Systems Stream (AUSS), a two-semester sequence at the University of Maryland that provides first-year students with an inquiry-based introduction to concepts in engineering and autonomy. AUSS is part of the UMD First-year Innovation and Research Experience program (FIRE), a camp...

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a major and very interesting technology, which consists of small battery powered sensor nodes with limited power resources. The sensor nodes are inaccessible to the user once they are deployed. Replacing the battery is not possible every time. Hence in order to improve the lifetime of the network, energy efficiency of the network needs to be maximized by decreas...

might allow sister-sister discrimination. The locations of the cues used in discrimination are not known. Egg-stage switches indicated that eggs or the comb, or their combination, are adequate for discrimination of a sister's comb from a nonsister's. For several reasons (7) we suspect that discrimination cues reside in the comb, not in brood members themselves, and are odors applied by the foun...

We have used random chemical mutagenesis and a simple genetic screen to generate and isolate a thermostable mutant of luciferase from the North American firefly (Photinus pyralis). A single G-to-A transition mutation, resulting in the substitution of a glutamate for a lysine residue at position 354 in the protein sequence, was shown to be responsible for this enhanced thermostability. Replaceme...