Deciphering mysteries of the structure-function relationship in cortical folding has emerged as the cynosure of recent research on brain. Understanding the mechanism of convolution patterns can provide useful insight into the normal and pathological brain function. However, despite decades of speculation and endeavors the underlying mechanism of the brain folding process remains poorly understo...

Echinoderms are unique among animal phyla in having a pentaradial body plan, and their fossil record provides critical data on how this novel organization came about by revealing intermediate stages. Here, we report a spiral-plated animal from the early Cambrian of Morocco that is the most primitive pentaradial echinoderm yet discovered. It is intermediate between helicoplacoids (a bizarre grou...

A long-standing question in biology is how a group of primordial cells can give rise to complex organs. A new study finds that, in an ancient land plant, growth rate variation patterned by meristematic cells primarily determines shape.

We involved 30 customers of a company designing and producing microwave ovens. In a number of experiments these customers generated over 100 new ideas on functions, attributes and services related to microwave ovens. The 21 best ideas were identified by company specialists and these ideas were then evaluated by a large customer group using the theory of attractive quality in order to identify w...

The article explores the impact of the diffusion of new methods of production on output and employment growth and income distribution within a Classical one-sector framework. Disequilibrium paths are studied analytically and in terms of simulations. Diffusion by differential growth affects aggregate dynamics through several channels. The analysis reveals the non-steady nature of economic change...

Canalization may play a critical role in molding patterns of integration when variability is regulated by the balance between processes that generate and remove variation. Under these conditions, the interaction among those processes may produce a dynamic structure of integration even when the level of variability is constant. To determine whether the constancy of variance in skull shape throug...

We investigate how thin sheets of arbitrary shapes morph under the isotropic in-plane expansion of their top surface, which may represent several stimuli such as nonuniform heating, local swelling and differential growth. Inspired by geometry, an analytical model is presented that rationalizes how the shape of the disk influences morphing, from the initial spherical bending to the final isometr...

WK E HAVE had to revamp many of our old ideas about feeding livestock. War proved again the tremendous importance of food. Wc had to get all the milk, eggs, poultry, meat, pork, lard, beef, veal, lamb, and mutton we could and make every tittle of grain count in doing so. Chicken was compared with hog and hog with steer to see which yielded the most nutrients for humans in return for the least f...

New Ideas In Pathfinding

We discuss some of the ideas behind the study of upper bound questions in classical discrepancy theory. The many ideas involved come from diverse areas of mathematics and include diophantine approximation, probability theory, number theory and various forms of Fourier analysis. We illustrate these ideas by largely restricting our discussion to two dimensions.