If you were to design wings for flying fruit, how best to optimize the wing shape? If you don’t already know the answer to that, you might begin your knowledge adventure by reading this study: “Curving to Fly: Synthetic Adaptation Unveils Optimal Flight Performance of Whirling Fruits,” Jean Rabault, Richard A. Fauli, and Andreas Carlson, […]
What shape does an earthworm take if someone vibrates the worm? Arnaud Hemmerle alerts us to an experimental attempt to find out. Hemmerle says: A few words about this wonderful paper, which tackles a deep and puzzling question: what is the shape of a vibrated earthworm? Back in 2015, we published a paper entitled “Worm-like […]
You may be wondering how aesthetically pleasing is your country’s diffraction pattern. This new physics study proves that Albert F. Rigosi shares your mental hobby: “Analysis of Fraunhofer Diffraction Patterns’ Entropy Based on Apertures Shaped as National Borders,” Albert F. Rigosi, Optik, vol. 172, November 2018, pp. 1019-1025. (Thanks to John Ng for bringing this […]
‘Caricaturization’ (the act of making a caricature of someone/something) can now be performed automatically – and not only that, it can be set to music. Matan Sela and colleagues at Prof. Ron Kimmel’s Geometric Image Processing Lab, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, have developed ‘A novel caricature generation framework for surfaces’. Computer Vision […]
Mathematics comes to the rescue of anyone who wants to make almost any shape “zippable” with a single zipper. This study has details: “Shape Representation by Zippable Ribbons,” Christian Schüller, Roi Poranne, and Olga Sorkine-Hornung, arXiv:1711.02450v1, November 7, 2017. The authors, at ETH Zürich, Switzerland, explain: “We observe that the assembly of complex 3D shapes […]
Mahadevan, who won an Ig Nobel Physics Prize in 2007 for studying how/why wrinkled sheets become wrinkled, has a new study out about how/why bird eggs become bird-egg shaped. The study, by Mahadevan and several collaborators, is: “Avian Egg Shape: Form, Function, and Evolution,” Mary Caswell Stoddard, Ee Hou Yong, Derya Akkaynak, Catherine Sheard, Joseph […]
A grizzled morphometrician casts a cold, gleeful eye at his field, and urges himself and his fellow morphometricians to do better. Morphometrics is the the continuing attempt to carefully measure and compare shapes and sizes. This morphometrician’s happy diatribe is in the form of a long, new paper: “The Inappropriate Symmetries of Multivariate Statistical Analysis […]
Have you ever mused upon the question: ‘Is the cross section of a banana an ellipsoid, and if so, can it be used to gauge its volume and surface area? Yes? Then a report in the International Journal of Agricultural Science, Research and Technology (IJASRT) 2011 Vol. 1 No. 1 pp. 1-5, may be of […]
This illustration demonstrates “the destructive effect of spectacle handles” for computer programs designed to automatically detect and measure the shape of a person’s ear. From one point of view, this shows that you are acting unfairly if you wear eyeglasses to an airport or bank or any other place where you are likely to be […]
A new study about faces implies than an old study about faces (which we wrote about way back when) should not be taken at face value: “Lack of Support for the Association between Facial Shape and Aggression: A Reappraisal Based on a Worldwide Population Genetics Perspective,” Jorge Gómez-Valdés, Tábita Hünemeier, Mirsha Quinto-Sánchez, Carolina Paschetta, Soledad […]