Jiajia Shen, Martin Garrad, Qicheng Zhang, Vico Chun Hei Wong, Alberto Pirrera, Rainer M J Groh
{"title":"A rapid-response soft end effector inspired by the hummingbird beak.","authors":"Jiajia Shen, Martin Garrad, Qicheng Zhang, Vico Chun Hei Wong, Alberto Pirrera, Rainer M J Groh","doi":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0148","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0148","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Biology is a wellspring of inspiration in engineering design. This paper delves into the application of elastic instabilities-commonly used in biological systems to facilitate swift movement-as a power-amplification mechanism for soft robots. Specifically, inspired by the nonlinear mechanics of the hummingbird beak-and shedding further light on it-we design, build and test a novel, rapid-response, soft end effector. The hummingbird beak embodies the capacity for swift movement, achieving closure in less than [Formula: see text]. Previous work demonstrated that rapid movement is achieved through snap-through deformations, induced by muscular actuation of the beak's root. Using nonlinear finite element simulations coupled with continuation algorithms, we unveil a representative portion of the equilibrium manifold of the beak-inspired structure. The exploration involves the application of a sequence of rotations as exerted by the hummingbird muscles. Specific emphasis is placed on pinpointing and tailoring the position along the manifold of the saddle-node bifurcation at which the onset of elastic instability triggers dynamic snap-through. We show the critical importance of the intermediate rotation input in the sequence, as it results in the accumulation of elastic energy that is then explosively released as kinetic energy upon snap-through. Informed by our numerical studies, we conduct experimental testing on a prototype end effector fabricated using a compliant material (thermoplastic polyurethane). The experimental results support the trends observed in the numerical simulations and demonstrate the effectiveness of the bio-inspired design. Specifically, we measure the energy transferred by the soft end effector to a pendulum, varying the input levels in the sequence of prescribed rotations. Additionally, we demonstrate a potential robotic application in scenarios demanding explosive action. From a mechanics perspective, our work sheds light on how pre-stress fields can enable swift movement in soft robotic systems with the potential to facilitate high input-to-output energy efficiency.</p>","PeriodicalId":17488,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The Royal Society Interface","volume":"21 218","pages":"20240148"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11463234/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142125998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"综合性期刊","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J Pablo Narvaez, Stephen P Yanoviak, Phillip M Bitzer, Jeffrey C Burchfield, Evan M Gora
{"title":"Effects of urbanization on cloud-to-ground lightning strike frequency: a global perspective.","authors":"J Pablo Narvaez, Stephen P Yanoviak, Phillip M Bitzer, Jeffrey C Burchfield, Evan M Gora","doi":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0257","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0257","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Urbanization tends to increase local lightning frequency (i.e. the 'lightning enhancement' effect). Despite many urban areas showing lightning enhancement, the prevalence of these effects is unknown and the drivers underlying these patterns are poorly quantified. We conducted a global assessment of cloud-to-ground lightning flashes (lightning strikes) across 349 cities to evaluate how the likelihood and magnitude of lightning enhancement vary with geography, climate, air pollution, topography and urban development. The likelihood of exhibiting lightning enhancement increased with higher temperature and precipitation in urban areas relative to their natural surroundings (i.e. urban heat islands and elevated urban precipitation), higher regional lightning strike frequency, greater distance to water bodies and lower elevations. Lightning enhancement was stronger in cities with conspicuous heat islands and elevated urban precipitation effects, higher lightning strike frequency, larger urban areas and lower latitudes. The particularly strong effects of elevated urban temperature and precipitation indicate that these are dominant mechanisms by which cities cause local lightning enhancement.</p>","PeriodicalId":17488,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The Royal Society Interface","volume":"21 218","pages":"20240257"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11463232/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142349241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"综合性期刊","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Brett Klaassen van Oorschot, Kelsy A Bryson, Olivia Danner, Joel F Eklof, Alessandra Lopez, Joshua Wah-Blumberg, Rachel E Pepper
{"title":"Dispersal distances from splash-cup plants depend on the cup's angle and contents.","authors":"Brett Klaassen van Oorschot, Kelsy A Bryson, Olivia Danner, Joel F Eklof, Alessandra Lopez, Joshua Wah-Blumberg, Rachel E Pepper","doi":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0129","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0129","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Splash-cup plants disperse propagules via raindrops striking cup-shaped fruiting bodies. The seeds are ejected at velocities up to five times the impact speed of the raindrop and are dispersed up to 1 m from the parent plant. Here, we examine the effects of cup angles and the presence of seed mimics to understand the dynamics of this unique method of dispersal. Our findings demonstrate that: (i) cup angles that launched seeds the furthest ranged from approximately 30° to 50°, matching the range of angles seen in splash-cup plants. (ii) Seeds travel shorter distances than water droplets alone, and this distance depends on the number of seeds in the cup. (iii) Not all seeds are ejected from initially dry cups, leaving cups with some seeds and some water. (iv) Nearly all seeds are ejected from cups that contain both water and seeds, and those that are ejected travel significantly further than those from dry cups. These results confirm the possibility that the conical shape of splash cup plants may be adapted to maximize dispersal distance and benefit from multiple splash events. Our results also illustrate that future work on these plants should include seeds rather than water droplets alone.</p>","PeriodicalId":17488,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The Royal Society Interface","volume":"21 218","pages":"20240129"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11463230/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142140454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"综合性期刊","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lixin Lin, Homayoun Hamedmoghadam, Robert Shorten, Lewi Stone
{"title":"Quantifying indirect and direct vaccination effects arising in the SIR model.","authors":"Lixin Lin, Homayoun Hamedmoghadam, Robert Shorten, Lewi Stone","doi":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0299","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0299","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Vaccination campaigns have both direct and indirect effects that act to control an infectious disease as it spreads through a population. Indirect effects arise when vaccinated individuals block disease transmission in any infection chain they are part of, and this in turn can benefit both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. Indirect effects are difficult to quantify in practice but, in this article, working with the susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model, they are analytically calculated in important cases, through pivoting on the final size formula for epidemics. Their relationship to herd immunity is also clarified. The analysis allows us to identify the important distinction between quantifying the indirect effects of vaccination at the 'population level' versus the 'per capita' level, which often results in radically different conclusions. As an example, our analysis unpacks why the population-level indirect effect can appear significantly larger than its per capita analogue. In addition, we consider a recently proposed epidemiological non-pharmaceutical intervention (by the means of recovered individuals) used over the COVID-19 pandemic, referred to as 'shielding', and study its impact on our mathematical analysis. The shielding scheme is extended to take advantage of vaccination including imperfect vaccination.</p>","PeriodicalId":17488,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The Royal Society Interface","volume":"21 218","pages":"20240299"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11463228/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142290059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"综合性期刊","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Justin M Calabrese, Lennart Schüler, Xiaoming Fu, Erik Gawel, Heinrich Zozmann, Jan Bumberger, Martin Quaas, Gerome Wolf, Sabine Attinger
{"title":"A novel, scenario-based approach to comparing non-pharmaceutical intervention strategies across nations.","authors":"Justin M Calabrese, Lennart Schüler, Xiaoming Fu, Erik Gawel, Heinrich Zozmann, Jan Bumberger, Martin Quaas, Gerome Wolf, Sabine Attinger","doi":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0301","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0301","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Comparing COVID-19 response strategies across nations is a key step in preparing for future pandemics. Conventional comparisons, which rank individual non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) effects, are limited by: (i) a focus on epidemiological outcomes; (ii) NPIs typically being applied as packages of interventions; and (iii) different political, economic and social conditions among nations. Here, we develop a coupled epidemiological-behavioural-macroeconomic model that can transfer NPI effects from a reference nation to a focal nation. This approach quantifies epidemiological, behavioural and economic outcomes while accounting for both packaged NPIs and differing conditions among nations. As a first proof of concept, we take Germany as our focal nation during Spring 2020, and New Zealand and Switzerland as reference nations with contrasting NPI strategies. Our results suggest that, while New Zealand's more aggressive strategy would have yielded modest epidemiological gains in Germany, it would have resulted in substantially higher economic costs while dramatically reducing social contacts. In contrast, Switzerland's more lenient strategy would have prolonged the first wave in Germany, but would also have increased relative costs. More generally, these findings indicate that our approach can provide novel, multifaceted insights on the efficacy of pandemic response strategies, and therefore merits further exploration and development.</p>","PeriodicalId":17488,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The Royal Society Interface","volume":"21 218","pages":"20240301"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11463227/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142290057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"综合性期刊","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Adaptive and self-learning Bayesian filtering algorithm to statistically characterize and improve signal-to-noise ratio of heart-rate data in wearable devices.","authors":"Luca Cossu, Giacomo Cappon, Andrea Facchinetti","doi":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0222","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0222","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The use of wearable sensors to monitor vital signs is increasingly important in assessing individual health. However, their accuracy often falls short of that of dedicated medical devices, limiting their usefulness in a clinical setting. This study introduces a new Bayesian filtering (BF) algorithm that is designed to learn the statistical characteristics of signal and noise, allowing for optimal smoothing. The algorithm is able to adapt to changes in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over time, improving performance through windowed analysis and Bayesian criterion-based smoothing. By evaluating the algorithm on heart-rate (HR) data collected from Garmin Vivoactive 4 smartwatches worn by individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and multiple sclerosis, it is demonstrated that BF provides superior SNR tracking and smoothing compared with non-adaptive methods. The results show that BF accurately captures SNR variability, reducing the root mean square error from 2.84 bpm to 1.21 bpm and the mean absolute relative error from 3.46% to 1.36%. These findings highlight the potential of BF as a preprocessing tool to enhance signal quality from wearable sensors, particularly in HR data, thereby expanding their applications in clinical and research settings.</p>","PeriodicalId":17488,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The Royal Society Interface","volume":"21 218","pages":"20240222"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11463221/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142126012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"综合性期刊","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Filippo Zimmaro, Manuel Miranda, José María Ramos Fernández, Jesús A Moreno López, Max Reddel, Valeria Widler, Alberto Antonioni, The Anh Han
{"title":"Emergence of cooperation in the one-shot Prisoner's dilemma through Discriminatory and Samaritan AIs.","authors":"Filippo Zimmaro, Manuel Miranda, José María Ramos Fernández, Jesús A Moreno López, Max Reddel, Valeria Widler, Alberto Antonioni, The Anh Han","doi":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0212","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0212","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As artificial intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly embedded in our lives, their presence leads to interactions that shape our behaviour, decision-making and social interactions. Existing theoretical research on the emergence and stability of cooperation, particularly in the context of social dilemmas, has primarily focused on human-to-human interactions, overlooking the unique dynamics triggered by the presence of AI. Resorting to methods from evolutionary game theory, we study how different forms of AI can influence cooperation in a population of human-like agents playing the one-shot Prisoner's dilemma game. We found that Samaritan AI agents who help everyone unconditionally, including defectors, can promote higher levels of cooperation in humans than Discriminatory AI that only helps those considered worthy/cooperative, especially in slow-moving societies where change based on payoff difference is moderate (small intensities of selection). Only in fast-moving societies (high intensities of selection), Discriminatory AIs promote higher levels of cooperation than Samaritan AIs. Furthermore, when it is possible to identify whether a co-player is a human or an AI, we found that cooperation is enhanced when human-like agents disregard AI performance. Our findings provide novel insights into the design and implementation of context-dependent AI systems for addressing social dilemmas.</p>","PeriodicalId":17488,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The Royal Society Interface","volume":"21 218","pages":"20240212"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11639149/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142349242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"综合性期刊","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Accuracy, rationality and specialization in a generalized model of collective navigation.","authors":"Richard P Mann, Joseph D Bailey, Edward A Codling","doi":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0207","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0207","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Animal navigation is a key behavioural process, from localized foraging to global migration. Within groups, individuals may improve their navigational accuracy by following those with more experience or knowledge, by pooling information from many directional estimates ('many wrongs') or some combination of these strategies. Previous agent-based simulations have highlighted that homogeneous leaderless groups can improve their collective navigation accuracy when individuals preferentially copy the movement directions of their neighbours while giving a low weighting to their own navigational knowledge. Meanwhile, other studies have demonstrated how specialized leaders may emerge, and that a small number of such individuals can improve group-level navigation performance. However, in general, these earlier results either lack a full mathematical grounding or do not fully consider the effect of individual self-interest. Here we derive and analyse a mathematically tractable model of collective navigation. We demonstrate that collective navigation is compromised when individuals seek to optimize their own accuracy in both homogeneous groups and those with differing navigational abilities. We further demonstrate how heterogeneous navigational strategies (specialized leaders and followers) may evolve within the model. Our results thus unify different lines of research in collective navigation and highlight the importance of individual selection in determining group composition and performance.</p>","PeriodicalId":17488,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The Royal Society Interface","volume":"21 218","pages":"20240207"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11463233/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142349240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"综合性期刊","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anna-Lee Jessop, Primož Pirih, Limin Wang, Nipam H Patel, Peta L Clode, Gerd E Schröder-Turk, Bodo D Wilts
{"title":"Elucidating nanostructural organization and photonic properties of butterfly wing scales using hyperspectral microscopy.","authors":"Anna-Lee Jessop, Primož Pirih, Limin Wang, Nipam H Patel, Peta L Clode, Gerd E Schröder-Turk, Bodo D Wilts","doi":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0185","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0185","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Biophotonic nanostructures in butterfly wing scales remain fascinating examples of biological functional materials, with intriguing open questions with regard to formation and evolutionary function. One particularly interesting butterfly species, <i>Erora opisena</i> (Lycaenidae: Theclinae), develops wing scales that contain three-dimensional photonic crystals that closely resemble a single gyroid geometry. Unlike most other gyroid-forming butterflies, <i>E. opisena</i> develops discrete gyroid crystallites with a pronounced size gradient hinting at a developmental sequence frozen in time. Here, we present a novel application of a hyperspectral (wavelength-resolved) microscopy technique to investigate the ultrastructural organization of these gyroid crystallites in dry, adult wing scales. We show that reflectance corresponds to crystallite size, where larger crystallites reflect green wavelengths more intensely; this relationship could be used to infer size from the optical signal. We further successfully resolve the red-shifted reflectance signal from wing scales immersed in refractive index liquids with varying refractive index, including values similar to water or cytosol. Such photonic crystals with lower refractive index contrast may be similar to the hypothesized nanostructural forms in the developing butterfly scales. The ability to resolve these fainter signals hints at the potential of this facile light microscopy method for <i>in vivo</i> analysis of nanostructure formation in developing butterflies.</p>","PeriodicalId":17488,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The Royal Society Interface","volume":"21 218","pages":"20240185"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11463223/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142290058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"综合性期刊","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"GIS-ODE: linking dynamic population models with GIS to predict pathogen vector abundance across a country under climate change scenarios.","authors":"A J Worton, R A Norman, L Gilbert, R B Porter","doi":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0004","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsif.2024.0004","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mechanistic mathematical models such as ordinary differential equations (ODEs) have a long history for their use in describing population dynamics and determining estimates of key parameters that summarize the potential growth or decline of a population over time. More recently, geographic information systems (GIS) have become important tools to provide a visual representation of statistically determined parameters and environmental features over space. Here, we combine these tools to form a 'GIS-ODE' approach to generate spatiotemporal maps predicting how projected changes in thermal climate may affect population densities and, uniquely, population dynamics of <i>Ixodes ricinus</i>, an important tick vector of several human pathogens. Assuming habitat and host densities are not greatly affected by climate warming, the GIS-ODE model predicted that, even under the lowest projected temperature increase, <i>I. ricinus</i> nymph densities could increase by 26-99% in Scotland, depending on the habitat and climate of the location. Our GIS-ODE model provides the vector-borne disease research community with a framework option to produce predictive, spatially explicit risk maps based on a mechanistic understanding of vector and vector-borne disease transmission dynamics.</p>","PeriodicalId":17488,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The Royal Society Interface","volume":"21 217","pages":"20240004"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11303026/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141897733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"综合性期刊","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}