Animal Senses

and Drones

Science Café Topic: Tiny Brains at High Speed: The Neuroscience of Fly Flight

with Dr. Jessica Fox

April 9, 2018

Animal brains take in information from the environment, process it, and use it to make decisions in very short amounts of time. Many animals use vision as a main source of information, but information coming from the eyes is only useful if the animal knows where it is in space and how it is moving. In Jessica's lab, Fox Lab@CWRU, they study how flies use their sensory systems to fly. They carefully record the flies' behavior while providing different sensory input, and they also record the activity of neurons in their brains. Our work shows us how small groups of nerve cells can act together to generate flight, and provides ideas on new ways to pilot drones. (excerpt from the Science Café website)

The books below provide an in-depth look at two aspects of Dr. Fox's talk: Animal (and human) senses and the connection with neuroscience as well as drones and their use, construction, and regulation. Click the titles to link to the library's catalog to place a hold or to get additional information.

Neuroscience and the Senses (Human and Animal)

Our Senses: An Immersive Experience by Rob DeSalle, Rob (2018)
- Rather than organize his material according to the major senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and balance), DeSalle's approach integrates the fields of evolution, genetics, neuroanatomy, and human variability and plasticity. DeSalle's enthusiasm blossoms when he discusses cross-modal sensory responses and the "kluge" of competing elements that make up the human brain. In addition to showcasing extreme demonstrations of trauma-induced brain changes and hallucinations, DeSalle also notably focuses on associations between sounds and figures made by average people, such as between hard sounds and pointy figures and soft sounds and blobby figures, and on synesthesia seen in normal infant development. - Publishers Weekly Review (excerpt)
What It's Like To Be A Dog: And Other Adventures In Animal Neuroscience by Gregory Berns (2017)
- Defying a long-standing philosophical belief that one can't possibly fathom the internal experiences of nonhuman creatures without somehow stepping inside their minds, Berns used the latest functional MRI equipment, which takes moving pictures of brainwave activity in the presence of smells or commands, to map the similarities between human and animal cognition. Berns also peeks into the gray matter of dolphins, sea lions, and Tasmanian devils, bolstering his contention that both four-footed and sea-dwelling mammals think and feel much as we do, a sentiment animal lovers and fans of books by Jane Goodall, E. O. Wilson, and Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason will heartily embrace. - Booklist Review (excerpt)
Being A Dog : Following The Dog Into A World Of Smell by Alexandra Horowitz (2016)
- To really understand dogs, one must move into the realm of the olfactory, because, as Horowitz points out, it all begins with the nose. While dogs see and hear perfectly well, what they really like is sniffing, and particularly sniffing other dogs and their humans. In this exploration of the canine nose, Horowitz explores the smelly world dogs live in, and, in the process, also learns a lot about humans' nasal abilities. Exploring the mechanics of sniffing, the author learned that dogs practice a form of circular breathing to enhance odors. She studies nasal anatomy; tries sniffing books to see which one her son recently handled (got it on the first try); takes part in a study of olfaction (100 scents in two hours); learns about detection training of working dogs as they learn to sniff out drugs, cadavers, and cancers; and trains her own dogs to search out scents. All of this focus on scent left Horowitz with a heightened awareness of smells, and to teach herself to attend to them. - Booklist Starred Review (excerpt)
Being A Beast : Adventures Across The Species Divide by Charles Foster (2016)
- I want to know what it is like to be a wild thing, explains Foster, a British professor of medical law and ethics as well as a veterinarian, at the start of this fascinating exploration. He describes the physiology and anatomy of five different species--badger, red deer, urban red fox, otter, and swift and tries to understand their experiences by living their lives. Foster lived in a hole and ate worms to approximate the life of a badger. As an otter, he traveled alone between streams and stayed in the water turning over stones in search of food. Joining urban foxes meant being crepuscular, sleeping next to freeways, and rummaging through trash cans. Learning what it was like to be a prey species as a red deer meant being chased by staghounds. The most difficult effort was to live the life of a swift, as these birds spend the vast majority of their lives airborne, so instead he followed their migration. Ultimately, Foster found reciprocity in his unusual and daring immersion in nature, feeling that he now knows the essence of animals' lives and is somehow newly known in return. - Booklist Starred Review (excerpt)
Animal Electricity: How We Learned That The Body And Brain Are Electric Machines by Robert Campenot (2016)
- In this fascinating, well-written work, Campenot clearly describes how animal electricity is central to scientists' modern understanding of the animal nervous system. The book not only provides a historical perspective on how various scientific theories developed over time but also explains how the new discoveries related to animal electricity have been applied to medicine, for example, the electrocardiogram and "brain-machine interfaces." The final chapter, "The Bionic Century," is a good presentation on prospects for future developments. The book's accessible language and thorough coverage of the basics of animal electricity makes this a useful work for undergraduate students as well as general readers. - Choice Review (excerpt)
On The Wing: Insects, Pterosaurs, Birds, Bats And The Evolution Of Animal Flight by David Alexander (2015)
- For any organism, the ability to break the bonds of terrestrial life and sustain flight confers enormous evolutionary advantages. However, powered flight has appeared among only four groups of organisms in the hundreds of millions of years of life on Earth. As Alexander (Univ. of Kansas) makes clear in this book, in each case, whether in insects, pterosaurs, birds, or bats, natural selection acted on a multitude of evolutionary steps as the anatomy of ancestral non-flying creatures changed to allow them to not only glide (a far easier feat one can see today among fish, rodents, lizards, and even snakes) but also fly thousands of kilometers. From birdwatchers to bug collectors, dinosaur enthusiasts, bat lovers, and even pilots, anyone with an interest in nature, evolution, and flight will enjoy this fascinating book. - Choice Review
Principles Of Neural Design by Peter Sterling (2015)
- From discussions of the simplest organisms such as bacteria to the complex mammalian brain, neuroscientists Sterling and Laughlin explore systematically how and why evolution has led to the efficient human brain. By examining an impressive amount of data, the authors explain the physical demands and limitations of a brain in the context of the needs of an organism. The book takes a particularly close look at the visual system, with the intent of applying the general concepts throughout the nervous system. Principles of Neural Design will appeal to anyone interested in the brain and leave them with a better appreciation of how and why it is designed the way it is. - Choice Review (excerpt)
Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Seeley (2010)
- Seeley (Cornell Univ.; The Wisdom of the Hive, 1995; Honeybee Ecology, CH, Mar'86) shares his 35-plus years of experience working with bees. He presents a very interesting treatise about his research (as well as that of other scientists) on these eusocial insects and their fast and accurate group decision making when choosing the colony's new dwelling place. This very well-written book is also beautifully illustrated, highly informative, and educational. - Choice Review (excerpt)

Drones

Drones : How To Teach An Arduino To Fly by David McGriffy (2016)
- Make: Drones will help the widest possible audience understand how drones work by providing several DIY drone projects based on the world's most popular robot controller--the Arduino. The information imparted in this book will show Makers how to build better drones and be better drone pilots, and incidentally it will have applications in almost any robotics project. Why Arduino? Makers know Arduinos and their accessories, they are widely available and inexpensive, and there is strong community support. Open source flight-control code is available for Arduino, and flying is the hook that makes it exciting, even magical, for so many people. Arduino is not only a powerful board in its own right, but it's used as the controller of most inexpensive 3d printers, many desktop CNCs, and the majority of open source drone platforms. (Book summary)
Building Your Own Drones : A Beginner's Guide To Drones, UAVs, And ROVs by John Baichtal (2016)
- Discover what drones are and why they're so exciting. Explore today's most imaginative projects, from 3D-printed mini quadcopters to floating robot armies. Create your own practical Drone Builder's Workbench. Build complete rocket, blimp, waterborne, and automotive drones. Construct both fully autonomous and radio-controlled drones. (Book summary)
Regulation of Drones from the Global Legal Research Directorate, Law Library of Congress (2016)
- This [136 page] report surveys the regulation of drone operations under the laws of twelve countries as well as the European Union. Countries surveyed use different terminology in regulating drones. Such terms include “unmanned aircraft systems” (UAS); “unmanned aerial [or air] vehicles” (UAVs), and “remotely piloted aircraft” (RPA). For the purpose of uniformity and to reflect the terminology used by the ICAO, this summary refers to drones as UAS, to include all types of unmanned systems, vehicles, and aircraft, excluding model aircraft used for hobby or recreational purposes. (excerpt)
Drones : What Everyone Needs To Know by Sarah Kreps (2016)
- Kreps (Cornell Univ.) knows how drones work from the inside, as a USAF officer, and from the outside, as a political scientist. This is a comprehensive study that lives up to its ambitious subtitle. The greater part of the book consists in raising more than 40 questions, from "what is a drone?" to "are drones here to stay?" Her answers cover military and civilian uses of drones, including unmanned sea and land vehicles, along with problems that transformative technologies always bring with them--here, moral hazard especially for military drones (the perverse incentive to increase the use of drone strikes) and privacy issues for civilian ones are the most obvious. - Choice Review (excerpt)

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