Biometric evidence that sexual selection has shaped the hominin face.

We consider sex differences in human facial morphology in the context of developmental change. We show that at puberty, the height of the upper face, between the lip and the brow, develops differently in males and females, and that these differences are not explicable in terms of sex differences in body size. We find the same dimorphism in the faces of human ancestors. We propose that the relative shortening in men and lengthening in women of the anterior upper face at puberty is the mechanistic consequence of extreme maxillary rotation during ontogeny. A link between this developmental model and sexual dimorphism is made for the first time, and provides a new set of morphological criteria to sex human crania. This finding has important implications for the role of sexual selection in the evolution of anthropoid faces and for theories of human facial attractiveness

The simplicity project: easing the burden of using complex and heterogeneous ICT devices and services

As of today, to exploit the variety of different "services", users need to configure each of their devices by using different procedures and need to explicitly select among heterogeneous access technologies and protocols. In addition to that, users are authenticated and charged by different means. The lack of implicit human computer interaction, context-awareness and standardisation places an enormous burden of complexity on the shoulders of the final users. The IST-Simplicity project aims at leveraging such problems by: i) automatically creating and customizing a user communication space; ii) adapting services to user terminal characteristics and to users preferences; iii) orchestrating network capabilities. The aim of this paper is to present the technical framework of the IST-Simplicity project. This paper is a thorough analysis and qualitative evaluation of the different technologies, standards and works presented in the literature related to the Simplicity system to be developed

Enabling the freight traffic controller for collaborative multi-drop urban logistics: practical and theoretical challenges

There is increasing interest in how horizontal collaboration between parcel carriers might help alleviate problems associated with last-mile logistics in congested urban centers. Through a detailed review of the literature on parcel logistics pertaining to collaboration, along with practical insights from carriers operating in the United Kingdom, this paper examines the challenges that will be faced in optimizing multicarrier, multidrop collection, and delivery schedules. A “freight traffic controller” (FTC) concept is proposed. The FTC would be a trusted third party, assigned to equitably manage the work allocation between collaborating carriers and the passage of vehicles over the last mile when joint benefits to the parties could be achieved. Creating this FTC concept required a combinatorial optimization approach for evaluation of the many combinations of hub locations, network configuration, and routing options for vehicle or walking to find the true value of each potential collaboration. At the same time, the traffic, social, and environmental impacts of these activities had to be considered. Cooperative game theory is a way to investigate the formation of collaborations (or coalitions), and the analysis used in this study identified a significant shortfall in current applications of this theory to last-mile parcel logistics. Application of theory to urban freight logistics has, thus far, failed to account for critical concerns including (a) the mismatch of vehicle parking locations relative to actual delivery addresses; (b) the combination of deliveries with collections, requests for the latter often being received in real time during the round; and (c) the variability in travel times and route options attributable to traffic and road network conditions

The Simplicity Project: Managing Complexity in a Diverse ICT World

As technology develops, people are using an ever broader range of heterogeneous ICT (Information and Communication Technology) devices and network-based services. New areas of research, such as pervasive computing, will further increase the diversity of the devices and services with which users have to deal. The result is an enormous burden of complexity for users, service providers and network operators. This creates obstacles to effective exploitation and acceptance of Beyond 3G systems such as ambient intelligence, context-aware services and novel access technologies. The goal of the Simplicity project is to reduce this complexity by: i) providing automatic customization of user access to services and the network; ii) automatically adapting services to terminal characteristics and user preferences; iii) orchestrating network capabilities

Novel component middleware for building dependable sentient computing applications

With advances in sensor-based computing and mobile communication, people have started to explore ubiquitous or pervasive computing systems that aim to have computing devices literally available everywhere, making them disappear into the physical environ- ment. Novel ubiquitous computing applications such as intelligent vehicles, smart buildings, and traffic management have special properties that traditional computing applications do not possess, such as context-awareness, massive decentralisation, autonomous behaviour, adaptivity, proactivity, and innate collaboration. In this paper we argue that such appli- cations require a new computational model and middleware that can reflect the autonomy and spontaneity of cooperative entities. The EU funded CORTEX1 project proposes the sentient object model to support the construction of such large-scale applications. We re- port on a flexible, run-time reconfigurable component based middleware that we have used to engineer the sentient object programming paradigm. We demonstrate the appropriate- ness of the novel computational model and validity of the middleware by constructing a proof of concept demonstrator based on the notion of autonomous cooperating vehicles

The simplicty project:Managing complexity in a diverse ICT world

As technology develops, people are using an ever broader range of heterogeneous ICT (Information and Communication Technology) devices and network-based services. New areas of research, such as pervasive computing, will further increase the diversity of the devices and services with which users have to deal. The result is an enormous burden of complexity for users, service providers and network operators. This creates obstacles to effective exploitation and acceptance of Beyond 3G systems such as ambient intelligence, context-aware services and novel access technologies. The goal of the Simplicity project is to reduce this complexity by: i) providing automatic customization of user access to services and the network; ii) automatically adapting services to terminal characteristics and user preferences; iii) orchestrating network capabilities

The simplicty project:Managing complexity in a diverse ICT world

As technology develops, people are using an ever broader range of heterogeneous ICT (Information and Communication Technology) devices and network-based services. New areas of research, such as pervasive computing, will further increase the diversity of the devices and services with which users have to deal. The result is an enormous burden of complexity for users, service providers and network operators. This creates obstacles to effective exploitation and acceptance of Beyond 3G systems such as ambient intelligence, context-aware services and novel access technologies. The goal of the Simplicity project is to reduce this complexity by: i) providing automatic customization of user access to services and the network; ii) automatically adapting services to terminal characteristics and user preferences; iii) orchestrating network capabilities

Observation of the suppressed Λb0→DpK- decay with D→K+π- and measurement of its CP asymmetry

International audienceA study of Λb0 baryon decays to the DpK- final state is presented based on a proton-proton collision data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9  fb-1 collected with the LHCb detector. Two Λb0 decays are considered, Λb0→DpK- with D→K-π+ and D→K+π-, where D represents a superposition of D0 and D¯0 states. The latter process is expected to be suppressed relative to the former, and is observed for the first time. The ratio of branching fractions of the two decays is measured, and the CP asymmetry of the suppressed mode, which is sensitive to the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa angle γ, is also reported