Disappearing Defendants v. Judgment Proof Injurers: Upgrading the Theory of Tort Law Failures

Do injurers’ insolvency and victims’ reluctance to sue affect accident prevention in the same way? Are these circumstances less of a problem under the negligence rule than under strict liability? We argue, contrary to the literature, that the answer is, in most cases, negative and make three main points. First, the judgment proof problem and the disappearing defendant problem are shown to have different effects on injurers’ behavior and hence yield dissimilar levels of social welfare. Second, when these two problems occur simultaneously they may have offsetting effects. Third, the negligence rule is superior to strict liability only under some conditions, which are not always satisfied when cause in fact is considered. In this case, we find that social welfare under negligence may actually be less than, the same as, or greater than under strict liability. Our model encompasses different precaution technologies as well as monetary vs. non-monetary precautions

Sky segmentation with ultraviolet images can be used for navigation

Inspired by ant navigation, we explore a method for sky segmentation using ultraviolet (UV) light. A standard camera is adapted to allow collection of outdoor images containing light in the visible range, in UV only and in green only. Automatic segmentation of the sky region using UV only is significantly more accurate and far more consistent than visible wavelengths over a wide range of locations, times and weather conditions, and can be accomplished with a very low complexity algorithm. We apply this method to obtain compact binary (sky vs non-sky) images from panoramic UV images taken along a 2km route in an urban environment. Using either sequence SLAM or a visual compass on these images produces reliable localisation and orientation on a subsequent traversal of the route under different weather conditions

Place recognition with event-based cameras and a neural implementation of SeqSLAM

Event-based cameras (Figure 1) offer much potential to the fields of robotics and computer vision, in part due to their large dynamic range and extremely high “frame rates”. These attributes make them, at least in theory, particularly suitable for enabling tasks like navigation and mapping on high speed robotic platforms under challenging lighting conditions, a task which has been particularly challenging for traditional algorithms and camera sensors. Before these tasks become feasible however, progress must be made towards adapting and innovating current RGB-camera-based algorithms to work with eventbased cameras. In this paper we present ongoing research investigating two distinct approaches to incorporating event-based cameras for robotic navigation: 1. The investigation of suitable place recognition / loop closure techniques, and 2. The development of efficient neural implementations of place recognition techniques that enable the possibility of place recognition using event-based cameras at very high frame rates using neuromorphic computing hardware. Figure 1: The first commercial event camera: (a) DVS128; (b) a stream of events (upward and downward spikes: positive and negative events); (c) image-like visualisation of accumulated events within a time interval (white and black: positive and negative events). From (H. Kim, 2014)]

Software to convert terrestrial LiDAR scans of natural environments into photorealistic meshes

The introduction of 3D scanning has strongly influenced environmental sciences. If the resulting point clouds can be transformed into polygon meshes, a vast range of visualisation and analysis tools can be applied. But extracting accurate meshes from large point clouds gathered in natural environments is not trivial, requiring a suite of customisable processing steps. We present Habitat3D, an open source software tool to generate photorealistic meshes from registered point clouds of natural outdoor scenes. We demonstrate its capability by extracting meshes of different environments: 8,800 m2 grassland featuring several Eucalyptus trees (combining 9 scans and 41,989,885 data points); 1,018 m2 desert densely covered by vegetation (combining 56 scans and 192,223,621 data points); a well-structured garden; and a rough, volcanic surface. The resultant reconstructions accurately preserve all spatial features with millimetre accuracy whilst reducing the memory load by up to 98.5%. This enables rapid visualisation of the environments using off-the-shelf game engines and graphics hardware

Ant homing ability is not diminished when traveling backwards

Ants are known to be capable of homing to their nest after displacement to a novel location. This is widely assumed to involve some form of retinotopic matching between their current view and previously experienced views. One simple algorithm proposed to explain this behavior is continuous retinotopic alignment, in which the ant constantly adjusts its heading by rotating to minimize the pixel-wise difference of its current view from all views stored while facing the nest. However, ants with large prey items will often drag them home while facing backwards. We tested whether displaced ants (Myrmecia croslandi) dragging prey could still home despite experiencing an inverted view of their surroundings under these conditions. Ants moving backwards with food took similarly direct paths to the nest as ants moving forward without food, demonstrating that continuous retinotopic alignment is not a critical component of homing. It is possible that ants use initial or intermittent retinotopic alignment, coupled with some other direction stabilizing cue that they can utilize when moving backward. However, though most ants dragging prey would occasionally look toward the nest, we observed that their heading direction was not noticeably improved afterwards. We assume ants must use comparison of current and stored images for corrections of their path, but suggest they are either able to chose the appropriate visual memory for comparison using an additional mechanism; or can make such comparisons without retinotopic alignment

Change: A Leader’s Perspective

Change: A Leader\u27s Perspective represents the culmination of the Change Leadership course taught at Winona State University in the fall term of 2017. Leadership is a broad category with many facets. This book explores the subject and offers students of leadership and aspiring leaders current perspectives on leadership theories, the omnipresence of change, and personal reflections on the course material. Additional thoughts which resonate throughout this text are that leaders influence outcomes and that leadership manifests itself in change, whether by cause or effect.https://openriver.winona.edu/leadershipeducationbooks/1000/thumbnail.jp

How variation in head pitch could affect image matching algorithms for ant navigation

Desert ants are a model system for animal navigation, using visual memory to follow long routes across both sparse and cluttered environments. Most accounts of this behaviour assume retinotopic image matching, e.g. recovering heading direction by finding a minimum in the image difference function as the viewpoint rotates. But most models neglect the potential image distortion that could result from unstable head motion. We report that for ants running across a short section of natural substrate, the head pitch varies substantially: by over 20 degrees with no load; and 60 degrees when carrying a large food item. There is no evidence of head stabilisation. Using a realistic simulation of the ant’s visual world, we demonstrate that this range of head pitch significantly degrades image matching. The effect of pitch variation can be ameliorated by a memory bank of densely sampled along a route so that an image sufficiently similar in pitch and location is available for comparison. However, with large pitch disturbance, inappropriate memories sampled at distant locations are often recalled and navigation along a route can be adversely affected. Ignoring images obtained at extreme pitches, or averaging images over several pitches, does not significantly improve performance

Still no convincing evidence for cognitive map use by honeybees

Cheeseman et al. (1) claim that an ability of honey bees to travel home through a landscape with conflicting information from a celestial compass proves the bees' use of a cognitive map. Their claim involves a curious assumption about the visual information that can be extracted from the terrain: that there is sufficient information for a bee to identify where it is, but insufficient to guide its path without resorting to a cognitive map. We contend that the authors’ claims are unfounded

Evolving a Neural Model of Insect Path Integration

Path integration is an important navigation strategy in many animal species. We use a genetic algorithm to evolve a novel neural model of path integration, based on input from cells that encode the heading of the agent in a manner comparable to the polarization-sensitive interneurons found in insects. The home vector is encoded as a population code across a circular array of cells that integrate this input. This code can be used to control return to the home position. We demonstrate the capabilities of the network under noisy conditions in simulation and on a robot

Somewhere between remembering and forgetting: Working across generations on The Middle

Inspired by Hamlet, The Middle (2013) is a one-man show devised for a theatre foyer - a liminal space between the outside and the inside, the real world and the theatre. Hamlet is a character caught in a limbo between ?To be or not to be? and by casting my father, Tony Pinchbeck, to play the title role, I sought to explore time passing, staging ageing and the relationship between father and son. My father studied Hamlet when he was at school so he is stuck in the middle between the fading memory of reading that play 50 years ago and reading it now. He is trying to remember what it was like to be Hamlet while I continue my struggle to stay in the wings. For this article, I reflect on the complex dramaturgical process of working with my father to revisit his performative memories. The dramaturg?s job is to look for and after something that is not yet found. As Williams tells Turner and Behrndt, ?you don?t really know what is being sought?.1 As such, the dramaturg is in a limbo, or in the middle, between finding and looking, knowing and not knowing. For The Middle (2013), I spent time playing with the material I wanted to use physically: a table, a chair, 40 metres of bubble wrap. I found I could create interesting images with this material that could speak about the themes of liminality, ageing, stasis and mortality and the archiving of memory. The older we get, and the longer the show toured, between 2013 and 2016, the more the notion of father and son resonated. A retired solicitor, my father is 75 this year, and as he grew older and the show toured for three years, his memory of playing Hamlet faded so the text he spoke was always further from events it described. As Matthew Goulish writes, ?Some words speak of events, other words, events make us speak?. These were the words my Dad?s memories made us speak. For this article, I reflect on concepts of memory, time passing and ageing with Professor Mick Mangan, who explores these themes in his publication Staging Ageing (2013). The article weaves together my dramaturgical experience of making the performance with my father, and Mick?s experience of watching it through the lens of his research, and touches upon recent casting choices in order to explore issues of age and ageing and reminiscence theatre