Extended spider cognition

HFJ received a visiting professor fellowship from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq - Brazil) (PDE PDE232691/2014-2). Research supported in part by a Grant from the John Templeton Foundation to KNL.There is a tension between the conception of cognition as a central nervous system (CNS) process, and a view of cognition as extending towards the body or the contiguous environment. The centralised conception requires large or complex nervous systems to cope with complex environments. Conversely, the extended conception involves the outsourcing of information processing to the body or environment, thus making fewer demands on the processing power of the CNS. The evolution of extended cognition should be particularly favoured among small, generalist predators such as spiders, and here we review the literature to evaluate the fit of empirical data with these contrasting models of cognition. Spiders do not seem to be cognitively limited, displaying a large diversity of learning processes, from habituation to contextual learning, including a sense of numerosity. To tease apart the central from the extended cognition, we apply the mutual manipulability criterion, testing the existence of reciprocal causal links between the putative elements of the system. We conclude that the web threads and configurations are integral parts of the cognitive systems. The extension of cognition to the web helps to explain some puzzling features of spider behaviour and seems to promote evolvability within the group, enhancing innovation through cognitive connectivity to variable habitat features. Graded changes in relative brain size could also be explained by outsourcing information processing to environmental features. More generally, niche-constructed structures emerge as prime candidates for extending animal cognition, generating the selective pressures that help to shape the evolving cognitive system.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Excursion to Sandgate and Folkestone

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Recovering refined surface normals for relighting clothing in dynamic scenes

In this paper we present a method to relight captured 3D video sequences of non-rigid, dynamic scenes, such as clothing of real actors, reconstructed from multiple view video. A view-dependent approach is introduced to refine an initial coarse surface reconstruction using shape-from-shading to estimate detailed surface normals. The prior surface approximation is used to constrain the simultaneous estimation of surface normals and scene illumination, under the assumption of Lambertian surface reflectance. This approach enables detailed surface normals of a moving non-rigid object to be estimated from a single image frame. Refined normal estimates from multiple views are integrated into a single surface normal map. This approach allows highly non-rigid surfaces, such as creases in clothing, to be relit whilst preserving the detailed dynamics observed in video

Complex Lagrangian embeddings of moduli spaces of vector bundles

By means of a Fourier-Mukai transform we embed moduli spaces of stable bundles on an algebraic curve C as isotropic subvarieties of moduli spaces of mu-stable bundles on the Jacobian variety J(C). When g(C)=2 this provides new examples of special Lagrangian submanifolds.Comment: 9 pages, no figures, to appear in Diff. Geom. App

Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Medical Malpractice the Year in Review

In its 1989 session, the General Assembly amended several medical malpractice statutes. Perhaps the most important changes expanded the definition of health care provider under the Medical Malpractice Act (the Act ), and clarified the qualification requirements for expert witnesses