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CRUX OF THE MATTER. "The question remains, however, how does an individual bird spark a change if all are busy responding to the movement of everyone else? And more importantly, how do they do it so incredibly quickly?" https://lnkd.in/eJ7rdtJ View in LinkedIn

RHODOPSIN ACTIVATION. "Upon photon absorption by rhodopsin, therefore, a cascade of events occur, which results in the hyperpolarization of the photoreceptor membranes, and it is this alteration in membrane potential, which ultimately initiates signalling to post-synaptic neurons." https://lnkd.in/eTtJ_KE View in LinkedIn

SCALE-FREE. "The change in the behavioral state of one animal affects and is affected by that of all other animals in the group, no matter how large the group is. Scale-free correlations provide each animal with an effective perception range much larger than the direct interindividual interaction range, thus enhancing global response to perturbations. Because the size of the flock doesn't matter, a huge flock is able to respond to a predator attack as effectively and fluidly as a small flock." https://lnkd.in/eJ7rdtJ View in LinkedIn

"RHODOPSIN is a photon receptor protein in the rod photoreceptors. It comprises 348 amino acids, in which mutations in several of the amino acid positions can lead to blinding conditions. In the resting state, rhodopsin consists of the protein opsin and a covalently bound retinal molecule, which acts as a chromophore. In this state, the retinal molecule is in the 11-cis configuration." https://lnkd.in/eTtJ_KE View in LinkedIn

CUSP OF A SHIFT. "The secret lies in the same systems that apply to anything on the cusp of a shift, like snow before an avalanche, where the velocity of one bird affects the velocity of the rest. It is called "scale-free correlation" and every shift of the murmuration is called a critical transition." https://lnkd.in/eJ7rdtJ View in LinkedIn

WHOPPING RATES. "The photochemical stability of BR, commonly referred to as the cyclicity, is a measure of the number of times that the protein can be converted between two states before 37 per cent (1/e) of the material denatures. At ambient temperatures, the cyclicity of BR has been found to exceed 10(6)." (Bacteriorhodopsin). https://lnkd.in/eqeu6na View in LinkedIn

SELF-ASSEMBLING FLOCKS. "This model leads to robustly coherent flocks that self-assemble to a state of marginal opacity. It therefore provides a mechanism for the control of density." https://lnkd.in/ernkfgF View in LinkedIn

"BACTERIORHODOPSIN (BR) is one of the most studied proteins for use in bioelectronic and biomimetic devices. The absorption of a photon by the retinal chromophore of BR is one of the most efficient and stable photochemical reactions found in nature." https://lnkd.in/eqeu6na View in LinkedIn

NEW MODEL "for long-range information exchange in bird flocks based on the projected view of each individual out through the flock. Visual input is coarse grained to a pattern of (dark) bird against (light) sky. We propose the simplest hybrid projection model that combines metric-free coalignment, and noise, with this projected view; here the birds fly toward the resolved vector sum of all the domain boundaries." https://lnkd.in/ernkfgF View in LinkedIn

COMPLEX TASKS. "Much use has been made of particle swarm optimization as a tool to solve complex optimisation tasks, and many extensions and modifications to the original algorithm have been proposed. One such extension is related to the murmuration or flocking behaviour of starling birds and their flight trajectories in relation to flock cohesion giving rise to the so-called flock of starlings optimisation algorithm." https://lnkd.in/e96DgxW View in LinkedIn