Sunday 14 December 2014

Why bird flocks move in unison

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Why bird flocks move in unison 
14 December, 2014, United KingdomUSA NEWS CORP


The reasons behind impressive formations of flocking birds, or schools of fish swimming in unison, will be discussed at the University of Lincoln’s Mathematics Christmas Lecture this month.  The talk will examine how and why such occurrences – which can also include the movements of human crowds and groups of bacteria – take place. Researchers in the field say that this so-called active matter form movements which make them appear to be a single organism, and is at the forefront of modern interdisciplinary research.  The lecture, 'Amazing flocking of birds: is it biology or mathematics?', will take place on Wednesday 17th December 2014 at 3 pm in the Engineering Hub (ENG208) on the University’s main Brayford Campus. It will be delivered by Professor Andrei Zvelindovsky, the Founding Head of the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Lincoln.  He said: "We all wonder why starlings flock in the sky: is it some mysterious collective intelligence of birds, which creates wonderfully complex patterns, or is it something really simple, like mathematical rules? This lecture will seek to explain how mathematics can help to decode some of these fairly complicated behaviours.” In Cologne, Germany, two biologists from the University of Leeds demonstrated a flock-like behavior in humans. The group of people exhibited a very similar behavioral pattern to that of a flock, where if 5% of the flock would change direction the others would follow suit. When one person was designated as a predator and everyone else was to avoid him, the flock behaved very much like a school of fish.  Flocking has also been considered as a means of controlling the behavior of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs).  As per Journal of Psychiatry Flocking is very common among species and it happens due to a reason e.g. defending from predator. Flocking is a common technology in screensavers, and has found its use in animation. Flocking has been used in many films to generate crowds which move more realistically. Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1992) featured flocking bats, and Disney's The Lion King (1994) included a wildebeest stampede.  Flocking behaviour has been used for other interesting applications. It has been applied to automatically program Internet multi-channel radio stations. It has also been used for visualizing information and for optimization tasks.


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