Conveners
GA. Biological Physics and Biomechanics
- Rahul Kulkarni (Virginia Tech)
Rolf MÜLLER
(Virginia Tech)
10/21/11, 8:30 AM
Invited
Bats have evolved one of the most capable and at the same time parsimonious sensory systems found in nature. Using active and passive biosonar as a major - and often sufficient - far sense, different bat species are able to master a wide variety of sensory tasks under very dissimilar sets of constraints. Given the limited computational resources of the bat's brain, this performance is unlikely...
Henry Greenside
(Duke University)
10/21/11, 9:00 AM
Invited
Many species of songbirds do not sing instinctively but learn their songs by a process of auditory-guided vocal learning that starts with a kind of babbling that converges over several months and through tens of thousands of iterations to a highly precise adult song. How the neural circuitry of the songbird brain learns, generates, and recognizes temporal sequences related to song are...
M. Shane Hutson
(Vanderbilt University)
10/21/11, 9:30 AM
Invited
The biological tissues of a developing organism are built and reshaped by the mechanical behavior of individual cells. We probe the relevant cellular mechanics \textit{in vivo} using laser-microsurgery -- both qualitatively, to assess whether removal of specific cells alters the dynamics of tissue reshaping, and quantitatively, to measure sub-cellular mechanical properties and stresses. I will...
