Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Using Computer Algorithms To Elucidate Zebra Finch Reproductive Behaviour, Tanya T. Shoot, Sophie C. Edwards, Robert J. Martin, Susan D. Healy, David F. Sherry, Mark J. Daley

Western Research Forum

Birds that experience variation in climatic conditions must maintain a stable nest temperature during incubation for successful hatching of offspring. Varying nest structure and incubation behaviour may be the methods birds use to regulate nest temperature. We used a modeling approach to investigate how birds adjust incubation behaviour to ambient temperature.

Hidden Markov Models (HMM) have been used previously to predict the spatial distribution of animals based on the models’ ability to classify movement behaviour. We used a HMM to predict zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) incubation behaviour and nest structure from a nest temperature data set. The full …

Text Mining In Chinese Ancient Attires, Lu Wang

Western Research Forum

Starting from the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BCE) when writing system appeared in China, clothing was recorded as symbols to denote social statuses. The hierarchical signification of clothing remained in the following dynasties until the end of imperial China in 1911. The imperial period produced twenty-five official dynastic histories with rich corpuses on the subject of attire, documenting regulations and prohibitions of detailed dress code, a subject being scarcely studied and treated with assumptions today. This research will use text mining tools to identify descriptive words of clothing that reflect Chinese hierarchal ideology from the twenty-five histories. The method is to …