Bird Flocks Research Articles

Wear fault diagnosis in hydro-turbine via the incorporation of the IWSO algorithm optimized CNN-LSTM neural network

When a hydropower unit operates in a sediment-laden river, the sediment accelerates hydro-turbine wear, leading to efficiency loss or even shutdown. Therefore, wear fault diagnosis is crucial for its safe and stable operation. A hydro-turbine wear fault diagnosis method based on improved WT (wavelet threshold algorithm) preprocessing combined with IWSO (improved white shark optimizer) optimized CNN-LSTM (convolutional neural network-long-short term memory) is proposed. The improved WT algorithm is utilized to denoise the preprocessing of the original signals. Chaotic mapping, bird flock search, and cosine elite variation strategies are introduced to enhance the WSO algorithm's robust performance, and the CNN-LSTM model's hyperparameters are optimized using the IWSO algorithm to improve the diagnostic performance. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the proposed method reaches 96.2%, which is 8.9% higher than that of the IWSO-CNN-LSTM model without denoising. The study also found that the diagnostic accuracy of hydro-turbine wear faults increased with increasing sediment concentration in the water. This study can supplement the existing hydro-turbine condition monitoring and fault diagnosis system. Meanwhile, diagnosing wear faults in hydro-turbines can improve power generation efficiency and quality and minimize resource consumption.

Application of sparrow search swarm intelligence optimization algorithm in identifying the critical surface in slope-stability

The use of nature-inspired meta-heuristics to tackle complex optimization problems is steadily gaining popularity within a rapidly evolving world. Swarm intelligence (SI) optimization motivated by behavior of community-based organisms of flocks of birds, schools of fish, colonies of ants and bees performs the search through agents whose trajectories are primarily adjusted stochastically and sporadically deterministically, by golden rules drawn from Mother Nature. Each entity within the swarm is swayed by its individual ‘best’ and group’s ‘best’ position while moving randomly to converge to optimal through competition and cooperation. The sparrow search algorithm (SSA), developed by Xuea and Shen (Xue and Shen in Syst Sci Cont Eng 8:22–34, 2020) is a very recent SI approach that adopts the sparrow producer–scrounger model metaphorically for designing optimum searching strategies, inspired by the foraging, anti-predation behavior, and the overall group wisdom of sparrows. SSA has been experimented on some hard benchmark test functions to test its effectiveness and thereafter, applied in slope-stability problems in searching the critical failure surface. The objective function to be optimized is the factor of safety against failure given by Bishop's (Bishop in Geotechnique 5:7–17, 1955) simplified method. Results show SSA is a strong contender to bio-inspired methods like genetic algorithms, big-bang big-crunch, simulated annealing, and artificial bee colony algorithms. The study illustrates the flexibility, efficiency, and robustness of the methodology in function optimization.

An Uncertain Perspective on Consciousness

This should be considered as an addendum to Fundamental Cosmology and Physics Beyond the Standard Model [1] and ideas from pilot/wave theory [2]. It is more accurate to say that this is a philosophical perspective that comes from common basic observations and we can give a simple demonstration of this Pilot Wave theory by showing several examples of scale invariance [3]. It is not only just at the smallest levels of quantum mechanics we can observe these properties. Consider large flocks of birds or schools of fish moving together at the human scales of perception. We may show each bird is a particle being piloted by the wave of birds in the flock. But, each bird is also a small part of the wave and has the freedom to change the waveform simultaneously, dynamically. As some might say, “That’s all there is folks.” A living fish or bird, with simpleconsciousness, can change the waveform based on internal freewill. There is something happening internally that sets life apart from that which can only be influenced externally. Life has internal dynamics. Particles interacting at the sub-atomic level have no choice in their interaction with the waveform, as this is solely influenced by its own (external) properties. Indeed there is a Markov blanket separating internal and external states. There is a repeating pattern of scale invariance when comparing brain holography theory and ADS-CFT correspondence [4], as black hole holography, as we will show.

Multi-body mesh deformation using a multi-level localized dual-restricted radial basis function interpolation

Multi-body dynamic problems with moving boundaries are prevalent in the computational fluid dynamics. In these problems, the original mesh is unsuitable for subsequent solution steps and is needed to be deformed. The radial basis function (RBF) interpolation is a common algorithm for the mesh deformation task. However, the multi-body mesh may contain numerous individuals and volume nodes, which will harm the computational efficiency. In order to optimize this process, we propose a new method for the mesh deformation of the multi-body configuration. In this new approach, each individual is deformed separately. Thus the global problem is decomposed into a series of local mesh deformation problems. As the computational cost to construct the interpolation system in RBF algorithm is proportional to the cube of the number of support points on the surface, converting it into multiple local mesh deformation problems can effectively reduce the CPU cost. To treat each local problem, we employ a dual-restricted RBF interpolation technique which could avoid the influence of moving individual on the other individuals. This new localized approach effectively improves the computational efficiency to construct the interpolation system but sometimes will increase the CPU cost of the mesh updating procedure. To avoid this drawback, the existed multi-level restricted RBF strategy is coupled with the new localized method to further reduce the CPU cost to update the mesh. The combination of the two techniques could enhance their advantages and avoid their drawbacks. Some numerical examples have demonstrated the abilities of the new algorithm. For instance, in the case of the three-dimensional birds flock, the CPU time to construct the interpolation system and deform the volume mesh was respectively reduced by three and two orders of magnitude compared to the global single-level method.

Spatial correlations in laboratory insect swarms.

In contrast with flocks of birds, schools of fish and herds of animals, swarms of the non-biting midge Chironomus riparius do not possess global order and under quiescent conditions velocities are only weakly correlated at long distances. Without such order it is challenging to characterize the collective behaviours of the swarms which until now have only been evident in their coordinated responses to disturbances. Here I show that the positions of the midges in laboratory swarms are maximally anticorrelated. This novel form of long-range ordering has until now gone unnoticed in the literature on collective animal movements. Here, its occurrence is attributed to midges being, in nearly equal measure, attracted towards the centre of the swarm and repelled by one another. It is shown that the midge swarms are poised at the cusp of a stable-unstable phase transition.

Field validation of effects of species and flock size on echoes in avian radar surveys

Radar is a powerful technology for surveys of avian movements. Validating the accuracy of radar detection is essential when establishing quantitative criteria for tracking bird trajectories and counting bird flocks. This study clarifies the positional and biological factors influencing the probability of detection (POD) and echo size on X-band marine radar. The bird trajectory for validation was obtained by ornithodolite at the same time as the radar scan. Distance was found to have a negative effect on POD and echo size, while elevation angle positively affected POD. Body mass and flock size positively affected POD and echo size. In predicting detection performance, the survey distance required to achieve 50% POD was 750 m or less for Grey-faced Buzzard, the lightest target species, but up to 1800 m for a pair of Bewick’s Swan. Our study provides survey and analysis procedures that allow for efficient validation using ornithodolites. Then, we identify the range settings that should be considered for target species and contribute to establishing criteria for quantitative radar bird surveys.

Discrete Laplacian thermostat for flocks and swarms: the fully conserved Inertial Spin Model

Abstract Experiments on bird flocks and midge swarms reveal that these natural systems are well described by an active theory in which conservation laws play a crucial role. By building a symplectic structure that couples the particles’ velocities to the generator of their internal rotations (spin), the Inertial Spin Model (ISM) reinstates a second-order temporal dynamics that captures many phenomenological traits of flocks and swarms. The reversible structure of the ISM predicts that the total spin is a constant of motion, the central conservation law responsible for all the novel dynamical features of the model. However, fluctuations and dissipation introduced in the original model to make it relax, violate the spin conservation law, so that the ISM aligns with the biophysical phenomenology only within finite-size regimes, beyond which the overdamped dynamics characteristic of the Vicsek model takes over. Here, we introduce a novel version of the ISM, in which the irreversible terms needed to relax the dynamics strictly respect the conservation of the spin. We perform a numerical investigation of the fully conservative model, exploring both the fixed-network case, which belongs to the equilibrium class of Model G, and the active case, characterized by self-propulsion of the agents and an out-of-equilibrium reshuffling of the underlying interaction network. Our simulations not only capture the correct spin wave phenomenology of the ordered phase, but they also yield dynamical critical exponents in the near-ordering phase that agree very well with the theoretical predictions.

UAV path planning based on bird flock migration

Unmanned aerial vehicle, generally referred to as UAV, due to its high-performance and low-cost characteristics, it is particularly widely used in both military and civil applications, and is often used to perform a variety of complex missions. Trajectory planning is the basis for UAVs to realize autonomous flight, which ensures that UAVs avoid obstacles and threatening areas when performing tasks, and guarantees the safe execution of tasks. The operation of a UAV requires finding the safest and most efficient trajectory from a starting point to a specified end point based on several specific constraints. Current UAV trajectory planning algorithms, such as swarm algorithm, particle swarm algorithm, and ant colony algorithm, have been widely recognized, but still have many limitations when they are applied to complex and variable terrain. Therefore, this paper proposes an improved UAV trajectory planning algorithm based on simulated bird migration, and uses matlab for simulation and algorithm evaluation. The simulation results indicate that the improved search strategy is effective, the algorithm can find a better solution in each iteration, and the search strategy of the algorithm can effectively guide the algorithm towards a more optimized region. Overall, this algorithm has high research value in both military and civilian fields.

DCWPSO: particle swarm optimization with dynamic inertia weight updating and enhanced learning strategies.

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) stands as a prominent and robust meta-heuristic algorithm within swarm intelligence (SI). It originated in 1995 by simulating the foraging behavior of bird flocks. In recent years, numerous PSO variants have been proposed to address various optimization applications. However, the overall performance of these variants has not been deemed satisfactory. This article introduces a novel PSO variant, presenting three key contributions: First, a novel dynamic oscillation inertia weight is introduced to strike a balance between exploration and exploitation; Second, the utilization of cosine similarity and dynamic neighborhood strategy enhances both the quality of solution and the diversity of particle populations; Third, a unique worst-best example learning strategy is proposed to enhance the quality of the least favorable solution and consequently improving the overall population. The algorithm's validation is conducted using a test suite comprised of benchmarks from the CEC2014 and CEC2022 test suites on real-parameter single-objective optimization. The experimental results demonstrate the competitiveness of our algorithm against recently proposed state-of-the-art PSO variants and well-known algorithms.

Radar Target Classification Using Enhanced Doppler Spectrograms with ResNet34_CA in Ubiquitous Radar

Ubiquitous Radar has become an essential tool for preventing bird strikes at airports, where accurate target classification is of paramount importance. The working mode of Ubiquitous Radar, which operates in track-then-identify (TTI) mode, provides both tracking information and Doppler information for the classification and recognition module. Moreover, the main features of the target’s Doppler information are concentrated around the Doppler main spectrum. This study innovatively used tracking information to generate a feature enhancement layer that can indicate the area where the main spectrum is located and combines it with the RGB three-channel Doppler spectrogram to form an RGBA four-channel Doppler spectrogram. Compared with the RGB three-channel Doppler spectrogram, this method increases the classification accuracy for four types of targets (ships, birds, flapping birds, and bird flocks) from 93.13% to 97.13%, an improvement of 4%. On this basis, this study integrated the coordinate attention (CA) module into the building block of the 34-layer residual network (ResNet34), forming ResNet34_CA. This integration enables the network to focus more on the main spectrum information of the target, thereby further improving the classification accuracy from 97.13% to 97.22%.

Various and orderly formations in the hydrodynamic schooling of multiple flapping swimmers

The fluid mechanics underlying the collective motion of fish schools and bird flocks still lack full understanding. In this paper, the collective motion of multiple asynchronous flapping foils is numerically studied. It is found that various and orderly formations are achieved by multiple foils only via hydrodynamic interactions. Three distinct states have been verified according to the equilibrium distance between adjacent foils, i.e., the sparse state, the compact state, and the combined state. The “head goose effect” is found in the combined state, and the significant speed enhancement can be observed in both the compact and combined states, except when the first subgroup of the combined group is isolated. The obvious energy savings can be observed in most cases examined in the current work, no matter which state occurs. Moreover, for a given phase difference, the compact group has the highest propulsive efficiency, while the sparse group has the lowest. In addition, the fluid mechanics by which the multiple-foil system achieves speed enhancement and energy savings are analyzed. The results obtained here may shed some light on understanding the collective motion of fish schools and bird flocks.

Learning interpretable dynamics of stochastic complex systems from experimental data

Complex systems with many interacting nodes are inherently stochastic and best described by stochastic differential equations. Despite increasing observation data, inferring these equations from empirical data remains challenging. Here, we propose the Langevin graph network approach to learn the hidden stochastic differential equations of complex networked systems, outperforming five state-of-the-art methods. We apply our approach to two real systems: bird flock movement and tau pathology diffusion in brains. The inferred equation for bird flocks closely resembles the second-order Vicsek model, providing unprecedented evidence that the Vicsek model captures genuine flocking dynamics. Moreover, our approach uncovers the governing equation for the spread of abnormal tau proteins in mouse brains, enabling early prediction of tau occupation in each brain region and revealing distinct pathology dynamics in mutant mice. By learning interpretable stochastic dynamics of complex systems, our findings open new avenues for downstream applications such as control.

Development of neural circuits for social motion perception in schooling fish

The collective behavior of animal groups emerges from the interactions among individuals. These social interactions produce the coordinated movements of bird flocks and fish schools, but little is known about their developmental emergence and neurobiological foundations. By characterizing the visually based schooling behavior of the micro glassfish Danionella cerebrum, we found that social development progresses sequentially, with animals first acquiring the ability to aggregate, followed by postural alignment with social partners. This social maturation was accompanied by the development of neural populations in the midbrain that were preferentially driven by visual stimuli that resemble the shape and movements of schooling fish. Furthermore, social isolation over the course of development impaired both schooling behavior and the neural encoding of social motion in adults. This work demonstrates that neural populations selective for the form and motion of conspecifics emerge with the experience-dependent development of collective movement.

Flock2: A model for orientation-based social flocking

The aerial flocking of birds, or murmurations, has fascinated observers while presenting many challenges to behavioral study and simulation. We examine how the periphery of murmurations remain well bounded and cohesive. We also investigate agitation waves, which occur when a flock is disturbed, developing a plausible model for how they might emerge spontaneously. To understand these behaviors a new model is presented for orientation-based social flocking. Previous methods model inter-bird dynamics by considering the neighborhood around each bird, and introducing forces for avoidance, alignment, and cohesion as three dimensional vectors that alter acceleration. Our method introduces orientation-based social flocking that treats social influences from neighbors more realistically as a desire to turn, indirectly controlling the heading in an aerodynamic model. While our model can be applied to any flocking social bird we simulate flocks of starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, and demonstrate the possibility of orientation waves in the absence of predators. Our model exhibits spherical and ovoidal flock shapes matching observation. Comparisons of our model to Reynolds’ on energy consumption and frequency analysis demonstrates more realistic motions, significantly less energy use in turning, and a plausible mechanism for emergent orientation waves.

Discovering dynamic laws from observations: The case of self-propelled, interacting colloids.

Active matter spans a wide range of time and length scales, from groups of cells and synthetic self-propelled colloids to schools of fish and flocks of birds. The theoretical framework describing these systems has shown tremendous success in finding universal phenomenology. However, further progress is often burdened by the difficulty of determining forces controlling the dynamics of individual elements within each system. Accessing this local information is pivotal for the understanding of the physics governing an ensemble of active particles and for the creation of numerical models capable of explaining the observed collective phenomena. In this work, we present ActiveNet, a machine-learning tool consisting of a graph neural network that uses the collective motion of particles to learn active and two-body forces controlling their individual dynamics. We verify our approach using numerical simulations of active Brownian particles, active particles undergoing underdamped Langevin dynamics, and chiral active Brownian particles considering different interaction potentials and values of activity. Interestingly, ActiveNet can equally learn conservative or nonconservative forces as well as torques. Moreover, ActiveNet has proven to be a useful tool to learn the stochastic contribution to the forces, enabling the estimation of the diffusion coefficients. Therefore, all coefficients of the equationof motion of Active Brownian Particles are captured. Finally, we apply ActiveNet to experiments of electrophoretic Janus particles, extracting the active and two-body forces controlling colloids' dynamics. On the one side, we have learned that the active force depends on the electric field and area fraction. On the other side, we have also discovered a dependence of the two-body interaction with the electric field that leads us to propose that the dominant force between active colloids is a screened electrostatic interaction with a constant length scale. We believe that the proposed methodological tool, ActiveNet, might open a new avenue for the study and modeling of experimental suspensions of active particles.

FlockSeer: A portable stereo vision observer for bird flocking

AbstractBird flocking is a paradigmatic case of self‐organised collective behaviours in biology. Stereo camera systems are employed to observe flocks of starlings, jackdaws, and chimney swifts, mainly on a spot‐fixed basis. A portable non‐fixed stereo vision‐based flocking observation system, namely FlockSeer, is developed by the authors for observing more species of bird flocks within field scenarios. The portable flocking observer, FlockSeer, responds to the challenges in extrinsic calibration, camera synchronisation and field movability compared to existing spot‐fixed observing systems. A measurement and sensor fusion approach is utilised for rapid calibration, and a light‐based synchronisation approach is used to simplify hardware configuration. FlockSeer has been implemented and tested across six cities in three provinces and has accomplished diverse flock‐tracking tasks, accumulating behavioural data of four species, including egrets, with up to 300 resolvable trajectories. The authors reconstructed the trajectories of a flock of egrets under disturbed conditions to verify the practicality and reliability. In addition, we analysed the accuracy of identifying nearest neighbours, and then examined the similarity between the trajectories and the Couzin model. Experimental results demonstrate that the developed flocking observing system is highly portable, more convenient and swift to deploy in wetland‐like or coast‐like fields. Its observation process is reliable and practical and can effectively support the study of understanding and modelling of bird flocking behaviours.

Patterns in the global diversity of mixed‐species bird flocks in relation to environmental factors

AbstractPreserving biodiversity requires an understanding of how natural environments and anthropogenic factors shape the global distribution of biological diversity. Moving beyond a focus on endangered species, conservation needs to also preserve the typical interactions among species that structure communities, such as those found in mixed‐species bird flocks (MSBFs). The objective of this study is to quantify the α and β diversity of MSBFs on a global scale and explore the influence of environmental factors. Based on data compiled from 172 global publications encompassing 2095 MSBF participating bird species, we investigated the distribution patterns and influencing factors of MSBFs at different latitudes globally. The findings revealed that the species diversity of MSBFs is higher at lower latitudes. In terms of β diversity, MSBFs exhibit high‐turnover at mid to low latitudes and nested patterns at higher latitudes. Environmental factors positively influencing α and β species diversity of MSBFs included temperature and solar radiation, while wind speed and human disturbance negatively affected diversity. Based on the wide distribution and conservation significance of MSBFs, we provide quantifiable data on their global diversity patterns and suggest that future animal conservation management strategies should prioritize a community‐based approach focused on interspecific interactions.

Assessing the efficacy of the ovicidal fungus Mucor circinelloides in reducing coccidia parasitism in peacocks

The biological control of gastrointestinal (GI) parasites using predatory fungi has been recently proposed as an accurate and sustainable approach in birds. The current study aimed to assess for the first time the efficacy of using the native ovicidal fungus Mucor circinelloides (FMV-FR1) in reducing coccidia parasitism in peacocks. For this purpose, an in vivo trial was designed in the resident peacock collection (n = 58 birds) of the São Jorge Castle, at Lisbon, Portugal. These animals presented an initial severe infection by coccidia of the genus Eimeria (20106 ± 8034 oocysts per gram of feces, OPG), and thus received commercial feed enriched with a M. circinelloides suspension (1.01 × 108 spores/kg feed), thrice-weekly. Fresh feces were collected every 15 days to calculate the coccidia shedding, using the Mini-FLOTAC technique. The same bird flock served simultaneously as control (t0 days) and test groups (t15–t90 days). The average Eimeria sp. shedding in peacocks decreased up to 92% following fungal administrations, with significant reduction efficacies of 78% (p = 0.004) and 92% (p = 0.012) after 45 and 60 days, respectively. Results from this study suggest that the administration of M. circinelloides spores to birds is an accurate solution to reduce their coccidia parasitism.

Optimization of the concentration of ozone generated by DBD using PSO algorithm for water treatment process

The water treatment process with ozone is influenced by various operating parameters and environmental factors that can impact its efficiency. In this study, experiments were conducted using a Venturi pumping frame to investigate the effects of three controllable variables: oxygen flow height, applied voltage level, and water flow rate. The tests aimed to develop a mathematical model that accurately represents the relationship between these input variables and the resulting ozone concentration in the treated water. The experimental data was analyzed using the MODDE 5.0 software, a specialized application for statistical modeling and design of experiments. By fitting the data to appropriate model equations, a mathematical model was obtained that quantifies the influence of each variable and their interactions on the ozone concentration response. To optimize the process performance, a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm was employed to extract the best-fit parameters for the mathematical model. PSO is a computational technique inspired by the social behavior of bird flocks or fish schools, utilizing a population of candidate solutions that evolve iteratively to converge on the global optimum solution. In this case, PSO searched for the model parameter values that minimized the error between predicted and experimentally measured ozone concentrations, rapidly converging to an accurate solution. The optimized mathematical model enables predicting the ozone concentration under any combination of oxygen flow height, voltage, and water flow rate within the experimental range. This predictive capability facilitates identifying the optimum operating conditions to maximize ozone concentration, thereby enhancing the efficiency of the water treatment process. The model serves as a valuable tool for process control, monitoring, and optimization, ensuring consistent treatment quality while minimizing resource consumption and operational costs.

A robotic falcon induces similar collective escape responses in different bird species.

Patterns of collective escape of a bird flock from a predator are fascinating, but difficult to study under natural conditions because neither prey nor predator is under experimental control. We resolved this problem by using an artificial predator (RobotFalcon) resembling a peregrine falcon in morphology and behaviour. We imitated hunts by chasing flocks of corvids, gulls, starlings and lapwings with the RobotFalcon, and compared their patterns of collective escape to those when chased by a conventional drone and, in case of starlings, hunted by wild peregrine falcons. Active pursuit of flocks, rather than only flying nearby by either the RobotFalcon or the drone, made flocks collectively escape more often. The RobotFalcon elicited patterns of collective escape in flocks of all species more often than the drone. Attack altitude did not affect the frequency of collective escape. Starlings escaped collectively equally often when chased by the RobotFalcon or a wild peregrine falcon. Flocks of all species reacted most often by collective turns, second most often by compacting and third by splitting into subflocks. This study demonstrates the potential of an artificial aerial predator for studying the collective escape behaviour of free-living birds, opening exciting avenues in the empirical study of prey-predator interactions.