At the RVC we are grieving the death of the Structure & Motion Lab's creator, and stalwart comrade, Professor Alan Wilson FRS, from a plane crash in Namibia on Wednesday. He was a giant in comparative biomechanics and an amazing scientist. I'm still reeling. It is utterly shocking and deeply sad.
Very emu
New #DAWNDINOS paper!
We do predictive simulations of vertical height jumping in the Triassic theropod Coelophysis & extant (tinamou) bird Eudromia. Mainly as sensitivity analysis of what parameters are most important. We show how crucial tail mobility is.
royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...
Substance Painter Day 3
I've released version 1.2 of my SDF simulations! This update further improves the runtimes:
- Simple checking for collision between two meshes run at >150 FPS
- Full 6DOF ROM simulations optimising the translations for each rotational pose run at >5.6 FPS
- Ligament path estimation run at >5.1 FPS
Look at that head stabilisation!
Diagonal couplets vs lateral sequence
Thanks to @joss-openjournals.bsky.social for publishing OpenSim Creator's official announcement paper!
I'll take any opportunity to talk about emus🎉 🐦🎉. Many thanks for the award, and to @taylorjmdick.bsky.social and @cjclemente.bsky.social for organising the conference!
Working on a new obstacle course for musculoskeletal models #Hyfydy
The final PDF of our XROMM study on bird shoulders w/ @johnrhutchinson.bsky.social & @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social is now available at @jexpbiol.bsky.social!
Accepted manuscript. Oliver E. Demuth, John R. Hutchinson, Vittorio La Barbera, Sharon E. Warner, Daniel J. Field; Soft tissue constraints on joint mobility in the avian shoulder. J Exp Biol 2025; jeb.250952. doi: https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.250952
Last week our in press manuscript was made available at @jexpbiol.bsky.social with the typeset version following soon. We conducted ex vivo XROMM experiments to determine the joint mobility in Red legged partridges and compared them with in silico simulations: doi.org/10.1242/jeb....
How did the ostrich cross the ocean? This fossil holds clues!
This is the holotype of Lithornis promiscuus at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. This heron-sized bird lived in a swampy floodplain in Paleocene Wyoming. #FossilFriday thread (1/4)
Very grateful for the grant support for this trip by the @knaw-nl.bsky.social Ecology Fund and @biologists.bsky.social Travelling Fellowship. Wasn't expecting this to be how I would start the final year of my PhD at @uugeo.bsky.social and @naturalis.bsky.social 🐦🦘🇦🇺
Made it to the Sunshine Coast to visit @cjclemente.bsky.social and (soon) @taylorjmdick.bsky.social for the next three months! We'll full be doing physics simulations and robot experiments in Chris's lab, and even some fieldwork studying the locomotor biomechanics of wild emus and kangaroos
‼️📄 Two new papers out today in @jexpbiol.bsky.social lead by @jamescharles90.bsky.social, all about locomotion and load-carrying across different working dog breeds! ⤵️ 🐕 🏋️♂️
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I'm recruiting a PhD student to join the lab at @gtsciences.bsky.social in Fall 2026! Broad taxonomic and topical freedom under the umbrella of vertebrate joint form and function. Information here: www.manafzadeh.com – please share 🦴🩻
New paper out today lead by @tsengzj.bsky.social where we test the 150-year-old hypothesis that the unique jaw torus in Nimravus is an adaptation to resist bite forces using FEA🦁🔪our results highlight some functional advantage of the torus, which are amplified at larger gape doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...
Hi all, me, @richardjbutler.bsky.social and the amazing UK-US-Moroccan team are delighted to announce that.. we have a new specimen of Spicomellus AND IT'S WAY WEIRDER AND WAY COOLER THAN WE EVER IMAGINED!!
Nee dat basisinkomen is er helaas niet ( 🤞ooit wel). Maar mijn punt is dat AI aan banden leggen (voorbij legitieme plagiaat en klimaatzorgen) symptoombestrijding is. Zie ook zelfscankassa's, veel soorten fabriekswerk, enz, maar nu beïnvloedt het white collar ipv blue collar jobs.
AI tools excelleren juist in admin taken, programmeren, spellchecking, enz, en hebben meer (in)correcte info paraat. M.i. kan dat niet een docent vervangen, want leren is niet louter info-overdracht. Een bot kan niet inspireren, connecten met studenten, etc. Info kan ik ook uit een boek halen.
Volgens mij kun je ieder's bestaan ook vergemakkelijken met een ruim basisinkomen. Het probleem is dat (historisch en nu) automatiseringswinsten alleen maar naar hyperkapitalisten stromen. Ik zou eerder daartegen pleiten, dan tegen automatisering te pleiten.
Nb is Bas Haring geen "tech bro", en zegt ie ook uitdrukkelijk dat je niet alle taken aan de chatbot kan overlaten. Maar een begeleider moet bijvoorbeeld soms ook simpele dingen als spelling en grammatica controleren, terwijl een chatbot dat gewoon beter en sneller kan
Dat je een baan moet hebben voor bestaansrecht is net zozeer een voorbeeld van neolib/kapitalistisch efficientiedenken.
Is het niet beter saaie taken weg te automatiseren, en dan iedereen een basisinkomen te garanderen zodat ze geen dingen hoeven te doen die een computerprogramma ook kan?
T skeleton facing an emu skeleton with the text "Remember who you are"
We were recording an outreach video at @naturalis.bsky.social, when I realised we accidentally recreated the T rex chicken meme (with an emu of course ❤️ 🐦❤️)
This new #RSOS study explores the biomechanical and behavioural significance of tails in sauropod #dinosaurs, focusing on the caudal series of the Late Jurassic species Giraffatitan brancai: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #palaeontology @daniajinn.bsky.social @pashavanb.bsky.social
We just published a Giraffatitan tail wagging paper, led by @daniajinn.bsky.social!
Interested in bone-on-bone range of motions? Have a look!
Fun fact: the Jurassic Park's Brachiosaurus was at least partly based on Giraffatitan
The github also links the preprint, the video tutorial, and the manual. You can do a lot in MuSkeMo (landmarks, reference frames, shape fitting, plotting moment arms, visualizing simulations, etc.). The horse is a newer version of the model from: doi.org/10.1093/icb/...
I construct all my models using MuSkeMo, and after running simulations in OpenSim, I import the trajectories back into Blender for visualizations. MuSkeMo is not OpenSim specific, it also includes importers for Mujoco and Gaitsym. You can download it from my Github: github.com/PashavanBijl...
For everyone at #ISB2025 interested in musculoskeletal modeling, I'm giving a talk about MuSkeMo, my model construction and visualization tool, Tuesday 11:30 in Room A1 (Session 6A - Musculoskeletal Model Personalization).
MuSkeMo is my tool for musculoskeletal model construction in Blender.
