

Algorithm Reveals Secrets of Leaf Shape - instantramen
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25117/?ref=rss

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ableal
Bonus URL, on parameter tuning: [http://www.hvass-
labs.org/people/magnus/thesis/pedersen08the...](http://www.hvass-
labs.org/people/magnus/thesis/pedersen08thesis.pdf) (PDF, Tuning And
Simplifying Heuristical Optimization (PhD thesis)). Via
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_swarm_optimization>

Someone may want to "cross-breed" those papers. I found Pedersen's interesting
thesis via the picture he kindly contributed to that Wikipedia page (thank
you; I used it for harmless, I hope, pedagogic purposes).

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ableal
Good find. Snippet:

 _In his model, the growth of leaf lobes is governed by the position of leaf
veins. [...] By varying just a handful of parameters, Young can produce a
surprisingly rich variety of shapes._

The issue of the shapes _not_ found in nature is also thought-provoking ...

P.S. Technology Review editors: <http://begthequestion.info/> , please. Thank
you.

~~~
RBerenguel
I read the article diagonally, and found no samples of what non-natural leaf
shapes does the algorithm produce. Sad. But it is interesting that even
complicated shapes like maple can be produced with such a simple model.

~~~
ableal
The editors' "produces one or two shapes not found in nature" may mean Fig.5a
and Fig.6c, which are lacking the '[as] seen in' notes given for all others
presented.

I'd say the author was going for showing that the model covered many (all ?
ferns, etc.?) natural shapes. But both the issues of exists-in-nature-but-not-
in-model and vice-versa should be interesting.

Perhaps the sets of "these parameters do not show up in nature" can give the
bio-mechanisms researchers some hints.

~~~
RBerenguel
I think those missing sets can be very interesting. I didn't realise these
figures didn't have tags (I scanned the text twice, but missed them :/)

The problem of lack-of-space in journals justifies these kind of cuts, but you
can always submit a longer version to ArXiV without any problems or
restrictions

