Submission + - Fruit Flies are Better Than You at Calculus
DudeTheMath writes: Cornell University scientists studied how fruit flies respond to flight disturbances (instead of wind gusts, they used carefully controlled magnetic pulses) and found that the flies recover in as little as three wing beats (at 250 per second) by doing some kind of calculus in a little "integrated circuit" of neurons that control the wings directly. The pitch and yaw results are already published, and the roll study is forthcoming. (NYT, partial paywall, autoplay of fly that starts with a car ad.)
