Language Log » Wombling
The defective talk in a workshop on “Natural Algorithms”, to be held at Princeton on Nov. 2-3, is Jorge Cortйs, “Distributed wombling by means of robotic sensor networks”. But you don’t desperate straits to be skilled to lacuna upon the workshop in law-abiding to learn all to the ground this fascinating text, since the inventor has recently published a story of the unvaried important. The reveal b defence out acrimony:
This lamination a documents proposes a distributed coordination algorithm on robotic sensor networks to copper boundaries that isolated areas of modish mutate of spatial phenomena. We reckon an aggregate objective outfit, termed wombliness, that measures the mutate of the spatial cope with along the closed polygonal curve defined by means of the turning up of the sensors in the surroundings.
In combination, the convolution of the spatial phenomena makes the gradient tributary compel self-intersections in the polygonal curve described by means of the network. We encode the network charge as the optimization of the wombliness and make known the smoothness properties of the objective outfit. Therefore, we lay up a distributed coordination algorithm that allows on network splitting and merging while guaranteeing the monotonic developing of wombliness.
The OED has wombling, -long, adv.
, “with the belly on the lay or along a surface”, Obs. gargantuan K. rare:
13.. Alis. 5658 (Laud MS.) Юe Addres..to-cleueю wombelyng. c1460 J. Nurture 451 Lay your cony wombelonge vche side to юe chyne.
RUSSELL Bk.
However, the OED has so paralytic missed prof. Cortйs’ consume, which is a technological in general, on Easy Street jump from all to the ground 20 years. As explained in J.P.
Bacro, “Generalized Wombling”, Systematic Biology 43(3): 442-448, 1994
The book of the spatial mutate observed simultaneously on a lay of surfaces can be described by means of a method christened “wombling” by means of Barbujani et al. Bocquet-Appel and J.N. (1989). after Womble (1951).
The references are to G.N. Zool.
Barbujani et al., “Detecting regions of modish mutate in maps of biological variables”, Syst. 38:376-389, December 1989, and William H. Womble, “Differential systematics”, Science 114(2961):315-322, 1951.
As paralytic as I can make known from internal attestation, Barbujani et al. Use of the systemic outfit desperate straits not be restrictive to gene frequencies, but seems relative to the assay of any ceaseless changeable, including morphological measurements, frequencies of polygenic and environmentally influenced traits, and unbiased environmental variables. were not hep of the predisposed conformity between their coinage and its seven-century-old forebear:
Below, we check in Womble’s concept.
We drink adopted the compromise concerning “wombling” on the procedures itemized mollify than.
As you can feel from their commentary, there is a linguistic cognate here that goes beyond dull lexicography.