Related papers: Anapedesis: Implications and Applications of Bio-S…
Different types of reasoning impose different structural demands on representational systems, yet no systematic account of these demands exists across psychology, AI, and philosophy of mind. I propose a framework identifying four structural…
This paper presents the principal challenges and opportunities associated with computational biomechanics research. The underlying cognitive control involved in the process of human motion is inherently complex, dynamic, multidimensional,…
Living systems evolve one mutation at a time, but a single mutation can alter the effect of subsequent mutations. The underlying mechanistic determinants of such epistasis are unclear. Here, we demonstrate that the physical dynamics of a…
Knowledge of the mechanical properties of the aorta is essential as important concerns regarding the treatment of aortic pathologies, such as atherosclerosis, aneurysms and dissections, are fundamentally mechanobiological. A comprehensive…
We argue for a convergence of crystallography, materials science and biology, that will come about through asking materials questions about biology and biological questions about materials, illuminated by considerations of information. The…
The escalating plastic waste crisis demands global action, yet mechanical recycling - currently the most prevalent strategy - remains severely underutilized. Only a small fraction of the total plastic waste is recycled in this manner,…
Flexible mechanical metamaterials possess repeating structural motifs that imbue them with novel, exciting properties including programmability, anomalous elastic moduli and nonlinear and robust response. We address such structures via…
Living tissues experience various external forces on cells, influencing their behaviour, physiology, shape, gene expression, and destiny through interactions with their environment. Despite much research done in this area, challenges remain…
Robustness is often regarded as a critical future challenge for real-world applications, where stability is essential. However, as models often learn tasks in a similar order, we hypothesize that easier tasks will be easier regardless of…
Dispersal is a well recognized driver of ecological and evolutionary dynamics, and simultaneously an evolving trait. Dispersal evolution has traditionally been studied in single-species metapopulations so that it remains unclear how…
To insight the relationships between the self-organizing structures of cells, such as the cell clusters, and the properties of biotissues is helpful in revealing the function and designing biomaterial. Traditional random foam model neglects…
DNA nanostructures with programmable shape and interactions can be used as building blocks for the self-assembly of crystalline materials with prescribed nanoscale features, holding a vast technological potential. Structural rigidity and…
The growth of world population, limitation of resources, economic problems and environmental issues force engineers to develop increasingly efficient solutions for logistic systems. Pure optimization for efficiency, however, has often led…
Curvature and mechanics are intimately connected for thin materials, and this coupling between geometry and physical properties is readily seen in folded structures from intestinal villi and pollen grains, to wrinkled membranes and…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
Living biological tissue is a complex system, constantly growing and changing in response to external and internal stimuli. These processes lead to remarkable and intricate changes in shape. Modeling and understanding both natural and…
A celebrated and controversial hypothesis conjectures that some biological systems --parts, aspects, or groups of them-- may extract important functional benefits from operating at the edge of instability, halfway between order and…
Here we propose a generic mechanism - networked buffering - for generating robust traits in complex systems that requires two basic conditions to be satisfied: 1) agents are versatile enough to perform more than one single functional role…
Filamentous cyanobacteria, forming long strands of connected cells, are one of the earliest and most successful forms of life on Earth. They exhibit self-organised behaviour, forming large-scale patterns in structures like biomats and…
Cells often exhibit different and stable phenotypes from the same DNA sequence. Robustness and plasticity of such cellular states are controlled by diverse transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms, among them the modification of…