Related papers: Ants as Fluids: Physics-Inspired Biology
Many microswimmers are inherently chiral, and this chirality can introduce fascinating behaviors in a collection of microswimmers. The dynamics become even more intriguing when two types of microswimmers with distinct chirality are mixed.…
Liquid foams exhibit menisci whose lengths range from hundreds of microns in microfoams to several centimeters in macroscopic bubble arrangements. These menisci thin under gravity until reaching a steady thickness profile, where hydrostatic…
Hydrodynamic interactions between fluid-dispersed particles are ubiquitous in soft matter and biological systems and they give rise to intriguing collective phenomena. While it was reported that these interactions can facilitate…
The aim of our study is to describe the dynamics of ant battles, with reference to laboratory experiments, by means of a chemical stochastic model. We focus on ants behavior as an interesting topic in order to predict the ecological…
This study investigates the clustering behaviour and surface distributions of buoyant particles at the air-water interface in open-channel turbulent flow, focusing on the interplay between capillary attraction, hydrodynamic drag, and…
Paratrechina longicornis ants are known for their ability to cooperatively transport large food items. Previous studies have focused on the behavioral rules of individual ants and explained the efficient coordination using the…
Crumpled paper or drapery patterns are everyday examples of how elastic sheets can respond to external forcing. In this Letter, we study experimentally a novel sort of forcing. We consider a circular flexible plate clamped at its center and…
A particle raft floating on an expanding liquid substrate provides a macroscopic analog for studying material failure. The time scales in this system allow both particle-relaxation dynamics and rift formation to be resolved. In our…
Ciliated tissues such as in the mammalian lungs, brains, and reproductive tracts, are specialized to pump fluid. They generate flows by the collective activity of hundreds of thousands of individual cilia that beat in a striking metachronal…
Competition between biological species in marine environments is affected by the motion of the surrounding fluid. An effective 2D compressibility can arise, for example, from the convergence and divergence of water masses at the depth at…
From biofilm and colony formation in bacteria to wound healing and embryonic development in multicellular organisms, groups of living cells must often move collectively. While considerable study has probed the biophysical mechanisms of how…
Cells moving on a two dimensional substrate generate motion by polymerizing actin filament networks inside a flat membrane protrusion. New filaments are generated by branching off existing ones, giving rise to branched network structures.…
As a fundamental force, friction exerts a profound influence on various aspects of our daily lives across multiple disciplines. To understand why adhesive friction is associated with the contact area, here we investigate the generic sliding…
The slip of a fluid layer in contact with a solid confining surface is investigated for different temperatures and densities using molecular dynamic simulations. We show that for an anomalous water-like fluid the slip goes as follows: for…
Collective and directed motility or swarming is an emergent phenomenon displayed by many self-organized assemblies of active biological matter such as clusters of embryonic cells during tissue development, cancerous cells during tumor…
We fluidize a granular medium through localized stirring and probe the mechanical response of quiescent regions far away from the main flow. In these regions the material behaves like a liquid: high-density probes sink, low-density probes…
Slicks are thin viscous films that can be found at the air--water interface of water bodies such as lakes, rivers and oceans. These micro-layers are enriched in surfactants, organic matter, and microorganisms, and exhibit steep physical and…
Atomic force microscopy cantilevers are often, intentionally or not, heated at their extremity. We describe a model to compute the resulting temperature field in the cantilever and in the surrounding fluid on a wide temperature range. In…
Contrasting with its sluggish behavior on standard solids, water is extremely mobile on superhydrophobic materials, as shown for instance by the continuous acceleration of drops on tilted water-repellent leaves. For much longer substrates,…
Short-range repulsion governs the dynamics of matter from atoms to animals. Using theory, simulations, and experiments, we find that an ensemble of repulsive particles spreads compactly with a sharp boundary, in contrast to the diffusive…