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Designing soft robots poses considerable challenges: automated design approaches may be particularly appealing in this field, as they promise to optimize complex multi-material machines with very little or no human intervention.…
A dynamic self-organized morphology is the hallmark of network-shaped organisms like slime moulds and fungi. Organisms continuously re-organize their flexible, undifferentiated body plans to forage for food. Among these organisms the slime…
Deformable boundaries are omnipresent in the habitats of swimming microorganisms, leading to intricate hydroelastic couplings. Employing a perturbation theory, valid for small deformations, we study the swimming dynamics of pushers and…
Although typically possessing four limbs and short bodies, lizards have evolved a diversity of body plans, from short-bodied and fully-limbed to elongate and nearly limbless. Such diversity in body morphology is hypothesized as adaptations…
We present and analyze a minimal hydrodynamic model of a vertically vibrated liquid drop that undergoes dynamic shape transformations. In agreement with experiments, a circular lens-shaped drop is unstable above a critical vibration…
Some microorganisms, such as spermatozoa, synchronize their flagella when swimming in close proximity. Using a simplified model (two infinite, parallel, two-dimensional waving sheets), we show that phase-locking arises from hydrodynamics…
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…
Dynamic structuring of water is a key player in a large class of processes underlying biochemical and technological developments today, the latter often involving electric fields. However, the anisotropic coupling between the water…
Suspensions of swimming micro-organisms are known to undergo intricate collective dynamics as a result of hydrodynamic and collision interactions. Micro-swimmers, such as bacteria and micro-algae, naturally live and have evolved in complex…
Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored…
Recent experiments have shown that the nematode {\it T. aceti} can assemble into collectively undulating groups at the edge of fluid drops. This coordinated state consists of metachronal waves and drives fluid circulation inside the drop.…
The motility behavior of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans in polymeric solutions of varying concentrations is systematically investigated in experiments using tracking and velocimetry methods. As the polymer concentration is increased,…
Biological and artificial microswimmers often self-propel in external flows of vortical nature; relevant examples include algae in small-scale ocean eddies, spermatozoa in uterine peristaltic flows and bacteria in microfluidic devices. A…
By molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of the one-component Dzugutov liquid in a metastable equilibrium supercooled state approaching the glass transition, we investigate the structural properties of highly mobile particles moving in strings…
Swimming eukaryotic microorganisms such as spermatozoa, algae and ciliates self-propel in viscous fluids using travelling wave-like deformations of slender appendages called flagella. Waves are predominant because Purcell's scallop theorem…
Active droplets are artificial microswimmers built from a liquid dispersion by microfluidic tools and showing self-propelled motion. These systems hold particular interest for mimicking biological phenomena, such as some aspects of cell…
We use computer simulations to explore the manner in which the particle displacements on intermediate time scales in supercooled fluids correlate to their dynamic structural environment. The fluid we study, a binary mixture of hard spheres,…
Recent experiments and numerical simulations have shown that certain types of microorganisms "reflect" off of a flat surface at a critical angle of departure, independent of the angle of incidence. The nature of the reflection may be active…
Biological cells and many living organisms are mostly made of liquids and therefore, by analogy with liquid drops, they should exhibit a range of fundamental nonlinear phenomena such as the onset of standing surface waves. Here, we test…
We experimentally investigate the dynamics of synthetic active particles composed of gravitationally bouncing, superwalking droplets confined within an annular fluid bath. Driven by a topologically pumping dual-frequency waveform, the…