Related papers: Water Movement in Vascular Plants: A Primer
A cylindrical flexible cable made up of pure fluid water can be experimentally spanned across a spatial gap with cable endpoints fixed to the top edges of two glass beakers. The cable has been called a water bridge in close analogy to iron…
The study of tree sap exudation, in which a (leafless) tree generates elevated stem pressure in response to repeated daily freeze-thaw cycles, gives rise to an interesting multi-scale problem involving heat and multiphase liquid/gas…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
Water molecules play an important role in providing unique environments for biological reactions on cell membranes. It is widely believed that water molecules form bridges that connect lipid molecules and stabilize cell membranes. Using…
The understanding of the spreading of liquids on solid surfaces is an important challenge for contemporary physics. Today, the motion of the contact line formed at the intersection of two immiscible fluids and a solid is still subject to…
This article discussesl a few of the problems that arise in geophysical fluid dynamics and climate that are associated with the presence of moisture in the air, its condensation and release of latent heat. Our main focus is Earth's…
The planetary building blocks that formed in the terrestrial planet region were likely very dry, yet water is comparatively abundant on Earth. We review the various mechanisms proposed for the origin of water on the terrestrial planets.…
Leaf hydraulic networks play an important role not only in fluid transport but also in maintaining whole-plant water status through transient environmental changes in soil-based water supply or air humidity. Both water potential and…
Predicting transport rates of windblown sand is a central problem in aeolian research, with implications for climate, environmental, and planetary sciences. Though studied since the 1930s, the underlying many-body dynamics is still…
Cellular membranes are elastic lipid bilayers that contain a variety of proteins, including ion channels, receptors, and scaffolding proteins. These proteins are known to diffuse in the plane of the membrane and to influence the bending of…
The response of paper to humidity variations is a complex multi-scale problem. The hygroscopic swelling of individual fibres and their interactions within the fibrous network govern the macroscopic response. At this scale, moisture induced…
The problem of surface effects at a fluid/force field boundary is investigated. A classical simple fluid with a locally introduced field simulating a solid is considered. For the case of a hard-core field, rigid, exponential, realistic, and…
Transitions between metastable conformations of a dipeptide are investigated using classical molecular dynamics simulation with explicit water molecules. The distribution of the surrounding water at different moments before the transitions…
Biological transport networks are highly optimized structures that ensure power-efficient distribution of fluids across various domains, including animal vasculature and plant venation. Theoretically, these networks can be described as…
Water is an unusual liquid. Its thermophysical properties are non-monotonic with temperature T and pressure p. It's not been known how water's behaviors are encoded in its molecules. We give a statistical physics model, Cage Water, which…
Transport networks are crucial to the functioning of natural and technological systems. Nature features transport networks that are adaptive over a vast range of parameters, thus providing an impressive level of robustness in supply.…
Many living organisms on Earth are strongly dependent on water, the natural liquid of the planet. A possible reason for that could be the conjecture of Ryoji Takahashi [Phys. Lett. A 141, 15 (1989)] that water microdrops release negentropy…
Understanding the complex patterns in space-time exhibited by active systems has been the subject of much interest in recent times. Complementing this forward problem is the inverse problem of controlling active matter. Here we use optimal…
Roots provide basic functions to plants such as water/nutrient uptake and anchoring in soil. The growth and development of root systems contribute to colonizing the surrounding soil and optimizing the access to resources. It is usually…
The dynamics of flow within a material transport network is dependent upon the dynamics of its power source. Responding to a change of these dynamics is critical for the fitness of living flow networks, e.g. the animal vasculature, which…