Related papers: Functional morphology, stable isotopes, and human …
The following manuscript reviews various theories of bipedalism and provides a holistic answer to human evolution. There are two questions regarding bipedalism: i) why were the earliest hominins partially bipedal? and ii) why did hominins…
The role of massive ($\geq$ 8M$_{\odot}$) stars in defining the energy budget and chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium in their host galaxy is significant. In this first paper from the Tracing Evolution in Massive Protostellar…
The report considers the dynamics of the global population as the unique case of the Socio-Economic Soft Matter system. This category was introduced for complex systems dominated by mesoscale assemblies, emerging due to the inherent…
We critically examine a scenario for the enrichment of the interstellar medium (ISM) in which supernova ejecta follow a long (10^8 yr) journey before falling back onto the galactic disk in the form of metal-rich ``droplets'', These droplets…
Motile eukaryotic cells propel themselves in viscous fluids by passing waves of bending deformation down their flagella. An infinitely long flagellum achieves a hydrodynamically optimal low-Reynolds number locomotion when the angle between…
The technique presented here identifies tethered mould designs, optimised for growing cultured tissue with very highly-aligned cells. It is based on a microscopic biophysical model for polarised cellular hydrogels. There is an unmet need…
The intergalactic medium (IGM) is the dominant reservoir of baryons at all cosmic epochs. We investigate the evolution of the IGM from z=2-0 in 48 Mpc/h, 110-million particle cosmological hydrodynamic simulations using three prescriptions…
The striking variety of macroscopic morphologies displayed by bacterial colonies depends on microscopic environmental and behavioural details in a manner that is currently not well understood. A surprising example is sibling inhibition,…
The concept of fitness is central to evolution, but it quantifies only the expected number of offspring an individual will produce. The actual number of offspring is also subject to noise, arising from environmental or demographic…
A semilinear parabolic equation with constraint modeling the dynamics of a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) is studied. In contrast to the commonly used MEMS model, the well-known pull-in phenomenon occurring above a critical potential…
High-entropy alloys (HEAs) are materials that consist of equimolar or near-equimolar multiple principal components but tend to form single phases, which is a new research topic in the field of metallurgy, have attracted extensive attention…
Confined thin structures are ubiquitous in nature. Spatial and length constraints have led to a number of novel packing strategies at both the micro-scale, as when DNA packages inside a capsid, and the macro-scale, seen in plant root…
The spatial dispersal of individuals is known to play an important role in the dynamics of populations, and is central to metapopulation theory. At the same time, local adaptation to environmental conditions creates a geographic mosaic of…
Modern tools for modeling stellar evolution, such as MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics), offer state-of-the-art implementations of stellar theories. However, this parametric approach introduces many free parameters that…
Nominally anhydrous minerals in rocky planet mantles can sequester oceans of water as a whole, giving a constraint on bulk water inventories. Here we predict mantle water capacities from the thermodynamically-limited solubility of water in…
When there is conspicuous under-exploitation of a limited resource, it is worth asking what mechanisms allow presumably valuable resources to be left unused? Evolutionary biologists have generated a wide range of hypotheses to explain this,…
We suggest to simulate evolution of complex organisms constrained by the sole requirement of robustness in their expression patterns. This scenario is illustrated by evolving discrete logical networks with epigenetic properties. Evidence…
During the life of animals, epithelial tissues undergo extensive deformations--first to form organs during embryogensis and later to preserve integrity and function in adulthood. To what extent these deformations resemble that of non-living…
Garnets, known since the early stages of human civilization, have found important applications in modern technologies including magnetorestriction, spintronics, lithium batteries, etc. The overwhelming majority of experimentally known…
A key challenge in robotic food manipulation is modeling the material properties of diverse and deformable food items. We propose using a multimodal sensory approach to interact and play with food that facilitates the ability to distinguish…