Related papers: Mushroom spore dispersal by convectively-driven wi…
When wind blows at the surface of a liquid of sufficiently high viscosity, a wave packet of small amplitude is first generated, which sporadically forms large-amplitude fluid bumps that rapidly propagate downstream. These nonlinear…
Diffusion in an evolving environment is studied by continuos-time Monte Carlo simulations. Diffusion is modelled by continuos-time random walkers on a lattice, in a dynamic environment provided by bubbles between two one-dimensional…
Motility is fundamental to the survival and proliferation of microorganisms. The E. coli bacterium propels itself using a bundle of rotating helical flagella. If one flagellum reverses its rotational direction, it leaves the bundle,…
Filamentous cyanobacteria are one of the oldest and today still most abundant lifeforms on earth, with manifold implications in ecology and economics. Their flexible filaments, often several hundred cells long, exhibit gliding motility in…
Anomalous diffusion or, more generally, anomalous transport, with nonlinear dependence of the mean-squared displacement on the measurement time, is ubiquitous in nature. It has been observed in processes ranging from microscopic movement of…
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, many live musical activities had to be postponed and even canceled to protect musicians and audience. Orchestral ensembles face a particular challenge of contamination because they are personnel heavy…
Dilute granular flows are routinely described by collisional kinetic theory, but dense flows require a fundamentally different approach, due to long-lasting, many-body contacts. In the case of silo drainage, many continuum models have been…
Traveling waves describe diverse natural phenomena from crystal growth in physics to range expansions in biology. Two classes of waves exist with very different properties: pulled and pushed. Pulled waves are driven by high growth rates at…
In nature, bacterial collectives typically consist of multiple species, which are interacting both biochemically and physically. Nonetheless, past studies on the physical properties of swarming bacteria were focused on axenic (single…
Propagating spiral waves have been discovered in various chemical, biological and physical systems. Spiral waves in multicellular organisms are often associated with essential living functions. Although certain eukaryotic microorganisms…
In this work we consider the question of whether a simple diffusive model can explain the scent tracking behaviours found in nature. For this behaviour to occur, both the concentration of a scent and its gradient must be above some…
To mitigate the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, officials have employed social distancing and stay-at-home measures, with increased attention to room ventilation emerging only more recently. Effective distancing practices for open spaces can be…
The more we learn about the cytoplasm of cells, the more we realise that the cytoplasm is not uniform but instead is highly inhomogeneous. In any inhomogeneous solution, there are concentration gradients, and particles move either up or…
Many biological, geophysical and technological systems involve the transport of resource over a network. In this paper we present an algorithm for calculating the exact concentration of resource at any point in space or time, given that the…
Enhanced colloidal transport beyond the limit imposed by diffusion is usually achieved through external fields. Here, we demonstrate the ballistic transport of a colloidal sphere using internal sources of energy provided by an attached…
The inertia of particles driven by the turbulent flow of the surrounding fluid makes them prefer certain regions of the flow. The heavy particles lag behind the flow and tend to accumulate in the regions with less vorticity, while the light…
Angular momentum transport in protostellar disks can be achieved by the action of a large scale magnetic field that runs vertically through the disk. The magnetic field centrifugally drives material from the disk surfaces into a wind,…
Bacterial cellulose biofilms are complex networks of strong interwoven nanofibers that control transport and protect bacterial colonies in the film. Design of diverse applications of bacterial cellulose films also relies on understanding…
Mushroom-shaped pillars have been extensively studied for their superior adhesive properties, often drawing inspiration from natural attachment systems observed in insects. Typically, pillars are modeled with linear elastic materials in the…
Experimental results are presented for a vertically shaken granular layer. In the range of accelerations explored, the layer develops a convective motion in the form of one or more rolls. The velocity of the grains near the wall has been…