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Adiabatic invariants foliate phase space, and impart a macro-scale hierarchy by separating microscopic variables. On a macroscopic leaf, long-scale ordered structures are created while maximizing entropy. A plasma confined in a…
Plants display physical displacements during their growth due to photosynthesis, which converts light into chemical energy. This can be interpreted as plants acting as actuators with a built-in power source. This paper presents a method to…
Human vision greatly benefits from the information about sizes of objects. The role of size in several visual reasoning tasks has been thoroughly explored in human perception and cognition. However, the impact of the information about sizes…
Magnetic fields play a crucial role in various astrophysical processes, including star formation, accretion of matter, transport processes (e.g., transport of heat), and cosmic rays. One of the easiest ways to determine the magnetic field…
This article investigates the stability of 'laser sail'-style spacecraft constructed from dielectric metasurfaces with areal densities $<$1g/m$^2$. We show that the microscopic optical forces exerted on a metasurface by a high power laser…
Food production needs to increase significantly in 30 years, and water loss from plants may hold one key, especially relevant in a time of climate change. The plant leaf cuticle is the final defence of leaves in drought and at night, and so…
The growth of plants is a hydromechanical phenomenon in which cells enlarge by absorbing water, while their walls expand and remodel under turgor-induced tension. In multicellular tissues, where cells are mechanically interconnected,…
Many organisms exhibit branching morphologies that twist around each other and become entangled. Entanglement occurs when different objects interlock, creating complex and often irreversible configurations. This physical phenomenon is…
Plant organ outgrowth superficially appears like the continuous mechanical deformation of a sheet of cells. Yet, how precisely cells as individual mechanical entities can act to morph a tissue reliably and efficiently into three dimensions…
Multiple near frontal-parallel planes based depth representation demonstrated impressive results in self-supervised monocular depth estimation (MDE). Whereas, such a representation would cause the discontinuity of the ground as it is…
Natural slender structures, such as plant leaves, petals, and tendrils, often exhibit complex three-dimensional (3D) morphologies-including twisting, helical coiling, and saddle-bending-driven by differential growth. The resulting internal…
Ellipsometry is a powerful and well-established optical technique used in the characterisation of materials. It works by combining the components of elliptically polarized light in order to draw information about the optical system. We…
Nature offers remarkable examples of complex photonic architectures such as those responsible for the iridescent colors of butterfly wings that emerge spontaneously during growth, well before any centralized control takes place. Arising…
Self-assembly is the autonomous organization of components into patterns or structures: an essential ingredient of biology and a desired route to complex organization. At equilibrium, the structure is encoded through specific interactions,…
A thin film at a liquid interface responds to uniaxial confinement by wrinkling and then by folding; its shape and energy have been computed exactly before self contact. Here, we address the mechanics of large folds, i.e. folds that absorb…
Full sky coverage Adaptive Optics on Extremely Large Telescopes requires the adoption of several Laser Guide Stars as references.With such large apertures, the apparent elongation of the beacons is absolutely significant.With few…
How can one design complex systems capable of learning for a given functionality? In the context of ultrafast laser-surface interaction, we unravel the nature of learning schemes tied to the emergence of complexity in dissipative…
Modern agricultural applications require knowledge about the position and size of fruits on plants. However, occlusions from leaves typically make obtaining this information difficult. We present a novel viewpoint planning approach that…
Trees are key components of the terrestrial biosphere, playing vital roles in ecosystem function, climate regulation, and the bioeconomy. However, large-scale monitoring of individual trees remains limited by inadequate modelling. Available…
Light reflection plays a crucial role in a number of modern technologies. In this paper, analytical expressions for maximal reflected power in any direction and for any polarization are given for generic planar structures made of a single…