Related papers: Termite mounds harness diurnal temperature oscilla…
We present a model for the growth of the transportation network inside nests of the social insect subfamily Termitinae (Isoptera, termitidae). These nests consist of large chambers (nodes) connected by tunnels (edges). The model based on…
Termite colonies construct towering, complex mounds, in a classic example of distributed agents coordinating their activity via interaction with a shared environment. The traditional explanation for how this coordination occurs focuses on…
Termites which are able to forage in the open can be often seen, in the field or in the lab: (i) wandering around, forming no observable pattern, or (ii) clustering themselves in a dense and almost immobile pack, or (iii) milling about in a…
Termites, like many social insects, build nests of complex architecture. These constructions have been proposed to optimize different structural features. Here we describe the nest network of the termite Nasutitermes ephratae, which is…
We present a simple three-dimensional model to describe the autonomous expansion of a substrate which grows driven by the local mean curvature of its surface. The model aims to reproduce the nest construction process in arboreal…
The Mima-mound-and-vernal-pool topography of California is rich in endemic plant and invertebrate species, but we do not know how this unusual environment is created or maintained. Burrowing rodents have been observed to move soil upwards…
Social organisms which construct nests consisting of tunnels and chambers necessarily navigate confined and crowded conditions. Unlike low-density collectives like bird flocks and insect swarms, in which hydrodynamic and statistical…
Wind turbines operate in the atmospheric boundary layer, where they are exposed to the turbulent atmospheric flows. As the response time of wind turbine is typically in the range of seconds, they are affected by the small scale intermittent…
Use of commercial growth chambers for study of biological processes involved in biomass growth and production pose certain limitations on the nature of studies that can be performed in them. Optimization of biomass rearing and production…
Swarming is an essential part of honeybee behaviour, wherein thousands of bees cling onto each other to form a dense cluster that may be exposed to the environment for several days. This cluster has the ability to maintain its core…
Urban trees play a crucial role in urban climate in many aspects. However, existing research has not adequately explored the impact from a time-evolving perspective, that is, tree growth over time. To bridge this research gap, this study…
Taylors hypothesis is the backbone to convert observations done over time to spatial information of the flow while carrying out turbulence measurements on a micrometeorological tower. To address its validity over a highly heterogeneous…
Wind-blown sand dunes are both a consequence and a driver of climate dynamics; they arise under persistently dry and windy conditions, and are sometimes a source for airborne dust. Dune fields experience extreme daily changes in…
Active hydrothermal vents provide the surrounding submarine environment with substantial amounts of matter and energy, thus serving as important habitats for diverse megabenthic communities in the deep ocean and constituting a unique,…
Most of Mars' ancient sedimentary rocks by volume are in wind-eroded sedimentary mounds, but the connections between mound form and wind erosion are unclear. We perform mesoscale simulations of different crater and mound morphologies to…
Smoke curtains are typically used in public-access buildings in connexion with ventilation effects without considering a crossed design. This paper aims to understand the fire smoke behaviour in the context of the interaction between…
The unsteady flow physics of wind-turbine wakes under dynamic forcing conditions are critical to the modeling and control of wind farms for optimal power density. Unsteady forcing in the streamwise direction may be generated by unsteady…
Termites form complex dynamical trail networks from simple individual rules when exploring their environment. To help identify those simple rules, we reconstructed trail networks from time-lapse images of roaming termites. We quantified the…
In protoplanetary disks, the formation of planetesimals via streaming and/or gravitational instabilities requires regions with a locally enhanced dust-to-gas mass ratio. Conventionally, gas pressure maxima sustained by gas surface density…
The possibility to use diurnal temperature variations for nondestructive monitoring of growing tubers is investigated by numerically simulating the data collected with a grid of passive thermal sensors placed in the ground and sampled at…