Related papers: Geometric control of bacterial surface accumulatio…
The study of vesicles in suspension is important to understand the complicated dynamics exhibited by cells in vivo and in vitro. We developed a computer simulation based on the boundary-integral method to model the three dimensional…
Condensation on vertical surfaces leads to fluid retention, which limits the efficiency of applications ranging from heat exchangers to atmospheric water harvesters. A common strategy is to structure the surface with grooves, yet whether…
Bacterial biofilms collectively develop distinct and ordered structures, including fibers, bundles, and branches. Often, it is unclear how these structural motifs convey specific advantages to bacterial strains under challenging conditions.…
The motion of soft-glassy materials (SGM) in a confined geometry is strongly impacted by surface roughness. However, the effect of the spatial distribution of the roughness remains poorly understood from a more quantitative viewpoint. Here…
Biofilms in porous media critically influence hydraulic properties in environmental and engineered systems. However, a mechanistic understanding of how microbial life controls permeability remains elusive. By combining microfluidics,…
Cellular structures must organize themselves within strict physical constraints, operating with finite resources and well-defined boundaries. Classical systems demonstrate only passive responses to boundaries, from surface energy…
In image processing, source detections are inevitably affected by the presence of the geometric boundaries in the images, including the physical boundaries of the CCD, and the boundaries of masked regions due to column defects, bright…
The exchange of diffusive metabolites is known to control the spatial patterns formed by microbial populations, as revealed by recent studies in the laboratory. However, the matrices used, such as agarose pads, lack the structured geometry…
When treated with antibiotics below the minimum inhibitory concentration, bacterial cell division turns off, but cell growth does not. Thus, rod-like bacteria, including E. coli, can elongate many times their length without increasing their…
Bacterial suspensions--a premier example of active fluids--show an unusual response to shear stresses. Instead of increasing the viscosity of the suspending fluid, the emergent collective motions of swimming bacteria can turn a suspension…
Topological defects, which are singular points in a director field, play a major role in shaping active systems. Here, we experimentally study topological defects and the flow patterns around them, that are formed during the highly rapid…
Active propulsion, as performed by bacteria and Janus particles, in combination with hydrodynamic interaction results in the accumulation of bacteria at a flat wall. However, in microfluidic devices with cylindrical pillars of sufficiently…
The spread of microbial infections is governed by the self-organization of bacteria on surfaces. Limitations of live imaging techniques make collective behaviors in clinically relevant systems challenging to quantify. Here, novel…
We consider the shape optimization of flow fields for electrochemical cells. Our goal is to improve the cell by modifying the shape of its flow field. To do so, we introduce simulation models of the flow field with and without the porous…
Depth averaged conservation equations are written for granular surface flows. Their application to the study of steady surface flows in a rotating drum allows to find experimentally the constitutive relations needed to close these equations…
Interactions between microorganisms and solid boundaries play an important role in biological processes, like egg fertilisation, biofilm formation and soil colonisation, where microswimmers move within a structured environment. Despite…
We examine how the shape of cells and the geometry of experiment affect the reaction-diffusion kinetics at the binding between target and probe molecules on molecular biochips. In particular, we compare the binding kinetics for the probes…
Symmetry principles play an important role in geometry, and physics, allowing for the reduction of complicated systems to simpler, more comprehensible models that preserve the system's features of interest. Biological systems are often…
During colony growth, complex interactions regulate the bacterial orientation, leading to the formation of large-scale ordered structures, including topological defects and microdomains. These structures may benefit bacterial strains,…
We investigate with Monte Carlo computer simulations the capillary phase behaviour of model colloid-polymer mixtures confined between a flat wall and a corrugated wall. The corrugation is modelled via a sine wave as a function of one of the…