Related papers: On the origin of order
Constructing physical models of living cells and tissues is an extremely challenging task because of the high complexities of both intra- and intercellular processes. In addition, the force that a single cell generates vanishes in total due…
We consider a model for driven particulate matter in which absorbing states can be reached both by particle isolation and by particle caging. The model predicts a non-equilibrium phase diagram in which analogues of hydrodynamic and elastic…
Contact inhibition plays a crucial role in the motility of cells, the process of wound healing, and the formation of tumors. By mimicking the mechanical motion of calls crawling on a substrate using a pseudopod, we constructed a minimal…
Amorphous materials as diverse as foams, emulsions, colloidal suspensions and granular media can {\em jam} into a rigid, disordered state where they withstand finite shear stresses before yielding. The jamming transition has been studied…
We investigate the Schelling model of social segregation, formulated as an intrinsically non-equilibrium system, in which the agents occupy districts (or patches) rather than sites on a grid. We show that this allows the equations governing…
During development and under normal physiological conditions, biological tissues are continuously subjected to substantial mechanical stresses. In response to large deformations cells in a tissue must undergo multicellular rearrangements in…
Self-avoiding random walks on graphs can be seen as walkers interacting with their own past history. This letter considers a complementary class of dynamics: Mutual future avoiding random walks (MFARWs), where stochastically driven walkers…
"Self-organization" has become a watchword in developmental biology, characterizing observations in which embryonic or induced stem cells of animals replicate morphological steps and outcomes seen in intact embryos. While the term was…
The conceptual landscape of convection has two simple gateways: optimal function and random form. Optimal convection adjusts toward a univariate ideal called neutrality. Convection form involves elements (parcels, bubbles, drafts) whose…
Evolution produces complex and structured networks of interacting components in chemical, biological, and social systems. We describe a simple mathematical model for the evolution of an idealized chemical system to study how a network of…
We study the statistical underpinnings of life. We question some common assumptions about the thermodynamics of life and illustrate how, contrary to widespread belief, even in a closed system entropy growth can accompany an increase in…
We have developed an experimental setup of very simple self-propelled robots to observe collective motion emerging as a result of inelastic collisions only. A circular pool and commercial RC boats were the basis of our first setup, where we…
Left-right axis specification establishes embryonic laterality through asymmetric signaling cascades originating at the cellular scale. We previously reported the presence of a directionality bias in confined pairs of endothelial (and…
Ordered chains (such as chains of amino acids) are ubiquitous in biological cells, and these chains perform specific functions contingent on the sequence of their components. Using the existence and general properties of such sequences as a…
There are three main aims of this paper. 1- I explain reasons why I await life to lie significantly deeper in chaos than Kauffman approach does, however still in boundary area near `the edge of chaos and order'. The role of negative…
The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes are one of the major transitions in the evolution of life on earth. One of its most interesting aspects is the emergence of cellular organelles, their dynamics, their functions, and their…
The jamming transition between flow and amorphous-solid states exhibits paradoxical properties characterized by hyperuniformity (suppressed spatial fluctuations) and criticality (hyperfluctuations), whose origin remains unclear. Here we…
We carry out numerical simulations of soft, U-shaped, frictionless particles in $d=2$ dimensions in order to explore the effects of complex particle shape on the jamming transition. We consider both cases of uniform compression-driven and…
Evolution is the fundamental physical process that gives rise to biological phenomena. Yet it is widely treated as a subset of population genetics, and thus its scope is artificially limited. As a result, the key issues of how rapidly…
Most conspicuous organisms are multicellular and most multicellular organisms develop somatic cells to perform specific, non-reproductive tasks. The ubiquity of this division of labor suggests that it is highly advantageous. In this paper,…