Related papers: A microfluidic method for passive trapping of sper…
Sperm cooperation has evolved in a variety of taxa and is often considered a response to sperm competition, yet the benefit of this form of collective movement remains unclear. Here we use fine-scale imaging and a minimal mathematical model…
Catching fish with a fishing net is typically done either by dragging a fishing net through quiescent water or by placing a stationary basket trap into a stream. We transfer these general concepts to micron-sized self-motile particles…
Microfluidic Trap Arrays (MTAs) have proved efficient tools for several applications requiring working at the single cell level like cancer understanding and treatment or immune synapse research. Unfortunately, it generally appears that…
It is often desirable to enhance the motility of active nano- or microscale swimmers such as, e.g., self-propelled Janus particles as agents of chemical reactions or weak sperm cells for better chances of successful fertilization. Here we…
Microorganisms often encounter strong confinement and complex hydrodynamic flows while navigating their habitats. Combining finite-element methods and stochastic simulations, we study the interplay of active transport and heterogeneous…
We investigate the influence of microstructural traps on hydrogen diffusion and embrittlement in the presence of cyclic loads. A mechanistic, multi-trap model for hydrogen transport is developed, implemented into a finite element framework,…
Sperm traverse their microenvironment through viscous fluid by propagating flagellar waves; the waveform emerges as a consequence of elastic structure, internal active moments, and low Reynolds number fluid dynamics. Engineered…
A sperm-driven micromotor is presented as cargo-delivery system for the treatment of gynecological cancers. This particular hybrid micromotor is appealing to treat diseases in the female reproductive tract, the physiological environment…
Fine manipulation of fluid flows at the microscale has a tremendous impact on mass transport phenomena of chemical and biological processes inside microfluidic platforms. Fluid mixing in the laminar flow regime at low Reynolds is poorly…
We introduce a novel technique for grabbing water with a flexible solid. This new passive pipetting mechanism was inspired by floating flowers and relies purely on the coupling of the elasticity of thin plates and the hydrodynamic forces at…
In this paper, we analyse two deep learning methods to predict sperm motility and sperm morphology from sperm videos. We use two different inputs: stacked pure frames of videos and dense optical flows of video frames. To solve this…
We develop a mother machine-like microfluidic device specifically designed to track the proliferation of T-cells via live-cell microscopy. Although numerous microfluidic setups have been developed to study cell proliferation at the…
Understanding flow and transport of bacteria in porous media is crucial to technologies such as bioremediation, biomineralization or enhanced oil recovery. While physicochemical bacteria filtration is well-documented, recent studies showed…
Suspensions of micro and nano particles made of Polystyrene, Poly(methyl methacrylate), Silicon dioxide etc. have been a standard model system to understand colloidal physics. . These systems have proved useful insights into phenomena such…
Sperm are propelled by bending waves travelling along the flagellum. During steering in gradients of sensory cues, sperm adjust the flagellar beat waveform. Symmetric and asymmetric beat waveforms produce straight and curved swimming paths,…
The male fruit fly produces ~1.8 mm long sperm, thousands of which can be stored until mating in a ~200 micron sac, the seminal vesicle. While the evolutionary pressures driving such extreme sperm (flagellar) lengths have long been…
Passive and effective fluid capture and transport at small scale is crucial for industrial and medical applications, especially for the realisation of point-of-care tests. Performing these tests involves several steps including biological…
Microfluidics involves the manipulation of flows at the microscale, typically requiring external power sources to generate pressure gradients. Alternatively, harnessing flows from active fluids, which are usually chaotic, has been proposed…
Sperm modulate their flagellar symmetry to navigate through complex physico-chemical environments and achieve reproductive function. Yet it remains elusive how sperm swim forwards despite the inherent asymmetry of several components that…
We present a new acquisition method that enables high-resolution, fine-detail full reconstruction of the three-dimensional movement and structure of individual human sperm cells swimming freely. We achieve both retrieval of the…