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There are two dominant and contrasting classes of origin of life scenarios: those predicting that life emerged in submarine hydrothermal systems, where chemical disequilibrium can provide an energy source for nascent life; and those…
Alkane mixtures are model systems where the influence of surface tension gradients during the spreading and the evaporation of wetting drops can be easily studied. The surface tension gradients are mainly induced by concentration gradients,…
Earth's aquatic environments are inherently stratified layered systems where interfaces between layers serve as ecological niches for microbial swimmers, forming colonies known as Active Carpet (AC). Previous theoretical studies have…
The onset of life is often framed around membrane bound compartments and encoded metabolism, leaving unresolved how spatial organization arose before stable boundaries. In this context, environmental gradients are usually treated as…
Aqueous alkylamine mixtures are studied by computer simulations in order to understand the microscopic origin of the water rich side prominent x-ray scattering pre-peaks reported in a recent study. These pre-peaks are puzzling in view of…
Chemical gardens are mineral aggregates that grow in three dimensions with plant-like forms and share properties with self-assembled structures like nano-scale tubes, brinicles or chimneys at hydrothermal vents. The analysis of their shapes…
This study investigates the hydrodynamics of droplet formation in a T-shaped cylindrical microfluidic device using micro-PIV experiments and CFD simulations. Devices of 150 micro-m internal diameter were fabricated from PDMS via a…
We investigate the formation of fingered flow in dry granular media under simulated rainfall using a quasi-2D experimental set-up composed of a random close packing of mono-disperse glass beads. Using controlled experiments, we analyze the…
The emergence of membranous compartments (protocells) with encapsulated genetic material was a crucial step life's origin and evolution. The hot spring hypothesis for the origin of life suggests that protocells could have formed in hot…
We consider the mixing of a viscous fluid by the rotation of a pitched blade turbine inside an open, cylindrical tank, with air as the lighter fluid above. To examine the flow and interfacial dynamics, we utilise a highly-parallelised…
In this fluid dynamics video, results from high fidelity numerical simulations are presented, which have been carried out to study the flow and droplet dynamics of liquid sheets formed by two impinging jets. A three-dimensional…
Studying and interpreting the different flow patterns present in urban areas is becoming essential since they help develop new approaches to fight climate change through an improved understanding of the dynamics of the pollutants in urban…
Spatial gradients of diffusible signalling molecules play crucial roles in controlling diverse cellular behaviour such as cell differentiation, tissue patterning and chemotaxis. In this paper, we report the design and testing of a…
We perform a laboratory-scale experiment of submarine avalanches on a rough inclined plane. A sediment layer is prepared and thereafter tilted up to an angle lower than the spontaneous avalanche angle. The sediment is scrapped until an…
Droplet microfluidics are a powerful approach for hydrogel cell encapsulations. Much of the field has focused on single-cell encapsulations with pico-nanoliter droplet volumes necessary for single-cell sequencing or high-throughput…
We investigate the microscopic origin of water's anomalies by inspecting the hydrogen bond network (HBN) and the spatial organization of low-density-liquid (LDL) like and high-density-liquid (HDL) like environments. Specifically, we…
Liquids serve microcavity research ever since Ashkins studies on optical resonances in levitating droplets to recent optofluidic resonators. Droplets can provide optical quality factor (Q) in proximity to the limit restricted by water…
We formulate a model for the dynamic growth of a membrane developing in a flow as the result of a precipitation reaction, a situation inspired by recent microfluidic experiments. The precipitating solid introduces additional forces on the…
The inner membrane of mitochondria presents folds, the cristae, which are the production place of ATP. This synthesis is driven by a flow of protons confined to the surface of the membrane, which also shapes the crista to ensure a high…
The emergence of the main divisions of today's life: (1) unicellular prokaryotes, (2) unicellular eukaryotes, (3) multicellular eukaryotes, and (4) metazoans, are examples of the--still unexplained--major transitions in evolution. Regarding…