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The forcibly launched spores of the crop pathogen \emph{Sclerotinia sclerotiorum} must eject through many centimeters of nearly still air to reach the flowers of the plants that the fungus infects. Because of their microscopic size,…
Thousands of fungal species rely on mushroom spores to spread across landscapes. It has long been thought that spores depend on favorable airflows for dispersal -- that active control of spore dispersal by the parent fungus is limited to an…
Pathogenic fungi are a leading cause of crop disease and primarily spread through microscopic, durable spores adapted differentially for both persistence and dispersal. Computational Earth System Models and air pollution models have been…
Liquid wetting of a surface is omnipresent in nature and the advance of micro-fabrication and assembly techniques in recent years offers increasing ability to control this phenomenon. Here, we identify how surface roughness influences the…
In this article, we study the spreading of droplets of density-matched granular suspensions on the surface of a solid. Bidispersity of the particle size distribution enriches the conclusions drawn from monodisperse experiments by…
We examine theoretically the spreading of a viscous liquid drop over a thin film of uniform thickness, assuming the liquid's viscosity is regulated by the concentration of a solute that is carried passively by the spreading flow. The solute…
Liquid drops slide more slowly over soft, deformable substrates than over rigid solids. This phenomenon can be attributed to the viscoelastic dissipation induced by the moving wetting ridge, which inhibits a rapid motion, and is called…
This paper combines experimental data with simple mathematical models to investigate the influence of spray formulation type and leaf character (wettability) on shatter, bounce and adhesion of droplets impacting with cotton, rice and wheat…
The fungi disperse spores to move across landscapes and spore liberation takes different patterns. While many species release spores intermittently, others release spores at specific times of day or night according to intrinsic rhythms.…
Spilling tea or coffee leads to a tell-tale circular stain after the droplet dries, known as the "coffee ring effect". The evaporation of suspension droplets is a complex physical process, and predicting and controlling the particle deposit…
The dispersion of respiratory saliva droplets by indoor wake structures may enhance the transmission of various infectious diseases, as the wake spreads virus-laden droplets across the room. Thus, this study analyses the interaction between…
The impact of droplets on concave surfaces is poorly understood, although it is relevant to a mode of dispersal that has evolved independently in several species of plants and fungi. This mode relies on splash-cups, specialized organs that…
Long distance wind dispersal requires small spores with low terminal velocities, which can be held aloft by turbulent air currents until they are deposited in suitable habitats for colonization. The inherent difficulty in dispersing spores…
Measuring the rheology of liquids typically requires precise control over shear rates and stresses. Here, we describe an alternative route for predicting the characteristic features of a power-law fluid by simply observing the capillary…
Several species of plants have raindrop-sized flowers that catch raindrops opportunistically in order to spread their 0.3-mm seeds distances of over 1 m. In the following fluid dynamics video, we show examples of these plants and some of…
Leaves shed by deciduous trees contain 40\% of the annually sequestered carbon, and include nutrients vital to the expansion and health of forest ecosystems. To achieve this, leaves must fall quickly to land near the parent tree --…
The impact dynamics of viscoelastic droplets on solid surfaces play a critical role in numerous applications, including inkjet printing, spray coating, and microfluidics, where precise control of spreading, retraction, and rebound is…
The leaves of many plants are superhydrophobic, a property that may have evolved to clean the leaves by encouraging water droplets to bead up and roll off. Superhydrophobic surfaces can also exhibit reduced friction and liquids flowing over…
Microdrop impact and spreading phenomena are explored as an interface formation process using a recently developed computational framework. The accuracy of the results obtained from this framework for the simulation of high deformation…
Polymer networks and biological tissues are often swollen by a solvent, such that their properties emerge from a coupling between swelling and elastic stress. This poroelastic coupling becomes particularly intricate in wetting, adhesion,…