Related papers: A Field Biology Guide for the Curious Physicist
Computational biologists are frequently engaged in collaborative data analysis with wet lab researchers. These interdisciplinary projects, as necessary as they are to the scientific endeavour, can be surprisingly challenging due to cultural…
If students are to successfully grapple with authentic, complex biological problems as scientists and citizens, they need practice solving such problems during their undergraduate years. Physics education researchers have investigated…
Research methods are essential parts in conducting any research project. Although they have been theorized and summarized based on best practices, every field of science requires an adaptation of the overall approaches to perform research…
A reliable understanding of the Earth system is essential for the life quality of modern society. Natural hazards are the cause of most life and resource losses. The ability to define the conditions for a sustainable development of…
This is a provisional status report of biophysics activities in Africa. We start by highlighting the importance of biophysics research and development for every country's economy in the 21st century. Yet, the amount of biophysics activity…
Being aware of the motivation problems observed in many scientific oriented careers, we present two experiences to expose to college students to environments, methodologies and discovery techniques addressing contemporary problems. This…
Fields offer a versatile approach for describing complex systems composed of interacting and dynamic components. In particular, some of these dynamical and stochastic systems may exhibit goal-directed behaviors aimed at achieving specific…
The discipline of `theoretical biology' has been developing from its inception several decades ago almost in parallel with the advances in biology, so much so that the latter is often considered to be almost exclusively an empirical…
Foraging site constancy, or repeated return to the same foraging location, is a foraging strategy used by many species to decrease uncertainty, but it is often unclear exactly how the foraging site is identified. Here we focus on the…
Collective behaviors exhibited by animal groups, such as fish schools, bird flocks, or insect swarms are fascinating examples of self-organization in biology. Concepts and methods from statistical physics have been used to argue…
Equipment used for site investigation activities like drill rigs are typically large and heavy to provide sufficient reaction mass to overcome the soil's penetration resistance. The need for large and heavy equipment creates challenges for…
A significant amount of high-impact contemporary scientific research occurs where biology, computer science, engineering and chemistry converge. Although programmes have been put in place to support such work, the complex dynamics of…
Computational biology continues to spread into new fields, becoming more accessible to researchers trained in the wet lab who are eager to take advantage of growing datasets, falling costs, and novel assays that present new opportunities…
What are the functions of curiosity? What are the mechanisms of curiosity-driven learning? We approach these questions about the living using concepts and tools from machine learning and developmental robotics. We argue that…
Vibe researching is an emerging paradigm in which human researchers provide high-level direction and critical judgment while LLM-based agents handle the labor-intensive execution of literature review, experimentation, data analysis, and…
Living labs have been established across different countries to evaluate how the interaction between humans and buildings can be optimized to improve comfort, health, and energy savings. However, existing living labs can be too…
One of the longest standing open problems in science is how life arises from non-living matter. If it is possible to measure this transition in the lab, then it might be possible to understand the physical mechanisms by which the emergence…
In this survey we present different approaches that allow an intelligent agent to explore autonomous its environment to gather information and learn multiple tasks. Different communities proposed different solutions, that are in many cases,…
What makes living systems flexible so that they can react quickly and adapt easily to changing environments? This question has not only engaged biologists for decades but is also of great interest to computer scientists and engineers who…
Curiosity is a vital metacognitive skill in educational contexts. Yet, little is known about how social factors influence curiosity in group work. We argue that curiosity is evoked not only through individual, but also interpersonal…