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The twisting and writhing of a cell body and associated mechanical stresses is an underappreciated constraint on microbial self-propulsion. Multi-flagellated bacteria can even buckle and writhe under their own activity as they swim through…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
Many animals meander in environments and avoid collisions. How the underlying neuronal machinery can yield robust behaviour in a variety of environments remains unclear. In the fly brain, motion-sensitive neurons indicate the presence of…
Semi-flexible polymers in crowded environments exhibit complex dynamics that play a crucial role in various biological and material design processes. Based on the classic reptation theory, it is generally believed that semiflexible polymers…
Active systems of self-propelled agents, e.g., birds, fish, and bacteria, can organize their collective motion into myriad autonomous behaviors. Ubiquitous in nature and across length scales, such phenomena are also amenable to artificial…
Migrating cells choose their preferential direction of motion in response to different signals and stimuli sensed by spanning their external environment. However, the presence of dense fibrous regions, lack of proper substrate, and cell…
The locomotion of microorganisms and spermatozoa in complex viscoelastic fluids is of critical importance in many biological processes such as fertilization, infection, and biofilm formation. Depending on their propulsion mechanisms,…
Transport of rodlike particles in confinement environments of macromolecular networks plays crucial roles in many important biological processes and technological applications. The relevant understanding has been limited to thin rods with…
We study the spontaneous configuration transitions of an active semi-flexible polymer between {\it spiral} and {\it non-spiral} states, and show that the configuration dynamics is fully described by a {\it subcritical pitchfork}…
This paper introduces Polyphorm, an interactive visualization and model fitting tool that provides a novel approach for investigating cosmological datasets. Through a fast computational simulation method inspired by the behavior of Physarum…
Collective and directed motility or swarming is an emergent phenomenon displayed by many self-organized assemblies of active biological matter such as clusters of embryonic cells during tissue development, cancerous cells during tumor…
The physics of behavior seeks simple descriptions of animal behavior. The field has advanced rapidly by using techniques in low dimensional dynamics distilled from computer vision. Yet, we still do not generally understand the rules which…
Since its discovery, the deep-sea glass sponge Euplectella aspergillum has attracted interest in its mechanical properties and beauty. Its skeletal system is composed of amorphous hydrated silica and is arranged in a highly regular and…
A collection of thin structures buckle, bend, and bump into each-other when confined. This contact can lead to the formation of patterns: hair will self-organize in curls; DNA strands will layer into cell nuclei; paper, when crumpled, will…
Lateral Inhibition (LI) phenomena occur in a wide range of sensory modalities and are most famously described in the human visual system. In LI the activity of a stimulated neuron is itself excited and suppresses the activity of its local…
Cell migration in confining physiological environments relies on the concerted dynamics of several cellular components, including protrusions, adhesions with the environment, and the cell nucleus. However, it remains poorly understood how…
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…
Typical bodily and environmental fluids encountered by biological swimmers consist of dissolved macromolecules such as proteins and polymers, often rendering them non Newtonian. To mimic such scenarios, we investigate the motion of swimming…
The Physarum network expands or retracts in response to environmental stimuli, demonstrating an intelligent adaptive capability to locate optimal paths for nutrient transport. The underlying physical mechanism governing this intelligence…
Decision making is the cognitive process of selecting a course of action among multiple alternatives. As the decision maker belongs to a complex microenvironment (which contains multiple decision makers), has to make a decision where…