相关论文: Mushroom spore dispersal by convectively-driven wi…

Marine microorganisms often reach high swimming speeds, either to take advantage of evanescent nutrient patches or to beat Brownian forces. Since this implies that a sizable part of their energetic budget must be allocated to motion, it is…

Surface-active molecules supplied from a particle fixed at the water surface create a spatial gradient of the molecule concentration, resulting in Marangoni convection. Convective flow transports the molecules far from the particle,…

Diffusion in complex heterogeneous media such as biological tissues or porous materials typically involves constrained displacements in tortuous structures and {\em sticky} environments. Therefore, diffusing particles experience both…

Particles with ligand-receptor contacts bind and unbind fluctuating "legs" to surfaces, whose fluctuations cause the particle to diffuse. Quantifying the diffusion of such "nanoscale caterpillars" is a challenge, since binding events often…

How producers of public goods persist in microbial communities is a major question in evolutionary biology. Cooperation is evolutionarily unstable, since cheating strains can reproduce quicker and take over. Spatial structure has been shown…

Motivated by a case study of vegetation patterns, we introduce a mixture model with concomitant variables to examine the association between the orientation of vegetation stripes and wind direction. The proposal relies on a novel…

The response of paper to humidity variations is a complex multi-scale problem. The hygroscopic swelling of individual fibres and their interactions within the fibrous network govern the macroscopic response. At this scale, moisture induced…

Grain segregation occurs under various conditions, such as vibration, shear and mixing. In the gravity-driven shear flow, size segregation is triggered by the percolation of small particles through the opened voids (kinetic sieving), and…

We demonstrate that collective turbulent-like motion in a bacterial bath can power and steer directed transport of mesoscopic carriers through the suspension. In our experiments and simulations, a microwedge-like "bulldozer" draws energy…

We quantitatively study the transport of E. coli near the walls of confined microfluidic channels, and in more detail along the edges formed by the interception of two perpendicular walls. Our experiments establish the connection between…

The recent interest in using microorganisms for biofuels is motivation enough to study bioconvection and cell dispersion in tubes subject to imposed flow. To optimize light and nutrient uptake, many microorganisms swim in directions biased…

Compound flows consist of two or more parallel compressible streams in a duct and their theoretical treatment has gained attention for the analysis and modelling of ejectors. Recent works have shown that these flows can experience choking…

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…

The self-organised motion of vast numbers of creatures in a single direction is a spectacular example of emergent order. We recreate this phenomenon using actuated non-living components. We report here that millimetre-sized tapered rods,…

A high fidelity model for the propagation of pathogens via aerosols in the presence of moving pedestrians is proposed. The key idea is the tight coupling of computational fluid dynamics and computational crowd dynamics in order to capture…

We present a continuum theory which describes the fast growth of a crack by surface diffusion. This mechanism overcomes the usual cusp singularity by a self-consistent selection of the crack tip radius. It predicts the saturation of the…

Maple trees (genus $\textit{Acer}$) accomplish the task of distributing objects to a wide area by producing seeds which are carried by the wind as they slowly descend to the ground, known as samaras. With the goal of supporting engineering…

Bacteria commonly live in structured communities that affect human health and influence ecological systems. Heterogeneous populations, such as motile and non-motile populations, often coexist in bacteria communities. Motile subpopulations…

The olfactory system of male moths is exquisitely sensitive to pheromones emitted by females and transported in the environment by atmospheric turbulence. Moths respond to minute amounts of pheromones and their behavior is sensitive to the…

The effect of mechanical interactions between cells in the spreading of bacterial populations was investigated in one-dimensional space. A continuum-mechanics approach, comprising cell migration, proliferation, and exclusion processes, was…