10 papers
Life in a tight spot: Coupled dynamics of bacteria and soil across scales
Pablo Bravo, Tanumoy Dhar, Eloise Masquelier +2
Soil harbors much of Earth's bacterial life. The activity of these bacteria governs plant growth, carbon and nitrogen cycling, and the response of land to a changing climate. Under…
Polymer extension at stagnation points governs flow thickening of polymer solutions in ordered porous media
Emily Y. Chen, Simon J. Haward, Amy Q. Shen +1
Polymer solutions exhibit anomalous flow thickening -- marked by an abrupt increase in the macroscopic flow resistance -- above a threshold flow rate in a porous medium, but not in…
Biogenic bubbles enable microbial escape from physical confinement
Babak Vajdi Hokmabad, Thomas Appleford, Hao Nghi Luu +3
Immotile microbes inhabit nearly every environment on Earth, from soils and sediments to food matrices -- yet how they disperse through these physically confining environments is p…
Dynamic Instabilities and Pattern Formation in Chemotactic Active Matter
Hongbo Zhao, Qiwei Yu, Andrej Košmrlj +1
Collectives of actively-moving particles can spontaneously segregate into dilute and dense phases through a process known as motility-induced phase separation (MIPS). This captivat…
Morphogenesis of bacterial colonies in liquid crystalline environments
Sebastian Gonzalez La Corte, Thomas G. J. Chandler, Saverio E. Spagnolie +2
Natural bacterial habitats are often complex fluids with viscoelastic and anisotropic responses to stress; for example, they can take the form of liquid crystals (LCs), with elonga…
Getting out of a tight spot: Cooperative unclogging of hydrogel particles in disordered porous media
Sanjana Kamath, Laurent Talon, Meera Ramaswamy +2
We use event-driven pore network modeling to study the transport of hydrogel particles through disordered porous media -- a process that underlies diverse applications. By simulati…