Presentation materials
The slime mold Physarum polycephalum offers a unique model for exploring interactions between living systems and porous environments. As a unicellular organism, it adapts its network-like body to optimize nutrient transport, often under varying mechanical and environmental constraints. In this study, we investigate how Physarum responds to confinement-induced hydraulic resistance within...
Water-like fluids move around and through brain tissue, sweeping away metabolic wastes whose accumulation correlates with diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Flow is driven, at least in part, by the dilation and constriction of arteries that lie within annular perivascular spaces filled with water-like cerebrospinal fluid. Naively, we would expect the oscillatory motion of artery walls...
Bone metastases, particularly in the spine, present a significant clinical challenge as they weaken the structural integrity of vertebrae, increasing the risk of fractures and spinal cord injuries. Tumours disrupt the normal balance of bone remodelling through a complex interplay of molecular signalling, biochemical changes, and mechanical forces, resulting in lesions characterized by...
The mechanical behavior of the optic nerve is largely unknown but is of critical importance to understanding injury and subsequent visual dysfunction from mechanical trauma or elevated intracranial (brain) pressure. The structure of the optic nerve resembles a cylindrical composite with an outer elastic layer and an inner biofluid-saturated porous core. Current computational and material...
The drying of biological materials, such as vegetables and fruits, is a critical process in food preservation, enhancing shelf life, maintaining nutritional value, and reducing transportation costs. Potatoes, as a staple crop and a primary source of carbohydrates globally, are particularly significant in this context. However, drying processes for biological materials are often complex,...
Microplastics pose significant environmental and health challenges due to their widespread presence in aquatic systems and their potential for ingestion by animals and humans. While much research has focused on the transport of microplastics, the role of biofilms in modulating microplastic transport remains underexplored. Most studies conclude that biofilms decrease microplastic transport....
Biofilms, aggregates of microbes, play a crucial role in subsurface processes and applications, including groundwater contamination and remediation, as well as biomineralization. In fractured media, fluid flow predominantly occurs through fractures due to their higher permeability compared to the surrounding rock matrix. The rock matrix, on the other hand, stores most of the fluid and provides...
Termite mounds are renowned for their ability to maintain self-sustained ventilation and thermoregulation irrespective of external climatic conditions. Although there has been significant interest in this topic, especially for designing energy-efficient buildings, it is still unclear how the mound properties are controlled. In this study, we combine X-ray tomography and numerical simulations...
The human skeletal sponge bone is composed of hard porous materials (pore diameters of 100 to 500
