Underwater aliens? Beautiful byproducts of a spherification demo 😅

🎲 This week in "Physics of Living Systems, Lab+Kitchen": Diffusion and random walks! 🧞‍♂️ Magic connection between microscopic random movement & deterministic bulk dynamics 🦄 How these dynamics shape organisms? 👨‍🍳 Chef Shahar Dabbah exemplified diffusion length via spherification of tasty gel spheres!🧋

Fireflies “have been doing computer science well before we even existed.” — Andrew Moiseff, a biologist at the University of Connecticut quantamagazine.org/how-do-firef...

🔬 This week in my course “Physics of Living Systems - in the Lab and Kitchen”, we explored viscosity & its microscopic origins. 👨‍🍳 Chef Yaniv Gur Arieh demonstrated different methods for sauce thickening: emulsions, gelatinization, reduction & modernist polymers. So much (tasty) soft matter physics!

Plants are everywhere 🌳 but rarely thought of as computing. New review (preprint 🪩 lnkd.in/d5KwzzPN): plants sense, compute, and move without a brain - via growth, combining physical computation, embodied intelligence & functional noise. A physics view of decentralized behavior in living matter 🌱

🥐 Master Baker Yuval Elhadeff shows how dough elasticity is manipulated by changing network properties of gluten! 🪩 1st demo in my course ”Physics of living systems, lab+kitchen”. When we cook we manipulate bio tissue with processes rooted in physics. More to come!

Awesome view from Artemis II this morning.

28 months later: In December 2024, I participated in the Ernst Strüngmann Forum on #Navigation #Research 🧭🧪 Now the book has been published including our chapter of group 2 ("team zoo" 🦠🐜🐦🦞🐒🦍🐢🤖) on the "Universal Principles of Navigation across Species and Spatial Scales" ↘️ doi.org/10.1007/978-... ↙️

Preprint 🌱 Plants build nonlinear vectorial representations of light patterns! Surprising results: Opposing cues cancel, so plants grow towards a weaker tie-breaker light. Plants respond to sum of transduced signals, not physical sum of light: optical “illusions”! 🪩 tinyurl.com/44f83xh8

Honeybee swarms do not come together and fall apart in the same way 🐝 In this new preprint led by Danielle Chase, we report how to trick swarms to repeatedly assemble and disassemble in front of our cameras, while tracking individual bees in 3D! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New preprint 🌱 Segment plants in time-series images using foundation model SAM2 - without training a model 🪩. Magician Alex Abbey! 💡SAP works across species, scales, and even z-stacks. From single cells to whole plants→ quantitative growth & dynamics . tinyurl.com/3raedtvm @biosofttau.bsky.social

🌱 “To twine or not to twine?” Preprint 🪩 Plants use inherent circular movements (circumnuations) for active sensing of support mechanical stability (eg whisking 🐭), twining occurs at a torque threshold. Heroic experiments by Amir Ohad, fancy simulations @amirporat.bsky.social: tinyurl.com/2syh4ny3

#LivingArchitectures Congratulations @manuelthery.bsky.social @lblanchoin.bsky.social and all Scientists of the #CytoMorphoLab for their poetic vision of the microscopic level.

✨ New preprint from the lab on firefly synchronization, led by Owen Martin (freshly Dr. Martin!), with Nataliya Nechyporenko and Kaushik Jayaram. Our measured firefly phase-response curves reveal excitatory and inhibitory timing rules that facilitate population synchrony ✨ doi.org/10.64898/202...

Job alert🚨I am advertising a 2-year postdoctoral position to work on the mathematics of plant morphogenesis @mpipz.bsky.social. Candidates with interests in mathematical modelling, mechanics, or biophysics are strongly encouraged to apply. 🌱Reposts are appreciated! jobs.mpipz.mpg.de/jobposting/4...

Artist+friend Liat Segal and I gave a fun talk at TRANSMEET Art+Science Festival (www.transmeet-festival.org ) "Art–science collaborations: Generators of new ideas and serendipitous events" (based on our paper bit.ly/4ohpuHu) After all, both artists & scientists are driven by asking questions

It's funny how in space all intuition about basic stuff - like water - goes out the window

We’re hiring! 🚨 Assistant Professor (TT) in Theoretical or Computational Biological Physics @univmiami.bsky.social 😀 Come build the future of interdisciplinary biophysics with us! Apply by Dec 15 → tinyurl.com/5n9bk836 #Biophysics #PhysicsJobs #AcademicJobs #UMiami

Call for Applications for the Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellowship-2026-27 azrielifoundation.org/azrieli-fell...

New paper!💡 Amir Ohad developed this nifty setup to measure weak forces generated by freely moving plants, based on the deflection of a pendulum (straw from the cafeteria 😎), which does not require any tethering of the plant: academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-... Plant-obstacle interactions here we come!

I can what this all day.

הכנתי לסטודנטים כמה הדגמות של ויזואליזציה של פונקציות מרוכבות למי שבעניין yohai.github.io/complex

💡Best way to learn electronics and ARDUINO for lab work? 🎨In an artist’s studio of course! Inspired by her amazing work, students (and some brave PIs) joined artist & friend Liat Segal in her studio for a workshop on the basics. Thanks @biosofttau.bsky.social for help funding!

Come fly with us, let's fly, let's fly away. Full details: www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/74169

I am super excited to announce that we have a tenure-track faculty position in biophysics open in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon! 🧪 Interfolio link: apply.interfolio.com/174360 PLEASE, share widely across the blue skies! Let me briefly explain what we're looking for: 1/10

I'm really looking forward to hosting this @metagov.bsky.social seminar on the governance of bees, fireflies, and plants with my colleage @oritpeleg.bsky.social: luma.com/pzbp4zq1

Surface tension wins when there’s no gravity! I love this video

Truly chuffed for our fearless food physicists @mpipks.bsky.social + collabs from AT @istaresearch.bsky.social, IT & ES who won this year’s Ig Nobel - the #NobelPrize of hearts❤️for cracking the science of perfect pasta !🍝Kudos to all for intrepidly consuming lots of cheese in the name of science!😋

New Episode! What is it like being inside an egg? Can you feel your sibling eggs nearby? How do you tell your parents when you are ready to come out? Dr Gabriella Gall is here to tell us all about her research into the world of egg communication. www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/collective-b...

Join my team for a PhD in Learning in living adaptive networks (Theory). Apply by October 7th through www.portal.graduatecenter.lmu.de/ocgc/qmb

In the last couple of months I helped biodesigner Chris Bellamy in a collaboration with fashion designer Iris van Herpen to make a bioluminescent dress for Paris Haute Couture week. And the outcome was absolutely stunning!!!! www.uva.nl/en/shared-co...

Research in the lab..

Is cognition a universal feature of the living world? How can we define it? Is a nervous system needed? If so, why? If not, why not? Check this fascinating @royalsocietypublishing.org Theme Issue led by @drmichaellevin.bsky.social & co. on Basal Cognition royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Mechanical interactions between plants and surroundings plays a huge role in understanding how plants negotiate their environment - but measuring low forces of free plants is hard! In this preprint Amir Ohad presents a new sensor - using a drinking straw! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Science-cooking aficionados 🍩 Last week I had a fun conversation with Foodie Shaul Amsterdamski about my course “Physics of Living Systems - Lab & Kitchen”, which includes live demos by chefs :) Last few minutes of his show “Close to the Plate”: www.kan.org.il/content/kan/...

Roses are spectacular in so many ways..

It's dandelion season — but there’s more than meets the eye... 👀 🔦 Under UV light they reveal a hidden bullseye🌸 Visit us at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show to see more flowers with hidden UV patterns #RHSChelsea #GreenSTEM #Dandelions #Pollinators #Bumblebees #Spring @cambridgeuni.bsky.social

Supposedly left-handed DNA reverses hair damage in 4 minutes.

Seriously this is not gender equality … this is wealthy women doing what all wealthy people do, spending obscene amounts of money on nothing that advances women, humanity or helps anyone at all.

FYI anyone interested in connections between art and science... "Automorphy" is a new exhibition at Jerusalem Science Museum, focusing on "self design in nature, science and architecture". Cool talks on opening night May 6!

so anyway, here's a creepy stick person made of an electroactive hydrogel walking back and forth through an electric field... #softrobotics Video from this paper doi.org/10.1021/acsa...

I absolutely love this video

Great theory paper by @hadrienoliveri.bsky.social & I. Cheddadi: a Hydromechanical field theory of plant growth treating tissue as a growing poroelastic medium. It's a nice bridge from cell biophysics to tissue-scale growth. arxiv.org/abs/2409.02775 & tinyurl.com/22n9ykdo

One of the key problems in biological growth is to obtain information about the forces in a growing tissue by just recording its deformation. In this collaboration with José A. Sanz-Herrera, we show that this inverse problem can be solved. authors.elsevier.com/a/1kiv357ZkC...

Friends! The science that we love is under threat. World-wide, there're forces seeking to make it corporate-like, focused on deliverables, or even the enemy of society. Take a stand & celebrate science & music! #theconferencetoendallconferences - Registration starts NOW! woodstock.img.cas.cz

This was a lit of fun :)

We (Marco Mazza, @jcammann.bsky.social, Hannah Laeverenz-Schlogelhofer and I) just posted a review on the physics of biological filaments across scales, enjoy! doi.org/10.48550/arX...

Delighted to unveil the poster and speakers list of the Mechanism of Plant Development meeting. 2 keynotes by @bradylabs.bsky.social & @nikogeldner.bsky.social to honour the legacy of P. Benfey & J. Chory. Congrats to @minyaaa.bsky.social for her beautiful Mimulus image. ➡️ tinyurl.com/24fsjq6a

“Before Noether’s theorem, the principle of conservation of energy was shrouded in mystery,” the physicist and mathematician Feza Gürsey wrote in 1983. “… Noether’s simple and profound mathematical formulation did much to demystify physics.” https://buff.ly/414iuVL

Excited to share our paper on the mathematical modelling of elephant trunk wrinkles, working with @langelamihai.bsky.social and @alaingoriely.bsky.social. We provide qualitative insight into surface wrinkles in elephant trunks based on nonlinear morphoelasticity. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1....