Ripple bugs use a special fan-like structure on their middle legs to speed and steer through turbulent waters. In a new Science study, researchers report a water-walking robot inspired by this feature.
Learn more in our latest issue: https://scim.ag/3V8FjDU
Close-up of experimental honeycombs built after a challenging 3D printed setup, showing mostly hexagonal cells.
New paper in PLOS Biology: as we raise the difficulty of our 3D printed puzzles, bees keep landing on combs with ever stranger hexagonal order! 🐝
Led by the brilliant Golnar Gharooni Fard, in collaboration with CK Prasanna & FL Jiménez
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Want to know if inertia matters in your system? 🤓Compute the transition pressure pt and compare ΔP/pt:
• If <1 → inertia negligible
• If >1 → big efficiency loss
Ex: 💧through a pore of square aspect ratio h/a=1 of radius… 1️⃣ 10 nm pore @30 bar → safe; 2️⃣ 10 µm pore @30 kPa → ~70% lost!
Using a simple U-tube, we measure pressure-driving flow through a single pore. At low Re, viscous drag dominates; but above Re ≈ 10, inertia takes over: resistance rises with pressure, overtaking viscosity. Simulations and model capture this transition from viscous to inertia regime 💻📝
Inertial correction to viscous drag along a pore length (Hagen-Poiseuille) are well studied; but this effect at the pore entrance (Sampson resistance) has received little attention, for example in work on end corrections for long pipes a century ago (Johansen Proc. R. Soc. A 1930)
Even if you reduce viscous drag with optimal geometry or special coatings, you still need to accelerate the fluid through the pore. That acceleration -- fluid inertia -- sets an upper bound on flow efficiency through micropores
🚰 Fluid inertia limits microporous flow efficiency, out in EPJ Plus this week, with Kaare Jensen @jensen-research.bsky.social rdcu.be/eBV2C 👇
Déployer ses ailes : la première étape cruciale de l’insecte adulte 🪰🦋🐞 Un article grand public avec @simonhadjaje.bsky.social et édité par Elsa Couderc
Fly wing unfurling study throws light on how tissues and organs are shaped
📹: Simon Hadjaje et al @joelmarthelot.bsky.social Raphaël Clément @univ-amu.fr & @centuri-ls.bsky.social
in @naturecomms.bsky.social
➡️: bpod.org.uk/archive/2025... with
JohnAnkers
Fresh off the press, our work on wing deployment in Drosophila 🪰:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Work by: Simon Hadjaje, Ignacio Andrade-Silva, Marie-Julie Dalbe and Raphaël Clément
