New from us in @pnas.org :
We considered the limits of condensate diversity, and engineered DNA droplets to form 9 distinct, homotypic, coexisting phases. Very hard to do this except with nucleic acids. Probably you can make more than 9. (1/3)
What if you made a jetpack using rifles?
What the latest What If? video in collaboration with @minuteearth.bsky.social!
youtu.be/IdlQsjq5vKo
This is different from my previous work, but part of the same overarching goal of coarse graining biology into physics.
This is, I think, an important step in automating the discovery of the correct low dimensional descriptions of biological systems!
We recover the critical exponents from simulated spin configurations of the 2D Ising model, and the degrees of freedom from experimental videos of mechanical pendulums.
New preprint!
arxiv.org/abs/2602.08105
We use mutual information to find the shared dimensionality of shared latent space between two high-dimensional variables. Turning inference into optimization, we use it to figure out dofs in movies and critical scaling in Ising!
New preprint! Non-reciprocal interactions don’t arise from a potential. Yet, we found a way to encode them in a Hamiltonian, which captures the phase transitions of non-reciprocal systems! With Yubo Shi, Roderich Moessner, and @marinbukov.bsky.social @mpipks.bsky.social.
arxiv.org/pdf/2505.05246
Thanks, Ricard!
Haha, thank you!
One successful PhD defense later…
- Dr. Gulati
A tantalizing prospect is that biology may exploit the propensity of active fluids to form networks for evolutionary advantage, for instance in organisms such as slime molds or some fungi that form networks to facilitate resource sharing.
(4/4)
It provides a basis for development of new techniques for tunable control of the structure/rheology of fluid mixtures. It may also be relevant to biological contexts such as spindle-shaped cells kneading a path through extracellular matrix or metastatic cancer cells invading healthy tissue.
(3/4)
The active fluid stretches and kneads itself into long, thin filaments to create a connected network and the network forms even when the active fluid is a small fraction of the mixture. It is dynamically stable, in the sense that it persists forever, while continuously remodeling itself.
(2/4)
Read about our recently published work (with Fernando Caballero and M. Cristina Marchetti) on how extensile active fluids can form filamentary networks, when mixed with a passive fluid:
journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...
(1/4)
Images of stand up for science attendees and their posters
10 MINUTES!!!!!
#standupforscience2025 at UCSB today!
Let’s go!! If you’re also at UCSB, I’ll see you at the Chem Lawn at 12 pm tomorrow! #standupforscience2025
Tech imitates life or something…
Same strategy as during the COVID pandemic: “If we stop testing, the number of cases will stop going up.”
DOGE is like if Fyre Festival was a government agency.
Welcome to the Bluesky account for Stand Up for Science 2025!
Keep an eye on this space for updates, event information, and ways to get involved. We can't wait to see everyone #standupforscience2025 on March 7th, both in DC and locations nationwide!
#scienceforall #sciencenotsilence
