The bottoms of boats and docks can accumulate lots of dirt, but semiaquatic animals like otters avoid having ‘fouled’ fur. Their secret could one day help keep underwater infrastructure clean.
Yizeng Li, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Counterintuitively, cells move faster in thicker fluids. New research on breast cancer cells explains why, and reveals the role that fluid viscosity plays in metastasis.
AI-generated voice-alikes can be indistinguishable from the real person’s speech to the human ear. A computer model that gives voice to the dinosaurs turns out to be a good way to tell the difference.
Little bits of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot seem to be flaking off. Is it a sign of the demise of this enigmatic red cloud, or just a consequence of atmospheric chaos we can’t see from above?
With no identifiable body parts, it’s hard to know how these fossilized creatures lived. A new approach models how the ocean’s water would interact with their unique shapes – hinting at their lifestyle.
David Hu, Georgia Institute of Technology and Patricia Yang, Georgia Institute of Technology
New parenthood got our fluid dynamics experts thinking about what ends up in the diaper. They headed to the zoo and the lab to come up with a cohesive physics story for how defecation works.
Alexis Noel, Georgia Institute of Technology and David Hu, Georgia Institute of Technology
How do a frog’s tongue and saliva work together to be sticky enough to lift 1.4 times the animal’s body weight? Painstaking lab work found their spit switches between two distinct phases to nab prey.
Even the best engineered filters get clogged eventually. Fish mouths have evolved structures that create unique fluid dynamics patterns that solve that problem.
The way sea lions swim is unique among fish and marine mammals. Their technique provides a biomechanical model to design agile underwater vehicles… but first we have to figure out how they do it.