📢Preprint: Positional information (PI) and information flows in dynamic tissues.
Our mathematical framework quantifies, from data, how the coupled stochastic dynamics of cell positions and properties preserve, degrade and generate PI. @alex-plum.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Springtails use aggregation pheromones to find each other. Because they are too small to break the water surface tension, their mutual attraction can result in large black floats. Woodstock, NY.
This is sooo cool! Ripple bugs propel themselves using collapsible fans that extend only when their legs touch water (in an ingenious way) - So glad I landed on this post. Amazing (and talented) way to communicate research
Read a breakdown of the research (with lots of visuals) AND the whole comic here:
bhamla.gatech.edu/project-blog...
The new publication:
doi.org/10.1126/scia...
New comic! Small groups of animals can be unpredictable, yet sheepdogs and their handlers direct them with style. The study just came out in Science Advances with a beautiful, mid-stride sheepdog on the cover! Congrats to the authors, Tuhin Chakrabortty (featured in the comic) and Saad Bhamla.
Comics by Caroline Hu here
Based on sheepdog insights, we developed an Indecisive Swarm Algorithm that can more efficiently control time-varying networks, such as swarm robotics, vehicular traffic, and social opinion. Full paper
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Our recent paper made it to the cover of Science Advances. In this paper, Tuhin Chakrabortty and I studied sheepdog trials, where skilled dog-handler teams control small flocks of sheep, and showed that trained dogs exploit indecisiveness to herd and divide the flock.
Tiny worms, big surprises! When placed in sand-filled Petri dishes, centimeter-long aquatic worms like T. tubifex spontaneously sweep up particles and reorganize their environment — all without a brain. Research team co-led by Saad Bhamla (@bhamlalab.bsky.social, ChbE@GT). bit.ly/4bzXFao
Beautiful work!!!
Non-motile microbes are not prisoners of diffusive transport. Just their metabolic activity can be sufficient to stir up the ambient fluid and cause explosive long-range dispersal -- a "metabolic firework".
Our latest work -- arxiv.org/abs/2512.16288
Beautiful work. Congrats!!!
Amazing research and such a fantastic scicomm video.
I'd like to show it to my kids, but I'm afraid that it'll backfire and they'll use it to explain why all the clothes in their cupboards are unfolded despite the fact they were folded when they went in....
(1/n) What if you never had to make your bed? What if your laundry could fold itself? Folding is everywhere around us - but did you know that folding flat sheets are at the ❤️ of diversity of shapes in the animal world - since 500 million years ago. Our latest work: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nudC...
These microrobots can execute digitally defined algorithms and autonomously change behavior in response to their surroundings.
It paves the way for general-purpose microrobots that work together to carry out tasks without supervision in uncertain environments.
🧪
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
I am pleased to announce that from Jan 1 2026 I take over as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biological Theory. My first act, with the support of the editorial team, is to bring the journal to BlueSky from X.
Please follow us @biologicaltheory.bsky.social. We will be posting about all our articles.
New York Times article on science funding with some depressing but familiar curves with interactive graphics.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
@jordancollver.bsky.social
PSA for people with NIH grant periods starting January 1st (including most NIGMS MIRAs): your RPPR is due Saturday, but they haven’t sent out the usual automated reminders, presumably due to the shutdown
Are you a scientist?
Is your research cool?
Do people not adequately appreciate how cool your research is?
I'm looking for researchers to feature in Q&A-style interviews on my blog and would love to hear from (or about — embarrass your friends!) scientists interested in sharing their work. 🧪
Great sci comm.
How much stress would a wood beetle get if the wood beetle was filled with worms?
Horned passalus beetles can have dozens to thousands of worms squirming inside them - and these worms can affect how their host responds to stress
#invertebrate 🧪
dailyparasite.blogspot.com/2023/06/chon...
Domesticated animals have pulled our heavy carts and turned our large mills for centuries. But what about the opposite end of the spectrum—what if the wheel you want to turn is so small you can’t see it?
Turns out we can harness the power of bacteria to power the world’s smallest machines.
1/7 ⚛️🧪
Expanded mouse olfactory bulb imaged with fluorescence at 20-50 nm resolution!
Ingenious concept - light sheet on serial sections by photo-etching the expanded hydrogel, layer by layer.
Photo-sectioning is quite slow, and the volumetric images are insanely large and complex, but the data look wonderful.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Welcome to all the new Packard Fellows- this is an incredible community. I look forward to meeting you at the reunion!
Also, huge congrats to my colleague @jameststroud.bsky.social! Can't wait to see what you discover in your long-term eco/evo experiment, Lizard Island!
This is my 1st time catching my pet archer fish, Legolas, spitting on camera. Archerfish use modified jaw and tongue bones to fire a jet of water to knock down bugs from over hanging vegetation. Here Legolas is shooting down a fruit fly 🪰 🐠🧪
🦑🧪 Job doing fieldwork (on ships) with Viking Cruises. Full-time position = ? Salary = ?
I usually don't post without more detail, but the job market is weird right now! And this would be a fun fit for someone, and I'm not sure if it'll hit the usual job feeds
www.vikingcareers.com/global/en/jo...
In another exciting development our new preprint is online:
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
This is the work of my brilliant graduate student Katerina Kourkoulou in collaboration with Maggie Liu and Arnold Mathijssen. Here is a video of the subject of our study:
Congrats!!!
