Publications related to Morphogenesis and oxygen dynamics in phototrophic biofilms growing across a gradient of hydraulic conditions

The microbial genomics of glacier-fed streams: adaptations to an extreme ecosystem

Glacier-fed streams are the cold, ultra-oligotrophic, and unstable streams that are fed by glacial meltwater. Despite these extreme conditions, they harbour a diverse and abundant microbial diversity that develops into biofilms, covering the boulders and s ...

EPFL2024

Frictional weakening leads to unconventional singularities during dynamic rupture propagation

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Federica Paglialunga, Mathias Alexandre David Lebihain, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Earthquakes i.e. frictional ruptures, are commonly described by singular solutions of shear crack motions. These solutions assume a square root singularity order around the rupture tip and a constant shear stress value behind it, implying scale-independent ...

2024

Proliferation-driven mechanical compression induces signalling centre formation during mammalian organ development

Sangwoo Kim, Pengfei Xu

Localized sources of morphogens, called signalling centres, play a fundamental role in coordinating tissue growth and cell fate specification during organogenesis. However, how these signalling centres are established in tissues during embryonic developmen ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Twenty years of irrigation acclimation is driven by denser canopies and not by plasticity in twig- and needle-level hydraulics in a Pinus sylvestris forest

Charlotte Grossiord, Christoph Bachofen, Eugénie Isabelle Mas, Hervé Cochard, Alice Jacqueline Frédérique Gauthey, Alex Tunas Corzon

Climate change is predicted to increase atmospheric vapor pressure deficit, exacerbating soil drought, and thus enhancing tree evaporative demand and mortality. Yet, few studies have addressed the longer-term drought acclimation strategy of trees, particul ...

Oxford Univ Press2024

Shear and steel-fibre reinforcement for the punching resistance of flat slabs at internal and edge columns

Diego Hernández Fraile

Reinforced concrete flat slabs consist of a continuous, thin concrete plate that rests on a grid of columns. The supporting surface of the columns is very small compared to the floor plan dimensions, leading to concentrations of shear forces near the colum ...

EPFL2024

Shearing and opening of a pre-existing discontinuity in response to fluid injection

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Alexis Alejandro Sáez Uribe, Ankit Gupta

We investigate the fluid-driven growth of a shear crack along a frictional discontinuity and its transition to hydraulic fracturing (sometimes referred to as hydraulic jacking) under plane-strain conditions. We focus on the case of a constant friction coef ...

2023

Solids that are also liquids: elastic tensors of superionic materials

Nicola Marzari, Tommaso Chiarotti, Giuliana Materzanini

Superionics are fascinating materials displaying both solid- and liquid-like characteristics: as solids, they respond elastically to shear stress; as liquids, they display fast-ion diffusion at normal conditions. In addition to such scientific interest, su ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

Study of backward Brillouin scattering in gas-filled anti-resonant fibers

Luc Thévenaz, Malak Mohamed Hossameldeen Omar Mohamed Galal, Li Zhang

Brillouin scattering in gas shows unmatched gain properties in hollow-core optical fibers filled at high pressure. Here, the gain characteristics are studied for two common gases, namely, N2 and CO2, which show distinct features and are compared to expecte ...

2023

Biofilm morphogenesis on soft hydrogels

Alice Cont

Bacteria often colonize their environment in the form of surface attached multicellular communities called biofilms. Biofilms grow from surface-attached cells that undergo division while self-embedding in a viscoelastic matrix. Biofilms grow at the surface ...

EPFL2023

Short homology bases for hyperelliptic hyperbolic surfaces

Jürgpeter Buser

Given a hyperelliptic hyperbolic surface S of genus g >= 2, we find bounds on the lengths of homologically independent loops on S. As a consequence, we show that for any lambda is an element of (0, 1) there exists a constant N(lambda) such that every such ...

Hebrew Univ Magnes Press2023