Dirk Wagner 
Paul Houle🫦 Researchers pioneer pathway to mechanical intelligence by breaking symmetry in soft composite materials
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-11-pathway-mechanical-intelligence-symmetry-soft.html
Researchers pioneer pathway to mechanical intelligence by breaking symmetry in soft composite materials
A research team has developed soft composite systems with highly programmable, asymmetric mechanical responses. By integrating "shear-jamming transitions" into compliant polymeric solids, this innovative work enhances key material functionalities essential for engineering mechano-intelligent systems—a major step toward the development of next-generation smart materials and devices.
FlorenceI got an IBM Model M keyboard
I got an IBM Model M keyboard
Brooks SmithHey hive mind - I'm keen to start a PhD and move toward academia, and am thinking about potential research topics. I'm an experienced structural #engineer and want to transition toward #sustainability as much as I can. But I'm not sure what that means for viable #research areas...
I have particular expertise in mechanics of #materials, software development ( #Python and #JavaScript), and cold-formed steel / #buckling of thin-walled structures.
Anyone out there have any suggestions for specific topics or general directions?
Jocelyn EtienneThe experiments were dramatic, here are the
spectacular simulations by Marino's team.
#tissue #epithelium #buckling #shell #elasticity #biophysics #biomechanics
RTN#taz:
"
Anbiederungen an Elon Musk
Der deutsche Kriecher
Die Unterwürfigkeit hiesiger Pseudoliberaler gegenüber Elon Musk scheint anlasslos und bizarr. Überlegungen zur Untertanenmentalität.
"
https://taz.de/Anbiederungen-an-Elon-Musk/!6057145/
8.1.2025
#Anbiederung #AutoritärerLibertarismus #Bückling #DerUntertan #Deutschland #Imponiergehabe #Macht #Musk #SocialMedia #Twitter #Untertan #Würde #X
Nicole SharpSome seabirds, including gannets and boobies, feed by plunge diving. From high in the air, they fold their wings and dive like darts into the water, impacting at speeds around 24 m/s to help them reach the depths where their prey swim. With their narrow beaks and necks, the critical moments in this feat come when the bird’s head is submerged but its body remains out of the water. At this point, the bird’s head is decelerating quickly and its body is still moving at full speed; if the neck cannot withstand this combination of forces, it will buckle.
But plunge divers, it turns out, have a secret weapon that helps them handle impact: their head shape. A study of water entry dynamics using 3D-printed models of birds’ heads found that plunge divers have a shape that increases the amount of time it takes to enter the water. The impact forces stretch out over that longer period of contact, which also stretches out the time it takes for the bird to reach its maximum deceleration. The end result? That extended contact time protects birds from unsafe levels of deceleration, just like a crumple-zone in a crashing car keeps its occupants from experiencing the worst decelerations. (Image credit: K. Zhou/BPOTY; research credit: S. Sharker et al.; via Colossal)
https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2024/10/immersion/
#biology #birds #buckling #diving #fluidDynamics #physics #plungeDiving #science #waterEntry
So #actin would be able to start the #lumen opening, and then a switch to #osmotic pressure driven growth would allow further opening before #buckling of actin.
Interesting.
@preLights
And we also had a variant of your pathway C of #epithelial fold formation : folding by *tensile* mechanical #buckling
(Note: these are my hands on the photo, so technically this is my own's only and single published experiment!)
Kara Finance