Peer-reviewed Royal Society journal covering research at the interface of physical and life sciences, including modelling of biological and social systems.
Chalmers University of Technology researchers report an AI system that designs and interprets its own brewer's yeast experiments in a closed loop. The account does not say how often its hypotheses held up, the figure a lab head needs before planning around one.
Reality
Wageningen and Delft researchers reproduced bumblebee landings on a flower model swaying twice a second with two control rules fed by the same cues. The pair gives engineers a control scheme to try on drones that must land on moving pads.
Reality
Daniel Kattnig modelled a semicircular canal under the conditions most favourable to electromagnetic induction and found the bird's own thermal fluctuations leave a directional signal far too slow to steer by.
Reality
Wageningen biomechanists found microscopic pillars on the rim of a cuttlefish sucker, then measured how hard dissected arms clung to plates of varying roughness and stiffness in a water tank. Plate stiffness is what moved the reported forces.
Reality
Buzz-pollination biomechanics has mostly measured how hard a flower shakes. A Vienna group measured when each part of a stamen moves, and found the anther able to work against its own stalk.
Reality
Aurele Boussard's team at Toulouse-CNRS and Leeds asked when a group's confidence is evidence of its competence. Their answer turns on whether the members were also watching each other while they decided.
Reality