Today, the Tour de France begins 3 gruelling weeks of sun, scenery & summits, but what's the key to winning in this elite world of small margins? How about appetite for risk? @imgoxford.bsky.social & @javichico.bsky.social lead the breakaway. Read more: www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/72427 #TDF2025

You've got friends round for coffee and cake. There are seven of you. Trouble is, you've made a square cake. How do you make sure everyone receives an equal share? Dominic has his cake and they all eat it.

Buckling normally happens when you compress something slender, but 'tug' on a piece of crumpled paper at two points and it also buckles. Read more about how this "localized-TUG folding" occurs in many systems at: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2423439122

🚨 NEW PAPER ALERT! After such a long journey, I am so glad to see this published in @PNASNews: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Big thanks to @leonardobonetti.bsky.social, Gemma Fernandez-Rubio, Peter Vuust, Gustavo Deco, Morten Kringelbach, Renaud Lambiotte and @alaingoriely.bsky.social A thread...

Multilevel irreversibility reveals higher-order organization of nonequilibrium interactions in human brain dynamics | PNAS

Information processing in the human brain can be modeled as a complex dynamical system operating out of equilibrium with multiple regions interacti...

pnas.org

Excited to share our paper on the mathematical modelling of elephant trunk wrinkles, working with @langelamihai.bsky.social and @alaingoriely.bsky.social. We provide qualitative insight into surface wrinkles in elephant trunks based on nonlinear morphoelasticity. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1....

🚨Hot off the press! With Ibrahim Cheddadi, we tackled a key challenge: building a field theory of plant morphogenesis, based on fundamental balance laws and capturing cell wall remodelling and water dynamics in tissues🌿💧Check out our paper at www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧵👇

Instead of listing my publications, as the year draws to an end, I want to shine the spotlight on the commonplace assumption that productivity must always increase. Good research is disruptive and thinking time is central to high quality scholarship and necessary for disruptive research.

Another one for the bucket list: when your paper makes it to Saturday Night Life Here is the paper www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Last night I had the opportunity of sharing some bite size pieces of my research in biological sensing with St John’s undergrads at the Christmas Maths Seminar. Thanks to everyone for the questions and the tutors for setting everything up!

Read about how the squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium) disperses its seeds in a high pressure jet here: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... (or just watch the movie)

And a nice write-up about our paper in The New York Times www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/s...

Squirting Cucumbers Shoot Their Seeds Like Botanical Bombardiers

Scientists say they’ve worked out how the plant can fire its seeds up to almost 40 feet.

nytimes.com

Hot off the press A super fun collaboration and paper. All you ever wanted about the squirting cucumber but never dared to ask. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Uncovering the mechanical secrets of the squirting cucumber | PNAS

Rapid movement is rare in the plant kingdom, but a prerequisite for ballistic seed dispersal. A particularly dramatic example of rapid motion in pl...

pnas.org