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SUMMARY:Mechanical study of the C. elegans worm locomotion. From soft matt
 er to biomimetics. - Prof Jean-Marc di Meglio\, University of Paris Didero
 t
DTSTART:20111118T143000Z
DTEND:20111118T153000Z
UID:TALK32958@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Anna Walczyk
DESCRIPTION:Soft matter has been defined as a state of matter with a high 
 susceptibility: small fields can induce large and macroscopic transformati
 ons.  But softness also is a property of materials which we commonly test 
 using our sense of touch. We started a few years ago a long term research 
 program to understand how the response of touch receptors is affected by p
 roperties such as roughness\, rigidity\, viscosity\, etc. More precisely\,
  we use a model organism (C. elegans) and study how its locomotion is affe
 cted by its mechanical environment. C. elegans is a nematode of about 1 mm
  in length which can crawl on moist gels and swims in bulk liquids. We wil
 l present in this talk a new mechanical model to describe the friction of 
 worms on gels and a series of original experiments to modulate the locomot
 ion of the worm and investigate the regulation of the gaits. Finally\, goi
 ng back to soft matter physics\, we will introduce new artificial magnetic
  swimmers made out of polymer to mimic worm deformations and locomotion.
LOCATION:Department of Engineering - LR4
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