Smart soft materials are envisioned to be the building blocks of the next generation of
advanced devices and digitally augmented technologies. In this context, liquid crystals (LCs) …

In active matter systems, individual constituents convert energy into non-conservative forces
or motion at the microscale, leading to morphological features and transport properties that …

Active matter extracts energy from its surroundings at the single particle level and transforms
it into mechanical work. Examples include cytoskeleton biopolymers and bacterial …

Various types of structures self-organised by animals exist in nature, such as bird flocks and
insect swarms, which stem from the local communications of vast numbers of limited …

Activity and autonomous motion are fundamental in living and engineering systems. This
has stimulated the new field of'active matter'in recent years, which focuses on the physical …

Cultured stem cells have become a standard platform not only for regenerative medicine
and developmental biology but also for biophysical studies. Yet, the characterization of …

The soil bacterium Myxococcus xanthus lives in densely packed groups that form dynamic
three-dimensional patterns in response to environmental changes, such as droplet-like …

Bacteria are among the oldest and most abundant species on Earth. Bacteria successfully
colonize diverse habitats and play a significant role in the oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen …

Liquid crystals (LCs) are ubiquitous in display technologies. The orientational ordering in the
nematic phase of LCs gives rise to structural anisotropy, the ability to form topological …

Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to
notable dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in …