Biological fluid dynamics is a research area that applies the principles and methods of fluid mechanics to analyze flows generated by, within, or around living organisms across scales from subcellular to ecological. It investigates how fluid properties, boundary conditions, and flexible or actuated biological structures interact to determine transport, locomotion, feeding, signaling, and morphogenesis in systems such as blood circulation, ciliary flows, microorganism swimming, plant transpiration, and animal flight or swimming. The field integrates continuum mechanics, low- and high-Reynolds-number hydrodynamics, nonlinear dynamics, and computational modeling with experiments to elucidate biophysical mechanisms and to inform biomedical and bioinspired engineering applications.
Scientists have known for years that birds like geese and ibises gain an aerodynamic advantage from flying in a "V" formation. Now, researchers from Brown University have provided new insights into the nature of that advantage.
Plants & Animals
22 hours ago
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18
For more than 25 years, lab-on-a-chip technology has allowed researchers to model human organs and blood vessels using real human cells in artificial microscopic environments. These microphysiological systems (MPS) may replicate ...
Biotechnology
Jul 16, 2026
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25
Faster and more effective ways to treat Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the most life-threatening pathogens, could be possible thanks to a first-of-its-kind ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 14, 2026
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9
Researchers at RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau have achieved a key experimental breakthrough: For the first time, the spontaneous macroscopic coherence of magnons—the quantized excitations of magnetic materials—has ...
Quantum Physics
Jul 14, 2026
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52
A new study in PLOS Biology of 133 species of flies, mosquitoes and their relatives shows that most species fly in surprisingly similar ways. Physical and aerodynamic laws shape the evolution of their flight behavior more ...
Evolution
Jul 10, 2026
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144
Usually there's safety in numbers, but it doesn't always work that way. Fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) filter-feed on immense shoals of krill, engulfing colossal mouthfuls of water containing up to 144 kg of the crustaceans. ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 9, 2026
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17
One day, tiny swimming robots may travel through the human body to deliver drugs. The medication would target only areas of need—chemotherapy drugs for a tumor, for example—avoiding healthy tissue and minimizing side effects. ...
Bio & Medicine
Jul 6, 2026
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15
China's Tianwen-2 space probe, which is set to bring back samples from an asteroid for research, has reached its target after traveling 1 billion kilometers (620 million miles) over more than a year, the Chinese space agency ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 6, 2026
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62
An international team, including the University of Tokyo, has created a sensor inspired by the lateral line in fish—their "sixth sense" organ—which measures the pulse of lab-grown 3D heart tissue (cardiac organoids). The ...
Biotechnology
Jul 5, 2026
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15
The AI-based program AlphaFold predicts a protein's 3D structure with remarkable accuracy. However, it tends to reduce heterogeneous structures to a single dominant conformation, or shape, and overlooks experimental conditions ...
Biotechnology
Jun 29, 2026
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