Bacterial Response to Conflicting Chemical Signals
When the bacteria E. coli are exposed to a source of nutrients, they tend to migrate towards it. Conversely, when bacteria are exposed to harmful substances, they tend to migrate away from the chemical source. My master’s thesis is about what happens when a population of cells is a exposed to a source that contains both nutrients and harmful substances emanating from the same point in space – how do bacteria solve this dilemma?
An Experimental Study of the Mechanism Behind the Motion of ‘Walkers’
A droplet of liquid may bounce indefinitely on a vertically vibrating bath of the same liquid. If the vibration is close enough to the bath’s Faraday instability threshold, the droplet can become a ‘walker’, and begin to propagate in a constant velocity. This happens because of a coupling between the bouncing droplet and the waves it creates on the liquid surface. As a part of an advanced physics lab course, we studied the mechanism behind this behavior.
Nir Livne 