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In Japan, many adults hold fond childhood memories of fireworks as a symbol of the summer season. Senko-hanabi, which translates to “sparkling fireworks,” emit a small fireball with streaks of light akin to pine needle structures. As one of the most popular hand-held fireworks since the early Edo period, from 1603 to 1868, they’re renowned for fragile beauty accompanied by a soothing sound. During the 69th DFD meeting, researchers will describe work uncovering the liquid dynamics at play behind Senko-hanabi’s beauty.

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Breastfeeding is a topic that creates discussion and at times even controversy. However, some basic questions about its biology still remain. For instance, does successful infant feeding depend on the mechanics of the breast and, conversely, does breast health depend on breastfeeding? It has been virtually impossible to study these complex dynamics and the delicate interplay that makes breastfeeding possible, but a pair of researchers are working together to build a biomimetic breast that will allow scientists to study how the breast behaves during its primary function: infant feeding.

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Note to elite swimmers: Are you looking for a competitive edge in the hydrodynamics of your front crawl?

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Have you ever taken a good look at a cat’s tongue? If so, you may have noticed the tiny, sharp “spines” on its surface.

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A team at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, exploring how air bubbles rise within a complex fluid, like those found while processing wet concrete, wondered if they could actually get them to sink instead by shaking the mixture in the right way. During the 69th DFD meeting, the researchers will present their work studying bubbles within complex fluids.

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Wind energy is a key part of the global energy future, expanding rapidly throughout the world in onshore and offshore settings. But to be sustainable, large scale, multi-megawatt (multi-MW) wind farming’s economic efficiencies need to be maximized -- and knowing where to place the turbines within the wind farm is a first step. Bring on the drones. Moreover, design novel instrumented drones with a suite of sensors capable of gathering precise field data in the complex flow and terrain of an actual wind farm. This was the approach of researchers from Switzerland.

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The 69th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society – Division of Fluid Dynamics this month will cover fluid dynamics advances across many disciplines, with applications including forensics, biomimetic devices, sports dynamics, bubble formation and more

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Along coastlines from California to Australia, you'll see surfers trying to catch that perfect wave. How they find and ride that wave relies on feel and intuition, developed through skill and experience. Now researchers from the LadHyX Hydrodynamics Laboratory of École Polytechnique in France are trying to quantify this ability, studying the conditions necessary for a surfer to catch a wave. They'll present their findings at APS's DFD 2015 Meeting.

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Simply oscillating its fins is all a flounder, a flat fish, needs to do to resuspend sand and quickly disappear beneath it to hide. By discovering the physics at play, researchers in France are hoping to provide a new flounder-inspired solution to a common technological challenge: the resuspension of granular material within a fluid. They'll discuss their findings at the American Physical Society's 2015 DFD Meeting.

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In the fleeting moments after a liquid is subjected to a sudden change in pressure, microscopic bubbles rapidly form and collapse in a process known as cavitation. In the human brain, this is believed to be a mechanistic cause of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, but the phenomenon has yet to be directly observed in brain tissue because the bubbles appear and disappear within microseconds. To address this, researchers are seeking to understand how cavitation might injure neurons by using a 3-D imaging system coupled with a diffraction grating to examine their post-exposure morphology. They will present their recent findings APS’s DFD 2015 Meeting.

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Last year Italy sent an espresso machine up to the ISS, and this inspired a team of researchers to study the related strange fluids phenomena in low gravity, such as espresso crema formation and containment of potentially hazardous drinks within a spacecraft. To do this, the researchers designed a cup that exploits surface tension as opposed to gravity and during APS’s DFD Meeting they'll present their findings about how it's working aboard the Space Station.

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Have you ever wondered why insects move in the funky ways they do? Or how physical laws shape the design of animals' sensors and neural computation for locomotion? These are a just a few of the questions Cornell University researchers are exploring within this realm, and during APS’s DFD 2015 Meeting, Z. Jane Wang, a Professor of Physics and of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and one of her students, James Melfi Jr., will share their findings.

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Monday, Nov. 23: A Live Streamed Event on the Physics of Surfing, the Complex Secrets of the Sneeze, a Flounder’s Disappearing Act, and How Fur Keeps Animals Warm in Cold Water -- News from the 68th Annual Meeting of APS Division of Fluid Dynamics in Boston

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However commonplace it may be in human life, the sneeze remains somewhat of an enigma to science, and we are still a long way from understanding the simple sneeze in all its phlegm-flam glory. This month during APS’s DFD 2015 Meeting, researchers will present new work that shows how droplets are formed within a high-propulsion sneeze cloud -- a critical piece of the puzzle that has so far been missing.

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Rather than relying on a thick layer of body fat for insulation as many aquatic mammals do, some seabirds and semiaquatic mammals such as fur seals and otters trap a layer of air in their feathers and furs for thermal insulation against the ice cold drink. Now a team of researchers from MIT has experimentally studied the trapping of air in hairy surfaces and the water-repellent properties of undeformable hairy textures, which is key for animals’ thermal regulation. The researchers will present the study at APS’s DFD Fall 2015 Meeting.

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Antarctic penguins live in a bitterly cold place, where the air temperature can drop to -40 degrees Celsius and the winds can hurtle at speeds of 40 meters per second. Although these birds routinely hop in and out of the water in sub-freezing temperatures, they manage to keep ice from coating their feathers. Now researchers have examined penguin feathers in extreme detail and think they know the penguins' anti-icing trick: a combination of nanostructures and a special oil make Antarctic penguin feathers ultra-water-repelling, or superhydrophobic. The researchers will present their findings at APS's DFD Fall 2015 Meeting.

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Drifting snow is a complicated and poorly understood process that is important to fathom because it accounts for a major fraction of wind-blown snow redistribution within polar and mountainous regions of the world. To understand it better, a group researchers is exploring mass and momentum fluxes during drifting snow events, pursuing an improved understanding of the link between snow cover erosion and deposition. They will present their findings at APS’s DFD 2015 Meeting.

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The future of bio-inspired engineering or robotics will greatly benefit from lessons learned from plants, according to a group of Seoul National University researchers. During the American Physical Society's 68th Annual Meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics, Nov. 22-24, 2015, in Boston, they will share details about how studying plants enabled them to create tiny robots powered exclusively by changes in humidity.

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Each year, the more than 2 million tractor-trailer trucks that cruise America's highways consume about 36 billion gallons of diesel fuel, representing more than 10 percent of the nation's entire petroleum use. That fuel consumption could be reduced by billions of gallons a year through the use of drag-reducing devices on trucks, according to studies by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

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Espresso-loving astronauts, rejoice! You may soon be able to enjoy your beloved beverage in space, thanks to a new cup designed specifically to defy the low-gravity environments encountered aboard the International Space Station (ISS).