We report the findings of a panEuropean study on the factors which provoke motion sickness on tilting trains. The findings also highlight tactics passengers may use to ameliorate their malaise. Some readers may recall that the tilting train programme under development in the UK some 30 years ago was halted because of a combination of technical problems and reports of high levels of motion sickn...

Rational molecular design and processing, enabling large-area molecular ordering, are important for creating high-performance organic materials and devices. We show that, upon one-step hot-pressing with uniaxially stretched Teflon sheets, a polymer brush carrying azobenzene-containing mesogenic side chains self-assembles into a freestanding film, where the polymer backbone aligns homeotropicall...

Here we show that floating objects in stratified fluids can be cloaked against broadband incident waves by properly architecting the bottom corrugations. The presented invisibility cloaking of gravity waves is achieved utilizing a nonlinear resonance concept that occurs between surface and internal waves mediated by the bottom topography. Our cloak bends wave rays from the surface into the body...

As a particle moves along a smooth curve in the plane, turns as the curve bends. Since T is a unit vector, its length remains constant and only its direction changes as the particle moves along the curve. The rate at which T turns per unit of length along the curve is called the curvature (Figure 13.19). The traditional symbol for the curvature function is the Greek letter (“kappa”). k T = dr>d...

Caenorhabditis elegans exhibits spontaneous motility in isotropic environments, characterized by periods of forward movements punctuated at random by turning movements. Here, we study the statistics of turning movements-deep Omega-shaped bends-exhibited by swimming worms. We show that the durations of intervals between successive Omega-turns are uncorrelated with one another and are effectively...

We introduce the theoretical criterion for achieving three-dimensional self-collimation of light in a photonic crystal. Based on this criterion, we numerically demonstrate a body-center-cubic structure that supports wide-angle self-collimation and is directly compatible with the recently developed holographic fabrication technique. We further show that both bends and beam splitters can be intro...