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The latest news and discoveries from the science of fluid motion will be featured at the 64th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society’s (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD), held November 20-22, 2011, at the Baltimore Convention Center near the scenic Inner Harbor section of Baltimore, Md. Researchers from around the globe will present noteworthy research covering the intricacies of flight, the workings of the human heart, the spread of disease, explosions, wine swirling, and more.

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The formation and collapse of bubbles within fluids can be a big engineering problem. Called cavitation, the process may erode vital pieces of mechanical equipment such as turbines or propellers. Seeking to better understand the dynamics of cavitation bubbles within liquid drops, the EPFL team created this type of bubble in microgravity conditions aboard the ESA parabolic flight.

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Flapping mini-robots that can maneuver in tight spaces could be ideal for search-and-rescue operations – say, in collapsed buildings. However, current versions of such micro-air vehicles are “violently unstable,” says fluid dynamicist Leif Ristroph of New York University. “Without some very good sensory feedback strategies, they quickly spin out of control and tumble from the air.”

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Mosquitoes, which thrive in hot, humid climates, are as adept at flying in rainstorms as under clear skies. That’s puzzling: Why aren’t the bugs – which each weigh 50 times less than a raindrop – battered and grounded by those falling drops?

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Rainfalls are suspected to trigger the spread of a multitude of foliar (leaf) diseases, which could be devastating for agriculture and forestry. Instead of focusing on the large-scale, ecological impact of this problem, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and the University of Liege in Belgium are studying the phenomenon from a novel perspective: that of a single rain droplet.

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Engineers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VirginiaTech) have developed a robot that mimics the graceful motions of jellyfish so precisely that it has been named Robojelly. Developed for the Office of Naval Research in 2009, this vehicle was designed to conduct ocean underwater surveillance, enabling it potentially to detect chemical spills, monitor the presence of ships and submarines, and observe the migration of schools of fish.

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The ability to efficiently and unobtrusively screen for trace amounts of explosives on airline passengers could improve travel safety – without invoking the ire of inconvenienced fliers. Toward that end, mechanical engineer and fluid dynamicist Matthew Staymates of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and colleagues have developed a prototype air sampling system that can quickly blow particles off the surfaces of shoes and suck them away for analysis.

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“Splashing” plays a central role in the transport of pollutants and the spread of diseases, but while the sight of a droplet striking and splashing off of a solid surface is a common experience, the actual physical ingredients and mechanisms involved in splashing aren’t all that well understood.

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Wine drinkers know that swirling a good vintage around in a glass aerates the wine and releases its bouquet. Just how the process – known as “orbital shaking” – works, however, has been something of a mystery.

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Explosions of reactive gases and the associated rapid, uncontrolled release of large amounts of energy pose threats of immense destructive power to mining operations, fuel storage facilities, chemical processing plants, and many other industrial applications.