Amy's review paper is out in the final form, with page numbers and all that. Teach the controversy! Click here to download.
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He discovers the law of urination, i.e., that all mammals empty their bladders in roughly the same amount of time. Here is the full abstract taken from arxiv http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.3737
"The urinary system evolved to eject fluids from the body quickly and efficiently. Despite a long history of successful urology treatments in humans and animals, the physics of urination has received comparatively little attention. In this combined experimental and theoretical investigation, we elucidate the hydrodynamics of urination across five orders of magnitude in animal mass, from mice to elephants. Using high-speed fluid dynamics videos and flow-rate measurement at Zoo Atlanta, we discover the "Law of Urination", which states animals empty their bladders over nearly constant duration of average 21 seconds (standard deviation 13 seconds), despite a difference in bladder volume from 100 mL to 100 L. This feat is made possible by the increasing urethra length of large animals which amplifies gravitational force and flow rate. We also demonstrate the challenges faced by the urinary system for rodents and other small mammals for which urine flow is limited to single drops. Our findings reveal the urethra evolved as a flow-enhancing device, enabling the urinary system to be scaled up without compromising its function. This study may help in the diagnosis of urinary problems in animals and in inspiring the design of scalable hydrodynamic systems based on those in nature."
...especially if mythbuster extraodinaire Jamie Hyneman is there to pick up the slack
Last Monday we took 20 students from our class on the Science of MythBusters on a field trip to M5 industries, where their experiments are made. We had a fantastic tour by Jamie and saw their latest builds. For anyone interested in knowing more about our class check out the website https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/thinking-matters/courses/autumn-course-highlights/science-mythbusters
Umut's work in collaboration with Amy Gladfelter's lab is finally out in Current Biology; clink here to download it. Umut did some very nice quantitative analysis of movies made by Cori from Amy's lab showing that the nuclei within the common cytoplasm of ashbya cells push against one another and maintain their own, growing, territories within the single cell. Well done to all to see this project through to the end.