Simon Garnier » Video

Wired.com – Self-Assembling Mini-Robots Swim and Manipulate Objects

Simon Garnier — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:36:49 +0000

Tiny, self-assembling robots can swim and clamp onto particles and then release them when subjected to the right magnetic fields.

These mini robotic doughnuts spontaneously form from metal particles floating between a layer of oil and water, and could potentially be used to manipulate chemical reactions, deliver medical treatments in the body or clean surfaces.

“It’s really counter intuitive,” said physicist Igor Aranson, co-author of a study in Nature Materials, August 7. “There is nothing fancy about magnetic particles, you can just buy them. But if you pour them on the surface of a liquid, you can form robots which can do something useful.”(…)

Read the rest of this article by Danielle Venton on Wired.com: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/self-assembling-robots/

Richard Dawkins: Ants that farm, compost and weed

Simon Garnier — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 00:02:57 +0000

Hereafter is a video of famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins speaking about leaf cutter ants. It's not a brand new video, but it's always interesting to hear about these fascinating ants. I hope you'll enjoy it too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks to http://www.antblog.co.uk/ for this discovery.

Iain couzin on WNYC Radiolab

Simon Garnier — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:32:09 +0000

Pr. Iain Couzin (Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University) was recently invited to participate in the first live event of the AWE-MAGEDDON series organized by Radiolab, a popular scientific radio show on WNYC. Hereafter is an excerpt of this show where Iain Couzin introduces the work done at his lab and answer to some questions from the show hosts, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The original video can be found here on the Radiolab blog.

Taming the Herd Mentality – Interview of Iain Couzin on BigThink.com

Simon Garnier — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:02:30 +0000

Iain Couzin, Professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and specialist of collective behaviours, recently answered to this interview on the website BigThink.com. The interview mixes questions about human crowds, locust plague, video games and more. The interview is available here, or can be seen below: