Microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) uses microorganisms to generate CaCO3 within porous materials, helping bind particles together and increase mechanical integrity. This process has potential applications in soil stabilization, crack sealing, and living building materials. However, the performance of biocemented materials depends not only...
This week’s research highlight focuses on how microfluidics can help us understand the evolution of phage resistance in spatially structured bacterial environments. The article “Gradient metapopulation microfluidic ecologies shape genetic and biofilm drivers of T4r phage resistance in E. coli,” published in npj Biofilms...
Understanding the interplay between surface chemistry, pore geometry, and flooding fluids remains a central challenge in enhanced oil recovery research, particularly for carbonate reservoirs where wettability strongly governs multiphase flow. The recent microfluidic research published in Lab on a Chip journal explores this issue...
Soil hosts dense and diverse microbial communities that drive major ecological processes, yet the way microbes respond to the physical structure of the soil is still not fully understood. One key unknown is how the distribution of pore sizes, which stem from soil aggregates,...
Fluid flow through a porous media can be seen in many biological and geological systems. The pores in porous media induce very complex fluid patterns that are sometimes overlooked. For example, the complex morphology in these systems is often associated with dead-ends resulting in a...