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Plants offer some of the most elegant applications of soft matter principles in Nature. Understanding the interplay between chemistry, physics, biology, and fluid mechanics is critical to forecast plant behaviour, which is necessary for agriculture and disease management. It also provides inspiration for novel engineering applications.Starting with fundamental concepts around plant biology, physics of soft matter and viscous fluids, readers of this book will be given a cross-disciplinary and expert grounding to the field. The book covers local scale aspects, such as cell and tissue mechanics, to regional scale matters covering movement, tropism, roots, through to global scale topics around fluid transport. Focussed chapters on water stress, networks, and biomimetics provide the user with a concise and complete introduction. Edited by internationally recognised leading experts in this field with contributions from key investigators worldwide, this book is the first introduction to the subject matter and will be suitable for both physical and life science readers.

Sand, rice, sugar, snow, cement... Although ubiquitous in our daily lives, granular media still challenge engineers and fascinate researchers. This book provides the state-of-the-art of the physics of granular media and recent advances in the field. The book presents the fundamental properties of granular materials: interactions between grains; solid, liquid and gaseous behaviours; coupling with a fluid; and sediment transport and formation of geological structures. Descriptions of the phenomena combine qualitative and formal arguments, coming from areas as diverse as elasticity, plasticity, statistical physics, fluid mechanics and geomorphology. Many examples of the astonishing behaviours of granular media are presented, including avalanches, segregation, dune song and quicksand. This book is ideal for graduate students and researchers in physics, applied mathematics and engineering.

Sable, riz, sucre, neige, ciment…La matière en grains nous est familière et abonde dans nos cuisines, dans la nature et de nombreux procédés industriels. Ce livre scientifique présente les propriétés fondamentales des milieux granulaires, discute les différents comportements solide, liquide et gaz qu'ils peuvent avoir, et aborde les problématique géophysiques du transport de sédiment et de la géomorphologie.