Press and Media Coverage
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Il valzer dei moscerini esiste, la fisica ne svela la coreografia |
| Ansa.it S&T Fisica&Matematica | |
| Piroette, volteggi e giravolte: il ‘valzer’ dei moscerini esiste davvero. I loro movimenti all’interno dello sciame sono tutt’altro che casuali e danno vita ad una vera e propria coreografia, […] |
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Coverpage September 2017 |
| Nature Physics – 2017 | |
| Swarms and statistical physics seem like natural bedfellows, but concepts like scaling are yet to prove directly applicable to insect group dynamics. A study of midges suggests they are, and that they may give rise to a new universality class. […] |
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Synopsis: Silent Flocks 2015 |
| Physics – 2015 | |
| Birds of a feather flock together by sharing information about their trajectory. Scientists try to model this form of communication with waves that travel through the flock at high speed. A new analysis shows that different types of waves may operate for small vs large flocks, but intermediate-sized flocks might not support any sort of wave. […] |
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David Attenborough’s Conquest of the Skies EP3 |
| Sky – 2015 | |
| The power of flight is one of nature’s greatest achievements. From its humble beginnings, generic over one hundred billion creatures soar through the sky today, thumb from tiny, search nectar-drinking hummingbirds to armoured airborne beetles, bizarre winged lizards and sonar-guided bats hunting in the dead of night. […] |
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Coverpage September 2014 |
| Nature Physics – 2014 | |
| How do flocks of birds remain cohesive while dodging predators? A study tracking up to 400 starlings reveals that information propagates in a linear fashion and with no attenuation, meaning that the language of phase transitions in correlated materials can be used to describe flocking behaviour. […] |
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Viewpoint: Insect swarms go critical |
| Physics – 2014 | |
| Scientists have found tantalizing evidence that diverse biological systems, including the human brain, gene expression networks, bird flocks, and fish schools, behave as though they are near the “critical point” of a phase transition, like correlated spins in a magnet on the verge of ordering. […] |
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Criticality and phase transitions in biology |
| Homunculus, Philip Ball – 2014 | |
| My piece just published in New Scientist on phase transitions in biology has had one of the most difficult gestations I’ve ever encountered. No one’s fault, it is just that it’s a very tough job finding the right way to tell a story like this. […] |
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Birds of feather… track seven neighbors to flock together |
| News at Princeton – 2013 | |
| Watching a flock of thousands of starlings take to the sky is a spectacular sight. As the flock changes direction, it looks like a formation of suspended iron filings guided by an invisible magnet in the sky. […] |
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How do starling flocks create those mesmerizing murmuration? |
| Cornell Lab Ornithology – 2013 | |
| Would you pull over your car just to watch some starlings? A gathering of only a few of these speckled, iridescent-black birds isn’t a very alluring sight—particularly in North America, where these birds are invaders. […] |
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Editorial: Tech is a flock of starlings |
| Engadget – 2013 | |
| You’ve seen the videos — thousands of starlings flocking in the sky to swirl and surge across wide, cloudless backdrops. The beauty of their coordinated motion is stunning. The phenomenon is expressively called murmuration. […] |
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Flights of fancy |
| American Scientist – 2011 | |
| A thousand starling rose in unison from trees along a riverbank. The ascending cloud of birds took the form of a teardrop, then transformed itself into a butterfly, then a twisting vortex narrowing to a sinuous, quivering rope of birds stretched across the twilight sky. […] |
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Choreografie ohne Choreografen |
| Neue Zürcher Zeitung – 2012 | |
| Das Verhalten von Vogelschwärmen zeugt von unglaublicher Koordination. Wie Forscher in den letzten Jahren herausgefunden haben, scheinen dem komplexen Verhalten aber einfache Regeln zugrunde zu liegen. […] |
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Animal magnetism: modeling flocks of birds using simple attractions |
| Ars Technica – 2012 | |
| Large collections of animals, such as flocks of birds or schools of fish, are difficult to model mathematically. A large flock of starlings, for example, may contain thousands of individuals covering a volume nearly 100 meters across, yet the entire group is able to fly as a unit, changing direction dynamically in response to its environment. […] |
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Starling Flocks Behave Like Flying Magnets |
| WIRED – 2012 | |
| To achieve their extraordinary coordination, starling flocks in flight behave mathematically like metals becoming magnetized, researchers say. […] |
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The seventh starling (Murmuration) |
| The Guardian – 2011 | |
| Anyone who has looked at the late afternoon sky has seen it: a single, giant shape-shifting creature of the air made up of hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of birds wheeling and swirling overhead as they settle in to their communal evening roosts. […] |
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The Startling Science of a Starling Murmuration |
| WIRED – 2011 | |
| Video of a massive starling flock turning and twisting over a river in Ireland has gone viral, and with good reason. Flocking starlings are one of nature’s most extraordinary sights. […] |
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Birds flock with scale invariance |
| Physics World- 2010 | |
| Rome is famous for its huge flocks of starlings that swerve through the evening sky as if directed by a collective intelligence. While these spectacular displays have fascinated Romans since ancient times, they have yet to be described effectively by a mathematical model. […] |
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How starling flocks create their aerobatic displays |
| Physics World- 2010 | |
| This autumn, dark clouds will gather over the UK’s skies.Far from being foreboding, they herald the start of one of nature’s great spectacles. Over the coming weeks, millions of starlings will take to the air performing a series of breathtaking aerial ballets each evening before dusk. Such murmurations, as they are called, are a testament to the amazing, complex behaviours that animals are capable of. […] |
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The Smart Swarm |
| Penguin Random House – Peter Miller – 2010 | |
| This autumn, dark clouds will gather over the UK’s skies.Far from being foreboding, they herald the start of one of nature’s great spectacles. Over the coming weeks, millions of starlings will take to the air performing a series of breathtaking aerial ballets each evening before dusk. Such murmurations, as they are called, are a testament to the amazing, complex behaviours that animals are capable of. […] |
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Amazing Starling Flocks Are Flying Avalanches |
| WIRED – 2010 | |
| To watch the uncanny synchronization of a starling flock in flight is to wonder if the birds aren’t actually a single entity, governed by something beyond the usual rules of biology. New research suggests that’s true. […] |
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Birds network too |
| Science News – 2008 | |
| On winter evenings in some southern European towns, tens of thousands of starlings congregate over their roosts. Above the ruins of Rome’s ancient Baths of Diocletian, huge black clouds of starlings assemble and continually morph into new shapes, possibly to signal their position to buddies who are still navigating their way home. […] |
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Study of starling formations points way for swarming robots |
| Daily Telegraph – 2008 | |
| Scientists have uncovered a simple rule that explains how thousands of starlings flock in formation and hope to use the discovery in the future to coordinate swarms of robots. […] |
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The emergent physics of animal locomotion |
| Daily Telegraph – 2008 | |
| Scientists have uncovered a simple rule that explains how thousands of starlings flock in formation and hope to use the discovery in the future to coordinate swarms of robots. […] |