Among the Latest Published Papers:
2004-2007

• Symmetry breaking in scaping ants
  Do humans behave like ants in panic conditions?. That is the question we try to answer in our paper "Symmetry breaking in escaping ants" (full text also here ), which was featured by The American Naturalist in December, 2005. Also comented by Discover Magazine.
  For More Information. 

• Colloquium: Experiments in vortex avalanches
  Vortices are tiny tornados of current in type II superconductors. Strangely enough, they sometimes move in avalanches, reminding the formation of a sandpile. The state of the art in the field is reviewed by one of us in Reviews of Modern Physics 76, 471 (2004).
  For More Information. 

• Activities in Cuba for the World Year of Physics

 
 
Current Research Work:

 
 
Granular Matter
"Revolving rivers" and "uphill solitary waves" are two of our serendipitous findings in the dynamics of granular flows. While we understand them within a phenomenological framework, the fact that they only occur for certain types of sand (specially one from "Santa Teresa, Cuba), remains a mystery.
For more information.

Pushing up the standards of field observations:

 
We are being able to collect unprecedent, massive amounts of highly detailed data of ants' "activity" at the exits of their nests. Berkeley new motes "Telos" will be used to construct our Wireless Sensor Network. We have devised a new activity sensor to meet the stringent energy saving demands of a WSN. The new sensor will allow us to scale up the experiments with ants in the wild.
More about Social Insects research