How few corners can a shape have and still tile the plane?” mathematician Gábor Domokos asked me over pizza. His deceptively simple question was about the geometry of tilings, also called ...

Scientists have just defined a new shape called the scutoid (SCOO-toid) while studying epithelial cells, the building blocks of embryos that eventually end up forming our skin and lining our organs ...

Through modeling and experiments, researchers uncover a previously undescribed shape -- they call a 'scutoid' -- adopted by packed epithelial cells during embryonic development; discovery could lead ...

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. “Girls can’t do Euclid: can they, sir?” “The Mill on the Floss” contains one of George Eliot’s ...

Over the last two years, mathematicians have identified the best versions of a child’s playroom’s worth of shapes. These results occupy a quirky corner of math and, fittingly, have been produced by ...

Micro decisions can have macro consequences. A soft matter physicist reveals how interactions within simple cellular collectives can lead to emergent physical traits. Biofilms lead lives of liminality ...