New Trends in the Physics and Mechanics of Biological Systems

In July 2009, many experts in the mathematical modeling of biological sciences gathered in Les Houches for a 4-week summer school on the mechanics and physics of biological systems. The goal of the school was to present to students and researchers an integrated view of new trends and challenges in physical and mathematical aspects of biomechanics. While the scope for such a topic is very wide, they focused on problems where solid and fluid mechanics play a central role. The school covered both the general mathematical theory of mechanical biology in the context of continuum mechanics but also the specific modeling of particular systems in the biology of the cell, plants, microbes, and in physiology.

These lecture notes are organized (as was the school) around five different main topics all connected by the common theme of continuum modeling for biological systems: Bio-fluidics, Bio-gels, Bio-mechanics, Bio-membranes, and Morphogenesis. These notes are not meant as a journal review of the topic but rather as a gentle tutorial introduction to the readers who want to understand the basic problematic in modeling biological systems from a mechanics perspective.

Anthony Simon Laden is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Reasonably Radical: Deliberative Liberalism and the Politics of Identity (Cornell, 2001) and co-editor, with David Owen, of Multiculturalism and Political Theory (Cambridge, 2007). He has written numerous articles on reasoning, deliberation, democratic theory, and the work of John Rawls.