Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36001692›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022

Optimal transport and control of active drops.

Suraj Shankar, Vidya Raju, L Mahadevan

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
7citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

7 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Pattern formation along signaling gradients driven by active droplet behavior of cell swarms.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Design rules for controlling active topological defects.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024
    Article
  6. Article
  7. Self-organization in amoeboid motility.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2022
    Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Suraj ShankarDepartment of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.ORCID 0000-0002-4615-975X
Vidya RajuPaulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.ORCID 0000-0002-9688-9312
L MahadevanDepartment of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.ORCID 0000-0002-5114-0519

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Understanding the complex patterns in space-time exhibited by active systems has been the subject of much interest in recent times. Complementing this forward problem is the inverse problem of controlling active matter. Here, we use optimal control theory to pose the problem of transporting a slender drop of an active fluid and determine the dynamical profile of the active stresses to move it with minimal viscous dissipation. By parametrizing the position and size of the drop using a low-order description based on lubrication theory, we uncover a natural "gather-move-spread" strategy that leads to an optimal bound on the maximum achievable displacement of the drop relative to its size. In the continuum setting, the competition between passive surface tension and active controls generates richer behavior with futile oscillations and complex drop morphologies that trade internal dissipation against the transport cost to select optimal strategies. Our work combines active hydrodynamics and optimal control in a tractable and interpretable framework and begins to pave the way for the spatiotemporal manipulation of active matter.

Indexed as

active matterdroplet motionoptimal controloptimal transport

Identifiers

PMID36001692
PMCPMC9436341

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.