So-called 'sandfish' could help materials handling and process technology specialists.    From Wordnik.com.  [WordPress.com News] Reference

So-called 'sandfish' could help materials handling and process technology specialists A new magnetic resonance imaging procedure can detect very early breast cancer in mice, including ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a precursor to invasive cancer.    From Wordnik.com.  [Blogrunner] Reference

Study reveals sandfish tucks legs and swims like a snake through desert sand.    From Wordnik.com.  [Science Blog - Science news straight from the source] Reference

These revealed that the sandfish keeps its legs tucked against its body while swimming.    From Wordnik.com.  [physicsworld.com: all content] Reference

Read more about the sandfish lizard-based robot research and see the more recent New Scientist article.    From Wordnik.com.  [Science Fiction in the News] Reference

The sandfish used in this study inhabits the Sahara desert in Africa and is approximately four inches long.    From Wordnik.com.  [PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories] Reference

A new sand-diving robot based on the sandfish lizard has been developed by a team led by Daniel I. Goldman.    From Wordnik.com.  [Science Fiction in the News] Reference

The sandfish lizard tucks in its limbs and wiggles forward with a whole-body sinusoidal traveling wave motion.    From Wordnik.com.  [Science Fiction in the News] Reference

If you own a pet lizard, it could be a sandfish - a mild-mannered skink native to North Africa and the Middle East.    From Wordnik.com.  [physicsworld.com: all content] Reference

Goldman said that the team's next goal is to work out whether the sandfish expends more energy while swimming in denser sand.    From Wordnik.com.  [physicsworld.com: all content] Reference

A robot that can travel through loose debris takes its inspiration from the sandfish lizard, one of nature's own sand swimmers.    From Wordnik.com.  [New Scientist - Online News] Reference

After collecting the experimental data, Goldman's team developed a physics model to predict the speed at which sandfish swim through sand.    From Wordnik.com.  [Science Blog - Science news straight from the source] Reference

They found that once the sandfish is submerged, it tucks its limbs into its sides and propels itself forward by wiggling from side to side.    From Wordnik.com.  [New Scientist - Online News] Reference

The team was particularly interested to see if the sandfish uses its limbs to push its way through the sand, so markers were glued onto its legs.    From Wordnik.com.  [physicsworld.com: all content] Reference

They found that the faster the sandfish propagate the wave, the faster they move forward through granular media -- up to speeds of six inches per second.    From Wordnik.com.  [Science Blog - Science news straight from the source] Reference

Daniel Goldman and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US allowed a sandfish to scurry (using its legs) into a container filled with deep sand.    From Wordnik.com.  [physicsworld.com: all content] Reference

A study published in the July 17 issue of the journal Science details how sandfish -- small lizards with smooth scales -- move rapidly underground through desert sand.    From Wordnik.com.  [Science Blog - Science news straight from the source] Reference

"But the results surprised us because the density of the granular media did not affect how the sandfish traveled through the sand; it was always the same undulatory wavelike pattern.".    From Wordnik.com.  [PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories] Reference

With funding from the National Science Foundation and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the research team used high-speed x-ray imaging to visualize sandfish -- formally called Scincus scincus -- burrowing into and through sand.    From Wordnik.com.  [Science Blog - Science news straight from the source] Reference

By tracking the sandfish in the x-ray images as it swam through the glass beads, Goldman was able to characterize the sandfish's motion -- called its kinematics -- as the form of a single-period sinusoidal wave that traveled from the head to the tail.    From Wordnik.com.  [innovations-report] Reference

Since a sandfish might encounter and need to move through different densities of sand in the desert, the researchers tested whether sandfish locomotion changed when burrowing through media with volume fractions of 58 and 62 percent -- typical values for desert sand.    From Wordnik.com.  [Science Blog - Science news straight from the source] Reference

"The large amplitude waves over the entire body are unlike the kinematics of other undulatory swimming organisms that are the same size as the sandfish, like eels, which propagate waves that start with a small amplitude that gets larger toward the tail," explained Goldman.    From Wordnik.com.  [PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories] Reference

But the sandfish lizard, Scincus scincus.    From Wordnik.com.  [New Scientist - Online News] Reference