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The rheological response, in particular the non-linear response, to oscillatory shear is experimentally investigated in colloidal glasses. The glasses are highly concentrated binary hard-sphere mixtures with relatively large size…
The question of how a disordered material's microstructure translates into macroscopic mechanical response is central to understanding and designing materials like pastes, foams and metallic glasses. Here, we examine a 2D soft jammed…
Equilibrating proteins and other biomacromolecules is cardinal for molecular dynamics simulation of such biological systems in which they perform free dynamics without any externally-applied mechanical constraint, until thermodynamic…
We revisit the classical problem of a polymer confined in a slit in both of its static and dynamic aspects. We confirm a number of well known scaling predictions and analyse their range of validity by means of comprehensive Molecular…
High speed machining has been improved thanks to considerable advancement on the tools (optimum geometry, harder materials), on machined materials (increased workability and machining capacity for harder workpieces) and finally on the…
We have developed a novel scanning probe-based methodology to study cell biomechanics. The time dependence of the force exerted by the cell surface on a scanning probe at constant local deformation has been used to extract local…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
The red blood cell (RBC) membrane is composed of a lipid bilayer and a cytoskeleton interconnected by protein junction complexes, allowing for potential sliding between the lipid bilayer and the cytoskeleton. Despite this biological…
A network of semiflexible biopolymers, known as the cytoskeleton, and molecular motors play fundamental mechanical roles in cellular activities. The cytoskeletal response to forces generated by molecular motors is profoundly linked to…
Recent findings suggest that shell protein distribution and morphology of bacterial microcompartments regulate the chemical fluxes facilitating reactions which dictate their biological function. We explore how the morphology and component…
Detecting variation in the evolutionary process along chromosomes is increasingly important as whole-genome data becomes more widely available. For example, factors such as incomplete lineage sorting, horizontal gene transfer, and…
Molecular Dynamics simulations of a coarse-grained bead-spring model of flexible macromolecules tethered with one end to the surface of a cylindrical pore are presented. Chain length $N$ and grafting density $\sigma$ are varied over a wide…
Microgels are soft colloids that, in virtue of their polymeric nature, can react to external stimuli such as temperature or pH by changing their size. The resulting swelling/deswelling transition can be exploited in fundamental research as…
Adhesion between membranes is studied using a phenomenological model, where the inter-membrane distance is coupled to the concentration of sticker molecules on the membranes. The model applies to both for adhesion of two flexible membranes…
Natural and synthetic multi-component gels display emergent properties, which implies that they are more than just the sum of their components. This warrants the investigation of the role played by inter-species interactions in shaping gel…
The diffusion of molecules (penetrants) of variable size, shape, and chemistry through dense crosslinked polymer networks is a fundamental scientific problem that is broadly relevant in materials, polymer, physical and biological chemistry.…
In the mimetic membrane system of phosphatidylcholine bilayers, thickening (pre-critical behavior, anomalous swelling) of the bilayers is observed, in the vicinity of the main transition, which is non-linear with temperature. The sterols…
Purpose: From the myofibrils to the whole muscle scale, muscle micro-constituents exhibit passive and active mechanical properties, potentially coupled to electrical, chemical, and thermal properties. Experimental characterization of some…
We have varied the disorder in a two-dimensional electron system in silicon by applying substrate bias. When the disorder becomes sufficiently low, we observe the emergence of the metallic phase, and find evidence for a metal-insulator…
Membrane curvature sensing is essential for a diverse range of biological processes. Recent experiments have revealed that a single nanometer-sized septin protein can distinguish between membrane-coated glass beads of one micron and three…