Related papers: Tensile Forces and Shape Entropy Explain Observed …
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…
Active nematic models explain the topological defects and flow patterns observed in epithelial tissues, but the nature of active stress-whether it is extensile or contractile, a key parameter of the theory-is not well established…
We investigate the mechanical interplay between the spatial organization of the actin cytoskeleton and the shape of animal cells adhering on micropillar arrays. Using a combination of analytical work, computer simulations and in vitro…
A heavy-fermion paramagnet UTe$_2$ has been a strong candidate for a spin-triplet superconductor. Experiments on UTe$_2$ under pressure have been vigorously conducted, and rich phase diagrams have been suggested. Multiple superconducting…
The incoherent dynamic structure factor of ortho-terphenyl has been measured by neutron time-of-flight and backscattering technique in the pressure range from 0.1 MPa to 240 MPa for temperatures between 301 K and 335 K. Tagged-particle…
In practice, physical membranes are exposed to a certain amount of external strain (tension or compression), due to the environment where they are placed. As a result, the behavior of the phonon modes of the membrane is modified. We show…
In tissue development, wound healing, and cancer invasion, coordinated cell motion arises from active forces produced by the cells. The relationship between force and motion remains unclear, however, because the forces result from a sum of…
We investigate the linear tearing instability in weakly collisional plasmas using a non-ideal gyrotropic-MHD framework, uncovering a previously unknown scaling relation for the instability growth rate in high-$\beta$ environments. Even…
Prominences show a surprising amount of fine structure and it is widely believed that their threads, as seen in H$\alpha$ observations, provide indirect information concerning magnetic field topology. We investigate the spontaneous…
We consider the elastic energy of a hanging drape -- a thin elastic sheet, pulled down by the force of gravity, with fine-scale folding at the top that achieves approximately uniform confinement. This example of energy-driven pattern…
Membrane tension is an acknowledged regulator of a wide array of cell functions; however, whether it acts locally or globally in different contexts remains debated. Recent experiments that locally perturb tension and measure the response…
Simulating protein-membrane interactions is an important and dynamic area of research. A proper definition of electrostatic forces on membrane surfaces is necessary for developing electromechanical models of protein-membrane interactions.…
All-polymer syntactic foams are studied under large strain cyclic and monotonic tensile loading in order to reveal their tensile stress-strain behaviour, recoverability, tensile strength, and elongation at break. The syntactic foam under…
Cells often divide under mechanical confinement, where surrounding structures restrict shape changes during cytokinesis. Although forces generated during confined division have been measured experimentally, it remains unclear how…
Recent experimental investigations into Hydra regeneration revealed a remarkable phenomenon: the morphological transformation of a tissue fragment from the incipient spherical configuration to a tube-like structure - the hallmark of a…
Proteins in photosynthetic membranes can organize into patterned arrays that span the membrane's lateral size. Attractions between proteins in different layers of a membrane stack can play a key role in this ordering, as was suggested by…
Protein folding is analyzed using a replica variational formalism to investigate some free energy landscape characteristics relevant for dynamics. A random contact interaction model that satisfies the minimum frustration principle is used…
Eukaryotic cells intrinsically change their shape, by changing the composition of their membrane and by restructuring their underlying cytoskeleton. We present here further studies and extensions of a minimal physical model, describing a…
In a recent publication we established an analogy between the free energy of a hard sphere system and the energy of an elastic network [1]. This result enables one to study the free energy landscape of hard spheres, in particular to define…
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…