Related papers: Rigidity sensing explained by active matter theory
Active turbulence in dense active systems is characterized by high vorticity on a length scale that is large compared to that of individual entities. We describe the properties of active turbulence as momentum propagation is screened by…
Habituation - a phenomenon in which a dynamical system exhibits a diminishing response to repeated stimulations that eventually recovers when the stimulus is withheld - is universally observed in living systems from animals to unicellular…
Active matter is a term encompassing particle-based assemblies with some form of self-propulsion, including certain biological systems as well as synthetic systems such as artificial colloidal swimmers, all of which can exhibit a remarkable…
Acoustic traps use forces exerted by sound waves to confine and transport small objects. The dynamics of an object moving in the force landscape of an acoustic trap can be significantly influenced by the inertia of the surrounding fluid…
The adhesion of cell membranes is mediated by the binding of membrane-anchored receptor and ligand proteins. In this article, we review recent results from simulations and theory that lead to novel insights on how the binding equilibrium…
Contractility in animal cells is often generated by molecular motors such as myosin, which require polar substrates for their function. Motivated by recent experimental evidence of motor-independent contractility, we propose a robust…
When plated onto substrates, cell morphology and even stem cell differentiation are influenced by the stiffness of their environment. Stiffer substrates give strongly spread (eventually polarized) cells with strong focal adhesions, and…
Binding of a ligand on a protein changes the flexibility of certain parts of the protein, which directly affects its function. These changes are not the same at each point, some parts become more flexible and some others become stiffer.…
In comparative and developmental neuroanatomy one encounters questions regarding the deformation of neural tissue under stress. The motivation of this note is an observation (Barbas {\it et al}) that at cortical folds or gyri, the layers of…
Temperature plays a very important role in various biological processes like the evolution of life, as it is anticipated that early life existed in a very hot environment that eventually cooled down with time. In vitro experiments,…
We offer our opinion on the benefits of integration of insights from active matter physics with principles of regulatory interactions and control to develop a field we term ``smart matter". This field can provide insight into important…
We analyse a generic motility model, with the motility mechanism arising by contractile stress due to the interaction of myosin and actin. A hydrodynamic active polar gel theory is used to model the cytoplasm of a cell and is combined with…
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…
This paper will introduce a theory of emergent animal social complexity using various results from computational models and empirical results. These results will be organized into a vertical model of social complexity. This will support the…
Simple active models of matter recapitulate complex biological phenomena. The out-of-equilibrium nature of these models, however, often makes them beyond the reach of first-principle descriptions. This limitation is particularly perplexing…
Even simple active systems can show a plethora of intriguing phenomena and often we find complexity were we would have expected simplicity. One striking example is the occurrence of a quiescent or absorbing state with frozen fluctuations…
Cells are modeled with spherical grains connected each other. Each cell can shrink and swell by transporting its fluid content to other connected neighbor while still maintaining its density at constant value. As a spherical part of a cell…
High-density granular active matter is a useful model for dense animal collectives and could be useful for designing reconfigurable materials that can flow or solidify on command. Recent work has demonstrated key similarities and…
We consider a theoretical model for membranes with adhesive receptors, or stickers, that are actively switched between two conformational states. In their 'on'-state, the stickers bind to ligands in an apposing membrane, whereas they do not…
Biological organisms are adaptive, able to function in unpredictably changing environments. Drawing on recent nonequilibrium physics, we show that in adaptation, fitness has two components parameterized by observable coordinates: a static…