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The existence and propagation of acoustic pressure pulses on lipid monolayers at the air/water-interfaces are directly observed by simple mechanical detection. The pulses are excited by small amounts of solvents added to the monolayer from…
Currently, biological signaling is envisaged as a combination of activation and movement, triggered by local molecular interactions and molecular diffusion, respectively. However, we here suggest, that other fundamental physical mechanisms…
Biological signaling is imagined as a combination of activation and transport. The former is triggered by local molecular interactions and the latter is the result of molecular diffusion. However, other fundamental physical principles of…
Biological membranes by virtue of their elastic properties should be capable of propagating localized perturbations analogous to sound waves. However, the existence and the possible role of such waves in communication in biology remains…
Hydrated interfaces are ubiquitous in biology and appear on all length scales from ions, individual molecules to membranes and cellular networks. In vivo, they comprise a high degree of self-organization and complex entanglement, which…
Sound waves are excited on lipid monolayers using a set of planar electrodes aligned in parallel with the excitable medium. By measuring the frequency dependent change in the lateral pressure we are able to extract the sound velocity for…
The propagation of sound waves on lipid monolayers supported on water has been studied during the melting transition. Since changes in volume, area, and compressibility in lipid membranes have biological relevance, the observed sound…
In an ongoing debate on the physical nature of the action potential, one group adheres to the electrical model of Hodgkin and Huxley, while the other describes the action potential as a non-linear acoustic pulse propagating within an…
In the recent years we have shown that cylindrical biological membranes such as nerve axons under physiological conditions are able to support stable electromechanical pulses called solitons. These pulses share many similarities with the…
Most biological molecules contain acido-basic groups that modulate their structure and interactions. A consequence is that pH gradients, local heterogeneities and dynamic variations are used by cells and organisms to drive or regulate…
An action potential is typically described as a purely electrical change that propagates along the membrane of excitable cells. However, recent experiments have demonstrated that non-linear acoustic pulses that propagate along lipid…
Lipid interfaces not only compartmentalize but also connect different reaction centers within a cell architecture. These interfaces have well defined specific heats and compressibilities, hence energy can propagate along them analogous to…
We measured high-speed sound propagation in a near-critical fluid using a ultra-sensitive interferometer to investigate adiabatic changes of fluids on acoustic timescales. A sound emitted by very weak continuous heating caused a stepwise…
The existence of acoustic pulse propagation in lipid monolayers at the air-water interface is well known. These pulses are controlled by the thermodynamic state of the lipid membrane. Nevertheless, the role of acoustic pulses for intra- and…
The thermodynamic state of lipid interfaces was observed during shock wave induced cavitation in water with sub-microsecond resolution, using the emission spectra of hydration-sensitive fluorescent probes co-localized at the interface. The…
Electrical signals in excitable cells involve spatially localized ionic fluxes through ion channels and pumps on cellular lipid membranes. Common approaches to understand how these localized fluxes spread assume that the membrane and the…
A theory of a lateral stress relaxation in a fluid bilayer membrane under a step-like pressure pulse is proposed. It is shown theoretically that transfer of lipid molecules into a strained region may lead to a substantial decrease of the…
Phonon transmission across an interface between dissimilar crystalline solids is calculated using molecular dynamics simulations with interatomic force constants obtained from first principles. The results reveal that although inelastic…
Protons at the water/vapor interface are relevant for atmospheric and environmental processes, yet to characterize their surface affinity on the quantitative level is still challenging. Here we utilize phase-sensitive sum-frequency…
The efficiency of phonon-mediated heat transport is limited by the intrinsic atomistic properties of materials, seemingly providing an upper limit to heat transfer in materials and across their interfaces. The typical speeds of conductive…