Related papers: Phloem loading through plasmodesmata: a biophysica…
Psammophilous plants are special plants that flourish in sand moving environments. There are two main mechanisms by which the wind affects these plants: (i) sand drift exposes roots and covers branches--the exposed roots turn into new…
The actin cytoskeleton of cells is in continuous motion due to both polymerization of new filaments and their contraction by myosin II molecular motors. Through adhesion to the substrate, such intracellular flow can be converted into cell…
Phagocytosis is the process of engulfment and internalization of comparatively large particles by the cell, that plays a central role in the functioning of our immune system. We study the process of phagocytosis by considering a simplified…
The efficacy of cryopreservation is constrained by the difficulty of achieving sufficiently high intracellular concentrations of cryoprotective solutes without inducing osmotic injury or chemical toxicity during loading. This thermodynamic…
We show the impact that scalar structures deformation and mixing has on the fate of plumes of waterborne contaminant transported through a chemically heterogeneous, partially adsorbing porous medium. Via pore-scale simulations, we follow…
The collective migration of epithelial groups of cells plays a central role in processes such as embryo development, wound healing, and cancer invasion. While finite cell clusters are known to collectively migrate in response to external…
Transport of molecular motors along protein filaments in a half-closed geometry is a common feature of biologically relevant processes in cellular protrusions. Using a lattice gas model we study how the interplay between active and…
Intracellular cargo transport can arise from passive diffusion, active motor-driven transport along cytoskeletal filament networks, and passive advection by fluid flows entrained by such motor/cargo motion. Active and advective transport…
Everyday experience shows that cellular sheets are stiffened by the presence of a pressurized gas: from bicycle inner tubes to bubble wrap, the presence of an internal pressure increases the stiffness of otherwise floppy structures. The…
Polymer blends consisting of two or more polymers are important for a wide variety of industries and processes, but, the precise mechanism of their thermomechanical behaviour is incompletely understood. In order to understand clearly, it is…
Assuming a vacancy-mediated diffusion, a continuum model for electromigration-driven transport of an embedded atom cluster across a surface terrace of a phase-separating A$_x$B$_{1-x}$ surface alloy, such as fcc AgPt(111), is presented.…
We studied the recombination dynamics of charge carriers in organic bulk heterojunction solar cells made of the blend system poly(2,5-bis(3-dodecyl thiophen-2-yl) thieno[2,3-b]thiophene) (pBTCT-C12):[6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl…
We study a heuristic, core-scale model for the transport of polymer particles in a two phase (oil and water) porous medium. We are motivated by recent experimental observations which report increased oil recovery when polymers are injected…
The Filament Based Lamellipodium Model (FBLM) is a two-phase two-dimensional continuum model, describing the dynamcis of two interacting families of locally parallel actin filaments (C.Schmeiser and D.Oelz, How do cells move? Mathematical…
Monte Carlo simulations are used to study the translocation of a polymer into and out of a ellipsoidal cavity through a narrow pore. We measure the polymer free energy F as a function of a translocation coordinate, s, defined to be the…
Inside cells, cargos such as vesicles and organelles are transported by molecular motors to their correct locations via active motion on cytoskeletal tracks and passive, Brownian diffusion. During the transportation of cargos, motor-cargo…
Encapsulation of chemicals using polymer membranes enables to control their transport and delivery for applications such as agrochemistry or detergency. To rationalize the design of polymer capsules, it is necessary to understand how the…
Biological systems exploit self-assembly to create complex structures whose arrangements are finely controlled from molecular to mesoscopic level. Herein we report an example of using fully synthetic systems that mimic two levels of…
We use molecular dynamics simulations to unravel the physics underpinning the light-induced density changes caused by the dynamic trans-cis-trans isomerization cycles of azo-mesogens embedded in a liquid crystal polymer network, an…
Immobilization of polyoxometalates (POMs) onto oxides is relevant to many applications in the fields of catalysis, energy conversion/storage or molecular electronics. Optimization and understanding the molecule/oxide interface is crucial to…