Related papers: Stability and roughness of interfaces in mechanica…
Instabilities of fluid-fluid interfaces are ubiquitous in passive soft matter. Adding activity to the interface or either fluid can dramatically change the stability of the interface. Using experiment and theory, we investigate the…
Neurons regulate the distribution of signaling components across an extended tree-like cellular structure using both local and global feedback control. This is hypothesized to allow homeostatic control of the electrical activity of a neuron…
We consider the interaction between two rods embedded in a fluctuating surface which is governed by either surface tension or rigidity. The modification of fluctuations by the rods leads to an attractive long-range interaction that falls…
Cell neighbor exchanges play a critical role in regulating tissue fluidity during epithelial morphogenesis and repair. In vivo, these neighbor exchanges are often hindered by the formation of transiently stable four-fold vertices, which can…
We study geometrically-controlled twist transitions of a nematic confined between a sinusoidal grating and a flat substrate. In these cells the transition to the twisted state is driven by surface effects. We have identified the mechanisms…
The ability of cells to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environments is fundamental to a range of cellular behaviours, with substrate stiffness increasingly being found to be a key signalling factor. Although active…
Dynamic instability in the cytoskeleton underlies a great many vital cellular processes. In neurons, it is thought to play a role in information processing and the establishment of synaptic connections. It is from this interneuronal…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
Self-affine rough interfaces are ubiquitous in experimental systems, and display characteristic scaling properties as a signature of the nature of disorder in their supporting medium, i.e. of the statistical features of its heterogeneities.…
We propose a three dimensional mechanical model of embryonic tissue dynamics. Mechanically coupled adherent cells are represented as particles interconnected with elastic beams which can exert non-central forces and torques. Tissue…
We prove that complex networks of interactions have the capacity to regulate and buffer unpredictable fluctuations in production events. We show that non-bursty network-driven activation dynamics can effectively regulate the level of…
Two-fluid interfaces in porous media, an example of driven disordered systems, were studied by a real time three-dimensional imaging technique with pore scale resolution for a less viscous fluid displacing a more viscous one. With…
The evolution of an instability at the interface of active and passive media is considered. An asymptotic form of a collision integral is found and the limitations of hydrodynamic approach are determined. A growth increment of small…
Two-dimensional Stokes flow with injection and suction is investigated through a second-order, perturbative mode-coupling approach. We examine the time-dependent disturbance of an initially circular interface separating two viscous fluids,…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
We propose a mechanism for mechanical regulation at the membrane of living cells, based on the exchange of membrane area between the cell membrane and a membrane reservoir. The reservoir is composed of invaginated membrane microdomains…
Composites with high strength and high fracture resistance are desirable for structural and protective applications. Most composites, however, suffer from poor damage tolerance and are prone to unpredictable fractures. Understanding the…
Fluid--fluid interfacial instability and subsequent fluid mixing are ubiquitous in nature and engineering. The hydrodynamic instability of fluid interfaces has long centered on the pressure gradient-driven long-wavelength Rayleigh--Taylor…
We investigate interface failure of model materials representing architected thin films in contact with heterogeneous substrates. We find that, while systems with statistically isotropic distributions of impurities derive their fracture…
Elastic interfaces display scale-invariant geometrical fluctuations at sufficiently large lengthscales. Their asymptotic static roughness then follows a power-law behavior, whose associated exponent provides a robust signature of the…