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Self-assembly in natural and synthetic molecular systems can create complex aggregates or materials whose properties and functionality rises from their internal structure and molecular arrangement. The key microscopic features that control…
In the current industry, the development of optimized mechanical components able to satisfy the customer requirements evolves quickly. Therefore, companies are asked for efficient solutions to improve their products in terms of stiffness…
The biological membrane, which compartmentalizes the cell and its organelles, exhibit wide variety of macroscopic shapes of varying morphology and topology. A systematic understanding of the relation of membrane shapes to composition,…
Thin cylindrical tethers are common lipid bilayer membrane structures, arising in situations ranging from micromanipulation experiments on artificial vesicles to the dynamic structure of the Golgi apparatus. We study the shape and formation…
We propose a new statistical model that can reproduce the hierarchical nature of the ubiquitous filamentary structures of molecular clouds. This model is based on the multiplicative random cascade, which is designed to replicate the…
Isotropic pairwise interactions that promote the self assembly of complex particle morphologies have been discovered by inverse design strategies derived from the molecular coarse-graining literature. While such approaches provide an avenue…
Living cells establish long-range orientational order through collective alignment, giving rise to topological defects whose functional relevance is increasingly recognized in tissue organization and morphogenesis. Engineered topographical…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…
Nature-occurring structures exhibiting unique topological features such as complex and gradient porosity has been the basis to create new materials and/or structures. Most studies have been focused on complex periodic porous structures but…
A cell is polarised when it has developed a main axis of organisation through the reorganisation of its cytosqueleton and its intracellular organelles. Polarisation can occur spontaneously or be triggered by external signals, like gradients…
We use the first Betti number of a complex to characterize the morphological structure of granular samples in mechanical equilibrium. We analyze two-dimensional granular packings after a tapping process by means of both simulations and…
A 3D unit cell model containing eight different spherical particles embedded in a homogeneous strain gradient plasticity (SGP) matrix material is presented. The interaction between particles and matrix is controlled by an interface model…
Bacteria can form a great variety of spatially heterogeneous cell density patterns, ranging from simple concentric rings to dynamical spiral waves appearing in growing colonies. These pattern formation phenomena are important as they…
Topology optimization of modular structures and mechanisms enables balancing the performance of automatically-generated individualized designs, as required by Industry 4.0, with enhanced sustainability by means of component reuse. For…
We present a new framework for the simultaneous optimiziation of both the topology as well as the relative density grading of cellular structures and materials, also known as lattices. Due to manufacturing constraints, the optimization…
Many interesting shapes appearing in the biological world are formed by the onset of mechanical instability. In this work we consider how the build-up of residual stress can cause a solid to buckle. In all past studies a fictitious…
Systematic expansion schemes in functional approaches require the inclusion of higher order vertices. These vertices are expanded in independent tensor bases with a rapidly increasing number of basis elements. Amongst the related tasks are…
A constitutive relation between stress and strain relative to a reference state is the basic assumption of elasticity theory. However, in living matter, force generation is governed by motor molecule activity, which does not depend on…
Cell-cell adhesion is one the most fundamental mechanisms regulating collective cell migration during tissue development, homeostasis and repair, allowing cell populations to self-organize and eventually form and maintain complex tissue…