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The mass distributions of dense cores in star-forming regions are measured to have a shape similar to the initial mass function of stars. This has been generally interpreted to mean that the constituent cores will form individual stars or…
Proteins are composed of chains of amino acids that fold into complex three-dimensional structures. Several key features, such as the radius of gyration, fraction of core amino acids $f_{\rm core}$, packing fraction $\langle \phi\rangle$ of…
In this thesis I present most of the results obtained during my PhD, where I worked on different subjects regarding jamming in systems of frictionless spheres. In particular, I focused on microscopic properties of jammed packings, such as…
The spectrum and scale of fluctuations in protein structures affect the range of cell phenomena, including stability of protein structures or their fragments, allosteric transitions and energy transfer. The study presents a…
Natural protein sequences that self-assemble to form globular structures are compact with high packing densities in the folded states. It is known that proteins unfold upon addition of denaturants, adopting random coil structures. The…
The spatial cosmic matter distribution on scales of a few up to more than a hundred Megaparsec displays a salient and pervasive foamlike pattern. Voronoi tessellations are a versatile and flexible mathematical model for such weblike spatial…
As a typical multiphase fluid flow process, drainage in porous media is of fundamental interest in nature and industrial applications. During drainage processes in unsaturated soils and porous media in general, saturated clusters, in which…
The idea that structural disorder might be a novel mechanism of protein interaction is widespread in the Literature, although the number of statistically significant structural studies supporting this is surprisingly low. At variance with…
Geometric and structural constraints greatly restrict the selection of folds adapted by protein backbones, and yet, folded proteins show an astounding diversity in functionality. For structure to have any bearing on function, it is thus…
The close packing density of log-normal and bimodal distributed, surface-adsorbed particles or discs in 2D is studied by numerical simulation. For small spread in particle size, the system orders in a polycrystalline structure of hexagonal…
Hard-particle packings have served as useful starting points to study the structure of diverse systems such as liquids, living cells, granular media, glasses, and amorphous solids. Howard Reiss has played a major role in helping to…
We analyze the critical connectivity of systems of penetrable $d$-dimensional spheres having size distributions in terms of weighed random geometrical graphs, in which vertex coordinates correspond to random positions of the sphere centers…
We investigate the spatial structure of cohesive granular matter with spheres floating at an air-liquid interface that form disordered close packings with pores in between. The interface is slowly lowered in a conical container to uniformly…
We study a reaction-diffusion model posed on two distinct spatial scales that accounts for diffusion, aggregation, fragmentation, and deposition of populations of colloidal particles within a porous material. In this model, the macroscopic…
The self-organization of proteins into enriched compartments and the formation of complex patterns are crucial processes for life on the cellular level. Liquid-liquid phase separation is one mechanism for forming such enriched compartments.…
Understanding the physical properties of star-forming cores as mass reservoirs for protostars, and the impact of turbulence, is crucial in star formation studies. We implemented passive tracer particles in clump-scale numerical simulations…
While classical percolation is well understood, percolation effects in randomly packed or jammed structures are much less explored. Here we investigate both experimentally and theoretically the electrical percolation in a binary composite…
The majority of viruses are organised according to the structural blueprints of the seminal Caspar-Klug theory. However, there are a number of notable exceptions to this geometric design principle. Prominent examples are the cancer-causing…
The spatial organization of complex biochemical reactions is essential for the regulation of cellular processes. Membrane-less structures called foci containing high concentrations of specific proteins have been reported in a variety of…
Jamming is a phenomenon shared by a wide variety of systems, such as granular materials, foams, and glasses in their high density regime. This has motivated the development of a theoretical framework capable of explaining many of their…