Related papers: The nonlinear motion of cells subject to external …
A liquid droplet, immersed into a Newtonian fluid, can be propelled solely by internal flow. In a simple model, this flow is generated by a collection of point forces, which represent externally actuated devices or model autonomous…
We study the motion of a two-dimensional droplet on an inclined surface, under the action of gravity, using a diffuse interface model which allows for arbitrary equilibrium contact angles. The kinematics of motion is analysed by decomposing…
Stick-slip motion, a common phenomenon observed during crawling of cells, is found to be strongly sensitive to the substrate stiffness. Stick-slip behaviours have previously been investigated typically using purely elastic substrates. For a…
Active drops emit/absorb chemical solutes, whose concentration gradients cause interfacial flows driving their own transport and the propulsion of the droplet. Such non-linear coupling enables active drops to achieve directed…
Crawling cell motility is vital to many biological processes such as wound healing and the immune response. Using a minimal model we investigate the effects of patterned substrate adhesiveness and biophysical cell parameters on the…
Cell crawling requires the generation of intracellular forces by the cytoskeleton and their transmission to an extracellular substrate through specific adhesion molecules. Crawling cells show many features of excitable systems, such as…
We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of line liquids as realized in the nonlinear motion of flux lines of a superconductor driven by an applied electric current. Our analysis suggests a transition in the dynamics of the lines from a smooth,…
Increasing evidence suggests that active matter exhibits instances of mixed symmetry that cannot be fully described by either polar or nematic formalism. Here, we introduce a minimal model that integrates self-propulsion into the active…
We study three different experiments that involve dry friction and periodic driving, and which employ both single and many-particle systems. These experimental set-ups, besides providing a playground for investigation of frictional effects,…
Self-similar solutions of the equation that describes spreading of a liquid layer due to intermolecular forces are found. It is supposed that, when the thickness of the layer reaches some magnitude of the order of the molecular size, it…
The dynamics of polymer decompression, i.e., a process from compressed, compact state to the relaxed swoll en conformation, can be formally described as a {\it nonlinear diffusion}. We discuss here two basic examples: (i) the expansion, or…
In this review we summarize theoretical progress in the field of active matter, placing it in the context of recent experiments. Our approach offers a unified framework for the mechanical and statistical properties of living matter:…
Contrasting with its sluggish behavior on standard solids, water is extremely mobile on superhydrophobic materials, as shown for instance by the continuous acceleration of drops on tilted water-repellent leaves. For much longer substrates,…
Active drops refer to drops with the ability to self-migrate: these drops typically attain this ability by virtue of containing of active particles that derive energy from their environment and undergo directed motion inside the drops,…
We investigate the transport of interacting active run-and-tumble particles moving under an external drift force through a periodic array of obstacles for increasing drive amplitudes. For high activity where the system forms a motility…
A nonlinear dynamical system model that approximates a microscopic Gibbs field model for the yielding of a viscoplastic material subjected to varying external stress recently reported in [1] is presented. The predictions of the model are in…
Active droplets swim as a result of the nonlinear advective coupling of the distribution of chemical species they consume or release with the Marangoni flows created by their non-uniform surface distribution. Most existing models focus on…
This work concerns with a class of chemotaxis models in which external sources, comprising nonlocal and gradient-dependent damping reactions, influence the motion of a cell density attracted by a chemical signal. The mechanism of the two…
The nonlinear dynamics associated with sliding friction forms a broad interdisciplinary research field that involves complex dynamical processes and patterns covering a broad range of time and length scales. Progress in experimental…
The transport of small quantities of liquid on a solid surface is inhibited by the resistance to motion caused by the contact between the liquid and the solid. To overcome such resistance, motion can be externally driven through gradients…