Related papers: The Physics of Self-Rolling Viruses
Non-equilibrium self-organized patterns formed by particles interacting through competing range interaction are driven over a substrate by an external force. We show that, with increasing driving force, the pre-existed static patterns…
Which kind of complex behavior may arise from self-organizing principles? We investigate this question for the case of snake-like robots composed of passively coupled segments, with every segment containing two wheels actuated separately by…
Spontaneous motion of an oil droplet driven by chemical nonequilibricity is reported. It is shown that the droplet undergoes regular rhythmic motion under appropriately designed boundary conditions, whereas it exhibits random motion in an…
There is this old, eternal question: Why don't animals have wheels? In this perspective we show that they actually do. And they do so in a physically extraordinary way -- by combining incompatible elasticity, differential geometry and…
A deformable body can rotate even with no angular momentum, simply by changing its shape. A good example is a falling cat, how it maneuvers in air to land on its feet. Here a first principles molecular level example of the phenomenon is…
Numerous physical models have been proposed to explain how cell motility emerges from internal activity, mostly focused on how crawling motion arises from internal processes. Here we offer a classification of self-propulsion mechanisms…
Traffic-like collective movements are observed at almost all levels of biological systems. Molecular motor proteins like, for example, kinesin and dynein, which are the vehicles of almost all intra-cellular transport in eukayotic cells,…
Living organisms are molecular systems with self-sustained dynamics via energy conversion through molecular cooperation, resulting in highly complex macroscopic behaviors. Construction of such autonomous macroscopic dynamics at a molecular…
We analyze the frictionless motion of a point-like particle that slides under gravity on an inverted conical surface. This motion is studied for arbitrary initial conditions and a general relation, valid within 13%, between the periods of…
Scattering of electrons from chiral spin textures such as the skyrmions is an emerging research area due to its richness in topological quantum transport, which is significant for spintronic devices. We study the dynamical process of…
We present an experimental study of the kinetics of orbitally-shaken macroscopic particles confined to a two-dimensional bounded domain. Discounting the forcing action of the external periodic actuation, the particles show translational…
We theoretically study the transport properties of self-propelled particles on complex structures, such as motor proteins on filament networks. A general master equation formalism is developed to investigate the persistent motion of…
Eukaryotic flagella are active structures with a complex architecture of microtubules, motor proteins and elastic links. They are capable of whiplike motions driven by motors sliding along filaments that are themselves constrained at an…
Reputed intractable, the question of the origin of viruses has long been neglected. In the modern literature 'Virus evolution' has come to refer to study more akin to population genetics, such as the world-wide scrutiny on new polymorphisms…
The problem of a disc or cylinder initially rolling with slipping on a surface and subsequently transitioning to rolling without slipping is often cited in textbooks. The following experiment serves to clearly demonstrate the transition…
Relative motion between soft wet solids arises in a number of applications in natural and artificial settings, and invariably couples elastic deformation and fluid flow. We explore this in a minimal setting by considering a fluid-immersed…
Self-propelled particles can navigate complex environments, including viscous fluid interfaces with curved geometries. In this work, we study the emergent dynamics of a suspension of self-propelled particles confined to a stationary curved…
We study a system of self-propelled disks that perform run-and-tumble motion, where particles can adopt more than one internal state. One of those internal states can be transmitted to another particle if the particle carrying this state…
The twisting and writhing of a cell body and associated mechanical stresses is an underappreciated constraint on microbial self-propulsion. Multi-flagellated bacteria can even buckle and writhe under their own activity as they swim through…
Sensitive and fast force measurements are performed on sheared granular layers undergoing stick-slip motion, along with simultaneous imaging. A full study has been done for spherical particles with a +-20% size distribution. Stick-slip…