Related papers: Biolocomotion and premelting in ice
Ice melting into saline water plays a fundamental role in the dynamics near the ice-ocean interface in polar oceans. The physics of ice melting involves a non-trivial interplay between thermodynamics at the interface, hydrodynamic transport…
A widely accepted phenomenological rule states that solids with free surfaces cannot be overheated. In this work we discuss this statement critically under the light of the statistical thermodynamics of interfacial roughening transitions.…
Molecular simulations employing empiric force fields have provided valuable knowledge about the ice growth process in the last decade. The development of novel computational techniques allows us to study this process, which requires long…
The process of thermalization in many-body systems is driven by complex interactions among sub-systems and with the surrounding environment. Here we lay the theoretical foundations for the active control of local thermal states in arbitrary…
From a purely operational standpoint, the existence of microbes that can grow under extreme conditions, or "extremophiles", leads to the question of how the molecules making up these microbes can maintain both their structure and function.…
The avoidance of water freezing is the holy grail in the cryopreservation of biological samples, food, and organs. Fast cooling rates are used to beat ice nucleation and avoid cell damage. This strategy can be enhanced by applying high…
If reheating of the Universe takes place via Planck-suppressed decay, it seems that the thermalization of produced particles might be delayed, since they have large energy/small number densities and number violating large angle scatterings…
In circumstellar disks around young stars, the gravitational influence of nascent planets produces telltale patterns in density, temperature, and kinematics. To better understand these signatures, we first performed 3D hydrodynamical…
We analyze the displacements of the particles of a glass-forming molecular liquid perpendicular to a confining solid surface, using extensive molecular dynamics simulations with atomistic models. In the vicinity of an attractive surface,…
Immotile microbes inhabit nearly every environment on Earth, from soils and sediments to food matrices -- yet how they disperse through these physically confining environments is poorly understood. Here, we show that immotile microbial…
Microplasmas are operated around atmospheric pressure exhibiting pronounced non-equilibrium characteristics, i.e. they possess energetic electrons while ions and neutrals remain cold. They have gained significant interest due to their…
Observations have revealed that the elemental abundances of carbon and oxygen in the warm molecular layers of some protoplanetary disks are depleted compared to those is the interstellar medium by a factor of ~10-100. Meanwhile, little is…
The ability of bacteria to colonize and grow on different surfaces is an essential process for biofilm development and depends on complex biomechanical interactions between the biofilm and the underlying substrate. Changes in the physical…
Context. Interstellar ice is the main form of metal species in dark molecular clouds. Experiments and observations have shown that the ice is significantly processed after the freeze-out of molecules onto grains. The processing is caused by…
We study the rotational and vibrational heating of diatomic molecules placed near a surface at finite temperature on the basis of macroscopic quantum electrodynamics. The internal molecular evolution is governed by transition rates that…
The interest in the structure of ice-rich planetary bodies, in particular the differentiation between ice and rock, has grown due to the discovery of Kuiper belt objects and exoplanets. We thus carry out a parameter study for a range of…
(Abridged) Exoplanet atmospheres are thought be built up from accretion of gas as well as pebbles and planetesimals in the midplanes of planet-forming disks. The chemical composition of this material is usually assumed to be unchanged…
With a series of numerical simulations, we analyze the thermo-hydrodynamical evolution of circumstellar disks containing Jupiter-size protoplanets. In the framework of the two-dimensional approximation, we consider an energy equation that…
Living organisms rely on molecular networks, such as gene circuits and signaling pathways, for information processing and robust decision-making in crowded, noisy environments. Recent advances show that interacting biomolecules…
Protoplanetary disks are mainly heated by radiation from the central star. Since the incident stellar flux at any radius is sensitive to the disk structure near that location, an unstable feedback may be present. Previous investigations…