Related papers: Measuring response functions of active materials f…
Activity and autonomous motion are fundamental aspects of many living and engineering systems. Here, the scale of biological agents covers a wide range, from nanomotors, cytoskeleton, and cells, to insects, fish, birds, and people. Inspired…
Cellular cortex, which is a highly viscous thin cytoplasmic layer just below the cell membrane, controls the cell's mechanical properties, which can be characterized by a hydrodynamic length scale $\ell$. Cells actively regulate $\ell$ via…
A defining feature of living matter is the ability to harness energy to self-organize multiscale structures whose functions are facilitated by irreversible nonequilibrium dynamics. While progress has been made in elucidating the underlying…
The living cell expends energetic and material resources to reliably process information from its environment. To do so, it utilises unreliable molecular circuitry that is subject to thermal and other fluctuations. Here, we argue that…
Because of consuming energy to drive their motion, systems of active colloids are intrinsically out of equilibrium. In the past decade, a variety of intriguing dynamic patterns have been observed in systems of active colloids, and they…
The need for high-throughput, precise, and meaningful methods for measuring behavior has been amplified by our recent successes in measuring and manipulating neural circuitry. The largest challenges associated with moving in this direction,…
Living cells dynamically modulate the local morphologies of their actin cytoskeletons to perform biological functions, including force transduction, intracellular transport, and cell division. A major challenge is to understand how diverse…
Active gels are a class of biologically-relevant material containing embedded agents that spontaneously generate forces acting on a sparse filament network. In vitro experiments of protein filaments and molecular motors have revealed a…
In cells, cytoskeletal filament networks are responsible for cell movement, growth, and division. Filaments in the cytoskeleton are driven and organized by crosslinking molecular motors. In reconstituted cytoskeletal systems, motor activity…
Active fluids generate spontaneous, often chaotic mesoscale flows. Harnessing these flows to drive embedded soft materials into structures with controlled length scales and lifetimes is a key challenge at the interface between the fields of…
A variety of computational models have been developed to describe active matter at different length and time scales. The diversity of the methods and the challenges in modeling active matter---ranging from molecular motors and cytoskeletal…
The interplay of nuclear and electronic dynamics characterizes the multi-dimensional electronic spectra of various molecular and solid-state systems. Theoretically, the observable effect of such interplay can be accounted for by response…
A number of micro-scale biological flows are characterized by spatio-temporal chaos. These include dense suspensions of swimming bacteria, microtubule bundles driven by motor proteins, and dividing and migrating confluent layers of cells. A…
Self organization mechanisms are essential for the cytoskeleton to adapt to the requirements of living cells. They rely on the intricate interplay of cytoskeletal filaments, crosslinking proteins and molecular motors. Here we present an in…
This topic review communicates working experiences regarding interaction of a multiplicity of processes. Our experiences come from climate change modelling, materials science, cell physiology and public health, and macroeconomic modelling.…
The study of systems with sustained energy uptake and dissipation at the scale of the constituent particles is an area of central interest in nonequilibrium statistical physics. Identifying such systems as a distinct category -- Active…
Essentially all biology is active and dynamic. Biological entities autonomously sense, com- pute, and respond using energy-coupled ratchets that can produce force and do work. The cytoskeleton, along with its associated proteins and motors,…
Active particles contain internal degrees of freedom with the ability to take in and dissipate energy and, in the process, execute systematic movement. Examples include all living organisms and their motile constituents such as molecular…
The structure and degree of order in soft matter and other materials is intimately connected to the nature of the interactions between the particles. One important research goal is to find suitable control mechanisms, to enhance or suppress…
Active polymers play a central role in many biological systems, from bacterial flagella to cellular cytoskeletons. Minimal models of semiflexible active filaments have been used to study a variety of interesting phenomena in active systems,…