Related papers: Solvent constraints for biopolymer folding and evo…
Solvents are an essential element in the production and processing of two-dimensional (2D) materials. For example, the liquid phase exfoliation of layered materials requires a solvent to prevent the resulting monolayers from re-aggregating,…
Life as we know it requires the presence of liquid water and the availability of nutrients, which are mainly based on the elements C, H, N, O, P, and S (CHNOPS) and trace metal micronutrients. We aim to understand the presence of these…
The outer solar system may provide a potential habitat for extraterrestrial life. Remote sensing data from the Galileo spacecraft suggest that the jovian icy moons, Europa, Ganymede, and possibly Callisto, may harbor liquid water oceans…
We investigate the dynamics of a particle moving randomly along a disordered hetero-polymer subjected to rapid conformational changes which induce superdiffusive motion in chemical coordinates. We study the antagonistic interplay between…
Geopolymers present a sustainable alternative to conventional binders, however, their commercial viability is hindered by a lack of standardised methods for preparing stabile activator solutions; alkaline feedstocks critical to geopolymer…
Smart polymers are a modern class of polymeric materials that often exhibit unpredictable behavior in mixtures of solvents. One such phenomenon is co-non-solvency. Co-non-solvency occurs when two (perfectly) miscible and competing good…
It is shown that several habitability conditions (in fact, at least seven such conditions) appear to be fulfilled automatically by circumbinary planets of main-sequence stars (CBP-MS), whereas on Earth these conditions are fulfilled only by…
A habitable exoplanet is a world that can maintain stable liquid water on its surface. Techniques and approaches to characterizing such worlds are essential, as performing a census of Earth-like planets that may or may not have life will…
Recent theory and experiments have shown how the buildup of a high-concentration polymer layer at a one-dimensional solvent-air interface can lead to an evaporation rate that scales with time as $t^{-1/2}$ and that is insensitive to the…
Theoretical studies of protein folding on lattice models relie on the assumption that water close to amino-acids is always in thermal equilibrium all along the folding pathway. Within this framework, it has always been considered that…
A coarse-graining strategy for dilute and semi-dilute solutions of interacting polymers, and of colloid polymer mixtures is briefly described. Monomer degrees of freedom are traced out to derive an effective, state dependent pair potential…
Evolution in time-varying environments naturally leads to adaptable biological systems that can easily switch functionalities. Advances in the synthesis of environmentally-responsive materials therefore open up the possibility of creating a…
Many evolutionary models of giant exoplanets still rely on simplifying assumptions that are no longer adequate given detailed constraints from Jupiter, Saturn, and modern exoplanet observations. Here, we identify the key physical…
We model evolution of plants in a world, made up of different locations, with multiple environments (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive subsets of locations). Each environment (landmass) has temperature, rainfall, and other…
The dynamic nature of life's ability to thrive in diverse and changing planetary environments suggests that habitability and survival depend on the evolutionary path and life adaptation to environmental conditions. Here we explore such…
The growth dynamics of rigid biopolymers, consisting of $N$ parallel protofilaments, is investigated theoretically using simple approximate models. In our approach, the structure of a polymer's growing end and lateral interactions between…
Typical bodily and environmental fluids encountered by biological swimmers consist of dissolved macromolecules such as proteins and polymers, often rendering them non Newtonian. To mimic such scenarios, we investigate the motion of swimming…
It has been suggested that major transitions in evolution require the emergence of novelties, often associated to the cooperative behaviour of previously existing objects or agents. A key innovation involves the first cooperative…
This article continues the research initiated in [17]. We derive explicit formulae for the leading order profiles of eleven types of stationary solutions to a one-dimensional two-layer thin-film liquid model considered with an…
Chemical surfactants are omnipresent in consumers' products but they suffer from environmental concerns. For this reason, complete replacement of petrochemical surfactants by biosurfactants constitute a holy grail but this is far from…