相关论文: Evidence for a liquid precursor to biomineral form…
The nucleation of crystals in liquids is one of nature's most ubiquitous phenomena, playing an important role in areas such as climate change and the production of drugs. As the early stages of nucleation involve exceedingly small time and…
We report results from radiation hydrodynamical simulations of the collapse of molecular cloud cores to form protostars. The calculations follow the formation and evolution of the first hydrostatic core/disc, the collapse to form a stellar…
An outstanding question of astrobiology is the link between the chemical composition of planets, comets, and other solar system bodies and the molecules formed in the interstellar medium. Understanding the chemical and physical evolution of…
Silica-carbonate biomorphs are a class of emergent materials, i.e. composite microstructures made of nanometric carbonate crystallites surrounded by amorphous silica. They form via a co-precipitation process in an interplay between alkaline…
In culture migrating and interacting amoeboid cells can form nematic liquid crystal phases. A polar nematic liquid crystal is formed if the interaction has a polar symmetry. One type of white blood cells (granulocytes) form clusters where…
Many microorganisms live and evolve in complex fluids. Examples include mammalian spermatozoa in cervical mucus, worms (e.g., \textit{C. elegans}) in wet soil, and bacteria (e.g., \textit{H. pylori}) in our stomach lining. Due to the…
Polymeric particles are strong candidates for designing artificial materials capable of emulating the complex twisting-based functionality observed in biological systems. In this letter, we provide the first detailed investigation of the…
Crystallization of the amorphous phases into metastable crystals plays a fundamental role in the formation of new matter, from geological to biological processes in nature to synthesis and development of new materials in the laboratory.…
The emergence of membranous compartments (protocells) with encapsulated genetic material was a crucial step life's origin and evolution. The hot spring hypothesis for the origin of life suggests that protocells could have formed in hot…
Intricate biomineralization processes in molluscs engineer hierarchical structures with meso-, nano-, and atomic architectures that give the final composite material exceptional mechanical strength and optical iridescence on the macroscale.…
Nucleation plays a critical role in the birth of crystals and is associated with a vast array of phenomena such as protein crystallization and ice formation in clouds. Despite numerous experimental and theoretical studies, many aspects of…
Molecular chirality leads to a wonderful variety of equilibrium structures, from the simple cholesteric phase to the twist-grain-boundary phases, and it is responsible for interesting and technologically important materials like…
Observationally inferred crystalline abundance in silicates in comets, which should have been formed in the outer region of a protoplanetary disk, is relatively high (~ 10-60%), although crystalline silicates would be formed by annealing of…
The presence of microparticles (clusters of micron size) of unknown origin in the volume of water, including highly purified water (bidistilled, deionized), has been repeatedly demonstrated by various methods of physical analysis. Various…
Bicontinuous Pickering emulsions (bijels) are a physically interesting class of soft materials with many potential applications including catalysis, microfluidics and tissue engineering. They are created by arresting the spinodal…
Primordial, or Pop III, supernovae (SNe) were the first, great nucleosynthetic engines in the Universe, forging the heavy elements required for the later formation of planets, and life. Past studies suggest that the rise of planet formation…
Water adopts many different crystal structures in its solid form. These provide insight into potential structures of water even in its liquid phase, and they can be used to calibrate pair potentials used for simulation of water. In crowded…
Organic molecules such as steroids or amino acids form crystals that can facilitate the formation of ice -- arguably the most important phase transition on earth. However, the origin of the ice nucleating ability of organic crystals is…
Using smoothed particle hydrodynamics in combination with the special-purpose hardware device GRAPE, we follow the fragmentation process and dynamical evolution in the interior of molecular clouds until most of the gas is converted to form…
How thousands of microtubules and molecular motors self-organize into spindles remains poorly understood. By combining static, nanometer-resolution, large-scale electron tomography reconstructions and dynamic, optical-resolution, polarized…