2,228 research outputs found
Nanomechanical and topographical imaging of living cells by Atomic Force Microscopy with colloidal probes
Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has a great potential as a tool to characterize
mechanical and morphological properties of living cells; these properties have
been shown to correlate with cells' fate and patho-physiological state in view
of the development of novel early-diagnostic strategies. Although several
reports have described experimental and technical approaches for the
characterization of cell elasticity by means of AFM, a robust and commonly
accepted methodology is still lacking. Here we show that micrometric spherical
probes (also known as colloidal probes) are well suited for performing a
combined topographic and mechanical analysis of living cells, with spatial
resolution suitable for a complete and accurate mapping of cell morphological
and elastic properties, and superior reliability and accuracy in the mechanical
measurements with respect to conventional and widely used sharp AFM tips. We
address a number of issues concerning the nanomechanical analysis, including
the applicability of contact mechanical models and the impact of a constrained
contact geometry on the measured elastic modulus (the finite-thickness effect).
We have tested our protocol by imaging living PC12 and MDA-MB-231 cells, in
order to demonstrate the importance of the correction of the finite-thickness
effect and the change in cell elasticity induced by the action of a
cytoskeleton-targeting drug.Comment: 51 pages, 12 figures, 3 table
Concurrent coupling of atomistic simulation and mesoscopic hydrodynamics for flows over soft multi-functional surfaces
We develop an efficient parallel multiscale method that bridges the atomistic
and mesoscale regimes, from nanometer to micron and beyond, via concurrent
coupling of atomistic simulation and mesoscopic dynamics. In particular, we
combine an all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) description for specific atomistic
details in the vicinity of the functional surface, with a dissipative particle
dynamics (DPD) approach that captures mesoscopic hydrodynamics in the domain
away from the functional surface. In order to achieve a seamless transition in
dynamic properties we endow the MD simulation with a DPD thermostat, which is
validated against experimental results by modeling water at different
temperatures. We then validate the MD-DPD coupling method for transient Couette
and Poiseuille flows, demonstrating that the concurrent MD-DPD coupling can
resolve accurately the continuum-based analytical solutions. Subsequently, we
simulate shear flows over polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-grafted surfaces (polymer
brushes) for various grafting densities, and investigate the slip flow as a
function of the shear stress. We verify that a "universal" power law exists for
the sliplength, in agreement with published results. Having validated the
MD-DPD coupling method, we simulate time-dependent flows past an endothelial
glycocalyx layer (EGL) in a microchannel. Coupled simulation results elucidate
the dynamics of EGL changing from an equilibrium state to a compressed state
under shear by aligning the molecular structures along the shear direction.
MD-DPD simulation results agree well with results of a single MD simulation,
but with the former more than two orders of magnitude faster than the latter
for system sizes above one micron.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figure
Diffusive spreading and mixing of fluid monolayers
The use of ultra-thin, i.e., monolayer films plays an important role for the
emerging field of nano-fluidics. Since the dynamics of such films is governed
by the interplay between substrate-fluid and fluid-fluid interactions, the
transport of matter in nanoscale devices may be eventually efficiently
controlled by substrate engineering. For such films, the dynamics is expected
to be captured by two-dimensional lattice-gas models with interacting
particles. Using a lattice gas model and the non-linear diffusion equation
derived from the microscopic dynamics in the continuum limit, we study two
problems of relevance in the context of nano-fluidics. The first one is the
case in which along the spreading direction of a monolayer a mesoscopic-sized
obstacle is present, with a particular focus on the relaxation of the fluid
density profile upon encountering and passing the obstacle. The second one is
the mixing of two monolayers of different particle species which spread side by
side following the merger of two chemical lanes, here defined as domains of
high affinity for fluid adsorption surrounded by domains of low affinity for
fluid adsorption.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure
Perspectives on Multi-Level Dynamics
As Physics did in previous centuries, there is currently a common dream of
extracting generic laws of nature in economics, sociology, neuroscience, by
focalising the description of phenomena to a minimal set of variables and
parameters, linked together by causal equations of evolution whose structure
may reveal hidden principles. This requires a huge reduction of dimensionality
(number of degrees of freedom) and a change in the level of description. Beyond
the mere necessity of developing accurate techniques affording this reduction,
there is the question of the correspondence between the initial system and the
reduced one. In this paper, we offer a perspective towards a common framework
for discussing and understanding multi-level systems exhibiting structures at
various spatial and temporal levels. We propose a common foundation and
illustrate it with examples from different fields. We also point out the
difficulties in constructing such a general setting and its limitations
Acoustic excitations and elastic heterogeneities in disordered solids
In the recent years, much attention has been devoted to the inhomogeneous
nature of the mechanical response at the nano-scale in disordered solids.
Clearly, the elastic heterogeneities that have been characterized in this
context are expected to strongly impact the nature of the sound waves which, in
contrast to the case of perfect crystals, cannot be completely rationalized in
terms of phonons. Building on previous work on a toy model showing an
amorphisation transition [Mizuno H, Mossa S, Barrat JL (2013) EPL {\bf
104}:56001], we investigate the relationship between sound waves and elastic
heterogeneities in a unified framework, by continuously interpolating from the
perfect crystal, through increasingly defective phases, to fully developed
glasses. We provide strong evidence of a direct correlation between sound waves
features and the extent of the heterogeneous mechanical response at the
nano-scale
Community detection for correlation matrices
A challenging problem in the study of complex systems is that of resolving,
without prior information, the emergent, mesoscopic organization determined by
groups of units whose dynamical activity is more strongly correlated internally
than with the rest of the system. The existing techniques to filter
correlations are not explicitly oriented towards identifying such modules and
can suffer from an unavoidable information loss. A promising alternative is
that of employing community detection techniques developed in network theory.
Unfortunately, this approach has focused predominantly on replacing network
data with correlation matrices, a procedure that tends to be intrinsically
biased due to its inconsistency with the null hypotheses underlying the
existing algorithms. Here we introduce, via a consistent redefinition of null
models based on random matrix theory, the appropriate correlation-based
counterparts of the most popular community detection techniques. Our methods
can filter out both unit-specific noise and system-wide dependencies, and the
resulting communities are internally correlated and mutually anti-correlated.
We also implement multiresolution and multifrequency approaches revealing
hierarchically nested sub-communities with `hard' cores and `soft' peripheries.
We apply our techniques to several financial time series and identify
mesoscopic groups of stocks which are irreducible to a standard, sectorial
taxonomy, detect `soft stocks' that alternate between communities, and discuss
implications for portfolio optimization and risk management.Comment: Final version, accepted for publication on PR
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