144 research outputs found
Protein accumulation in the endoplasmic reticulum as a non-equilibrium phase transition
Several neurological disorders are associated with the aggregation of
aberrant proteins, often localized in intracellular organelles such as the
endoplasmic reticulum. Here we study protein aggregation kinetics by mean-field
reactions and three dimensional Monte carlo simulations of diffusion-limited
aggregation of linear polymers in a confined space, representing the
endoplasmic reticulum. By tuning the rates of protein production and
degradation, we show that the system undergoes a non-equilibrium phase
transition from a physiological phase with little or no polymer accumulation to
a pathological phase characterized by persistent polymerization. A combination
of external factors accumulating during the lifetime of a patient can thus
slightly modify the phase transition control parameters, tipping the balance
from a long symptomless lag phase to an accelerated pathological development.
The model can be successfully used to interpret experimental data on
amyloid-\b{eta} clearance from the central nervous system
Universal distribution of threshold forces at the depinning transition
We study the distribution of threshold forces at the depinning transition for
an elastic system of finite size, driven by an external force in a disordered
medium at zero temperature. Using the functional renormalization group (FRG)
technique, we compute the distribution of pinning forces in the quasi-static
limit. This distribution is universal up to two parameters, the average
critical force, and its width. We discuss possible definitions for threshold
forces in finite-size samples. We show how our results compare to the
distribution of the latter computed recently within a numerical simulation of
the so-called critical configuration.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, revtex
Discrete Fracture Model with Anisotropic Load Sharing
A two-dimensional fracture model where the interaction among elements is
modeled by an anisotropic stress-transfer function is presented. The influence
of anisotropy on the macroscopic properties of the samples is clarified, by
interpolating between several limiting cases of load sharing. Furthermore, the
critical stress and the distribution of failure avalanches are obtained
numerically for different values of the anisotropy parameter and as a
function of the interaction exponent . From numerical results, one can
certainly conclude that the anisotropy does not change the crossover point
in 2D. Hence, in the limit of infinite system size, the crossover
value between local and global load sharing is the same as the one
obtained in the isotropic case. In the case of finite systems, however, for
, the global load sharing behavior is approached very slowly
Elementary plastic events in amorphous silica
Plastic instabilities in amorphous materials are often studied using idealized models of binary mixtures that do not capture accurately molecular interactions and bonding present in real glasses. Here we study atomic-scale plastic instabilities in a three-dimensional molecular dynamics model of silica glass under quasistatic shear. We identify two distinct types of elementary plastic events, one is a standard quasilocalized atomic rearrangement while the second is a bond-breaking event that is absent in simplified models of fragile glass formers. Our results show that both plastic events can be predicted by a drop of the lowest nonzero eigenvalue of the Hessian matrix that vanishes at a critical strain. Remarkably, we find very high correlation between the associated eigenvectors and the nonaffine displacement fields accompanying the bond-breaking event, predicting the locus of structural failure. Both eigenvectors and nonaffine displacement fields display an Eshelby-like quadrupolar structure for both failure modes, rearrangement, and bond breaking Our results thus clarify the nature of atomic-scale plastic instabilities in silica glasses, providing useful information for the development of mesoscale models of amorphous plasticity
Force fluctuation in a driven elastic chain
We study the dynamics of an elastic chain driven on a disordered substrate
and analyze numerically the statistics of force fluctuations at the depinning
transition. The probability distribution function of the amplitude of the slip
events for small velocities is a power law with an exponent
depending on the driving velocity. This result is in qualitative agreement with
experimental measurements performed on sliding elastic surfaces with
macroscopic asperities. We explore the properties of the depinning transition
as a function of the driving mode (i.e. constant force or constant velocity)
and compute the force-velocity diagram using finite size scaling methods. The
scaling exponents are in excellent agreement with the values expected in
interface models and, contrary to previous studies, we found no difference in
the exponents for periodic and disordered chains.Comment: 8 page
Resistance and Resistance Fluctuations in Random Resistor Networks Under Biased Percolation
We consider a two-dimensional random resistor network (RRN) in the presence
of two competing biased percolations consisting of the breaking and recovering
of elementary resistors. These two processes are driven by the joint effects of
an electrical bias and of the heat exchange with a thermal bath. The electrical
bias is set up by applying a constant voltage or, alternatively, a constant
current. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to analyze the network evolution
in the full range of bias values. Depending on the bias strength, electrical
failure or steady state are achieved. Here we investigate the steady-state of
the RRN focusing on the properties of the non-Ohmic regime. In constant voltage
conditions, a scaling relation is found between and , where
is the average network resistance, the linear regime resistance
and the threshold value for the onset of nonlinearity. A similar relation
is found in constant current conditions. The relative variance of resistance
fluctuations also exhibits a strong nonlinearity whose properties are
investigated. The power spectral density of resistance fluctuations presents a
Lorentzian spectrum and the amplitude of fluctuations shows a significant
non-Gaussian behavior in the pre-breakdown region. These results compare well
with electrical breakdown measurements in thin films of composites and of other
conducting materials.Comment: 15 figures, 23 page
Modeling relaxation and jamming in granular media
We introduce a stochastic microscopic model to investigate the jamming and
reorganization of grains induced by an object moving through a granular medium.
The model reproduces the experimentally observed periodic sawtooth fluctuations
in the jamming force and predicts the period and the power spectrum in terms of
the controllable physical parameters. It also predicts that the avalanche
sizes, defined as the number of displaced grains during a single advance of the
object, follow a power-law, , where the exponent is
independent of the physical parameters
Mean-field behavior of the sandpile model below the upper critical dimension
We present results of large scale numerical simulations of the Bak, Tang and
Wiesenfeld sandpile model. We analyze the critical behavior of the model in
Euclidean dimensions . We consider a dissipative generalization
of the model and study the avalanche size and duration distributions for
different values of the lattice size and dissipation. We find that the scaling
exponents in significantly differ from mean-field predictions, thus
suggesting an upper critical dimension . Using the relations among
the dissipation rate and the finite lattice size , we find that a
subset of the exponents displays mean-field values below the upper critical
dimensions. This behavior is explained in terms of conservation laws.Comment: 4 RevTex pages, 2 eps figures embedde
- …