Dissipative Particle Dynamics with energy conservation

Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) does not conserve energy and this precludes its use in the study of thermal processes in complex fluids. We present here a generalization of DPD that incorporates an internal energy and a temperature variable for each particle. The dissipation induced by the dissipative forces between particles is invested in raising the internal energy of the particles. Thermal conduction occurs by means of (inverse) temperature differences. The model can be viewed as a simplified solver of the fluctuating hydrodynamic equations and opens up the possibility of studying thermal processes in complex fluids with a mesoscopic simulation technique.Comment: 5 page

Prescriptions and proscriptions: moralising sleep medicines

This work was carried out with colleagues at the University of Warwick and Royal Holloway, University of London. Open access articleThe pharmaceuticalisation of sleep is a contentious issue. Sleep medicines get a‘bad press’due to their potential for dependence and other side effects, including studies reporting increased mortality risks for long-term users. Yet relatively little qualitative social science research has been conducted into how people understandand negotiate their use/non-use of sleep medicines in the context of their everyday lives. This paper draws on focus group data collected in the UK to elicit collective views on and experiences of prescription hypnotics across different social contexts.Respondents, we show, drew on a range of moral repertoires which allowed them to present themselves and their relationships with hypnotics in different ways. Six distinct repertoires about hypnotic use are identified in this regard: the ‘deserving’ patient, the ‘responsible’ user, the ‘compliant’ patient, the ‘addict’, the ‘sinful’ user and the ‘noble’ non user. These users and non-users are constructed drawing on cross-cutting themes of addiction and control, ambivalence and reflexivity. Such issues are in turn discussed in relation to recent sociological debates on the pharmaceuticalisation/de-pharmaceuticalisation of everyday life and the consumption of medicines in the UK today

Two-dimensional hydrodynamic lattice-gas simulations of binary immiscible and ternary amphiphilic fluid flow through porous media

The behaviour of two dimensional binary and ternary amphiphilic fluids under flow conditions is investigated using a hydrodynamic lattice gas model. After the validation of the model in simple cases (Poiseuille flow, Darcy's law for single component fluids), attention is focussed on the properties of binary immiscible fluids in porous media. An extension of Darcy's law which explicitly admits a viscous coupling between the fluids is verified, and evidence of capillary effects are described. The influence of a third component, namely surfactant, is studied in the same context. Invasion simulations have also been performed. The effect of the applied force on the invasion process is reported. As the forcing level increases, the invasion process becomes faster and the residual oil saturation decreases. The introduction of surfactant in the invading phase during imbibition produces new phenomena, including emulsification and micellisation. At very low fluid forcing levels, this leads to the production of a low-resistance gel, which then slows down the progress of the invading fluid. At long times (beyond the water percolation threshold), the concentration of remaining oil within the porous medium is lowered by the action of surfactant, thus enhancing oil recovery. On the other hand, the introduction of surfactant in the invading phase during drainage simulations slows down the invasion process -- the invading fluid takes a more tortuous path to invade the porous medium -- and reduces the oil recovery (the residual oil saturation increases).Comment: 48 pages, 26 figures. Phys. Rev. E (in press

Ethics, evidence based sports medicine, and the use of platelet rich plasma in the English Premier League

The use of platelet rich plasma (PRP) as a novel treatment is discussed in the context of a qualitative research study comprising 38 interviews with sports medicine practitioners and other stakeholders working within the English Premier League during the 2013-16 seasons. Analysis of the data produced several overarching themes: conservatism versus experimentalism in medical attitudes; therapy perspectives divergence; conflicting versions of appropriate evidence; subcultures; community beliefs/practices; and negotiation of medical decision-making. The contested evidence base for the efficacy of PRP is presented in the context of a broader professional shift towards evidence based medicine within sports medicine. Many of the participants while accepting this shift are still committed to casuistic practices where clinical judgment is flexible and does not recognize a context-free hierarchy of evidentiary standards to ethically justifiable practice. We also discuss a tendency in the data collected to consider the use of deceptive, placebo-like, practices among the clinician participants that challenge dominant understandings of informed consent in medical ethics. We conclude that the complex relation between evidence and ethics requires greater critical scrutiny for this emerging specialism within the medical community

Symmetry-breaking in chiral polymerisation

We propose a model for chiral polymerisation and investigate its symmetric and asymmetric solutions. The model has a source species which decays into left- and right-handed types of monomer, each of which can polymerise to form homochiral chains; these chains are susceptible to `poisoning' by the opposite handed monomer. Homochiral polymers are assumed to influence the proportion of each type of monomer formed from the precursor. We show that for certain parameter values a positive feedback mechanism makes the symmetric steady-state solution unstable. The kinetics of polymer formation are then analysed in the case where the system starts from zero concentrations of monomer and chains. We show that following a long induction time, extremely large concentrations of polymers are formed for a short time, during this time an asymmetry introduced into the system by a random external perturbation may be massively amplified. The system then approaches one of the steady-state solutions described above.Comment: 26pages, 6 Figure

Renormalisation-theoretic analysis of non-equilibrium phase transitions I: The Becker-Doring equations with power law rate coefficients

We study in detail the application of renormalisation theory to models of cluster aggregation and fragmentation of relevance to nucleation and growth processes. We investigate the Becker-Dorging equations, originally formulated to describe and analyse non-equilibrium phase transitions, and more recently generalised to describe a wide range of physicochemical problems. In the present paper we analyse how the systematic coarse-graining renormalisation of the \BD system of equations affects the aggregation and fragmentation rate coefficients. We consider the case of power-law size-dependent cluster rate coefficients which we show lead to only three classes of system that require analysis: coagulation-dominated systems, fragmentation-dominated systems and those where coagulation and fragmentation are exactly balanced. We analyse the late-time asymptotics associated with each class.Comment: 18 pages, to appear in J Phys A Math Ge

The concept of medicalisation reassessed: a response to Joan Busfield

Joan Busfield's (2017) reassessment of the concept of medicalisation is a welcome and timely contribution to a key issue within medical sociology, past and present. Not simply medical sociology however. Medicalisation indeed, as Conrad (2015) himself notes, now carries ‘analytical weight’ in a range of disciplines beyond sociology including history, anthropology, bioethics, economics, media studies and feminism. To this of course we may add engagements within medicine itself as well as the wider circulation of ‘medicalisation’ within popular culture, if not public consciousness today, as a commonly used if not abused term of reference, thereby rending medicalisation a victim of its own success perhaps. Hence debates in recent years as to whether or not medicalisation has outlived its usefulness as a concept, including its relationship to other newly developed concepts and ways of theorising these matters, in sociology and beyond (Bell and Figert 2014, 2015, Rose 2007)

Lattice-Gas Simulations of Minority-Phase Domain Growth in Binary Immiscible and Ternary Amphiphilic Fluid

We investigate the growth kinetics of binary immiscible fluids and emulsions in two dimensions using a hydrodynamic lattice-gas model. We perform off-critical quenches in the binary fluid case and find that the domain size within the minority phase grows algebraically with time in accordance with theoretical predictions. In the late time regime we find a growth exponent n = 0.45 over a wide range of concentrations, in good agreement with other simluations. In the early time regime we find no universal growth exponent but a strong dependence on the concentration of the minority phase. In the ternary amphiphilic fluid case the kinetics of self assembly of the droplet phase are studied for the first time. At low surfactant concentrations, we find that, after an early algebraic growth, a nucleation regime dominates the late-time kinetics, which is enhanced by an increasing concentration of surfactant. With a further increase in the concentration of surfactant, we see a crossover to logarithmically slow growth, and finally saturation of the oil droplets, which we fit phenomenologically to a stretched exponential function. Finally, the transition between the droplet and the sponge phase is studied.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures, submitted to PR

Lattice-gas simulations of Domain Growth, Saturation and Self-Assembly in Immiscible Fluids and Microemulsions

We investigate the dynamical behavior of both binary fluid and ternary microemulsion systems in two dimensions using a recently introduced hydrodynamic lattice-gas model of microemulsions. We find that the presence of amphiphile in our simulations reduces the usual oil-water interfacial tension in accord with experiment and consequently affects the non-equilibrium growth of oil and water domains. As the density of surfactant is increased we observe a crossover from the usual two-dimensional binary fluid scaling laws to a growth that is {\it slow}, and we find that this slow growth can be characterized by a logarithmic time scale. With sufficient surfactant in the system we observe that the domains cease to grow beyond a certain point and we find that this final characteristic domain size is inversely proportional to the interfacial surfactant concentration in the system.Comment: 28 pages, latex, embedded .eps figures, one figure is in colour, all in one uuencoded gzip compressed tar file, submitted to Physical Review

Fluctuating hydrodynamic modelling of fluids at the nanoscale

A good representation of mesoscopic fluids is required to combine with molecular simulations at larger length and time scales (De Fabritiis {\it et. al}, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 134501 (2006)). However, accurate computational models of the hydrodynamics of nanoscale molecular assemblies are lacking, at least in part because of the stochastic character of the underlying fluctuating hydrodynamic equations. Here we derive a finite volume discretization of the compressible isothermal fluctuating hydrodynamic equations over a regular grid in the Eulerian reference system. We apply it to fluids such as argon at arbitrary densities and water under ambient conditions. To that end, molecular dynamics simulations are used to derive the required fluid properties. The equilibrium state of the model is shown to be thermodynamically consistent and correctly reproduces linear hydrodynamics including relaxation of sound and shear modes. We also consider non-equilibrium states involving diffusion and convection in cavities with no-slip boundary conditions