Capillary condensation in one-dimensional irregular confinement

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Training-induced criticality in martensites

We propose an explanation for the self-organization towards criticality observed in martensites during the cyclic process known as `training'. The scale-free behavior originates from the interplay between the reversible phase transformation and the concurrent activity of lattice defects. The basis of the model is a continuous dynamical system on a rugged energy landscape, which in the quasi-static limit reduces to a sandpile automaton. We reproduce all the principal observations in thermally driven martensites, including power-law statistics, hysteresis shakedown, asymmetric signal shapes, and correlated disorder.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Prominent effect of soil network heterogeneity on microbial invasion

Using a network representation for real soil samples and mathematical models for microbial spread, we show that the structural heterogeneity of the soil habitat may have a very significant influence on the size of microbial invasions of the soil pore space. In particular, neglecting the soil structural heterogeneity may lead to a substantial underestimation of microbial invasion. Such effects are explained in terms of a crucial interplay between heterogeneity in microbial spread and heterogeneity in the topology of soil networks. The main influence of network topology on invasion is linked to the existence of long channels in soil networks that may act as bridges for transmission of microorganisms between distant parts of soil

Socialization of the elderly in outdoor health circuits

En los parques biosaludables, originalmente concebidos para la población madura y anciana, se encuentran usuarios de diferentes edades y con distintas formas de entender la actividad física. El presente trabajo intenta examinar las relaciones de las personas mayores con el resto de usuarios para determinar en qué medida dichos parques pueden cumplir alguna función social más allá del fomento de hábitos saludables. Para ello se ha llevado a cabo una serie de observaciones, participantes y no participantes, en tres parques de la ciudad de Granada, donde se ha visto que, si bien existe una proporción minoritaria pero importante de usuarios jóvenes (aproximadamente un tercio del total), estos tienden a evitar una interacción que parte de los usuarios de mayor edad buscan expresamente

Modelling avalanches in martensites

Solids subject to continuous changes of temperature or mechanical load often exhibit discontinuous avalanche-like responses. For instance, avalanche dynamics have been observed during plastic deformation, fracture, domain switching in ferroic materials or martensitic transformations. The statistical analysis of avalanches reveals a very complex scenario with a distinctive lack of characteristic scales. Much effort has been devoted in the last decades to understand the origin and ubiquity of scale-free behaviour in solids and many other systems. This chapter reviews some efforts to understand the characteristics of avalanches in martensites through mathematical modelling.Comment: Chapter in the book "Avalanches in Functional Materials and Geophysics", edited by E. K. H. Salje, A. Saxena, and A. Planes. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45612-6_

PVS: a web server for protein sequence variability analysis tuned to facilitate conserved epitope discovery

We have developed PVS (Protein Variability Server), a web-based tool that uses several variability metrics to compute the absolute site variability in multiple protein-sequence alignments (MSAs). The variability is then assigned to a user-selected reference sequence consisting of either the first sequence in the alignment or a consensus sequence. Subsequently, PVS performs tasks that are relevant for structure-function studies, such as plotting and visualizing the variability in a relevant 3D-structure. Neatly, PVS also implements some other tasks that are thought to facilitate the design of epitope discovery-driven vaccines against pathogens where sequence variability largely contributes to immune evasion. Thus, PVS can return the conserved fragments in the MSA—as defined by a user-provided variability threshold—and locate them in a relevant 3D-structure. Furthermore, PVS can return a variability-masked sequence, which can be directly submitted to the RANKPEP server for the prediction of conserved T-cell epitopes. PVS is freely available at: http://imed.med.ucm.es/PVS/

Stable, metastable and unstable states in the mean-field RFIM at T=0

We compute the probability of finding metastable states at a given field in the mean-field random field Ising model at T=0. Remarkably, this probability is finite in the thermodynamic limit, even on the so-called ``unstable'' branch of the magnetization curve. This implies that the branch is reachable when the magnetization is controlled instead of the magnetic field, in contrast with the situation in the pure system.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Zero-temperature random-field Ising model on a bilayered Bethe lattice

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