Surface Transitions for Confined Associating Mixtures

Thin films of binary mixtures that interact through isotropic forces and directionally specific "hydrogen bonding" are considered through Monte Carlo simulations. We show, in good agreement with experiment, that the single phase of these mixtures can be stabilized or destabilized on confinement. These results resolve a long standing controversy, since previous theories suggest that confinement only stabilizes the single phase of fluid mixtures.Comment: LaTeX document, documentstyle[aps,preprint]{revtex}, psfig.sty, bibtex, 13 pages, 4 figure

Global distribution of the sickle cell gene and geographical confirmation of the malaria hypothesis

It has been 100 years since the first report of sickle haemoglobin (HbS). More than 50 years ago, it was suggested that the gene responsible for this disorder could reach high frequencies because of resistance conferred against malaria by the heterozygous carrier state. This traditional example of balancing selection is known as the 'malaria hypothesis'. However, the geographical relationship between the transmission intensity of malaria and associated HbS burden has never been formally investigated on a global scale. Here, we use a comprehensive data assembly of HbS allele frequencies to generate the first evidence-based map of the worldwide distribution of the gene in a Bayesian geostatistical framework. We compare this map with the pre-intervention distribution of malaria endemicity, using a novel geostatistical area-mean comparison. We find geographical support for the malaria hypothesis globally; the relationship is relatively strong in Africa but cannot be resolved in the Americas or in Asia

On the Adsorption of Two-State Polymers

Monte Carlo(MC) simulations produce evidence that annealed copolymers incorporating two interconverting monomers, P and H, adsorb as homopolymers with an effective adsorption energy per monomer, $\epsilon_{eff}$, that depends on the PH equilibrium constants in the bulk and at the surface. The cross-over exponent, $\Phi,$ is unmodified. The MC results on the overall PH ratio, the PH ratio at the surface and in the bulk as well as the number of adsorbed monomers are in quantitative agreement with this hypothesis and the theoretically derived $\epsilon_{eff}$. The evidence suggests that the form of surface potential does not affect $\Phi$ but does influence the PH equilibrium.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure

A finite strain fibre-reinforced viscoelasto-viscoplastic model of plant cell wall growth

A finite strain fibre-reinforced viscoelasto-viscoplastic model implemented in a finite element (FE) analysis is presented to study the expansive growth of plant cell walls. Three components of the deformation of growing cell wall, i.e. elasticity, viscoelasticity and viscoplasticity-like growth, are modelled within a consistent framework aiming to present an integrative growth model. The two aspects of growth—turgor-driven creep and new material deposition—and the interplay between them are considered by presenting a yield function, flow rule and hardening law. A fibre-reinforcement formulation is used to account for the role of cellulose microfibrils in the anisotropic growth. Mechanisms in in vivo growth are taken into account to represent the corresponding biologycontrolled behaviour of a cell wall. A viscoelastic formulation is proposed to capture the viscoelastic response in the cell wall. The proposed constitutive model provides a unique framework for modelling both the in vivo growth of cell wall dominated by viscoplasticity-like behaviour and in vitro deformation dominated by elastic or viscoelastic responses. A numerical scheme is devised, and FE case studies are reported and compared with experimental data

Epidemic dynamics in inhomogeneous populations and the role of superspreaders

A variant of the susceptible-infected-recovered model for an inhomogeneous population is introduced to account for the effect of variability in susceptibility and infectiousness across a population. An initial formulation of this dynamics leads to infinitely many differential equations. Our model, however, can be reduced to a single first-order one-dimensional differential equation. Using this approach, we provide quantitative solutions for different distributions. In particular, we use GPS data from ∼ 107 cell phones to determine an empirical distribution of the number of individual contacts and use this to infer a possible distribution of susceptibility and infectivity. We quantify the effect of superspreaders on the early growth rate ${\mathcal{R}}_{0}$ of the infection and on the final epidemic size, the total number of people who are ever infected. We discuss the features of the distribution that contribute most to the dynamics of the infection