Dynamic model for failures in biological systems

A dynamic model for failures in biological organisms is proposed and studied both analytically and numerically. Each cell in the organism becomes dead under sufficiently strong stress, and is then allowed to be healed with some probability. It is found that unlike the case of no healing, the organism in general does not completely break down even in the presence of noise. Revealed is the characteristic time evolution that the system tends to resist the stress longer than the system without healing, followed by sudden breakdown with some fraction of cells surviving. When the noise is weak, the critical stress beyond which the system breaks down increases rapidly as the healing parameter is raised from zero, indicative of the importance of healing in biological systems.Comment: To appear in Europhys. Let

Velocity selection problem for combined motion of melting and solidification fronts

We discuss a free boundary problem for two moving solid-liquid interfaces that strongly interact via the diffusion field in the liquid layer between them. This problem arises in the context of liquid film migration (LFM) during the partial melting of solid alloys. In the LFM mechanism the system chooses a more efficient kinetic path which is controlled by diffusion in the liquid film, whereas the process with only one melting front would be controlled by the very slow diffusion in the mother solid phase. The relatively weak coherency strain energy is the effective driving force for LFM. As in the classical dendritic growth problems, also in this case an exact family of steady-state solutions with two parabolic fronts and an arbitrary velocity exists if capillary effects are neglected. We develop a velocity selection theory for this problem, including anisotropic surface tension effects. The strong diffusion interaction and coherency strain effects in the solid near the melting front lead to substantial changes compared to classical dendritic growth.Comment: submitted to PR

Magnetoelectric Effects on Composite Nano Granular Fe/TiO2−δFe/TiO_{2-\delta} Films

Employing a new experimental technique to measure magnetoelectric response functions, we have measured the magnetoelectric effect in composite films of nano granular metallic iron in anatase titanium dioxide at temperatures below 50 K. A magnetoelectric resistance is defined as the ratio of a transverse voltage to bias current as a function of the magnetic field. In contrast to the anomalous Hall resistance measured above 50 K, the magnetoelectic resistance below 50 K is significantly larger and exhibits an even symmetry with respect to magnetic field reversal $H\to -H$. The measurement technique required attached electrodes in the plane of the film composite in order to measure voltage as a function of bias current and external magnetic field. To our knowledge, the composite films are unique in terms of showing magnetoelectric effects at low temperatures, $<$ 50 K, and anomalous Hall effects at high temperatures, $>$ 50 K.Comment: ReVTeX, 2 figures, 3 page

Anomalous kinetics of attractive A+B→0A+B \to 0 reactions

We investigate the kinetics of $A+B \to 0$ reaction with the local attractive interaction between opposite species in one spatial dimension. The attractive interaction leads to isotropic diffusions inside segregated single species domains, and accelerates the reactions of opposite species at the domain boundaries. At equal initial densities of $A$ and $B$, we analytically and numerically show that the density of particles ($\rho$), the size of domains ($\ell$), the distance between the closest neighbor of same species ($\ell_{AA}$), and the distance between adjacent opposite species ($\ell_{AB}$) scale in time as $\rho \sim t^{-1/3}$, $\ell_{AA} \sim t^{1/3}$, and $\ell \sim \ell_{AB} \sim t^{2/3}$ respectively. These dynamical exponents form a new universality class distinguished from the class of uniformly driven systems of hard-core particles.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Dynamic model of fiber bundles

A realistic continuous-time dynamics for fiber bundles is introduced and studied both analytically and numerically. The equation of motion reproduces known stationary-state results in the deterministic limit while the system under non-vanishing stress always breaks down in the presence of noise. Revealed in particular is the characteristic time evolution that the system tends to resist the stress for considerable time, followed by sudden complete rupture. The critical stress beyond which the complete rupture emerges is also obtained