Active colloidal particles in emulsion droplets: A model system for the cytoplasm

In living cells, molecular motors create activity that enhances the diffusion of particles throughout the cytoplasm, and not just ones attached to the motors. We demonstrate initial steps toward creating artificial cells that mimic this phenomenon. Our system consists of active, Pt-coated Janus particles and passive tracers confined to emulsion droplets. We track the motion of both the active particles and passive tracers in a hydrogen peroxide solution, which serves as the fuel to drive the motion. We first show that correcting for bulk translational and rotational motion of the droplets induced by bubble formation is necessary to accurately track the particles. After drift correction, we find that the active particles show enhanced diffusion in the interior of the droplets and are not captured by the droplet interface. At the particle and hydrogen peroxide concentrations we use, we observe little coupling between the active and passive particles. We discuss the possible reasons for lack of coupling and describe ways to improve the system to more effectively mimic cytoplasmic activity

Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Soft Grains: Malaria-Infected Red Blood Cells Motion within Obstructed 2-D Capillary Vessel

Molecular dynamics has been widely used to numerically solve equation of motion of classical many-particle system. It can be used to simulate many systems including biophysics, whose complexity level is determined by the involved elements. Based on this method, a numerical model had been constructed to mimic the behaviour of malaria-infected red blood cells within capillary vessel. The model was governed by three forces namely Coulomb force, normal force, and Stokes force. By utilizing two dimensional four-cells scheme, theoretical observation was carried out to test its capability. Although the parameters were chosen deliberately, all of the quantities were given arbitrary value. Despite this fact, the results were quite satisfactory. Combined with the previous results, it can be said that the proposed model were sufficient enough to mimic the malaria-infected red blood cells motion within obstructed capillary vessel. Keywords: molecular dynamics, two-dimensional model, red-blood cell motion, malariaComment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 3 table, conference paper (presented the International Symposium on BioMathematics (Symomath) 2013, October 27-29, 2013, Bandung, Indonesia

Bulk equations of motion from CFT correlators

To O(1/N) we derive, purely from CFT data, the bulk equations of motion for interacting scalar fields and for scalars coupled to gauge fields and gravity. We first uplift CFT operators to mimic local AdS fields by imposing bulk microcausality. This requires adding an infinite tower of smeared higher-dimension double-trace operators to the CFT definition of a bulk field, with coefficients that we explicitly compute. By summing the contribution of the higher-dimension operators we derive the equations of motion satisfied by these uplifted CFT operators and show that we precisely recover the expected bulk equations of motion. We exhibit the freedom in the CFT construction which corresponds to bulk field redefinitions.Comment: 62 pages, LaTeX, 304 equations. v2: minor edits, reference added. v3: minor improvements, version to appear in JHE

Relativistic motion of an Airy wavepacket in a lattice potential

We study the dynamics of an Airy wavepacket moving in a one-dimensional lattice potential. In contrast to the usual case of propagation in a continuum, for which such a wavepacket experiences a uniform acceleration, the lattice bounds its velocity, and so the acceleration cannot continue indefinitely. Instead, we show that the wavepacket's motion is described by relativistic equations of motion, which surprisingly, arise naturally from evolution under the standard non-relativistic Schr\"odinger equation. The presence of the lattice potential allows the wavepacket's motion to be controlled by means of Floquet engineering. In particular, in the deep relativistic limit when the wavepacket's motion is photon-like, this form of control allows it to mimic both standard and negative refraction. Airy wavepackets held in lattice potentials can thus be used as powerful and flexible simulators of relativistic quantum systems.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures. Higher resolution versions of Figs. 7a, 7b, 7c can be supplied on reques

The influence of barefoot and barefoot inspired footwear on the kinetics and kinematics of running in comparison to conventional running shoes.

Barefoot running has experienced a resurgence in footwear biomechanics literature, based on the supposition that it serves to reduce the occurrence of overuse injuries in comparison to conventional shoe models. This consensus has lead footwear manufacturers to develop shoes which aim to mimic the mechanics of barefoot locomotion. This study compared the impact kinetics and 3-D joint angular kinematics observed whilst running: barefoot, in conventional cushioned running shoes and in shoes designed to integrate the perceived benefits of barefoot locomotion. The aim of the current investigation was therefore to determine whether differences in impact kinetics exist between the footwear conditions and whether shoes which aim to simulate barefoot movement patterns can closely mimic the 3-D kinematics of barefoot running. Twelve participants ran at 4.0 m.s-1±5% in each footwear condition. Angular joint kinematics from the hip, knee and ankle in the sagittal, coronal and transverse planes were measured using an eight camera motion analysis system. In addition simultaneous tibial acceleration and ground reaction forces were obtained. Impact parameters and joint kinematics were subsequently compared using repeated measures ANOVAs. The kinematic analysis indicates that in comparison to the conventional and barefoot inspired shoes that running barefoot was associated significantly greater plantar-flexion at footstrike and range of motion to peak dorsiflexion. Furthermore, the kinetic analysis revealed that compared to the conventional footwear impact parameters were significantly greater in the barefoot condition. Therefore this study suggests that barefoot running is associated with impact kinetics linked to an increased risk of overuse injury, when compared to conventional shod running. Furthermore, the mechanics of the shoes which aim to simulate barefoot movement patterns do not appear to closely mimic the kinematics of barefoot locomotion

Nose-Hoover dynamics for coherent states

The popular method of Nose and Hoover to create canonically distributed positions and momenta in classical molecular dynamics simulations is generalized to a genuine quantum system of infinite dimensionality. We show that for the quantum harmonic oscillator, the equations of motion in terms of coherent states can easily be modified in an analogous manner to mimic the coupling of the system to a thermal bath and create a quantum canonical ensemble. Possible applications to more complex systems, especially interacting Fermion systems, are proposed.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Swimming of onboard-powered autonomous robots in viscous fluid filled channels

Microrobots can make a great impact in medical applications such as minimally-invasive surgery, screening and diagnosis of diseases, targeted therapy and drug delivery. Smallsized bio-inspired robots can mimic flagellar propulsion mechanisms of microorganisms for actuation in microfluidic environments, which are dominated by viscous forces. Microorganisms propel themselves by means of the motion of their flagella such as rotation of rigid helices or travelling planar waves on flexible tails similar to whipping motion. Here, we present characterization of swimming of onboard-powered autonomous robots inside cylindrical tubes. Robots consist of two links, head and tail, connected with a revolute joint. Rigid helical tails of the swimmer robots are made of steel wires with 12 different configurations of helical radius and pitch. From experiments forward linear velocity of robots and angular velocities of the links are measured, and compared with the mathematical model, which is based on the resistive force theory. Results indicate that the motion of the swimmer inside channels can be predicted by means of the resistive force theory reasonably well