EPJ E - What makes tires grip the road on a rainy day?
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- Published on 10 August 2012
Scientists examine the flow of liquid at the contact between randomly rough surfaces
A team of scientists from Italy and Germany has recently developed a model to predict the friction occurring when a rough surface in wet conditions (such as a road on a rainy day) is in sliding contact with a rubber material (such as a car tire tread block) in an article that has just been published in EPJE.EPJ E - New complex offers potentially safer alternative for gene therapy delivery
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- Published on 02 September 2011
Spontaneous ordering of DNA fragments in a special matrix holds the key to creating non-toxic gene therapy delivery vectors, according to a study recently published in the European Physical Journal E.
Scientists from the CNRS Paul Pascal Research Centre, an institute of the University of Bordeaux, France, and colleagues from the Institute of Physics at the University of Sao Paolo, have created a complex system designed to hold DNA fragments in solution between the hydrophilic layers of a matrix of fatty substances (also known as lipids) combined with a surfactant (used to soften the layers’ rigidity). One possible application that has yet to be tested is gene therapy.EPJ E - Embryo development obeys the laws of hydrodynamics
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- Published on 22 August 2011
The law of hydrodynamics can contribute to our understanding of how a cluster of embryonic cells can transform into an animal within the first 36 hours of development, according to research recently published in European Physical Journal E.
Vincent Fleury, a researcher at the Paris Diderot University, studied the early stage of development when embryonic cells first form a flat sheet of cells before folding into a U-shape, resembling a folded pancake. He demonstrated that the formation of a chicken’s head is a consequence of the collision between both sides of the embryo flowing at constant speed towards each other.
EPJ E - Compare Motor Models: Two-State versus Crossbridge
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- Published on 18 July 2011
Rigid two-state and crossbridge are two models of motor assemblies widely used in the literature. But up to now they had never been studied and compared systematically. In cells, motor proteins use chemical energy to generate motion and forces. This thorough comparison presented in EPJE shows that theforce response to a small displacement step is similar in both models to the delayed stretch activation observed in oscillating muscles.
EPJ E - Unlocking jams in fluid materials
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- Published on 08 April 2011
A new theoretical model which helps to understand how to best avoid jamming of soft matter.
In a study recently published in the European Physical Journal E (EPJE), a German scientist constructed a theoretical model to understand how to best avoid jamming of soft matter that can be applied in food and cosmetics production.
EPJ E - Pierre Gilles De Gennes Prize awarded to Michael E. Cates
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- Published on 24 March 2011
The second edition of the EPJE - Pierre Gilles De Gennes Lecture Prize will be hosted in Vienna, during the 8th Liquid Matter Conference.
EPJ E - Polymersomes made-to-measure
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- Published on 22 March 2011
The use of polymersomes in drug delivery, medical imaging, micro-reactors or to mimic biophysical membrane phenomena is greatly dependent on the extent to which their properties can be controlled and tuned.
Electrodeposition of an electroactive polymer and subsequent polymerization of monomers is a novel route to anchor polymer chains to electrode surfaces.
Tiny polymer droplets that crystallize on a surface are a shrewd expedient to study the birth of a polymer crystal by the elusive homogeneous nucleation mechanism. In most cases, take for example the dust particle in a snowflake, nucleation starts from a heterogenous defect. Homogenous nucleation is difficult to study because of the prevalence of defects in any bulk sample. Crystallization in small droplets alleviates this difficulty in a manner that is conceptually simple: subdivide the system into more domains than the number of defects. If the domains greatly outnumber the defects then only the homogenous mechanism can induce nucleation in a defect free compartment.
