Browsing STAMI-SMI Events by Title
Now showing items 1-20 of 22
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Cell Contraction Induces Long-Ranged Stress Stiffening in the Extracellular Matrix
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-19)Animal cells in tissues are supported by biopolymer matrices, which exhibit highly nonlinear mechanical properties. Here we show that this nonlinearity allows living contractile cells to generate a massive stiffness gradient ... -
Cellular Packing, Mechanical Stress and the Evolution of Multicellularity
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-19)The evolution of multicellularity set the stage for sustained increases in organismal complexity. However, a fundamental aspect of this transition remains largely unknown: how do simple clusters of cells evolve increased ... -
Exploiting Disorder
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-20)We are taught to understand solids by considering ideal crystals. This approach becomes untenable as the amount of disorder increases; for a glass with no well-defined long-range order, a crystal is an abysmal starting ... -
Fracturing of Marginally Stable Structures: Fiber Networks and Topological Metamaterials
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-19)When conventional brittle materials break, long cracks form due to stress focusing at crack tips: a phenomenon explained by Griffith in the 1920s. In this talk, we will discuss two types of systems where the fracturing ... -
Geometric Underpinnings of Auxetic Behavior
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-18)In materials science, auxetic behavior is characterized by negative Poisson's ratios. We have recently developed a purely geometric theory of auxetic behavior for periodic framework materials. In this talk I will present ... -
Highly Efficient Oil-Water Separation Using Surface-Programmable Membranes
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-20)The challenge of separating emulsified oil from oil/water mixture has sparked enormous research interests in developing advanced membrane technology. One of the most crucial elements to achieve high separating efficiency ... -
How Hidden Geometric Symmetries in Origami Generate New Folding Mechanisms
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-19)The traditional Japanese art of paper folding has inspired various foldable materials, some now realizable at the atomic scale. These thin sheets use engineered crease patterns to provide a desired mechanical response ... -
Local and Global Avalanches in Sheared Granular Materials
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-20)We perform a stick-slip experiment to characterize avalanches for granular materials. In our experiment, a constant speed stage pulls a slider which rests on a vertical bed of circular photoelastic particles in a 2D system. ... -
Mechanics of Active Networks – Lessons from Fire Ant Aggregations
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-19)Biological assemblies in nature are seen as active matter due to their ability to perform intelligent collective motion based on neighbor interactions and sometimes without any centralized control or leadership. Fire ants ... -
New Results for Old Physics: Critical Phenomena for Colloids in Microgravity
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-19)This talk will describe results from experiments conducted in the absence of gravitational forces allowing the effects very delicate interactions between colloidal particles to be explored. The behavior very close to the ... -
Ordered and Disordered Motion in Dense Active Materials
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-19)We discuss how the non-equilibrium driving forces introduced by the natural biological activity or by physical self-propulsion mechanisms generically affect the structure, dynamics and phase behavior of dense active media. ... -
Probing Active Nematic Films with Magnetically Manipulated Colloids
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-19)Active nematics are non-equilibrium liquid crystalline systems composed of self driven particles whose motility creates flows that lead to perpetual changes in the local nematic director. We employ magnetically manipulated ... -
Quantifying Hidden Order Out of Equilibrium
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-20)While the equilibrium properties, states, and phase transitions of interacting systems are well described by statistical mechanics, the lack of suitable state parameters has hindered the understanding of non-equilibrium ... -
Self–Assembled DNA Liquids: Properties and Protein Activation
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-19)Biomolecules can self-assemble into liquid phases, termed ‘membraneless organelles’ in the biological context, though also known as ‘coacervates’. I will discuss our efforts to study this by exploiting DNA nanotechnology ... -
Soft, Responsive and Semiconducting Gels
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-20)Interaction of biopolymers with organic electronic materials provides an appealing opportunity to design electroactive materials for use in many applications especially bioelectronics. Because of their biocompatibility, ... -
Some Universal Features of Soft Random Solids
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-18)The aim of this talk is to look at soft random solids through the lens of condensed matter theory, and to explore how their core features -- most notably their random structure and elasticity –- emerge via the collective ... -
Symmetry Breaking During the Synthesis of Nanoparticles
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-19)Symmetry breaking is a ubiquitous phenomenon that occurs spontaneously when a system is subjected to variations in size and/or perturbations in terms of thermodynamic parameters. As a stochastic process, even small ... -
Symposium on Soft Matter Forefronts - Welcome
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-18)The symposium aims to familiarize attendees with the soft-matter research and expertise at Georgia Tech and to demonstrate the role Georgia Tech plays in influencing and advancing the field. -
The Topological Character of Smectics
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-18)Though the systematic use of topology to understand defects in ordered matter is now nearly 50 years old, the original work failed to completely characterize systems with broken translational order, i.e., crystals. Smectics ... -
Topology in Polar Flocking and Active Nematics
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-18)Active flocking on curved surfaces, such as the 2-sphere and the catenoid, exhibits dynamical symmetry breaking in the form of spontaneous flow, calculable inhomogeneous density patterns and long-wavelength propagating ...