By allowing the surface charge of one surface to affect the adsorption equilibrium of the other, we establish the existence of a long-range attractive interaction between two identical surfaces in an electrolyte containing polyvalent counterions with a mean-field Poisson-Boltzmann approach. A Stern electrostatic condition from linearization of the mass-action adsorption isotherm is used to capture how polyvalent ion condensation affects and reverses the surface charge. We furthermore establish a direct mapping between this Stern-layer condition and previously derived modified mean-field formulations associated with correlated fluctuations theory. For a sufficiently potential-sensitive isotherm, antisymmetric charge inversion can occur to produce an attractive force that increases with decreasing ionic strengths. Analyses of a mass-action isotherm produce force-separation relations, including an exponential far-field force decay distinct but consistent with previously proposed correlated fluctuation theories and in quantitative agreement with experimental data.

In the present paper we first focus on the role of the instrumental resolution in elastic incoherent neutron scattering (EINS) where the connection between the self-distribution function (SDF) and the measured EINS intensity profile is highlighted. Second we show how the SDF procedure, previously introduced, allows both the total and the partial mean-square displacement evaluations through the total and the partial SDFs. Finally, we compare the SDF and the Gaussian procedures, by applying the two approaches to EINS data collected, by the IN13 backscattering spectrometer (Institute Laue-Langevin, Grenoble), on aqueous mixtures of two homologous disaccharides, i.e., sucrose and trehalose, and on myoglobin.

Space-time correlations or Eulerian two-point two-time correlations of fluctuating velocities are analytically and numerically investigated in turbulent shear flows. An elliptic model for the space-time correlations in the inertial range is developed from the similarity assumptions on the isocorrelation contours: they share a uniform preference direction and a constant aspect ratio. The similarity assumptions are justified using the Kolmogorov similarity hypotheses and verified using the direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulent channel flows. The model relates the space-time correlations to the space correlations via the convection and sweeping characteristic velocities. The analytical expressions for the convection and sweeping velocities are derived from the Navier-Stokes equations for homogeneous turbulent shear flows, where the convection velocity is represented by the mean velocity and the sweeping velocity is the sum of the random sweeping velocity and the shear-induced velocity. This suggests that unlike Taylor’s model where the convection velocity is dominating and Kraichnan and Tennekes’ model where the random sweeping velocity is dominating, the decorrelation time scales of the space-time correlations in turbulent shear flows are determined by the convection velocity, the random sweeping velocity, and the shear-induced velocity. This model predicts a universal form of the space-time correlations with the two characteristic velocities. The DNS of turbulent channel flows supports the prediction: the correlation functions exhibit a fair good collapse, when plotted against the normalized space and time separations defined by the elliptic model.

A number of aspects of the two-point correlation behavior of the nearest-neighbor, triangular Ising antiferromagnet are studied using a combination of numerical evaluation of exact expressions and Monte Carlo simulation. Existing asymptotic results for on-axis correlations at finite temperatures are evaluated and shown to be of limited accuracy. The sublattice structure of the off-axis correlation function is clarified, and rotational invariance is studied as a function of temperature. Separations and temperatures for which the correlation function is significant are identified, and a simple functional expression is developed that allows accurate calculation of the correlation function in this region.

In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) effect is used to identify and delineate neuronal activity. The sensitivity of a fMRI-based detection of neuronal activation, however, strongly depends on the relative levels of signal and noise in the time series data, and a large number of different artifact and noise sources interfere with the weak signal changes of the BOLD response. Thus, noise reduction is important to allow an accurate estimation of single activation-related BOLD signals across brain regions. Techniques employed so far include filtering in the time or frequency domain which, however, does not take into account possible nonlinearities of the BOLD response. We here evaluate a previously proposed method for nonlinear denoising of short and transient signals, which combines the wavelet transform with techniques from nonlinear time series analysis. We adopt the method to the problem at hand and show that successful noise reduction and, more importantly, preservation of the shape of individual BOLD signals can be achieved even in the presence of in-band noise.

Forced nonharmonic excitation of the two-dimensional flow about a circular cylinder is studied by numerical simulations at mean Reynolds numbers of 180 and 150. Moderate deviations of the forced inflow velocity waveform from a pure harmonic generate different modes of phase-locked vortex formation in the cylinder wake, involving combinations of single and/or pairs of vortices for the same forcing frequency and peak-to-peak amplitude. The dynamical response of the wake oscillator is studied by employing phase portraits of the drag and lift coefficients that display modified limit-cycle behavior due to nonharmonic excitation. It is further shown that changing solely the velocity waveform can incite transition from a quasiperiodic state to a phase-locked state. The findings demonstrate that the wake oscillator is admissible to an infinite number of phase-locked and/or modulated states characterized by a single point on the frequency-amplitude plane.

We describe the bursting of macroscopic spherical bubbles formed by smectic liquid crystals. During rupture, strong light scattering is observed. It is suggested here that peristaltic undulations of the films are responsible for this scattering. This phenomenon distinguishes bursting smectic films from bursting soap films. The dynamics of these mechanical waves are strongly influenced by the internal layered structure of the smectic films, viz. by the elasticity of the molecular layers, expressed by the smectic layer compression modulus $B$. We study experimentally the optical properties of bursting smectic films by means of optical transmission measurements and laser scattering. The typical wavelength range of the propagating peristaltic waves is in the micrometer range. The wavelength spectrum rather is independent of the initial film thickness $\delta$, but the scattering intensity strongly depends on $\delta$.

The modified Thomson problem, which concerns an assembly of $N$ particles mutually interacting through a Coulombic potential and subject to a Coulombic-harmonic confinement, is introduced. For sufficiently strong confinement strengths $M$, properties of its solutions (such as the energy and the particle positions at the minimum, and the corresponding zero-point vibrational energy) are accurately estimated by expressions dependent on only a few quantities pertaining to the original Thomson problem [such as the energy $E_{\text{Th}}\left(N\right)$] and the reduced confinement strength $\xi =\frac{NM}{E_{\text{Th}}\left(N\right)}$. For $N\le 12$, this regime of the perturbed Thomson problem persists for all non-negative values of $\xi$. On the other hand, the perturbed spherical Coulomb crystal regime emerges for $\xi <{\xi }_{\text{crit}}\left(N\right)$ and larger numbers of particles. For $13\le N\le 22$, the transition that delineates these two regimes is due to the existence of two energy minima, the crystal-like one becoming global for sufficiently weak confinements. For $N\ge 23$, the transition involves a catastrophe brought about by the vanishing of one of the Hessian matrix eigenvalues, the value of ${\xi }_{\text{crit}}\left(N\right)$ being related to the magnitude of radial instability in the corresponding solution of the original Thomson problem.

In this paper we present a study of the early stages of unstable state evolution of systems with spatial symmetry changes. In contrast to the early time linear theory of unstable evolution described by Cahn, Hilliard, and Cook, we develop a generalized theory that predicts two distinct stages of the early evolution for symmetry-breaking phase transitions. In the first stage the dynamics is dominated by symmetry-preserving evolution. In the second stage, which shares some characteristics with the Cahn-Hilliard-Cook theory, noise-driven fluctuations break the symmetry of the initial phase on a time scale which is large compared to the first stage for systems with long interaction ranges. To test the theory we present the results of numerical simulations of the initial evolution of a long-range antiferromagnetic Ising model quenched into an unstable region. We investigate two types of symmetry-breaking transitions in this system: disorder-to-order and order-to-order transitions. For the order-to-order case, the Fourier modes evolve as a linear combination of exponentially growing or decaying terms with different time scales.

We analyze fluctuation-dissipation relations in the backgammon model: a system that displays glassy behavior at zero temperature due to the existence of entropy barriers. We study local and global fluctuation relations for the different observables in the model. For the case of a global perturbation we find a unique negative fluctuation-dissipation ratio that is independent of the observable and which diverges linearly with the waiting time. This result suggests that a negative effective temperature can be observed in glassy systems even in the absence of thermally activated processes.

We perform molecular dynamics simulations to investigate hydrogen-bond dynamics of the TIP5P (transferable intermolecular potential with five points) model of water confined in a quasi-two-dimensional hydrophobic nanopore slit. We find that even if the average number and the lifetime of hydrogen bonds are affected by nanoconfinement, the characteristics of hydrogen-bond dynamics in hydrophobic confined water are the same as in bulk water—such as an Arrhenius temperature dependence of average hydrogen-bond lifetime and a nonexponential behavior of lifetime distributions at short time scales. The different physical properties of water in hydrophobic confinement compared to bulk water—such as $\sim 40\text{K}$ temperature shift—may be primarily due to the reduction of the lifetime of hydrogen bonds in confined environments. We also find that the hydrogen-bond autocorrelation function exhibits a power-law tail following a stretched exponential behavior. The relaxation time of hydrogen bonds in confined water is smaller than in bulk water. Further, we find that the temperature dependence of the relaxation time follows a power-law behavior, and the exponents for bulk and confined water are similar to each other.

In this paper, a three-dimensional model taking into account the contact deformation and surface area coverage (SAC) of nanoadditives is proposed to predict the force required to separate two contacting particles (the pull-off force) under consolidation stress up to 10 KPa, for cornstarch, a Geldart group C powder, sparsely and densely dry-coated with nanosilica. The experimental pull-off force measurement is conducted in a Seville powder tester. Comparison of the predicted results with the experimental results indicates (1) that the pull-off force of sparsely coated cornstarch is larger than that of densely coated cornstarch due to the greater hardness and small particle radius of fumed silica; (2) there is not a continuous variation in the pull-off force with the coverage of silica; on the contrary, values of the pull-off force of sparsely coated samples are grouped in similar range, while the values of the pull-off force of densely coated samples are grouped in another range of lower values. (3) Within a range, the SAC does not have a big effect on the pull-off force for sparsely coated samples and only a slight effect for densely coated samples (4) the pull-off force increases with increasing consolidation force due to larger deformation in the contact area; (5) under consolidation stresses up to 10 KPa, the deformation of the cornstarch particles is not large enough to fully embed the nanosized silica.

The dynamics of grain ejection consecutive to a sphere impacting a granular material is investigated experimentally and the variations of the characteristics of grain ejection with the control parameters are quantitatively studied. The time evolution of the corona formed by the ejected grains is reported, mainly in terms of its diameter and height, and favorably compared with a simple ballistic model. A key characteristic of the granular corona is that the angle formed by its edge with the horizontal granular surface remains constant during the ejection process, which again can be reproduced by the ballistic model. The number and the kinetic energy of the ejected grains are evaluated and allow for the calculation of an effective restitution coefficient characterizing the complex collision process between the impacting sphere and the fine granular target. The effective restitution coefficient is found to be constant when varying the control parameters.

We report an optical and atomic force microscopic (AFM) study of interactions between weakly charged silica spheres at a water-air interface. Attractive interactions are observed at intermediate interparticle distances and the amplitude of the attraction increases with the amount of salt (NaCl) added into the water phase. AFM images obtained in the salty water show the formation of patchy charge domains of size $\sim 100\text{nm}$ on the silica surface. The experiment suggests that surface heterogeneity produced during ionization plays an important role in the generation of attractions between like-charged particles at the interface.

We demonstrate that a protein molecule of interest undergoing the one-dimensional Brownian dynamics along DNA can exhibit a directional dependent net transport either toward or away from its target site depending on the distribution of the initial positions of the other classes of protein molecules present on the same DNA. Directionality arises as a consequence of the confinement of the search space and dynamic reflections by other protein molecules present on the same DNA chain. Energy cost for such directionality comes from the free energy spent on setting the initial positions of the other protein molecules. In the mechanism of action of cis-acting elements on the initiation of transcription, such free-energy inputs are derived from the site-specific binding affinities of the inflowing transcriptional factors toward their cis-acting elements. If the initial distribution of other protein molecules is a random one, then the protein molecule of interest exhibits a net transport away from its target site. This directionality originates from unequal natures of enhancing and retarding effects of the randomly distributed other classes of protein molecules. The protein molecule of interest overcomes the retarding effects of the other classes of protein molecules in a dynamical manner by increasing the number of dissociation-association events when it is far away from its target site and then by switching back to the sliding dynamics due to increase in the enhancing effects as it moves closer to its target site.

We consider the problem of synchronizing a general complex network by means of the on-off coupling strategy; in this case, the on-off time scale is varied from a very small to a very large value. In particular, we find that when the time scale is comparable to that of node dynamics, synchronization can also be achieved and greatly optimized for the upper bound of the stability region which nearly disappears, and the synchronization speed is accelerated a lot, independent of network topologies. Our study indicates that the time scale for network variation is of crucial importance for network dynamics and synchronization under the comparable time scale which is much more advantageous over other time scales. Both analysis and experiments confirm the conclusions.

Bubble and droplet motion in binary mixtures is studied in weak heat and diffusion fluxes and in gravity by solving the linearized hydrodynamic equations supplemented with appropriate surface boundary conditions. Without gravity, the velocity field is induced by evaporation and condensation at the interface and by the Marangoni effect due to a surface-tension gradient. In pure fluids, the latter nearly vanishes since the interface temperature tends to the coexistence temperature $T_{\text{cx}}\left(p\right)$ even in heat flow. In binary mixtures, the velocity field can be much enhanced by the Marangoni effect above a crossover concentration $c^{\ast }$ inversely proportional to the radius $R$ of the bubble or droplet. Here $c^{\ast }$ is usually very small for large $R$ for non-azeotropic mixtures. The temperature and concentration deviations are also calculated.

A spectral analysis of anisotropic magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, in presence of a constant magnetic field, is presented using high-resolution direct numerical simulations. A method of decomposing the spectral space into ring structures is presented and the energy transfers between such rings are studied. This decomposition method takes into account the angular dependency of energy transfers in anisotropic systems, while it allows one to recover easily the known shell-to-shell energy transfers in the limit of isotropic turbulence. For large values of the constant magnetic field, the total-energy transfer appears to be most dominant in the direction perpendicular to the mean magnetic field. The linear transfer due to the constant magnetic also appears to be important in redistributing the energy between the velocity and the magnetic fields.

Empirical measurements of hydrodynamics of swimming fish are very difficult. Therefore, modeling studies may be of great benefit. Here, we investigate the suitability for such a study of a recently developed mesoscale method, namely, multiparticle collision dynamics. As a first step, we confine ourselves to investigations at intermediate Reynolds numbers of objects that are stiff. Due to the lack of empirical data on the hydrodynamics of stiff fishlike shapes we use a previously published numerical simulation of the shapes of a fish and a tadpole for comparison. Because the shape of a tadpole resembles that of a circle with an attached splitter plate, we exploit the knowledge on hydrodynamic consequences of such an attachment to test the model further and study the effects of splitter plates for objects of several shapes at several Reynolds numbers. Further, we measure the angles of separation of flow around a circular cylinder and make small adjustments to the boundary condition and the method to drive the flow. Our results correspond with empirical data and with results from other models.

Experiments have shown that Lagrangian statistics in turbulent flows display Gaussianly distributed velocity values and non-Gaussianly distributed velocity differences or accelerations. Coherent flow structures in the form of vortices have often been proposed to play an important role in this behavior. Here we examine the origin of these statistics using both continuously stirred $n$-body point-vortex simulations and analytic random variable transformation in a simplified model of randomly distributed vortices. We conclude that Lagrangian velocity distributions can be understood in terms of dominant nearest vortex neighbor contributions. Accelerations likewise reflect vortical contributions, but at smallest temporal increment are dominated, not by the motion of the Lagrangian tracers, but by vorticity reconfiguration within the domain.