NAR: Energetic funnel facilitates facilitated diffusion

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Massimo Cencini has published Energetic funnel facilitates facilitated diffusion in Nucleic Acid Research.

Gene transcription is regulated by proteins – Transcription Factors (TFs) – that by binding to short target sequences are able to promote or impede the binding of RNA-Polymerase (RNAP) and, consequently, activate or repress tran-
scription. Fast and accurate control of gene expression is crucial for many biological functions, and relies on the ability of TFs to rapidly find their transcription factor binding site (TFBS) among a multitude of competing DNA sequences,
and to establish with it a stable complex.… Read the rest

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Macromolecules Editors’ Choice: In Silico Synthesis of Microgel Particles

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Congratulations to Nicoletta Gnan, Lorenzo Rovigatti, Maxime Bergman and Emanuela Zaccarelli whose article In Silico Synthesis of Microgel Particles has been selected as editor’s choice in Macromolecules.… Read the rest

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Dynamic scaling in natural swarms – Nature Physics

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Andrea Cavagna, Daniele Conti, Chiara Creato, Lorenzo Del Castello, Irene Giardina, Tomas S. Grigera, Stefania Melillo, Leonardo Parisi & Massimiliano Viale have published an article on the collective behaviour in biological systems which presents theoretical challenges beyond the borders of classical statistical physics.… Read the rest

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The Nobel laureate Karplus has cited Luccioli

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The 2013 Nobel laureate in Chemistry Prof Martin Karplus has cited in one publication of 2010:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jz1005016

a publication by

Luccioli, Imparato, Torcini, 
“Free energy landscape of mechanically unfolded model proteins: extended Jarzinsky versus inherent structure reconstruction”
Phys. Rev. E. 78 (2008) 031907

reporting the results of the PhD Thesi of Dr Stefano Luccioli. You can download the related pdf by clicking on the link here below.… Read the rest

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Physical realization of the Glauber quantum oscillator

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More than 30 years ago, Glauber theorized the existence of quantum systems to explain the link between the reversible microscopic and irreversible macroscopic scale. The formulation of such model is based on the so-called “rigged Hilbert space” and include irreversibility as a fundamental principle through the introduction of an inverted harmonic oscillator describing quantum amplifier.
The standard quantum mechanics does not forbid time-travel.… Read the rest

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Self-Sustained Density Oscillations of Swimming Bacteria Confined in Microchambers

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Luca Angelani’s paper on Self-Sustained Density Oscillations of Swimming Bacteria Confined in Microchambers reporting the emergence of spontaneous density oscillations of bacteria confined in microchambers connected by thin channels, has been selected for the Cover of Physical Review Letters.

M. Paoluzzi, R. Di Leonardo, and L. Angelani (Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 188303, 2015)

… Read the rest
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Contagion

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Epidemic processes have accumulated over the years a vast amount of research which is coherently reviewed in a comprehensive manner by Claudio Castellano together with Romualdo Pastor-Satorras, Piet Van Mieghem, and Alessandro Vespignani in an article published in Epidemic processes in complex networks Reviews of Modern Physics 87, 925 (31 August 2015)… Read the rest

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Olfactory Navigation

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Pelagic seabirds rely on olfactory maps for oceanic navigation

Seabirds can fly for days across featureless oceans to their preferred feeding locations and then fly back to their nests without getting lost. How they do this has long been a mystery. Now through a careful analysis of their flight patterns, researchers have shown that seabirds navigate using an “odour map”. It seems likely that such maps are common place in the animal kingdom having a role in movements like migrations and finding food.… Read the rest

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Replica Symmetry Breaking

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Experimental evidence of replica symmetry breaking in random lasers

Spin-glass theory is one of the leading paradigms of complex physics and describes condensed matter, neural networks and biological systems, ultracold atoms, random photonics and many other research fields.

According to this theory, identical systems under identical conditions may reach different states. This effect is known as replica symmetry breaking and is revealed by the shape of the probability distribution function of an order parameter named the Parisi overlap.… Read the rest

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Dynamic Coarsening

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Crystal surfaces led out of equilibrium by a growth or erosion process may undergo morphological instabilities and develop distinct structures: ondulations, mounds or pyramids, bunches of steps, ripples.

Emergent pattern may increase in size with time by means of a coarsening process which may continue forever or stop at some relevant length scale.

Paolo Politi’s group has studied the dynamics for three different types of instabilities, stressing the main physical ingredients: kinetic, energetic and athermal instabilities.… Read the rest

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Silent Flocks

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A paper on the collective behaviour of bird flocks, in which a spin wave model is brought to the continuous limit as in fluid elements of a large hydrodynamic system, has been published in Physical Review Letters and it has been the subject of a synopsis in the APS magazine Physics.

Both spin and density waves can propagate throughout flocks, but in some cases their contributions are quickly damped.… Read the rest

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LSIE_2D

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Strain, Lattice, Interactions and Entanglement in novel Two-Dimensional materials

Founding Body: Marie Curie -CIG – Support for training and career development of researcher (CIG)
Total grant: € k
Principal Investigator: Emmanuele Cappelluti
Other participants:
Project duration: 2013-2016
Website: cordis
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Empty Liquids and Equilibrium Gels in a Colloidal Clay

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CNR researchers (CNR-ISC and CNR-IPCF) in collaboration with University La Sapienza and ESRF (Grenoble) have observed a new kind of extremely light and stable gel in a suspension of colloidal clay. The so-called equilibrium gel, predicted 4 years ago by theoretical calculations by members of the same research team for a simplified model[1], could lead to improved drug-delivery systems and other novel microscopic devices.… Read the rest

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