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Latest Research
Soft matter research is going on all around the world. We bring you a selection of the latest research highlights as well as feature articles on classic experiments and papers.
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The Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) School of Soft Matter has been a cornerstone of soft matter research since it was founded in August, 2008. The institute takes advantage of a huge interdisciplinary network of scientists to create novel organic materials with biological characteristics. Liquid crystals, large molecules, polymers, and other biomaterials are engineered to to their environment in a highly selective way.
Many projects, such as the development of microfluidic medical micro-sensors, soft-matter-based nanosystems for drug delivery, production of nano electromechanical systems using DNA origami, bionic chemistry, and the development of micro MR imaging techniques for flat tissues, border on life sciences. Other research foci, such as mechanisms and materials of photosensitive molecular processes, aim to develop more efficient solar cells.
The institute is directed by professors Hermann Grabert and Jan G. Korvink. Dr. Grabert is a theoretical physicist who studies transport in quantum nanostructures. Dr. Korvink is a professor for microsystems engineering and runs the Laboratory for Microsystem Simulation in the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg.
Since 2008, 31 fellows (8 Internal Senior Fellows, 9 Junior Fellows, 13 External Senior Fellows and 1 Honorary Fellow) have worked at the School of Soft Matter Research. Currently, 23 PhD students and postdocs are working on soft matter projects. The scope and velocity of research coming from the group is highlighted by the 360 peer reviewed papers published since 2008, including numerous articles in Science, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Chemistry, Angewandte Chemie Int., PNAS and PRL.
FRIAS reaches out to other Soft Matter research groups and institutes by hosting seminars and conferences, including the Black Forest Focus on Soft Matter series. To date, 59 soft matter seminars have been held with 38 external speakers (of which 32 were international guests) and 21 from Freiburg.
Currently, FRIAS has two post-doctoral positions available. One for a specialist in high throughput nuclear magnetic resonance for small organism in vivo metabolite analysis with Dr. Korvink and the other for a computational biophysicist with expertise in simulation of protein folding and aggregation kinetics, lipid-protein complexes and antibody interactions with Dr. Küst.
Read more about the institute at their website.
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Xiao Chen, Xu Dong, Avraham Be'er, Harry L. Swinney, and H. P. Zhang. PRL 108, 148101 (2012)
Collective motion is an exciting topic in soft matter science. From bird flocks and fish schools that travel in a three dimensions, to bacterial clusters that travel on a flat plain, the principles of collective motion appear to be similar. In this paper, the authors investigated the collective motion of bacteria, B. Subtillus, revealing long range, scale -invariant correlations.
Researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and the University of Texas at Austin determine the position, orientation, and velocity of bacteria in a growing bacterial culture edge by recording videos of the expanding culture. Clusters of bacteria are defined by common direction of motion and spatial proximity.
Correlation lengths of velocity and speed fluctuations within a cluster were found to increase linearly with the spatial size. For a range of cell density and cluster size, the correlation length is shown to be 30% of the spatial size of clusters. These findings along with previous research on bird flocks suggest that long-range scale-invariant correlations may be a general feature in systems exhibiting collective motion. Read more in PRL.
Read more at Physical Review of Letters.
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This text, appropriately named "Foams, Gels, and Other Miracles" gives a broad, fourteen chapter overview of how soft matter science can be seen in everyday life, relating schools of fish, rubber, and even the blood of Saint Januarius to the subject. This approach enables the author to talk in depth on a broad range of subjects. Michael Mitov is Director of Research at CNRS (The National Center for Scientific Research, France) and Head of the Liquid Crystal Group at CEMES (Le Centre d'Elaboration de Matériaux et d'Etudes Structurales) in Toulouse.
The book was translated from French into English by Giselle Weiss and is available from Harvard University Press.
Read more at Harvard University Press.
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edited by Shigeyuki Komura & Takao Ohta (World Scientific)
This 436 page text features seven reviews on the different non-linear behaviors of soft matter. In particular, rheology of polymers and liquid crystals, dynamical properties of Langmuir monolayers at the air/water interface, hydrodynamics of membranes and twisted filaments as well as dynamics of deformable self-propelled particles and migration of biological cells.
Read more about the book online. |
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