Nucleation processes are at the heart of a large number of phenomena, from cloud formation to protein crystallization. A recently emerging area where nucleation is highly relevant is the initiation of filamentous protein self-assembly, a process that has broad implications in many research areas ranging from medicine to nanotechnology. As such, spontaneous nucleation of protein fibrils has rece...

Nucleation plays an important role in various contexts ranging from formation of atmospheric aerosols to material processing. A quantitative description of these processes often requires an accurate estimate on the rate of nucleation as an input. Classical nucleation theory has been used extensively in practice to predict this quantity. The essential content of classical theory is as follows. T...

In most of the constraint-based approaches to planning, the problem is unfolded over a given number of steps. Because this unfolded CSP encoding is very time and memory consuming, we propose on top of the CNT framework (Constraint Networks on Timelines) a more efficient slice CSP encoding which allows only a limited number of steps to be considered at each step of the search.

When the nucleation of a stable crystalline phase directly in a supersaturated old phase is greatly retarded, the crystal nuclei might nucleate within faster-forming particles of an intermediate phase. Here we present a theoretical investigation of the kinetics of this two-step nucleation of crystals and derive general expressions for the time dependence of the number of crystals nucleated with...

Systematic measurements and analyses of surface nucleation and growth of l-cordierite on diamond-polished surfaces and on fractured surfaces of cordierite glasses containing 0.3, 1.2, 3.4, 6.2 and 8.1 wt% TiO2 were carried out. All the glasses exhibit surface nucleation, however, the glass having 8.1 wt% TiO2 also exhibits volume nucleation. The maximum surface nucleation rate is located at a t...

We built a cryogenic nucleation pulse chamber for measuring homogeneous nucleation rates of argon. First measurements show that the growth rate of argon droplets at nucleation conditions is rather high so that nucleation and growth could not yet be decoupled. Nevertheless, the experiments permit an estimate of the onset of nucleation corresponding to a nucleation rate of J=10(7(+/-2)) cm(-3) s(...

The effect of an externally applied high frequency oscillating electric field on the critical nucleation field of superconductivity in the bulk as well as at the surface of a superconductor is investigated in details in this work. Starting from the linearized time dependent Ginzburg-Landau (TDLG) theory and using the variational principle we have shown the analogy between a quantum harmonic osc...

Crystal size distribution (CSD) in metamorphic rocks provide fundamental information about crystal nucleation and growth rate, growth time and the degree of overstepping. CSD data for garnet, staurolite, kyanite and andalusite crystals from the aureole demonstrate that the earliest formed of these minerals, garnet, has the highest population density and the shortest growth time. The last formed...

Microtubules are intrinsically polar structures. A consequence of this polarity is that the two ends of the microtubule polymer exhibit different properties. The more dynamic plus ends and the mechanisms that regulate their behavior have been the focus of much recent attention. Here, we concentrate on the dynamics and regulation of minus ends, which play distinct but equally critical roles in m...