During a variety of biological and technological processes, biopolymers are simultaneously subject to both confinement and external forces. Although significant efforts have gone into understanding the physics of polymers that are only confined, or only under tension, little work has been done to explore the effects of the interplay of force and confinement. Here, we study the combined effects ...

Waveguides with low confinement loss, low chromatic dispersion, and low nonlinear effects are used in optical communication systems. Optical fibers can also be employed in such systems. Besides optical fibers, photonic crystal fibers are also highly suitable transmission media for optical communication systems. In this paper, we introduce two new designs of index-guiding photonic crystal fiber ...

In this paper, the electronic eigenstates and energy spectra of single and two-interacting electrons confined in a concentric double quantum rings with a perpendicular magnetic field in the presence of         on-center donor and acceptor impurities are calculated using the exact diagonalization method. For a single electron case, the binding energy of on-center donor and acceptor impurities ar...

Many eukaryotic cells undergo frequent shape changes (described as amoeboid motion) that enable them to move forward. We investigate the effect of confinement on a minimal model of amoeboid swimmer. A complex picture emerges: (i) The swimmer's nature (i.e., either pusher or puller) can be modified by confinement, thus suggesting that this is not an intrinsic property of the swimmer. This swimmi...

We have performed experiments on model emulsions of polyisobutylene (PIB) and poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) to quantify the effect of confinement on deformation and stability under flow of droplets and strings (threads). It is known from earlier work from our group that, under confinement, droplets in concentrated emulsions can coalesce with each other and elongate in the flow direction to form...

Hog confinement workers are at high risk to develop chronic bronchitis as a result of their exposure to organic dust. Chronic bronchitis is characterized by inflammatory changes of the airway epithelium. A key mediator in inflammation is Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2). We investigated the role of TLR2 in pulmonary inflammation induced by hog confinement dust. Normal human bronchial epithelial cell...

This study is to understand confinement effect on the dynamical behaviour of a droplet immersed in an immiscible liquid subjected to a simple shear flow. The lattice Boltzmann method, which uses a forcing term and a recolouring algorithm to realize the interfacial tension effect and phase separation respectively, is adopted to systematically study droplet deformation and breakup in confined con...