We study light-quark observables by means of dynamical lattice QCD simulations using twisted mass fermions at maximal twist. We employ chiral perturbation theory to describe our data for the pion mass and decay constant. In this way, we extract precise determinations for the low-energy constants of the effective theory as well as for the light-quark mass and the chiral condensate.

We report an unusual electroconvection in the nematic phase of a bent-core liquid crystal. In a voltage-frequency diagram, two frequency regions exhibiting prewavy stripe patterns were found, as reported by Wiant We found that these stripes never show extinction dark when cells were rotated under crossed polarizers. Based on the color interchange in between neighboring stripes by the rotation o...

Several new transmittive bistable twisted nematic liquid display (BTN-LCD) modes are developed. Unlike previous versions, these BTN modes do not require cross polarizers. Experiments confirmed that these modes have high contrast ratio and reasonably high transmittance. The dispersion characteristics of some of these modes are comparable to ordinary waveguiding TN modes. That is, they afford tru...

Cancerous human fibrosarcoma cells undergo collective migration at the edge of their colony by combining mesoscale self-organization and intrinsic handedness, showing how physical interactions alone can lead to biological functionality.

A chiral nematic liquid crystal that is tilted by an angle θi with respect to a substrate is subjected to an ac electric field at frequency ω. The nematic director is found to oscillate azimuthally about the normal to the liquid crystal substrate interface at frequency ω, indicating that a nonzero polarization perpendicular to the molecular tilt plane exists at the interface. The interfacial po...