The amyloid state of polypeptides is a stable, highly organized structural form consisting of laterally associated β-sheet protofilaments that may be adopted as an alternative to the functional, native state. Identifying the balance of forces stabilizing amyloid is fundamental to understanding the wide accessibility of this state to peptides and proteins with unrelated primary sequences, variou...

We examined the formation of a multiply curved meniscus inside rectangular nanochannels, whose width ranges from 50 to 800 nm at a constant height of 200 nm. When the channel width is smaller than approximately 400 nm under partial wetting conditions, a distinct multi-curvature meniscus was observed at the advancing front with an edge disjoined from the wall. In contrast, a typical pre-wetting ...

In this review, the development of low-molecular-weight gelators and polymer-based gelators is described. The driving forces for physical gelation are non-covalent bonds, such as hydrogen bonds, electrostatic interactions, van der Waals interactions and p–p interactions. When gelation occurs, the gelator molecules self-assemble into macromolecule-like aggregates through non-covalent intermolecu...

generally, plasma proteins owe their binding capacity to the presence of aminoacid units which enter into intra- and intermolecular hydrophobic bonding with a diverse range of endo- and exogenous chemical substances. the intermolecular interactions between the hydrophobic areas of drug molecules and those of plasma proteins play an important role in drug-macromolecular complex formation and sta...

Cells sense physical properties of their environment including substratum rigidity, roughness, and topography of recognition sites. The cell surface displays continuous deformations of nanometer-scale amplitude and Hz frequency. Recent results support the hypothesis that these surface undulations constitute a powerful strategy for the rapid acquisition of environmental cues: transient contact w...

In this contribution, we summarize the key ideas of recently developed finite element schemes for fourthorder degenerate parabolic equations like the thin film equation. Our approach is inspired both by the physics to be modeled and by analytical methods used in the theory of these partial differential equations. As a consequence, the scheme preserves non-negativity or positivity of solutions i...

In recent years, considerable attention has focused on biological applications of the atomic force microscope (AFM), in particular on high-resolution imaging of individual biological molecules and on the measurement of molecular forces under near-physiological conditions. The detection of intermolecular forces in the piconewton range has paved the way to investigate details on structural parame...

We have used self-assembled purines and pyrimidines on planar gold surfaces and on gold-coated atomic force microscope (AFM) tips to directly probe intermolecular hydrogen bonds. Electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis (ESCA) and thermal programmed desorption (TPD) measurements of the molecular layers suggested monolayer coverage and a desorption energy of about 25 kcal/mol. Experiments wer...

To probe the microscopic balance of forces close to a moving contact line, the boundary conditions around viscous drops sliding down an inclined plane are investigated. At first, the variation of the contact angle as a function of the scale of analysis is discussed. The dynamic contact angle is measured at a scale of 6 mum all around sliding drops for different volumes and speeds. We show that ...

Small total chirality in the gravitational terms originates from the cancellation of the large rightand left-handed helicity elements. Therefore, the external potential energy for gravity can be very small but finite values, and the distortion of the spacetime axes can occur. That is, gravitational field can originate from the fluctuation of the electromagnetic fields because of the slight pola...