We revisit the rapid stretching of a liquid filament under the action of a constant imposed tensile force, a problem which was first considered by Matta & Tytus [JNNFM vol. 35, pp 215-229, 1990]. A liquid bridge formed from a viscous Newtonian fluid or from a dilute polymer solution is first established between two cylindrical disks. The upper disk is held fixed and may be connected to a force ...

We solve the stochastic equations for a cluster of parallel bonds with shared constant loading, rebinding, and the completely dissociated state as an absorbing boundary. In the small force regime, cluster lifetime grows only logarithmically with bond number for weak rebinding, but exponentially for strong rebinding. Therefore rebinding is essential to ensure physiological lifetimes. The number ...

Mechanical unfolding and refolding of single RNA molecules have previously been observed in optical traps as sudden changes in molecular extension. Two methods have been traditionally used: "force-ramp", with the applied force continuously changing, and "hopping". In hopping experiments the force is held constant and the molecule jumps spontaneously between two different states. Unfolding/refol...

In this paper, we generalize a result by Rubin and Ungar on Hamiltonian systems with a strong constraining potential to thermally embedded systems, i.e. to Langevin dynamics. Such highly oscillatory systems arise, for example, in the context of molecular dynamics. We derive averaged equations of motion for the slowly varying solution components. This includes in particular the derivation of a c...

Molecular dynamics simulations of a keratin/peptide complex have been conducted to predict the binding affinity of four different peptides toward human hair. Free energy calculations on the peptides' interaction with the keratin model demonstrated that electrostatic interactions are believed to be the main driving force stabilizing the complex. The molecular mechanics-Poisson-Boltzmann surface ...