The stability of sand castles is determined by the structure of wet granulates. Experimental data on the size distribution of fluid pockets are ambiguous with regard to their origin. We discovered that contact-angle hysteresis plays a fundamental role in the equilibrium distribution of bridge volumes, and not geometrical disorder as commonly conjectured. This has substantial consequences on the...

Oxygen is an essential part of the living organism. It is transported from blood to the body tissue by the systematic circulation and large part of it is stored in the blood flowing in capillaries. In this work we discuss a mathematical model for oxygen transport in tissues. The governing equations are established assuming that the blood is flowing along a co-axial cylindrical capillary inside ...

On the basis of his observations on the occurrence of characteristic caveolae and vesicles within the capillary endothelium, PALADE (1953) proposed an original hypothesis that substances are transported through the capillary endothelium enclosed in these vesicular structures which were presumed to move rapidly. The mechanism of "vesicular transport" was later named cytopempsis by MOORE and RUSK...

Brain capillary endothelial cells play an important role in ion homeostasis of the brain through the transendothelial transport of Na and K. Since little is known about the regulation of ion transport in these cells, we determined the effect of extracellular potassium concentration ([K]o) on the kinetics of the Na,K-pump in isolated cerebral microvessels using both K uptake and Na efflux as mea...

The presence of surfactants may have profound effects on the transport of organic contaminants in multiphase systems. It is a common practice, however, to model the subsurface migration of liquids independently of the aqueous phase composition. As such, transport in these systems may not be adequately characterized. This study investigates the impact of pH on interfacial tension, wettability, a...

Insulin, at physiological concentrations, regulates the volume of microvasculature perfused within skeletal and cardiac muscle. It can also, by relaxing the larger resistance vessels, increase total muscle blood flow. Both of these effects require endothelial cell nitric oxide generation and smooth muscle cell relaxation, and each could increase delivery of insulin and nutrients to muscle. The ...

Inherent in the remote organ injury caused by sepsis is a profound maldistribution of microvascular blood flow. Using a 24-h rat cecal ligation and perforation model of sepsis, we studied O(2) transport in individual capillaries of the extensor digitorum longus (EDL) skeletal muscle. We hypothesized that erythrocyte O(2) saturation (SO(2)) levels within normally flowing capillaries would provid...

Oxygen is an essential part of the living organism. It is transported from blood to the body tissue by the systematic circulation and large part of it is stored in the blood flowing in capillaries. In this work we discuss a mathematical model for oxygen transport in tissues. The governing equations are established assuming that the blood is flowing along a co-axial cylindrical capillary inside ...