לוח שנה משולב

Despite the importance of tissue microstructure in health and disease, its noninvasive characterization remains a formidable challenge. Signal representations (diffusion/kurtosis tensors) are unspecific while tissue modelling using ideal geometries representing different cellular components have failed when scrutinized vis-à-vis histology: axon diameter, for example, is overestimated by factors of >6. Biophysical models characterizing signal behavior in specific diffusion-weighting regimes (power law scaling in “q” or “t”) have been more recently proposed as more reliable means for characterizing tissues. In recent years, the most prevalent biophysical model for diffusion in tissues was termed the “Standard Model”, consisting of a sum of gaussian components (nearly always two), one of which with zero diffusivity (stick). In the lecture, we will present validity regimes for the standard model and provide evidence for its limits. We will then propose a few novel means for characterizing

Nuclear Pore Complex (NPC) is a biomolecular “nanomachine” that controls nucleocytoplasmic transport in eukaryotic cells. The key component of the functional architecture of the NPC is the assembly of the polymer-like intrinsically disordered proteins that line its passageway and play a central role in the NPC transport mechanism. Due to paucity of experimental methods capable to directly probe the morphology and the dynamics of this assembly in intact NPCs, much of our knowledge about its properties derives from /in vitro/ experiments interpreted through theoretical and computational modeling.
Remarkably, despite their molecular complexity, much of the behavior of these assemblies and their selective permeability with respect to cargo-carrying transport proteins can be understood based on minimal complexity models relying on the statistical physics of molecular assemblies on the nanoscale. I will present the recent insights into the architecture and the dynamics of the NPC arising from the theoretical analysis of the wide range of experimental results.

Solid-state theory has been formulated in the 20th century on the assumptions of regular crystalline lattices where linear dynamics holds at both classical and quantum levels, while dissipative effects are taken into account to perturbative order. While considerable success has been achieved in the further understanding of disorder effects on the electronic properties of solids, the same is not true for the thermal, vibrational and mechanical properties due to the difficulty of reformulating the whole body of lattice dynamics in a non-perturbative way for disordered systems. I will present a formulation of lattice dynamics extended (in a non-perturbative way) to disordered systems, called Nonaffine Lattice Dynamics (NALD), successfully tested on different systems [1-3]. I will then consider the effect of viscous dissipation on the lattice dynamics of crystalline solids and show how dissipation can lead, in perfectly ordered crystals, to effects very similar to disorder-induced effects in glasses. Theory can explain all these surprising effects in perfect crystals as a result of anharmonic damping inducing diffusive modes that compete with propagating modes [4], and also predicts similar effects resulting from low-lying soft optical phonons (experimentally confirmed). This framework may lead to a new quantitative connection between lattice/atomic parameters, electron-phonon coupling and the Tc of superconductors with the possibility, in future work, of rationalizing a variety of experimental data and to provide a more quantitative (less empirical) understanding of how Tc can be varied in conventional and perhaps also more exotic superconductors.
[1] A. Zaccone and E. Scossa-Romano, Phys. Rev. B 83, 184205 (2011). [2] R. Milkus and A. Zaccone, Phys. Rev. B 93, 094204 (2016). [3] V.V. Palyulin, C. Ness, R. Milkus, R.M. Elder, T.W. Sirk, A. Zaccone, Soft Matter 14, 8475 (2018). [4] M. Baggioli and A. Zaccone, arXiv:1810.09516v1 [cond-mat.soft].

Electrostriction is a second order electro-mechanical coupling that exists in all dielectrics. Classical electrostriction describes anharmonic perturbation of the chemical bonds in the lattice, which gives rise to changes in the average position of atoms. It was found that the mechanism of electrostriction in gadolinium doped ceria (CGO) is fundamentally different from that of classical electrostriction, in which high electrostriction goes together with a large dielectric constant. The mechanism of electrostriction in CGO is not known yet. However, the current hypothesis attributes it to rearrangement of local distortions in the fluorite lattice.
This PhD thesis presents investigation of non-classical electrostriction effect in self-supported films of gadolinium doped ceria: dependence of the electrostriction strain coefficient on frequency and magnitude of the electric field and mechanical fatigue in thin films. Using self-supported Al/Ti/CGO/Ti/Al structure, I also identified electro-chemo-mechanical effect, which was previously considered unfeasible actuation mechanism at room temperature. The processes presented in this work provide a technological basis for integrating CGO as an active material in electro-active ceramic MEMS (microelectromechanical system)-actuation devices.