I. Santamaría-Holek

The rheology of hard sphere suspensions at arbitrary volume fractions : An improved differential viscosity model

We propose a simple and general model accounting for the dependence of the viscosity of a hard sphere suspension at arbitrary volume fractions. The model constitutes a continuum-medium description based on a recursive-differential method where correlations between the spheres are introduced through an effective volume fraction. In contrast to other differential methods, the introduction of the effective volume fraction as the integration variable implicitly considers interactions between the spheres of the same recursive stage. The final expression for the viscosity scales with this effective volume fraction, which allows constructing a master curve that contains all the experimental situations considered. The agreement of our expression for the viscosity with experiments at low- and high-shear rates and in the high-frequency limit is remarkable for all volume fractions.

Thermodynamics and dynamics of the formation of spherical lipid vesicles.

We propose a free energy expression accounting for the formation of spherical vesicles from planar lipid membranes and derive a Fokker–Planck equation for the probability distribution describing the dynamics of vesicle formation. We find that formation may occur as an activated process for small membranes and as a transport process for sufficiently large membranes. We give explicit expressions for the transition rates and the characteristic time of vesicle formation in terms of the relevant physical parameters.

Some conceptual thoughts toward nanoscale oriented friction in a model of articular cartilage.

This work presents a conceptual framework as to how a deficit in the synovial-fluid content, exemplified by hyaluronan or any other amphiphilic species, is capable of decisively altering the complex lubrication and wear conditions observed clinically in articular cartilage. The effect is revealed in (non)stationary regimes if the cartilage is subjected to some normal periodic load, revealing over its exploitation time increasingly dissipative, in general entropy-addressing, characteristics. It can be hypothesized that a Grotthuss-type proton transport physiology-concerning mechanism in channel-like, phospholipid-water cartilages articulating nanospaces will be responsible for the expression of the lubrication mode. The corresponding wear involving overall change is then manifested adequately in the stationary regime, and in a viable system-parametric correlation with its lubrication counterpart. Certain analytic formulae for the nanoscale oriented coefficient of friction, involving generically H-bonds breaking mechanism, and pointing to some local-viscosity context, have been proposed for fitting the experimental data and clinical observations involving proton management at articular cartilage surfaces.

A non-equilibrium thermodynamics model for combined adsorption and diffusion processesin micro- and nanopores

A non-equilibrium thermodynamics model able to analyze the combined effect of diffusion and adsorption in porous materials is proposed. The model considers the coupled dynamics of the diffusive phase, described by a diffusion type equation, and the adsorbed phase governed by a generalized Langmuir equation. It is shown that the combination of diffusion and adsorption can be treated as diffusion in an effective medium, with an effective diffusion coefficient depending on the characteristics of the adsorption kinetics. The interplay between these effects leads to the appearance of different regimes in which the effective diffusion coefficient exhibits peculiar behaviours such as a decrease due to the presence of the adsorption process and a non-monotonous behavior resulting from particle interactions. We outline applications of the model developed to diffusion in porous materials such as zeolites and bentonites, and to engineered highly porous materials.

Finite-size effects in microrheology

We propose a model to explain finite-size effects in intracellular microrheology observed in experiments. The constrained dynamics of the particles in the intracellular medium, treated as a viscoelastic medium, is described by means of a diffusion equation in which interactions of the particles with the cytoskeleton are modeled by a harmonic force. The model reproduces the observed power law behavior of the mean square displacement in which the exponent depends on the ratio between particle-to-cytoskeleton-network sizes.

Superstatistics of Brownian motion: A comparative study

The dynamics of temperature fluctuations of a gas of Brownian particles in local equilibrium with a nonequilibrium heat bath are described using an approach consistent with Boltzmann–Gibbs (BG) statistics. We use mesoscopic nonequilibrium thermodynamics (MNET) to derive a Fokker–Planck equation for the probability distribution in phase space including the local intensive variables fluctuations. We contract the description to obtain an effective probability distribution (EPD) from which the mass density, van Hoves function and the dynamic structure factor of the system are obtained. The main result is to show that in the long time limit the EPD exhibits a similar behavior as the superstatistics distribution of nonextensive statistical mechanics (NESM), therefore implying that the coarse-graining procedure is responsible for the so-called nonextensive effects.

Generalized Fick–Jacobs Approach for Describing Adsorption–Desorption Kinetics in Irregular Pores under Nonequilibrium Conditions

We present a study exploring the range of applicability of a generalized Fick–Jacobs equation in the case when diffusive mass transport of a fluid along a pore includes chemical reactions in the bulk and pore’s surface. The study contemplates nonequilibrium boundary conditions and emphasizes the comparison between the predictions coming from the projected Fick–Jacobs description and the corresponding predictions of the original two-dimensional mass balance equation, establishing a simple quantitative criterion of validity of the projected description. For the adsorption–desorption process, we demonstrate that the length and the local curvature of the pore are the relevant geometric quantities for its description, allowing for giving very precise predictions of the mass concentration along the pore. Some schematic cases involving adsorption and chemical reaction are used to quantify with detail the concentration profiles in transient and stationary states involving equilibrium and nonequilibrium situations...

Biophysics of Active Vesicle Transport, an Intermediate Step That Couples Excitation and Exocytosis of Serotonin in the Neuronal Soma

Transmitter exocytosis from the neuronal soma is evoked by brief trains of high frequency electrical activity and continues for several minutes. Here we studied how active vesicle transport towards the plasma membrane contributes to this slow phenomenon in serotonergic leech Retzius neurons, by combining electron microscopy, the kinetics of exocytosis obtained from FM1-43 dye fluorescence as vesicles fuse with the plasma membrane, and a diffusion equation incorporating the forces of local confinement and molecular motors. Electron micrographs of neurons at rest or after stimulation with 1 Hz trains showed cytoplasmic clusters of dense core vesicles at 1.5±0.2 and 3.7±0.3 µm distances from the plasma membrane, to which they were bound through microtubule bundles. By contrast, after 20 Hz stimulation vesicle clusters were apposed to the plasma membrane, suggesting that transport was induced by electrical stimulation. Consistently, 20 Hz stimulation of cultured neurons induced spotted FM1-43 fluorescence increases with one or two slow sigmoidal kinetics, suggesting exocytosis from an equal number of vesicle clusters. These fluorescence increases were prevented by colchicine, which suggested microtubule-dependent vesicle transport. Model fitting to the fluorescence kinetics predicted that 52–951 vesicles/cluster were transported along 0.60–6.18 µm distances at average 11–95 nms−1 velocities. The ATP cost per vesicle fused (0.4–72.0), calculated from the ratio of the ΔGprocess/ΔGATP, depended on the ratio of the traveling velocity and the number of vesicles in the cluster. Interestingly, the distance-dependence of the ATP cost per vesicle was bistable, with low energy values at 1.4 and 3.3 µm, similar to the average resting distances of the vesicle clusters, and a high energy barrier at 1.6–2.0 µm. Our study confirms that active vesicle transport is an intermediate step for somatic serotonin exocytosis by Retzius neurons and provides a quantitative method for analyzing similar phenomena in other cell types.

On the protein crystal formation as an interface-controlled process with prototype ion-channeling effect.

A superdiffusive random-walk action in the depletion zone around a growing protein crystal is considered. It stands for a dynamic boundary condition of the growth process and competes steadily with a quasistatic, curvature-involving (thermodynamic) free boundary condition, both of them contributing to interpret the (mainly late-stage) growth process in terms of a prototype ion-channeling effect. An overall diffusion function contains quantitative signatures of both boundary conditions mentioned and indicates whether the new phase grows as an orderly phase or a converse scenario occurs. This situation can be treated in a quite versatile way both numerically and analytically, within a generalized Smoluchowski framework. This study can help in (1) elucidating some dynamic puzzles of a complex crystal formation vs biomolecular aggregation, also those concerning ion-channel formation, and (2) seeing how ion-channel-type dynamics of non-Markovian nature may set properly the pace of model (dis)ordered protein aggregation.

Protein Motors Induced Enhanced Diffusion In Intracellular Transport

Diffusion of transported particles in the intracellular medium is described by means of a generalized diffusion equation containing forces due to the cytoskeleton network and to the protein motors. We find that the enhanced diffusion observed in experiments depends on the nature of the force exerted by the protein motors and on parameters characterizing the intracellular medium which is described in terms of a generalized Debye spectrum for the noise density of states.