We analyse a binary mixture of colloidal parallel hard cylindrical particles with identical diameters but dissimilar lengths L(1) and L(2), with s = L(2)/L(1) = 3, confined by two parallel hard walls in a planar slit-pore geometry, using a fundamental-measure density functional theory. This model presents nematic (N) and two types of smectic (S) phases, with first- and second-order N-S bulk tra...

Pneumolysin is a cholesterol-dependent cytolysin (CDC) and virulence factor of Streptococcus pneumoniae. It kills cells by forming pores assembled from oligomeric rings in cholesterol-containing membranes. Cryo-EM has revealed the structures of the membrane-surface bound pre-pore and inserted-pore oligomers, however the molecular contacts that mediate these oligomers are unknown because high-re...

We study pore blockade times for a translocating polymer of length N , driven by a field E across the pore in three dimensions. The polymer performs Rouse dynamics, i.e., we consider polymer dynamics in the absence of hydrodynamical interactions. We find that the typical time the pore remains blocked during a translocation event scales as∼ N /E, where ν ≃ 0.588 is the Flory exponent for the pol...

Clonal BC3H-1 muscle cells were studied using patch-clamp techniques. The structure and ion binding sites of the nicotinic ACh receptor channel were examined by measuring permeability ratios and streaming potentials. The permeability ratio of lithium to ammonium remained constant from 10 to 150 mM. That result indicates there is one primary binding site in the narrowest region of the channel ov...

Design of 3D scaffolds that can facilitate proper survival, proliferation, and differentiation of progenitor cells is a challenge for clinical applications involving large connective tissue defects. Cell migration within such scaffolds is a critical process governing tissue integration. Here, we examine effects of scaffold pore diameter, in concert with matrix stiffness and adhesivity, as indep...

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the characterization of the pore morphologies of reservoir rocks and how the spatial organization of pore geometry affects the macroscopic behaviour of rock-fluid systems. With the availability of highresolution 3D imaging, such as X-ray micro-computed tomography (μ-CT), the detailed quantification of particle shapes has been facilitated by progress ...

The pore size of biopolymer networks governs their mechanical properties and strongly impacts the behavior of embedded cells. Confocal reflection microscopy and second harmonic generation microscopy are widely used to image biopolymer networks; however, both techniques fail to resolve vertically oriented fibers. Here, we describe how such directionally biased data can be used to estimate the ne...

Our paper ‘‘Upscaling geochemical reaction rates using pore-scale network modeling’’ [1] presents a novel application of pore-scale network modeling to upscale mineral dissolution and precipitation reaction rates from the pore scale to the continuum scale, and demonstrates the methodology by analyzing the scaling behavior of anorthite and kaolinite reaction kinetics under conditions related to ...

We simulate molecular transport in elongated hydrothermal pore systems influenced by a thermal gradient. We find extreme accumulation of molecules in a wide variety of plugged pores. The mechanism is able to provide highly concentrated single nucleotides, suitable for operations of an RNA world at the origin of life. It is driven solely by the thermal gradient across a pore. On the one hand, th...

We have produced single, synthetic nanometer-diameter pores by using a tightly focused, high-energy electron beam to sputter atoms in 10-nm-thick silicon nitride membranes. Subsequently, we measured the ionic conductance as a function of time, bath concentration, and pore diameter to infer the conductivity and ionic mobility through the pores. The pore conductivity is found to be much larger th...