As I walked into an unassuming hotel restaurant in Chicago during the ALA Annual Conference June, had my eyes peeled for a colleague was meeting. Instead, spotted icon. Quickly glancing to right, spot woman who looks just like Judy Blume, enjoying coffee at quiet table. Upon finding tablemates around corner, silently squealed, “Is that Blume?”

We consider the classical problem of the stick-slip dynamics observed when peeling a roller adhesive tape at a constant velocity. From fast imaging recordings, we extract the dependence of the stick and slip phase durations on the imposed peeling velocity and peeled ribbon length. Predictions of Maugis and Barquins [in Adhesion 12, edited by K. W. Allen, Elsevier ASP, London, 1988, pp. 205-222]...

Double-stranded DNA is a dynamic molecule whose structure can change depending on conditions. While there is consensus in the literature about many structures DNA can have, the state of highly-stretched DNA is still not clear. Several groups have shown that DNA in the torsion-unconstrained B-form undergoes an "overstretching" transition at a stretching force of around 65 pN, which leads to appr...

Despite successful fabrication of gecko-inspired fibrillar surfaces with strong adhesion forces, how to achieve an easy-removal property becomes a major concern that may restrict the wide applications of these bio-inspired surfaces. Research on how geckos detach rapidly has inspired the design of novel adhesive surfaces with strong and reversible adhesion capabilities, which relies on further f...

Solution processibility is a unique advantage of organic semiconductors, permitting the low-cost production of flexible electronics under ambient conditions. However, the solution affinity to substrate surfaces remains a serious dilemma; liquid manipulation is more difficult on highly hydrophobic surfaces, but the use of such surfaces is indispensable for improving device characteristics. Here ...

Food appearance sets intentions and expectations. When designing packaged food much attention is devoted to packaging elements like color shape, but less the characteristics of images used. To our awareness, no study has yet investigated how shown on package affects consumers’ preferences. Often, orange juice packages depict an orange. Juiciness being one most important parameters assess orange...

We consider adhesion due to London-van der Waals attraction between a thin film and a patterned surface with nanometer asperities. Depending on the surface topography and the stiffness of the film, three regimes of adhesion are identified: complete contact adhesion, partial contact adhesion, and glassy adhesion. For complete contact adhesion, the film conforms to the undulations of the surface,...

We consider the inverse problem of the identification of a piecewiseconstant conductivity in a bar given the extra information of the heat flux through one end of the bar. Our theoretical results show that such an identification is unique. This approach utilizes a ”layer peeling” argument. A computational algorithm based on this method is proposed and implemented. The advantage of this algorith...