A key step in the HIV-infection process is the fusion of the virion membrane with the target cell membrane and the concomitant transfer of the viral RNA. Experimental evidence suggests that the fusion is preceded by considerable elastic softening of the cell membranes due to the insertion of fusion peptide in the membrane. What are the mechanisms underpinning the elastic softening of the membra...

The effect of geometric imperfections and viscous damping on the type of nonlinearity i.e., the hardening or softening behaviour of circular plates and shallow spherical shells with free edge is here investigated. The Von Kármán large-deflection theory is used to derive the continuous models. Then, nonlinear normal modes NNMs are used for predicting with accuracy the coefficient, the sign of wh...

A shadow of a numerical solution to a chaotic system is an exact solution to the equations of motion that remains close to the numerical solution for a long time. In a collisionless n-body system, we know that particle motion is governed by the global potential rather than by interparticle interactions. As a result, the trajectory of each individual particle in the system is independently shado...

In N -body simulations of collisionless stellar systems, the forces are softened to reduce the large fluctuations due to shot noise. Softening essentially modifies the law of gravity at r = |xi − xj | smaller than some softening length ǫ. Therefore, the softened forces are increasingly biased for ever larger ǫ, and there is some optimal ǫ which yields the best compromise between reducing the fl...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The best time for surgery after embolization of meningiomas remains unclear. We used the tumor-softening effect of embolization to determine this time. METHODS Forty-two patients with intracranial meningiomas that received more than 50% of their blood supply from the external carotid artery underwent embolization before surgery. The interval between embolization and sur...

Accumulative Roll-Bonding (ARB) is one of the more recently developed techniques capable of producing bulk ultra-fine grained (ufg) metals. There are still many aspects of the behavior of ufg metals that lacks an in-depth understanding, such as a generalized view of the factors that govern the cyclic deformation mechanism(s). This study aims to advance the understanding of the cyclic deformatio...

Relaxor-based ferroelectrics are prized for their giant electromechanical coupling and have revolutionized sensor and ultrasound applications. A long-standing challenge for piezoelectric materials has been to understand how these ultrahigh electromechanical responses occur when the polar atomic displacements underlying the response are partially broken into polar nanoregions (PNRs) in relaxor-b...

The role of the ripening-specific expansin Exp1 protein in fruit softening and cell wall metabolism was investigated by suppression and overexpression of Exp1 in transgenic tomato plants. Fruit in which Exp1 protein accumulation was suppressed to 3% that of wild-type levels were firmer than controls throughout ripening. Suppression of Exp1 protein also substantially inhibited polyuronide depoly...

A review of earlier fluid dynamical calculations with QGP show a softening of the directed flow while with hadronic matter this effect is absent. The effect shows up in the reaction plane as enhanced emission which is orthogonal to the directed flow. Thus, it is not shadowed by the deflected projectile and target. As both of these flow components are in the reaction plane these form an enhanced...