A long-lasting challenge in comparative physiology is to understand why the efficiency of the mechanical work done to maintain locomotion increases with body mass. It has been suggested that this is due to a more elastic step in larger animals. Here, we show in running, hopping and trotting animals, and in human running during growth, that the resonant frequency of the bouncing system decreases...

DNA-binding proteins (DBPs) rapidly search and specifically bind to their target sites on genomic DNA in order to trigger many cellular regulatory processes. It has been suggested that the facilitation of search dynamics is achieved by combining 3D diffusion with one-dimensional sliding and hopping dynamics of interacting proteins. Although, recent studies have advanced the knowledge of molecul...

The motion of one molecule on a surface can cause the subsequent motion of another molecule, and so on in a cascade of molecular motion. We call such an engineered motion a “molecule cascade”. A molecule cascade is similar to a row of toppling dominoes. It offers a unique chance to study the physical mechanism of hopping molecules as well as interesting applications for information transport an...

Free-standing serum-albumin mats can transport protons over millimetre length-scales. The results of photoinduced proton transfer and voltage-driven proton-conductivity measurements, together with temperature-dependent and isotope-effect studies, suggest that oxo-amino-acids of the protein serum albumin play a major role in the translocation of protons via an "over-the-barrier" hopping mechanis...

Allosteric regulation is often viewed as thermodynamic in nature. However protein internal motions during an enzymatic reaction cycle can be slow hopping processes over numerous potential barriers. We propose that regulating molecules may function by modifying the nonequilibrium protein dynamics. The theory predicts that an enzyme under the new mechanism has different temperature dependence, wa...

We induce dramatic changes in the structure of conducting polymer nanofibers by carbonization at 800 °C and compare charge transport properties between carbonized and pristine nanofibers. Despite the profound structural differences, both types of systems display power law dependence of current with voltage and temperature, and all measurements can be scaled into a single universal curve. We ana...

We report on the mechanism of hopping for bound excitons under an energy gradient. By means of a Monte-Carlo simulation, we show that this mechanism explains the movement of bound excitons observed experimentally. We show that the speed of the excitons decreases quickly with temperature. Thanks to an effective medium approximation, we deduce an analytical model to estimate the average speed at ...

The transmission electron microscopy images of in situ prepared multiwall carbon nanotubes MWNTs and polyaniline PANI composites show that nanotubes are well dispersed in aqueous medium, and the nanofibers of PANI facilitate intertube transport. Although low temperature transport indicates variable range hopping VRH mechanism, the dc and ac conductivity become temperature independent as the MWN...

Based on the accurate identification of chemical structures as electric elements, we described charge transport mechanism in a DNA molecule by a stepwise LC oscillatory circuitry, in which every base pair is a capacitor, every phosphate bridge is an inductor, and every deoxyribose is a charge router. The circuit model agrees with established experimental evidence that has supported super-exchan...