We have determined the mechanical anisotropy of a single microtubule by simultaneously measuring the Young's and the shear moduli in vitro. This was achieved by elastically deforming the microtubule deposited on a substrate tailored by electron-beam lithography with a tip of an atomic force microscope. The shear modulus is 2 orders of magnitude lower than the Young's, giving rise to a length-de...

Static and dynamic deformabilities of erythrocytes are important determinants of microcirculatory blood flow. To determine the influence of increased cellular hemoglobin concentration on these properties, we quantitated static and dynamic deformabilities of isolated subpopulations of oxygenated normal and sickle erythrocytes with defined cell densities using micromechanical manipulations of ind...

From Landau-Alexander-McTague theory and Monte-Carlo simulation results we show that the modulated liquid obtained by subjecting a colloidal system to a periodic laser modulation has long range bond-orientational order and non-zero shear rigidity. From infinite field simulation results we show that in the modulated liquid phase, the translational order parameter correlation function decays to z...

The meanfield equations for α > 1, and ∆0 < ∆c admit three lines of transitions which end at a critical point (Rc,∆c). These lines are defined by Rt(∆0), RDST (∆0), and Rm(∆0) in descending order of magnitude (Fig.1(a) in main text). The line Rt(∆0), marks the transition from a single solution, M(H = 0) = 0, for R > Rt(∆0) to multiple solutions for M(H = 0), whereas the line Rm(∆0) marks the tr...

Micropipette aspiration tests on single erythrocytes have previously shown that the static rigidity (membrane shear modulus) of oxygenated sickle cells increased with increasing hemoglobin concentration, whereas the rigidity of normal cells was independent of hemoglobin concentration. Moreover, it was observed that after mechanical extension, sickle cells exhibited persistent deformation more f...

Two models, one random the other periodic, are described which exhibit splay rigidity but are not rigid with respect to compression. The random model is based on a periodic lattice of rhombuses whose sides consist of central-force springs, which is perturbed in the following way: rhombuses can have diagonal central force struts with probability y or they can have one of the horizontal springs r...