Many eukaryotic cells undergo frequent shape changes (described as amoeboid motion) that enable them to move forward. We investigate the effect of confinement on a minimal model of amoeboid swimmer. A complex picture emerges: (i) The swimmer's nature (i.e., either pusher or puller) can be modified by confinement, thus suggesting that this is not an intrinsic property of the swimmer. This swimmi...

Binding energies of negative sX−d and positive trions sX+d in quantum wires are studied for strong quantum confinement of carriers which results in a numerical exactly solvable model. The relative electron and hole confinement have a strong effect on the stability of trions. For equal hole and electron confinement, X+ is more stable but a small imbalance of the particle confinement towards a st...

Characteristic molecular dynamics of reactant molecules confined in the space of the nanometer scale augments the frequency of collisions with the electrified surface so that a given faradaic reaction can be enhanced at nanoporous electrodes, the so-called nano-confinement effect. Since this effect is grounded on diffusion inside nanopores, it is predicted that adsorption onto the surface will ...

A novel design of Dual-Core Photonic Crystal Fiber (DC-PCF) with silica-air microstructures is proposed in this paper. Nonlinearity and confinement loss of DC-PCF are evaluated by using a Full-Vectorial Finite Element Method (FV-FEM) successfully. By optimizing the geometry of three ring DC-PCFs, a high nonlinearity (52w-1km-1) and low confinement loss (0.001dB/km) can be achieved at 1.55μm wav...

An analytic expression is derived for the distribution G(~ R) of the end-to-end distance ~ R of semiflexible polymers in external potentials to elucidate the effect of confinement on the mechanical and statistical properties of biomolecules. For parabolic confinement the result is exact whereas for realistic potentials a self-consistent ansatz is developed, so that G(~ R) is given explicitly ev...

RNAs are negatively charged molecules that reside in cellular environments with macromolecular crowding. Macromolecular confinement can influence the ion effects in RNA folding. In this work, using the recently developed tightly bound ion model for ion fluctuation and correlation, we investigate the effect of confinement on ion-mediated RNA structural collapse for a simple model system. We find...

Electronic confinement at nanoscale dimensions remains a central means of science and technology. We demonstrate nanoscale lateral confinement of a quasi-two-dimensional electron gas at a lanthanum aluminate-strontium titanate interface. Control of this confinement using an atomic force microscope lithography technique enabled us to create tunnel junctions and field-effect transistors with char...

We perform magnetotransport measurements in lithographically patterned graphene nanoribbons down to a 70 nm width. The electronic spectrum fragments into an unusual Landau levels pattern, characteristic of Dirac fermion confinement. The two-terminal magnetoresistance reveals the onset of magnetoelectronic subbands, edge currents and quantized Hall conductance. We bring evidence that the magneti...