Granular materials consist of macroscopic grains, interacting via contact forces, and
unaffected by thermal fluctuations. They are one of a class systems that undergo jamming, ie …

In 1989, Sir Sam Edwards made the visionary proposition to treat jammed granular materials
using a volume ensemble of equiprobable jammed states in analogy to thermal equilibrium …

As an injury heals, an embryo develops or a carcinoma spreads, epithelial cells
systematically change their shape. In each of these processes cell shape is studied …

It is well established that the early malignant tumor invades surrounding extracellular matrix
(ECM) in a manner that depends upon material properties of constituent cells, surrounding …

Arrays of non-interacting nanomagnets are widespread in data storage and processing. As
current technologies approach fundamental limits on size and thermal stability, enhancing …

Sphere packing is an ancient problem. The densest packing is known to be a face-centered
cubic (FCC) crystal, with space-filling fraction ϕ FCC= π/18≈ 0.74. The densest “random …

Each cell comprising an intact, healthy, confluent epithelial layer ordinarily remains
sedentary, firmly adherent to and caged by its neighbors, and thus defines an elemental …

Using x-ray tomography, we experimentally investigate granular packings subject to
mechanical tapping for three types of beads with different friction coefficients. We validate …

The holographic duality has proven successful in linking seemingly unrelated problems in
physics. Recently, intriguing correspondences between the physics of soft matter and gravity …

To explore basin geometry in high-dimensional dynamical systems, we consider a ring of
identical Kuramoto oscillators. Many attractors coexist in this system; each is a twisted …