The main motivation for “hierarchical biomechanics” is that the wide variability of mechanical
properties encountered at the macroscopic scale may be traced back to just a few …

We report on the interplay between creep and residual stresses in a carbopol microgel.
When a constant shear stress σ is applied below the yield stress σ y, the strain is shown to …

Power law rheology is of widespread occurrence in complex materials that are characterized
by the presence of a very broad range of microstructural length and time scales. Although …

Folded protein hydrogels are prime candidates as tuneable biomaterials but it is unclear to
what extent their mechanical properties have mesoscopic, as opposed to molecular origins …

In epithelial tissues, cells tightly connect to each other through cell–cell junctions, but they
also present the remarkable capacity of reorganizing themselves without compromising …

Cancer cells consistently exhibit decreased stiffness; however, the onset and progression of
this change have not been characterized. To study the development of cell stiffness …

The defense mechanism of hagfish slime is remarkable considering that hagfish cannot
control the concentration of the resulting gel directly; they simply exude a concentrated …

Folded protein hydrogels are prime candidates as tuneable biomaterials but it is unclear to
what extent their mechanical properties have mesoscopic, as opposed to molecular origins …

Fractional viscoelastic models provide an excellent description of rheological data for
polymer systems with power-law behavior. However, the physical interpretation of their …

We analyse the rheological behaviour of the generalised Maxwell and Kelvin-Voigt models
with a power law spectrum of relaxation or retardation times, ${\cal H}\sim 1/\tau^{\alpha} …