Living systems operate far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Enzymatic activity can induce
broken detailed balance at the molecular scale. This molecular scale breaking of detailed …

In microrheology, the local and bulk mechanical properties of a complex fluid are extracted
from the motion of probe particles embedded within it. In passive microrheology, particles …

Research on soft materials, including colloidal suspensions, glasses, pastes, emulsions,
foams, polymer networks, liquid crystals, granular materials, and cells, has captured the …

Particle tracking is a powerful biophysical tool that requires conversion of large video files
into position time series, ie, traces of the species of interest for data analysis. Current …

We propose a hopping mechanism for diffusion of large nonsticky nanoparticles subjected to
topological constraints in both unentangled and entangled polymer solids (networks and …

We use scaling theory to derive the time dependence of the mean-square displacement⟨ Δ r
2⟩ of a probe nanoparticle of size d experiencing thermal motion in polymer solutions and …

The field of microrheology is concerned with how materials store and dissipate mechanical
energy as a function of length scale. Recent developments in the theory and instrumentation …

Particle tracking techniques are often used to assess the local mechanical properties of cells
and biological fluids. The extracted trajectories are exploited to compute the mean-squared …

Soft microgel particles inherently possess qualities of both polymers as well as particles. We
review the similarities and differences between soft microgel particles and stiff colloids at …

Current protocols to encapsulate cells within physical hydrogels require substantial changes
in environmental conditions (pH, temperature, or ionic strength) to initiate gelation. These …