Self-organized dynamics and the transition to turbulence of confined active nematics.

We study how confinement transforms the chaotic dynamics of bulk microtubule-based active nematics into regular spatiotemporal patterns. For weak confinements in disks, multiple continuously nucleating and annihilating topological defects self-organize into persistent circular flows of either handedness. Increasing confinement strength leads to the emergence of distinct dynamics, in which the slow periodic nucleation of topological defects at the boundary is superimposed onto a fast procession of a pair of defects.

Insensitivity of active nematic liquid crystal dynamics to topological constraints.

Confining a liquid crystal imposes topological constraints on the orientational order, allowing global control of equilibrium systems by manipulation of anchoring boundary conditions. In this article, we investigate whether a similar strategy allows control of active liquid crystals. We study a hydrodynamic model of an extensile active nematic confined in containers, with different anchoring conditions that impose different net topological charges on the nematic director.

Erratum: Room-temperature serial crystallography using a kinetically optimized microfluidic device for protein crystallization and on-chip X-ray diffraction. Corrigendum.

The name of one of the authors in the article by Heymann et al. [(2014), IUCrJ, 1, 349-360] is corrected.[This corrects the article DOI: 10.