Tubulin acetylation promotes penetrative capacity of cells undergoing radial intercalation.

Post-translational modification of tubulin provides differential functions to microtubule networks. Here, we address the role of tubulin acetylation on the penetrative capacity of cells undergoing radial intercalation, which is the process by which cells move apically, insert between outer cells, and join an epithelium. There are opposing forces that regulate intercalation, namely, the restrictive forces of the epithelial barrier versus the penetrative forces of the intercalating cell.

Why Phonon Scattering in Glasses is Universally Small at Low Temperatures.

We present a novel view of the standard model of tunneling two level systems (TLSs) to explain the puzzling universal value of a quantity, C∼3×10^{-4}, that characterizes phonon scattering in glasses below 1 K as reflected in thermal conductivity, ultrasonic attenuation, internal friction, and the change in sound velocity. Physical considerations lead to a broad distribution of phonon-TLS couplings that (1) exponentially renormalize tunneling matrix elements, and (2) reduce the TLS density of states through TLS-TLS interactions. We find good agreement between theory and experiment for a variety of individual glasses.

Frequency dependence and equilibration of the specific heat of glass-forming liquids.

We have performed molecular dynamics simulations on a glass-forming liquid consisting of a three-dimensional binary mixture of soft spheres. We show that a peak in the specific heat versus temperature can occur because a glassy system that shows no signs of aging progresses so slowly through the energy landscape that the minimum sampling time needed to obtain accurate thermodynamic averages exceeds the observation time. We develop a systematic technique to determine the equilibrium value of the specific heat and the minimum sampling time.

Structural probe of a glass-forming liquid: generalized compressibility.

We introduce a structural quantity to probe the glass transition. This quantity is a linear generalized compressibility which depends solely on the positions of the particles. We have performed a molecular dynamics simulation on a glass-forming liquid consisting of a two-component mixture of soft spheres in three dimensions.