Soft Matter Blog

Congratulations to Leopoldo Gomez (Leiden University, The Netherlands), Shashi Thutupalli (Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Germany) and Yusuke Maeda (The Rockefeller University, USA) for winning the Soft Matter poster prizes at the Gordon-Kenan Research Seminar 2011: Soft Matter Far From Equilibrium.

Left to right: Leopoldo Gomez, Shashi Thutupalli, Yusuke Maeda

The titles of the winning posters were:

• Leopoldo Gomez “Shock Waves in Jammed Solids”
• Shashi Thutupalli “Collective dynamics of swimming emulsions”
• Yusuke Maeda “The Soret effect from molecular separation to nonequilibrium RNA world”

Soft Matter Far From Equilibrium was held at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, NH, USA, on Aug 13-14, 2011. Alexandra Zidovska, Harvard University, chaired the conference. We wish Leopoldo Gomez, Shashi Thutupalli, Yusuke Maeda and Alexandra Zidovska all the best for the future.

Congratulations to Carolina Vannozzi at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, for winning the Soft Matter poster prize at 7th Annual European Rheology Conference in Suzdal, Russia. Carolina Vannozzi’s poster was on “An analytic expression for the disjoining pressure between particle-stabilized fluid-fluid interfaces and composite materials”.

The two Soft Matter runners up were Valery Karbushev at A. V. Topchiev Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis, RAS (TIPS RAS), Moscow, Russia, with his poster “Physical-mechanical and rheological properties of composites based on thermoplastic and nanodiamonds” and Sergey Litvinov at Technical University Munich, Germany with “Smoothed dissipative particle dynamics model for polymer solutions“.

From left to right are Sergey Litvinov, Valery Karbushev and Carolina Vannozzi. Congratulations to all three winners.

Self-folding all-polymer thermoresponsive microcapsules: Partially biodegradable thermoresponsive self-folding capsules capable of controlled capture and release of cells have been created by a team based in Germany. Georgi Stoychev, Nikolay Puretskiy and Leonid Ionov demonstrated the principle using star-like patterned polycaprolactone-poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) bilayers, which reversibly encapsulate/release yeast cells in response to a temperature signal. (Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 3277-3279.)

Read the full article for free until 31st May.

Soft Matter issue 8 is now online. The outside front cover features “Photochromic materials with tunable color and mechanical flexibility” by Hyun-Kwan Yang, A. Evren Özçam, Kirill Efimenko and Jan Genzer (Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 3766-3774).

Highlighted on the inside front cover is the paper “Non-lithographic electrochemical patterning of polypyrrole arrays using single-layered colloidal templates on HOPG surface: effects of electrodeposition time and field-gradient” by Jin Young Park, Pampa Dutta and Rigoberto Advincula (Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 3775-3779)

The issue also includes 5 hot articles.

Emerging Area: Emerging area: biomaterials that mimic and exploit protein motion
William L. Murphy, Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 3679-3688

Communication: “Host–guest” interaction between cyclohexasilane and amphiphilic invertible macromolecules
Ananiy Kohut, Xuliang Dai, Danielle Pinnick, Douglas L. Schulz and Andriy Voronov, Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 3717-3720

Communication: Extraordinary long range order in self-healing non-close packed 2D arrays
Stefan B. Quint and Claudia Pacholski, Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 3735-3738

Communication: Universal soft matter template for photonic applications
Luciano De Sio, Sameh Ferjani, Giuseppe Strangi, Cesare Umeton and Roberto Bartolino, Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 3739-3743

Communication: Compartment size dependence of performance of polymerase chain reaction inside giant vesicles
Koh-ichiroh Shohda, Mieko Tamura, Yoshiyuki Kageyama, Kentaro Suzuki, Akira Suyama and Tadashi Sugawara, Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 3750-3753

The back cover showcases the work of S. Torquato, Chase E. Zachary and F. H. Stillinger. Duality relations for the classical ground states of soft-matter systems (Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 3780-3793). You can read the full issue here. I hope you enjoy it.