Soft Matter Blog

Soft Matter is excited to announce an open call for submissions to themed collection on ‘Food as soft matter’

Guest Edited by Associate Professor Vivek Sharma (University of Illinois Chicago, USA), this themed collection invites contributions in form of articles, communications, reviews and perspectives aimed at understanding and analysing food as soft matter and molecular gastronomy: the physicochemical basis for designing foods. Imagine bread, butter, wine, cheese, ice cream, chocolates, mayo, frothy beers, milk, yogurt, sushi, meats, cotton candy, burgers, fondue, chips, cookies, cakes, and champagne. Contributors are requested to use the lens of soft matter and present their original research efforts that dive into the science of cooking and molecular gastronomy, food production, processing, and consumption by highlighting concepts from statistical thermodynamics, macromolecular and soft matter physics, interfacial science, fluid mechanics and rheology (science of deformation & flow). Many food materials are rheologically-complex fluids that can be modelled as multicomponent colloidal dispersions with a continuous liquid phase containing dispersed proteins, polysaccharides, drops, bubbles, particles, and self-assembled structures (like micelles). Contributors are encouraged to discuss the influence of the dispersed and the continuous phases and of ingredients like salt, sugar, fat, animal proteins, and gluten on stability, microstructure, rheology, and heuristic properties like dispensing behaviour, stickiness, thickening, stringiness, softness, creaminess, mouthfeel, texture, foamability, and chewability. The Guest Editor’s focus is on curating an anthology and a landmark collection of original papers and reviews that place significant emphasis on understanding current foods to develop the roadmap for sustainable, cost-effective, healthier, and tasteful alternatives, including meat and dairy alternatives with plant-based ingredients.

Submissions open until 1 July 2023

If you wish to submit to the collection, please contact softmatter-rsc@rsc.org 

Submissions to the journal should fit within the scope of Soft Matter – Please see the journal website for more information on the journal’s scope, standards, article types and author guidelines. All submissions will be subject to initial assessment by the journal Associate Editors and are subject to the journal’s standard rigorous peer review procedures, as such we cannot guarantee peer review or acceptance in the journal. Accepted manuscripts will be added to the online collection as soon as they are online and they will be published in a regular issue of Soft Matter.

Guest Editors Anand Mishra (Cornell University, USA), Zhihong Nie (Fudan University, China), Jamie Paik (EPFL, Switzerland) and Rob Shepherd (Cornell University, USA) would like to extend an invitation to all researchers working on the forefront of soft robotics, to contribute an article of their work to an exciting upcoming themed collection of Soft Matter, dedicated to advanced materials and processes for soft robotics.

Submissions are open from now until 8 June 2022

This collection will include, but is not limited to, printable materials for soft robotics, elastomeric and hydrogel actuators, soft sensing materials and devices, bioinspired soft materials/robots, multifunctional soft robots, advanced manufacturing of soft robots, dynamic behaviours of soft robots, energy for soft robotics and experimental protocols, functionality and performance.

If you wish to submit to the collection, please contact softmatter-rsc@rsc.org to receive a personal submission link.

Please note all manuscripts must be within scope for the journal and will be subject to the journal’s standard rigorous peer review procedures, managed by the journal editors.

Accepted manuscripts will be added to the online collection as soon as they are online and they will be published in a regular issue of Soft Matter.

If you have any questions, please contact us at softmatter-rsc@rsc.org

We are very pleased to announce the Soft Matter special collection on Force transmission by nonlinear biomaterials.

This collection focuses on a wide variety of non-linear mechanical phenomena in biological contexts and how they arise from the underlying fibrous structure of different biomaterials. The Guest Editors for this collection are:

• Professor Yair Shokef (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
• Professor Xiaoming Mao (University of Michigan, USA)

All of the articles are FREE to access until 24 January 2022

Read the following selection of articles from the collection:

Quantifying the link between local structure and cellular rearrangements using information in models of biological tissues
By Indrajit Tah, Tristan Sharp, Andrea Liu and Daniel Sussman

Harnessing biomimetic cryptic bonds to form self-reinforcing gels
By Santidan Biswas, Victor Yashin and Anna Balazs

Viscoelasticity of 3D actin networks dictated by the mechanochemical characteristics of cross-linkers
By X. Wei, C. Fang, B. Gong, J. Yao, J. Qian and Y. Lin

Inverse method based on 3D nonlinear physically constrained minimisation in the framework of traction force microscopy
By J. A. Sanz-Herrera, J. Barrasa-Fano, M. Cóndor and H. Van Oosterwyck

Read the full collection here

Guest Editors Drs Tanmay Lele (Texas A&M University, USA) and Anna Taubenberger (TU Dresden, Germany) would like to extend an invitation to all researchers working on the forefront of soft matter and cancer research, to contribute an article of their work to an exciting upcoming special collection of Soft Matter, dedicated to the soft matter aspects of cancer.

Submissions are open from now until 15 November 2021.

This collection will include, but is not limited to, cancer cell mechanics, mechanobiology, tissue mechanics and bioengineered models of cancer. We are happy to consider emerging technologies in the field, and both experimental and theoretical studies are welcomed.

If you wish to submit to the collection, please contact softmatter-rsc@rsc.org to receive a personal submission link.

Please note all manuscripts must be within scope for the journal and will be subject to the journal’s standard rigorous peer review procedures, managed by the journal editors.

Accepted manuscripts will be added to the online collection as soon as they are online and they will be published in a regular issue of Soft Matter.

If you have any questions, please contact us at softmatter-rsc@rsc.org

This week’s issue of Soft Matter is our 2019 Emerging Investigators issue, which contains articles from soft matter researchers in the early stages of their independent careers and is accompanied by an Editorial from Editor-in-Chief Professor Darrin Pochan. To celebrate this issue we are delighted to feature the profile of Professor Anderson Shum, who published in our 2017 Emerging Investigators issue. Below, Anderson talks about his research journey, from student to Associate Professor, and his feelings towards Soft Matter!

 “I started my scientific career as a student working on photocatalysis of titanium in the summer at Technion after my high school, and assembly of surfactants onto metallic substrates during my undergraduate studies at Princeton. All of these helped cultivate a deep interest in topics relevant to Soft Matter. I was initially excited by soft matter areas because of the pretty microscopic pictures that you can see. Afterwards, I was intrigued by the set of tools that emerge, such as microfluidics, for manipulating soft matter systems. Recently, I am becoming more convinced how findings in soft matter can benefit a plethora of applications, ranging from food to biomedicine.

The journal, Soft Matter, addresses all of these interesting topics, and reports the latest discoveries and applications, always showcasing some fascinating pictures and explaining new science in an easy-to-understand manner. The articles often contain very illustrative figures and schematics that elucidate an otherwise difficult concept to understand. Soft Matter sets itself apart from many journals, as it can be a relaxing and enjoyable read. Currently, most, if not all, of my research hinges on some aspects of soft matter science, probably because of its ability to keep the interests of mine and my students’ high.“

Read Anderson’s Soft Matter papers below!

1. Coalescence of electrically charged liquid marbles Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 119-124 (Emerging Investigators 2017 Issue)

2. Partitioning-dependent conversion of polyelectrolyte assemblies in an aqueous two-phase system Soft Matter, 2018, 14, 1552-1558

3. Capillary micromechanics for core–shell particles Soft Matter, 2014, 10, 3271-3276

4. Engineering polymeric composite particles by emulsion-templating: thermodynamics versus kinetics Soft Matter, 2013, 9, 9780-9784

These articles are all  FREE to read and download until the 20^th March

Biography

Anderson Ho Cheung Shum received his B.S.E. degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University, S.M. and Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard University. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Biomedical Engineering Programme in the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include microfluidics, microscaled fluid flows, emulsion-templated materials and soft matter.

 Anderson was a HK nominee for the 2017 APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (ASPIRE Prize), and an awardee for the Early Career Award by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong in 2012, HKU Outstanding Young Researcher Award 2016-17, silver medal in 46th International Exhibition of Inventions (Geneva, Switzerland) in 2018 and IEEE Nanomed 2018 New Innovator in 2018. He was selected to join The Royal Society of Chemistry as a fellow in 2017 and The Young Academy of Science of Hong Kong as a founding member in 2018. He is a top 1% scholar by Clarivate Analytics’s Essential Science Indicators in 2018. He is an Associate Editor for Biomicrofluidics (American Institute of Physics (AIP), starting January 2019), Editorial Board member for Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) and an Editorial Advisory Board member for Lab-on-a-Chip (Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)).

This week’s issue of Soft Matter is our 2019 Emerging Investigators issue, which contains articles from soft matter researchers in the early stages of their independent careers and is accompanied by an Editorial from Editor-in-Chief Professor Darrin Pochan. In order to celebrate this issue, we are delighted to feature the profile of Professor LaShanda Korley, who published in our 2017 Emerging Investigators issue. Below, LaShanda discusses her research from the issue and how it fits into her overall research interests.

“Biomimicry is the underlying theme of my research program. We apply bio-inspired principles towards the design of responsive and mechanically-tunable polymeric systems.  This strategy is highly interdisciplinary, integrating many aspects of soft matter chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering.   Soft Matter is an ideal publication platform for this research, from the unique scope of the journal to the breadth of reviewer expertise. In the 2017 Emerging Investigator issue, hygromorphic, bilayer actuator composites inspired by seed pods were highlighted, combining concepts of interfacial assembly, transport, and manufacturing in active and passive soft components.¹ This fundamental investigation was translated to the design of hygromorphic materials with aligned, active elements for controlled actuation.² Other biomimetic avenues explored by my research team have also been published in Soft Matter, including peptide hybrid materials,³ templating in multilayered films⁴, and molecular gel assembly in polymer composites.⁵  As Director of the NSF PIRE: Bio-inspired Materials and Systems, I also lead an interdisciplinary team of US and Swiss researchers that are inspired by natural materials, such as the sea cucumber, caddisfly silk, and the extracellular matrix, towards the design of dynamic and tunable materials for soft robotics.”

Read LaShanda’s Soft Matter papers below!

1. Tunable hygromorphism: structural implications of low molecular weight gels and electrospun nanofibers in bilayer composites Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 283-291 (Emerging Investigators 2017 Issue)

2. Programming shape and tailoring transport: advancing hygromorphic bilayers with aligned nanofibers Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 5589 – 5596

3. Enhanced mechanical pathways through nature’s building blocks: amino acids Soft Matter, 2012, 8, 11431-11442

4. Thin film confinement of a spherical block copolymer via forced assembly co-extrusion Soft Matter, 2013, 9, 4381-4385

5. Mechanical enhancement via self-assembled nanostructures in polymer nanocomposites Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 2449 – 2455

These papers are all currently FREE to read and download until 20th March

Biography
LaShanda T.J. Korley recently joined the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware as a Distinguished Associate Professor.  Previously, she held the Climo Associate Professorship of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, where she started her independent career in 2007. Her research program involves utilizing design rules from Nature in the development of mechanically-enhanced and tunable materials. She is the PI of the NSF PIRE: Bio-inspired Materials and Systems.

She received a B.S. in both Chemistry & Engineering from Clark Atlanta University, and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1999.  Dr. Korley completed her Ph.D. at MIT in Chemical Engineering and the Program in Polymer Science and Technology in 2005. LaShanda Korley was a Provost’s Academic Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Soft Matter is pleased to present this collection on electrostatics and soft matter, in memory of Per Linse, a prominent researcher who made many key contributions within the field of soft matter electrostatics and polyelectrolytes.

The collection is Guest Edited by Christos Likos (University of Vienna, Austria) and Joakim Stenhammar (Lund University, Sweden), and their Editorial for the collection is available here.

The full collection contains contributions from many of Per’s former colleagues, as well as other leaders in the field and we have highlighted some of these articles below:

Hunting mermaids in real space: known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns
C. Patrick Royall
Soft Matter, 2018,14, 4020-4028
DOI: 10.1039/C8SM00400E, Review

Concentration-dependent swelling and structure of ionic microgels: simulation and theory of a coarse-grained model
Tyler J. Weyer and Alan R. Denton
Soft Matter, 2018,14, 4530-4540
DOI: 10.1039/C8SM00799C, Paper

Field-induced dipolar attraction between like-charged colloids
Chunyu Shih, John J. Molina and Ryoichi Yamamoto
Soft Matter, 2018,14, 4520-4529
DOI: 10.1039/C8SM00395E, Paper

Hydrodynamic simulations of charge-regulation effects in colloidal suspensions
Kyohei Takae and Hajime Tanaka
Soft Matter, 2018, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C8SM00579F, Paper

Making strong polyelectrolyte brushes pH-sensitive by incorporation of gold nanoparticles

D. Boyaciyan, P. Krause and R. von Klitzing
Soft Matter, 2018,14, 4029-4039
DOI: 10.1039/C8SM00411K, Paper

Strong-coupling theory of counterions between symmetrically charged walls: from crystal to fluid phases
Ladislav Šamaj, Martin Trulsson and Emmanuel Trizac
Soft Matter, 2018,14, 4040-4052
DOI: 10.1039/C8SM00571K, Paper