Mesoscale modelling of droplets' self-assembly in microfluidic channels

A recently proposed mesoscale approach for the simulation of multicomponent flows with near-contact interactions is employed to investigate the early stage formation and clustering statistics of soft flowing crystals in microfluidic channels. Specifically, we first demonstrate the ability of the aforementioned mesoscale model to accurately reproduce main mechanisms leading to the formation of two basic droplet patterns (triangular and hexagonal), in close agreement with experimental evidence.

Modeling the Effect of High Calorie Diet on the Interplay between Adipose Tissue, Inflammation, and Diabetes

Background. Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a chronic metabolic disease potentially leading to serious widespread tissue damage. Human organism develops T2D when the glucose-insulin control is broken for reasons that are not fully understood but have been demonstrated to be linked to the emergence of a chronic inflammation. Indeed such low-level chronic inflammation affects the pancreatic production of insulin and triggers the development of insulin resistance, eventually leading to an impaired control of the blood glucose concentration.

Treatment with a Probiotic Mixture Containing Bifidobacterium animalis Subsp. Lactis BB12 and Enterococcus faecium L3....

Background: Probiotics may prevent the allergic response development due to their antiinflammatory and immunomodulatory effects. The aim of this study is to determine if the prophylactic treatment with a mixture of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. Lactis BB12 and Enterococcus faecium L3 would reduce symptoms and need for drug use in children with allergic rhinitis (AR). Methods: The study included 250 children aged from 6 to 17 years, affected by AR. Patients were randomly assigned to the intervention group (150) or to the placebo group (100).

Gravitational spin-orbit coupling in binary systems, post-Minkowskian approximation, and effective one-body theory

A novel approach for extracting gauge-invariant information about spin-orbit coupling in gravitationally interacting binary systems is introduced. This approach is based on the "scattering holonomy", i.e. the integration (from the infinite past to the infinite future) of the differential spin evolution along the two worldlines of a binary system in hyperboliclike motion. We apply this approach to the computation, at the first post-Minkowskian approximation (i.e.

ROBustness In Network (robin): an R Package for Comparison and Validation of Communities

In network analysis, many community detection algorithms have been developed. However, their implementation leaves unaddressed the question of the statistical validation of the results. Here, we present robin (ROBustness In Network), an R package to assess the robustness of the community structure of a network found by one or more methods to give indications about their reliability.

On a One-Dimensional Hydrodynamic Model for Semiconductors with Field-Dependent Mobility

We consider a one-dimensional, isentropic, hydrodynamical model for a unipolar semiconductor, with the mobility depending on the electric field. The mobility is related to the momentum relaxation time, and field-dependent mobility models are commonly used to describe the occurrence of saturation velocity, that is, a limit value for the electron mean velocity as the electric field increases. For the steady state system, we prove the existence of smooth solutions in the subsonic case, with a suitable assumption on the mobility function.

Lattice Boltzmann simulations of stochastic thin film dewetting

We study numerically the effect of thermal fluctuations and of variable fluid-substrate interactions on the spontaneous dewetting of thin liquid films. To this aim, we use a recently developed lattice Boltzmann method for thin liquid film flows, equipped with a properly devised stochastic term. While it is known that thermal fluctuations yield shorter rupture times, we show that this is a general feature of hydrophilic substrates, irrespective of the contact angle $\theta$. The ratio between deterministic and stochastic rupture times, though, decreases with $\theta$.