Investigation about the mechanisms involved in the onset of type 2 diabetes in absence of familiarity is the focus of a research project which has led to the development of a computational model that recapitulates the aetiology of the disease.

The dynamic interaction of complex fluid interfaces is highly sensitive to near-contact interactions occurring at the scale of ten of nanometers. Such interactions are difficult to analyze because they couple self-consistently to the dynamic morphology of the evolving interface, as well as to the hydrodynamics of the interstitial fluid film.

Background. The three terms "panic", "irrationality", and "herding" are ubiquitous in the crowd dynamics literature and have a strong influence on both modelling and management practices. The terms are also commonly shared between the scientific and nonscientific domains. The pervasiveness of the use of these terms is to the point where their underlying assumptions have often been treated as common knowledge by both experts and lay persons. Yet, at the same time, the literature on crowd dynamics presents ample debate, contradiction, and inconsistency on these topics. Method.

Reputation systems are nowadays widely used to support decision making in networked systems. Parties in such systems rate each other and use shared ratings to compute reputation scores that drive their interactions. The existence of reputation systems with remarkable differences calls for formal approaches to their analysis. We present a verification methodology for reputation systems that is based on the use of the coordination language Klaim and related analysis tools.

We explore the impact of geometrical corrugations on the near-wall flow properties of a soft material driven in a confined rough microchannel. By means of numerical simulations, we perform a quantitative analysis of the relation between the flow rate ? and the wall stress ?w for a number of setups, by changing both the roughness values as well as the roughness shape. Roughness suppresses the flow, with the existence of a characteristic value of ?w at which flow sets in. Just above the onset of flow, we quantitatively analyze the relation between ? and ?w.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality worldwide. Atherosclerosis, one of the most common forms of the disease, is characterized by a gradual formation of atherosclerotic plaque, hardening, and narrowing of the arteries. Nanomaterials can serve as powerful delivery platforms for atherosclerosis treatment. However, their therapeutic efficacy is substantially limited in vivo due to nonspecific clearance by the mononuclear phagocytic system.

Tor hidden services allow offering and accessing various Internet resources while guaranteeing a high degree of provider and user anonymity. So far, most research work on the Tor network aimed at discovering protocol vulnerabilities to de-anonymize users and services. Other work aimed at estimating the number of available hidden services and classifying them. Something that still remains largely unknown is the structure of the graph defined by the network of Tor services.

The exploration and analysis of Web graphs has flourished in the recent past, producing a large number of relevant and interesting research results. However, the unique characteristics of the Tor network demand for specific algorithms to explore and analyze it. Tor is an anonymity network that allows offering and accessing various Internet resources while guaranteeing a high degree of provider and user anonymity. So far the attention of the research community has focused on assessing the security of the Tor infrastructure.