Dynamic instability of thin viscoelastic films under lateral stress

We study the influence of lateral stress on the stability of thin viscoelastic films. The free surface of a deposited film under stress is shown to undergo an instability initiated by an anisotropic diffusion of the polymer molecules. This instability ultimately results in the formation of holes provided that the initial surface fluctuations are larger than a critical value. The latter is found to decrease when increasing the stress. An increase of the holes number density with the stress is therefore predicted. Most interestingly, the holes number density is also predicted to increase when increasing the molecular weight of the polymers. Additionally, we demonstrate that the friction of the substrate suppresses any spatial coherence between holes on large length scales. These predictions explain recent experimental observations made on thin spin-coated polystyrene films [G. Reiter, Nat. Mater. 4, 754 (2005)10.1038/nmat1484].     

Direct experimental evidence for atomic tunneling of europium in crystalline Eu8Ga16Ge30

M?ssbauer-effect and microwave absorption experimental evidence unambiguously demonstrates the presence of slow, approximately 450 MHz, tunneling of magnetic europium between four equivalent sites in Eu8Ga16Ge30, a stoichiometric clathrate. Remarkably, six of the eight europium atoms, or 11% of the constituents in this solid, tunnel between these four sites separated by 0.55 A. The off centering of the atoms or ions in crystalline clathrates appears to be a promising route for producing Rabi oscillators in solid-state materials.     

Around rationality of cycles

We prove certain results comparing rationality of algebraic cycles over the function field of a quadric and over the base field. These results have already been obtained by Alexander Vishik in the case of characteristic 0, which allowed him to work with algebraic cobordism theory. Our proofs use the modulo 2 Steenrod operations in the Chow theory and work in any characteristic ≠ 2.     

KAM-tori near an analytic elliptic fixed point

We study the accumulation of an elliptic fixed point of a real analytic Hamiltonian by quasi-periodic invariant tori. We show that a fixed point with Diophantine frequency vector ω ₀ is always accumulated by invariant complex analytic KAM-tori. Indeed, the following alternative holds: If the Birkhoff normal form of the Hamiltonian at the invariant point satisfies a Rüssmann transversality condition, the fixed point is accumulated by real analytic KAM-tori which cover positive Lebesgue measure in the phase space (in this part it suffices to assume that ω ₀ has rationally independent coordinates). If the Birkhoff normal form is degenerate, there exists an analytic subvariety of complex dimension at least d + 1 passing through 0 that is foliated by complex analytic KAM-tori with frequency ω ₀. This is an extension of previous results obtained in [1] to the case of an elliptic fixed point.     

Capillary-gravity waves generated by a slow moving object

We investigate theoretically and experimentally the capillary-gravity waves created by a small object moving steadily at the water-air interface along a circular trajectory. It is well established that, for straight uniform motion, no steady waves appear at velocities below the minimum phase velocity c(min)=23 cm s(-1). We demonstrate that no such velocity threshold exists for a steady circular motion, for which, even for small velocities, a finite wave drag is experienced by the object. This wave drag originates from the emission of a spiral-like wave pattern. Our results are in good agreement with direct experimental observations of the wave pattern created by a circularly moving needle in contact with water. Our study leads to new insights into the problem of animal locomotion at the water-air interface.     

Scattering Below Critical Energy for the Radial 4D Yang-Mills Equation and for the 2D Corotational Wave Map System

Given g and f  =  gg′, we consider solutions to the following non linear wave equation :

Chemical biology of salinomycin

Cancer stem cells (CSC) have been shown to be refractory to conventional therapeutic agents, can promote metastasis, and have been linked to cancer relapse. The natural product Salinomycin has been identified by means of high throughput phenotypic screening as a selective killer of CSC in vitro and in vivo. In this article we comprehensively review the chemistry of Salinomycin, documenting early total syntheses, along with strategies that have been developed over the years to effectively modify this natural product at key positions with the view to establish a robust structure-activity-relationship and to delineate the complex mechanism of action of this fascinating molecule in the context of cancer research. Then, we document the biology of Salinomycin, putting forward phenotypic alterations that have been observed in the relevant biological models and highlighting how chemistry has been instrumental in discovering unprecedented physiological features of cancer stem cells that can be exploited for therapeutic benefits.     

Reprogramming the chemical reactivity of iron in cancer stem cells

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been shown to be refractory to conventional therapeutic agents, can promote metastasis, and have been linked to cancer relapse. Salinomycin can selectively kill CSCs. We have shown that salinomycin derivatives accumulate in lysosomes and sequester iron in this organelle. As a result, accumulation of iron leads to the production of reactive oxygen species and lysosomal membrane permeabilization, which in turn promotes cell death by ferroptosis. These findings have revealed the prevalence of iron homeostasis in CSCs and paved the way toward the development of next-generation therapeutics.     

Phosphoinositide-3-kinases (PI3Ks): combined comparative modeling and 3D-QSAR to rationalize the inhibition of p110alpha

The p110alpha isoform of the class IA PI3Ks was recently genetically validated as a promising target for anticancer therapy. However, up to now, only one compound (PIK75 = 1) has been reported as a very potent and selective inhibitor of this isoform. The lack of a 3D structure for this enzyme has clearly hindered the discovery of new p110alpha selective compounds. In view of this, we combined target-based (homology modeling) and ligand-based (3D-QSAR) approaches in an attempt to define an integrated interaction model for p110alpha inhibition. Twenty-five analogues of 1 were docked within the putative p110alpha binding site, and the molecular alignment generated was subsequently used to derive QSAR models based on scoring function, free energy of binding, CoMFA. and CoMSIA. The predictive power of these models was then analyzed using a challenging test set of 5 compounds. CoMSIA, and particularly CoMFA, models were found to outperform the other methods, predicting accurately the potency of 100% of the compounds in the test set, thereby validating our p110alpha homology model for use in further drug development.