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Operating Notes for the iMechanica Journal Club

Submitted by Managers on
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Guided by a thread that proposed the Journal Club, we evolve these operating notes. These notes are a work in progress, and will evolve as the iMechanica community and the Web technology evolve. Every moderator and architect can edit these notes. Every user can see the editing history. As always, every registered user can make suggestions by leaving comments.

Model Reduction of Large Proteins for Normal Mode Studies

Submitted by Kilho Eom on

Recently, I reported the model reduction method for large proteins for understanding large protein dynamics based on low-frequency normal modes. This work was pubslihed at Journal of Computational Chemistry (click here).

Coarse-Graining of protein structures for the normal mode studies

Abstracts 

Researcher Spotlight: Professor Lambert Ben Freund (LBF)

Submitted by Managers on

Lambert Ben Freund (LBF) was born on November 23, 1942, in Johnsburg, Illinois, a tiny rural community of a few hundred people in the northeast corner of the state. This part of the Midwest was opened to European settlement by the Black Hawk War of the 1830s. A small delegation of his ancestors arrived in the area in 1841. The enthusiastic letters they wrote to relatives waiting in Bavaria and the Rhineland resulted in rapid settlement of the area by immigrant families in the mid-1800s.

Quantum Stability of Metallic Thin Films and Nanostructures

Submitted by Zhenyu Zhang on

When a metal system shrinks its dimension(s), the conduction electrons inside the metal feel the squeezing, and are forced into (discrete) quantum states. Such confined motion of the conduction electrons may influence the global or local stability of the low dimensional systems, and in the case of a thin film on a foreign substrate this "quantum energy" of electronic origin can easily overwhelm the strain effects in definging the film stability, thereby severely influencing the preferred growth mode (see, e.g., Suo and Zhang, Phys. Rev. B 58, 5116 (1998)).

Mechanics and deformation of the nucleus in micropipette aspiration experiment

Submitted by Ashkan Vaziri on

Robust biomechanical models are essential for studying the nuclear mechanics and can help shed light on the underlying mechanisms of stress transition in nuclear elements. Here, we develop a computational model for an isolated nucleus undergoing micropipette aspiration. Our model includes distinct components representing the nucleoplasm and the nuclear envelope. The nuclear envelope itself comprises three layers: inner and outer nuclear membranes and one thicker layer representing the nuclear lamina.

Atomistic simulations for the evolution of a U-shaped dislocation in fcc Al

Submitted by Xiaoyan Li on

We show, through MD simulations, a new evolution pattern of the U-shaped dislocation in fcc Al that would enrich the FR mechanism. Direct atomistic investigation indicates that a U-shaped dislocation may behave in different manners when it emits the first dislocation loop by bowing out of an extended dislocation. One manner is that the glissile dislocation segment always bows in the original glide plane, as the conventional FR mechanism. Another is that non-coplanar composite dislocations appear owing to conservative motion of polar dislocation segments, and then bow out along each slip plane, creating a closed helical loop. The motion of these segments involves a cross-slip mechanism by which a dislocation with screw component moves from one slip plane into another. Ultimately, such non-coplanar evolution results in the formation of a FR source.