JOINT ICTP/SISSA STATISTICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR - Tuesday 7 May 2013

[de_comel]

Please take note:


JOINT ICTP/SISSA STATISTICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR


Tuesday, 7 May 2013  -   at 11:00 hrs.


SISSA, Santorio building room 128 (1st floor)


L.Giomi (SISSA)



Active fluids: from liquid crystals to living systems

Colonies of motile microorganisms, the cytoskeleton and its components,
cells and tissues have much in common with soft condensed matter systems
(i.e. liquid crystals, amphiphiles, colloids etc.), but also exhibit
behaviors that do not appear in inanimate matter and that are crucial for
biological functions. These unique properties arise when the constituent
particles are active: they consume energy from internal and external
sources and dissipate it by moving through the medium they inhabit. In
this talk I will give a brief introduction to the notion of "active
matter" and present some recent results on the hydrodynamics of active
nematics suspensions in two dimensions.