Granular materials consist of macroscopic grains, interacting via contact forces, and
unaffected by thermal fluctuations. They are one of a class systems that undergo jamming, ie …

In 1989, Sir Sam Edwards made the visionary proposition to treat jammed granular materials
using a volume ensemble of equiprobable jammed states in analogy to thermal equilibrium …

As an injury heals, an embryo develops or a carcinoma spreads, epithelial cells
systematically change their shape. In each of these processes cell shape is studied …

It is well established that the early malignant tumor invades surrounding extracellular matrix
(ECM) in a manner that depends upon material properties of constituent cells, surrounding …

Arrays of non-interacting nanomagnets are widespread in data storage and processing. As
current technologies approach fundamental limits on size and thermal stability, enhancing …

Sphere packing is an ancient problem. The densest packing is known to be a face-centered
cubic (FCC) crystal, with space-filling fraction ϕ FCC= π/18≈ 0.74. The densest “random …

Each cell comprising an intact, healthy, confluent epithelial layer ordinarily remains
sedentary, firmly adherent to and caged by its neighbors, and thus defines an elemental …

We give a bird's-eye view of the plastic deformation of crystals aimed at the statistical
physics community, as well as a broad introduction to the statistical theories of forced rigid …

Jamming is an athermal transition between flowing and rigid states in amorphous systems
such as granular matter, colloidal suspensions, complex fluids and cells. The jamming …