Biomedical subjects

J S Langer

Publications and source records attributed to J S Langer.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Excitation chains at the glass transition.

The excitation-chain theory of the glass transition, proposed in an earlier publication, predicts diverging, super-Arrhenius relaxation times and, via a similarly diverging length scale, suggests a way of understanding the relations between dynamic and thermodynamic properties of glass-forming liquids. I argue here that critically large excitation chains play a role roughly analogous to that played by critical clusters in the droplet model of vapor condensation. Unlike a first-order condensation point in a vapor, the glass transition is not a conventional phase transformation, and may not be a thermodynamic transition at all.

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PubMed2006

Dynamics and thermodynamics of the glass transition.

The principal theme of this paper is that anomalously slow, super-Arrhenius relaxations in glassy materials may be activated processes involving chains of molecular displacements. As pointed out in a preceding paper with Lemaitre, the entropy of critically long excitation chains can enable them to grow without bound, thus activating stable thermal fluctuations in the local density or molecular coordination of the material. I argue here that the intrinsic molecular-scale disorder in a glass plays an essential role in determining the activation rate for such chains, and show that a simple disorder-related correction to the earlier theory recovers the Vogel-Fulcher law in three dimensions. A key feature of this theory is that the spatial extent of critically long excitation chains diverges at the Vogel-Fulcher temperature. I speculate that this diverging length scale implies that, as the temperature decreases, increasingly large regions of the system become frozen and do not contribute to the configurational entropy, and thus ergodicity is partially broken in the super-Arrhenius region above the Kauzmann temperature T(K). This partially broken ergodicity seems to explain the vanishing entropy at T(K) and other observed relations between dynamics and thermodynamics at the glass transition.

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PubMed2005

Dynamic model of super-arrhenius relaxation rates in glassy materials.

Super-Arrhenius relaxation rates in glassy materials can be associated with thermally activated rearrangements of increasing numbers of molecules at decreasing temperatures. We explore a model of such a mechanism in which stringlike fluctuations in the neighborhood of shear transformation zones provide routes along which rearrangements can propagate, and the entropy associated with critically long strings allows the rearrangement to be distributed stably in the surrounding material. We further postulate that, at low enough temperatures, these fluctuations are localized on the interfaces between frustration-limited domains, and in this way obtain a modified Vogel-Fulcher formula for the relaxation rate.

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PubMed2004

Dynamics of shear-transformation zones in amorphous plasticity: Formulation in terms of an effective disorder temperature.

This investigation extends earlier studies of a shear-transformation-zone (STZ) theory of plastic deformation in amorphous solids. The main purpose is to explore the possibility that the configurational degrees of freedom of such systems fall out of thermodynamic equilibrium with the heat bath during persistent mechanical deformation and that the resulting state of configurational disorder may be characterized by an effective temperature. The further assumption that the population of STZ's equilibrates with the effective temperature allows the theory to be compared directly with experimentally measured properties of metallic glasses, including their calorimetric behavior. The coupling between the effective temperature and mechanical deformation suggests an explanation of shear-banding instabilities.

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PubMed2004

Thermal effects in the shear-transformation-zone theory of amorphous plasticity: comparisons to metallic glass data.

We extend our earlier shear-transformation-zone theory of amorphous plasticity to include the effects of thermally assisted molecular rearrangements. This version of our theory is a substantial revision and generalization of conventional theories of flow in noncrystalline solids. As in our earlier work, it predicts a dynamic transition between jammed and flowing states at a yield stress. Below that yield stress, it now describes thermally assisted creep. We show that this theory accounts for the experimentally observed strain-rate dependence of the viscosity of metallic glasses, and that it also captures many of the details of the transient stress-strain behavior of those materials during loading. In particular, it explains the apparent onset of superplasticity at sufficiently high stress as a transition between creep at low stresses and plastic flow near the yield stress. We also argue that there are internal inconsistencies in the conventional theories of these deformation processes, and suggest ways in which further experimentation as well as theoretical analysis may lead to better understanding of a broad range of nonequilibrium phenomena.

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PubMed2003

Dynamics of shear-transformation zones in amorphous plasticity: energetic constraints in a minimal theory.

We use energetic considerations to deduce the form of a previously uncertain coupling term in the shear-transformation-zone (STZ) theory of plastic deformation in amorphous solids. As in the earlier versions of the STZ theory, the onset of steady deformation at a yield stress appears here as an exchange of dynamic stability between jammed and plastically deforming states. We show how an especially simple "quasilinear" version of this theory accounts qualitatively for many features of plasticity such as yielding, strain softening, and strain recovery. We also show that this minimal version of the theory fails to describe certain other phenomena, and argue that these limitations indicate needs for additional internal degrees of freedom beyond those included here.

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PubMed2003

Dynamics of large-scale plastic deformation and the necking instability in amorphous solids.

We use the shear transformation zone (STZ) theory of dynamic plasticity to study the necking instability in a two-dimensional strip of amorphous solid. Our Eulerian description of large-scale deformation allows us to follow the instability far into the nonlinear regime. We find a strong rate dependence; the higher the applied strain rate, the further the strip extends before the onset of instability. The material hardens outside the necking region, but the description of plastic flow within the neck is distinctly different from that of conventional time-independent theories of plasticity.

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PubMed2002

Survivin as a cell cycle-related and antiapoptotic protein in granulosa cells.

Survivin is a relatively unique member of the inhibitor of apoptosis protein (IAP) family in that it contains a single baculovirus IAP repeat (BIR) domain combined with a COOH-terminal alpha-helix coiled-coil domain instead of the more common zinc-binding RING finger. Results from a variety of transformed or continuous mammalian cell lines suggest that, due to the combination of these features, Survivin is capable of regulating both cell proliferation and apoptotic cell death. However, to date there is essentially no information regarding Survivin expression, regulation or function within the ovary, or in any nonmammalian vertebrate species. In the present studies, cDNAs for chicken (ch) Survivin-142 (homologous to human Survivin-142) plus three alternatively spliced variants (ch Survivin-short, -gamma, and -delta) are described, and of these, transcripts for ch Survivin-142 and -short are expressed in granulosa cells from the hen ovary. Highest levels of Survivin mRNA during follicle development occur in mitotically active granulosa cells from undifferentiated, prehierarchal follicles. Cell cycle analysis determined that Survivin mRNA expression is elevated specifically during the G2/M phase of mitosis. Significantly, transient transfection with ch Survivin-142 in primary cultures of hen granulosa cells attenuates taxol- and N-octanoylsphingosine- (C8-ceramide-) induced caspase-3 activity, whereas overexpression of ch Survivin-short (a truncated variant that lacks much of the functional BIR domain plus the entire alpha-helix coil domain) lacks this antiapoptotic activity. Taken together, these data provide evidence for Survivin in granulosa cells acting as a bifunctional protein associated with regulation of the cell cycle and the inhibition of apoptosis.

8-Bromo Cyclic Adenosine Monophosphate↗

PubMed2001

Microstructural shear localization in plastic deformation of amorphous solids.

The shear-transformation-zone (STZ) theory of plastic deformation predicts that sufficiently soft, noncrystalline solids are linearly unstable against forming periodic arrays of microstructural shear bands. A limited nonlinear analysis indicates that this instability may be the mechanism responsible for strain softening in both constant-stress and constant-strain-rate experiments. The analysis presented here pertains only to one-dimensional banding patterns in two-dimensional systems, and only to very low temperatures. It uses the rudimentary form of the STZ theory in which there is only a single kind of zone rather than a distribution of them with a range of transformation rates. Nevertheless, the results are in qualitative agreement with essential features of the available experimental data. The nonlinear theory also implies that harder materials, which do not undergo a microstructural instability, may form isolated shear bands in weak regions or, perhaps, at points of concentrated stress.

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PubMed1999

Rate-and-state theory of plastic deformation near a circular hole.

We show that a simple rate-and-state theory accounts for most features of both time-independent and time-dependent plasticity in a spatially inhomogeneous situation, specifically, a circular hole in a large stressed plate. Those features include linear viscoelastic flow at small applied stresses, strain hardening at larger stresses, and a dynamic transition to viscoplasticity at a yield stress. In the static limit, this theory predicts the existence of a plastic zone near the hole for some but not all ranges of parameters. The rate-and-state theory also predicts dynamic failure modes that we believe may be relevant to fracture mechanics.

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PubMed1996

Slip complexity in dynamic models of earthquake faults.

We summarize recent evidence that models of earthquake faults with dynamically unstable friction laws but no externally imposed heterogeneities can exhibit slip complexity. Two models are described here. The first is a one-dimensional model with velocity-weakening stick-slip friction; the second is a two-dimensional elastodynamic model with slip-weakening friction. Both exhibit small-event complexity and chaotic sequences of large characteristic events. The large events in both models are composed of Heaton pulses. We argue that the key ingredients of these models are reasonably accurate representations of the properties of real faults.

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PubMed1984

Theory of the intermediate rippled phase of phospholipid bilayers.

A mathematical model of the periodic, rippled P beta' phase of phosphatidylcholine is described. In this model the P beta' phase shows a periodic variation in membrane properties corresponding to a lateral periodic variation between fluid-like and crystal-like states. The model is based on a curvature-dependent Landau-de Gennes free-energy functional. Our proposed form of the curvature-dependent free energy remedies a subtle mathematical flaw in an earlier model having similar physical content [Falkovitz, M. F., Seul, M., Frisch, H. L. & McConnell, H. M. (1982) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 79, 3918-3921].

Chemical Phenomena↗

PubMed1975

A spectrophotometric assay for gentamicin.

A rapid and accurate spectrophotometric assay has been developed for the determination of blood werum levels of gentamicin and related antibiotics. The assay uses a purified enzyme from Escherichia coli JR88/C600 that acetylates gentamicin with the production of coenzyme A, linked to a chemical reaction with a sulfhydryl reagent to produce stoichiometric amounts of a sensitive chromophore, monitored in the visible spectrum. The system provides advantages of speed, cost, convenience, accuracy, and enzyme stability to the desirable characteristics encountered with previous enzymatic methods.

Acetyltransferases↗