The growth plate is a highly organized section of cartilage in the long bones of growing children that is susceptible to mechanical failure as well as structural and functional disruption caused by a dietary deficiency of vitamin D. The shear mechanical properties of the proximal tibial growth plate of rats raised either on normal or vitamin D and calcium deficient diets were measured. A sinusoidal oscillating shear load was applied to small excised growth plate specimens perpendicular to the direction of growth while imaging the deformation in real time with a fast confocal microscope.

We couple a single suspended carbon nanotube to the near field of a free standing optical microdisk. The strong interaction between the nanotube and the microcavity produces an ultrahigh photocurrent response as large as 0.35mA/W. © 2013 Optical Society of America.

A major question in Fe-based superconductors remains the structure of the pairing, in particular whether it is of unconventional nature. The electronic structure near a vortex can serve as a platform for phase-sensitive measurements to answer this question. By solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations for LiFeAs, we calculate the energy-dependent local electronic structure near a vortex for different nodeless gap-structure possibilities. At low energies, the local density of states (LDOS) around a vortex is determined by the normal-state electronic structure.

Human collective behavior can vary from calm to panicked depending on social context. Using videos publicly available online, we study the highly energized collective motion of attendees at heavy metal concerts. We find these extreme social gatherings generate similarly extreme behaviors: a disordered gaslike state called a mosh pit and an ordered vortexlike state called a circle pit. Both phenomena are reproduced in flocking simulations demonstrating that human collective behavior is consistent with the predictions of simplified models. © 2013 American Physical Society.

Taylor dispersion - shear-induced enhancement of translational diffusion - is an important phenomenon with applications ranging from pharmacology to geology. Through experiments and simulations, we show that rotational diffusion is also enhanced for anisotropic particles in oscillatory shear. This enhancement arises from variations in the particle's rotation (Jeffery orbit) and depends on the strain amplitude, rate, and particle aspect ratio in a manner that is distinct from the translational diffusion.

Falling parallelograms exhibit coupled motion of autogyration and tumbling, similar to the motion of falling tulip seeds, unlike maple seeds which autogyrate but do not tumble, or rectangular cards which tumble but do not gyrate. This coupled tumbling and autogyrating motion are robust, when card parameters, such as aspect ratio, internal angle, and mass density, are varied. We measure the three-dimensional (3D) falling kinematics of the parallelograms and quantify their descending speed, azimuthal rotation, tumbling rotation, and cone angle in each falling.

The superfluid phases of helium-3 (3He) are predicted to be strongly influenced by mesoscopic confinement. However, mapping out the phase diagram in a confined geometry has been experimentally challenging. We confined a sample of 3He within a nanofluidic cavity of precisely defined geometry, cooled it, and fingerprinted the order parameter using a sensitive nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer. The measured suppression of the p-wave order parameter arising from surface scattering was consistent with the predictions of quasi-classical theory.

The nonlinear optical properties of few-layer MoS2 two-dimensional crystals are studied using femtosecond laser pulses. We observed highly efficient second-harmonic generation from the odd-layer crystals, which shows a polarization intensity dependence that directly reveals the underlying symmetry and orientation of the crystal. Additionally, the measured second-order susceptibility spectra provide information about the electronic structure of the material. Our results open up opportunities for studying the nonlinear optical properties in these two-dimensional crystals.

We calculate the dynamics of one- and two-body correlation functions in a homogeneous Bose gas at zero temperature following a sudden change in the interaction strength, in the continuum and in a lattice. By choosing suitable examples, we highlight features in the correlation functions that emerge due to the interactions and the band structure. We find that interactions dramatically change the way correlations build up and subsequently decay following a quench.

We investigate phonon-induced spin and charge relaxation mediated by spin-orbit and hyperfine interactions for a single electron confined within a double quantum dot. A simple toy model incorporating both direct decay to the ground state of the double dot and indirect decay via an intermediate excited state yields an electron spin relaxation rate that varies nonmonotonically with the detuning between the dots.