Methods for exerting and measuring forces on single molecules have revolutionized the study of the physics of biology. However, it is often the case that biological processes involve rotation or torque generation, and these parameters have been more difficult to access experimentally. Recent advances in the single-molecule field have led to the development of techniques that add the capability of torque measurement. By combining force, displacement, torque, and rotational data, a more comprehensive description of the mechanics of a biomolecule can be achieved.

Articular cartilage has well known depth-dependent structure and has recently been shown to have similarly non-uniform depth-dependent mechanical properties. Here, we study anatomic variation of the depth-dependent shear modulus and energy dissipation rate in neonatal bovine knees. The regions we specifically focus on are the patellofemoral groove, trochlea, femoral condyle, and tibial plateau. In every sample, we find a highly compliant region within the first 500 μm of tissue measured from the articular surface, where the local shear modulus is reduced by up to two orders of magnitude.

We present high-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectra of the heavy-fermion superconductor URu2Si2. Detailed measurements as a function of both photon energy and temperature allow us to disentangle a variety of spectral features, revealing the evolution of the low-energy electronic structure across the "hidden order" transition. Above the transition, our measurements reveal the existence of weakly dispersive states that exhibit a large scattering rate and do not appear to shift from above to below the Fermi level, as previously reported.

Energy-Recovery Linacs (ERLs) are proposed as drivers for hard x-ray sources because of their ability to produce electron bunches with small, flexible cross sections and short lengths at high repetition rates. Cornell University has pioneered the design and hardware for ERL lightsources. This preparatory research for ERL-lightsource construction will be discussed.

We present a unified theory of fracture in disordered brittle media that reconciles apparently conflicting results reported in the literature. Our renormalization group based approach yields a phase diagram in which the percolation fixed point, expected for infinite disorder, is unstable for finite disorder and flows to a zero-disorder nucleation-type fixed point, thus showing that fracture has a mixed first order and continuous character. In a region of intermediate disorder and finite system sizes, we predict a crossover with mean-field avalanche scaling.

We calculate the magnetic-field dependence of Rabi rates for two-photon optical Raman processes in alkali-metal atoms. Due to a decoupling of the nuclear and electronic spins, these rates fall with increasing field. At the typical magnetic fields of alkali-metal-atom Feshbach resonances (B∼200-1200 G), the Raman rates have the same order of magnitude as their zero-field values, suggesting one can combine Raman-induced gauge fields or spin-orbital coupling with strong Feshbach-induced interactions.

Graphene's success has shown that it is possible to create stable, single and few-atom-thick layers of van der Waals materials, and also that these materials can exhibit fascinating and technologically useful properties. Here we review the state-of-the-art of 2D materials beyond graphene. Initially, we will outline the different chemical classes of 2D materials and discuss the various strategies to prepare single-layer, few-layer, and multilayer assembly materials in solution, on substrates, and on the wafer scale.

Mesoporous nanomaterials have attracted widespread interest because of their structural versatility for applications including catalysis, separation, and nanomedicine. We report a one-pot synthesis method for a class of mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) containing both cubic and hexagonally structured compartments within one particle. These multicompartment MSNs (mc-MSNs) consist of a core with cage-like cubic mesoporous morphology and up to four branches with hexagonally packed cylindrical mesopores epitaxially growing out of the cubic core vertices.

Hybrid density functionals show great promise for chemically accurate first-principles calculations, but their high computational cost limits their application in nontrivial studies, such as exploration of reaction pathways of adsorbents on periodic surfaces. One factor responsible for their increased cost is the dense Brillouin-zone sampling necessary to accurately resolve an integrable singularity in the exact exchange energy.

We use a high-temperature expansion to explore spin correlations around a single hole in a two-dimensional lattice filled with a hard-core two-component bose gas. We find that the spins around the hole develop ferromagnetic order and quantify the degree of polarization at temperatures of the order of the hopping energy, finding a measurably nonzero polarization. We also discuss the effect of fixing the overall magnetization of the system for finite-sized systems. © 2013 American Physical Society.