| 12/2025 Optimizing infectious disease mitigation under dynamic conditions Laura Müller et al. Mitigation measures are essential for controlling the spread of infectious diseases during pandemics and epidemics, but they impose considerable societal, individual, and economic costs. We developed a general optimization framework to balance costs related to infection and to mitigation. Optimizing the trade-off between mitigation and infection cost, we identified three novel, surprising effects: … |
| 12/2025 Size control guidelines for chemically active droplets Guido Kusters et al. Biological cells and synthetic analogues use liquid-liquid phase separation to dynamically compartmentalize their environment for various applications. In many cases, multiple droplets need to coexist, and their size needs to be controlled, which is challenging because large droplets tend to grow at the expense of smaller ones. Chemical reactions can, in principle, control droplet sizes, but there … |
| 12/2025 Dimensionality and confinement reshape competition in cellular renewing active matter Patrick Zimmer et al. Cellular renewing active matter – assemblies of proliferating and apoptotic cells – underlies tissue homeostasis, morphogenesis, and clonal competition. Previous work in one-dimensional periodic systems identified a fitness advantage associated with rapid dead-cell clearance, an "opportunistic" competition mechanism. Extending this framework, we study two-dimensional cellular aggregates … |
| 12/2025 Orientational lineage memory and mechanical ordering during diffusion-limited growth Ilias-Marios Sarris et al. Growth and shape formation in crowded multicellular assemblies arise from the interplay of chemical gradients, single-cell expansion and mechanical interactions, making it essential to understand how these processes jointly shape collective organization. Using a particle-based model that resolves nutrient fields as well as cellular orientations and their inheritance, we investigate how orientation … |
| 12/2025 Order and shape dependence of mechanical relaxation in proliferating active matter Jonas Isensee et al. Collective dynamics in proliferating anisotropic particle systems arise from an interplay between growth, division, and mechanical interactions, often mediated by particle shape. In classical models of prolate, rod-like growth, flow-induced alignment and division geometry reinforce one another, leading to robust nematic order under confinement. Here we introduce a complementary regime by consideri … |
| 11/2025 Non-reciprocal interactions between condensates in chemically active mixtures Jacopo Romano et al. We study the behaviour of catalytically active droplets in multi-component conserved mixtures affected by noise. Working in the thin interface limit, we analytically determine the state diagram of the system, characterized by multiple dynamical regimes, and verify our findings using numerical simulations. In particular, we show the emergence of a non-reciprocal, chemically-mediated interaction bet … |
| 11/2025 Molecular simulations of phase separation in elastic polymer networks Takahiro Yokoyama et al. Phase separation within polymer networks plays a central role in shaping the structure and mechanics of both synthetic materials and living cells, including the formation of biomolecular condensates within cytoskeletal networks. Previous experiments and theoretical studies indicate that network elasticity can regulate demixing and stabilize finite-sized domains, yet the microscopic origin of this … |
| 11/2025 Effects of Non-reciprocity on Coupled Kuramoto Oscillators Shaon Mandal Chakraborty et al. All the fundamental interactions (such as gravity or electromagnetic interactions) are reciprocal in nature. However, in the macroscopic world, in particular outside equilibrium, non-reciprocal or non-mutual interactions are quite ubiquitous. Understanding the impact of such non-reciprocal interactions has drawn a significant amount of interest in physics and other fields of sciences in recent yea … |
| 11/2025 Representation learning in cerebellum-like structures Lucas Rudelt et al. Animals use past experiences to adapt future behavior. To enable this rapid learning, vertebrates and invertebrates have evolved analogous neural structures like the vertebrate cerebellum or insect mushroom body. A defining feature of these circuits is a large expansion layer, which re-codes sensory inputs to improve pattern separation, a prerequisite to learn non-overlapping associations between … |
| 11/2025 Targeted synthesis of polycrystalline vanadium dioxide thin films via post-deposition annealing Kirill Trunov et al. Implementation of neuromorphic hardware is a promising way to improve the computing efficiency and decrease the energy consumption of artificial neural networks. For this purpose, electronic elements emulating the behavior of synapses and neurons have to be developed. In order to realize electronic artificial neurons, threshold resistive switches or memristors can be efficiently used. One of the m … |