N. M. Pugno — Page 2

arXiv2014

Violation of the Universal Behavior of Membranes Inside Cylindrical Tubes at Nanoscale

Recently, it was proposed based on classical elasticity theory and experiments at macroscale, that the conformations of sheets inside cylindrical tubes present a universal behavior. A natural question is whether this behavior still holds at nanoscale. Based on molecular dynamics simulations and analytical modeling for graphene and boron nitride membranes confined inside carbon nanotubes, we show that the class of universality observed at macroscale is violated at nanoscale. The precise origins of these discrepancies is addressed and proven to be related to both surface and atomistic effects.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2005

On the Statistical Law of Life

In this paper we derive a statistical law of Life. It governs the probability of death, or complementary of survival, of the living organisms. We have deduced such a law coupling the widely used Weibull statistics, developed for describing the distribution of the strength of solids, with the universal model for ontogenetic growth only recently proposed by West and co-authors. The main idea presented in this paper is that cracks can propagate in solids and cause their failure as sick cells in living organisms can cause their death. Making a rough analogy, living organisms are found to behave as growing mechanical components under cyclic, i.e., fatigue, loadings and composed by a dynamic evolutionary material that, as an ineluctable fate, deteriorates. The implications on biological scaling laws are discussed. As an example of application, we apply such a statistical law to large data collections on human deaths due to cancer of various types recorded in Italy: a relevant agreement is observed.

q-bio.PE↗