We study the elastic response of concentrated suspensions of rigid wire frame particles to a step strain. These particles are constructed from infinitely thin, rigid rods of length L. We specifically compare straight rod-like particles to bent and branched wire frames. In dense suspensions, the wire frames are frozen in a disordered state by the topological entanglements between their arms. We present a simple, geometric method to find the scaling of the elastic stress with concentration in these glassy systems. We apply this method to a simple 2D model system where a test particle is placed on a plane and constrained by a random distribution of points with number density ν. Two striking differences between wire frame and rod suspensions are found (1) The linear elasticity per particle for wire frames is very large, scaling like ν2L4, whereas for rods, it is much smaller and independent of concentration. (2) Rods always shear thin but wire frames shear harden for concentrations less than ∼K/kBTL4, where K is the bending modulus of the particles. The deformation of wire frames is found to be important even for small strains, with the proportion of deformed particles at a particular strain, γ, being given by (νL2)2γ2. Our results agree well with simple numerical calculations for the 2D system.Excitation energy transfer is crucially involved in a variety of systems. During the process, the non-Condon vibronic coupling and the surrounding solvent interaction may synergetically play important roles. In this work, we study the correlated vibration-solvent influences on the non-Condon exciton spectroscopy. Statistical analysis is elaborated for the overall vibration-plus-solvent environmental effects. Analytic solutions are derived for the linear absorption of monomer systems. General simulations are accurately carried out via the dissipaton-equation-of-motion approach. The resulted spectra in either the linear absorption or strong field regime clearly demonstrate the coherence enhancement due to the synergetic vibration-solvent correlation.Ethanol is highly effective against various enveloped viruses and can disable the virus by disintegrating the protective envelope surrounding it. The interactions between the coronavirus envelope (E) protein and its membrane environment play key roles in the stability and function of the viral envelope. By using molecular dynamics simulation, we explore the underlying mechanism of ethanol-induced disruption of a model coronavirus membrane and, in detail, interactions of the E-protein and lipids. We model the membrane bilayer as N-palmitoyl-sphingomyelin and 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoylphosphatidylcholine lipids and the coronavirus E-protein. The study reveals that ethanol causes an increase in the lateral area of the bilayer along with thinning of the bilayer membrane and orientational disordering of lipid tails. Ethanol resides at the head-tail region of the membrane and enhances bilayer permeability. We found an envelope-protein-mediated increase in the ordering of lipid tails. Our simulations also provide important insights into the orientation of the envelope protein in a model membrane environment. At ∼25 mol. % of ethanol in the surrounding ethanol-water phase, we observe disintegration of the lipid bilayer and dislocation of the E-protein from the membrane environment.Over the past decade, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have earned applicability in numerous fields as non-flammable, non-volatile, and greener alternatives to conventional organic solvents. In a first of its kind, a hydrophobic DES composed of a 11 mixture of oleic acid and lidocaine was recently reported, possessing a lower critical solution temperature in water. The thermoreversible phase property of this DES-water system was utilized to sequester out dye molecules from their aqueous solutions. In this article, we explore the phase separation phenomena for this particular DES in its aqueous solution using an all-atom molecular dynamics simulation. A 50 wt. % solution of the DES in water was studied at three different temperatures (253, 293, and 313 K) to understand the various molecular interactions that dictate the phase segregation property of these systems. In this work, we have elaborated on the importance of hydrogen bonding interactions and the non-bonding interactions between the components and the competition between the two that leads to phase separation. Overall, we observe that the increase in unfavorable interaction between the DES components and water with increasing temperature determines the phase separation behavior. SR18662 We have also studied the modification in the dynamical properties of water molecules close to the phase boundary. Such molecular insights would be beneficial for designing novel solvent systems that can be used as extraction-based media in industries.The disordered microphases that develop in the high-temperature phase of systems with competing short-range attractive and long-range repulsive (SALR) interactions result in a rich array of distinct morphologies, such as cluster, void cluster, and percolated (gel-like) fluids. These different structural regimes exhibit complex relaxation dynamics with marked heterogeneity and slowdown. The overall relationship between these structures and configurational sampling schemes, however, remains largely uncharted. Here, the disordered microphases of a schematic SALR model are thoroughly characterized, and structural relaxation functions adapted to each regime are devised. The sampling efficiency of various advanced Monte Carlo sampling schemes-Virtual-Move (VMMC), Aggregation-Volume-Bias (AVBMC), and Event-Chain (ECMC)-is then assessed. A combination of VMMC and AVBMC is found to be computationally most efficient for cluster fluids and ECMC to become relatively more efficient as density increases. These results offer a complete description of the equilibrium disordered phase of a simple microphase former as well as dynamical benchmarks for other sampling schemes.High-harmonic generation (HHG) from the condensed matter phase holds promise to promote future cutting-edge research in the emerging field of attosecond nanoscopy. The key for the progress of the field relies on the capability of the existing schemes to enhance the harmonic yield and to push the photon energy cutoff to the extreme-ultraviolet (XUV, 10-100 eV) regime and beyond toward the spectral "water window" region (282-533 eV). Here, we demonstrate a coherent control scheme of HHG, which we show to give rise to quantum modulations in the XUV region. These modulations are shown to be caused by quantum-path interferences and are found to exhibit a strong sensitivity to the delocalized character of bulk states of the material. The control scheme is based on exploring surface states in transition-metal surfaces and, specifically, tuning the electronic structure of the metal surface itself together with the use of optimal chirped pulses. Moreover, we show that the use of such pulses having moderate intensities permits us to push the harmonic cutoff further to the spectral water window region and that the extension is found to be robust against the change in the intrinsic properties of the material.