Including fluorescent nanoparticle probes within injectable gels for remote strain measurements and discrimination between compression and tension

Remote measurement of the deformation ratio and discrimination between tension and compression for injectable gels is demonstrated using photoluminescence and two types of fluorescent probe particles.

Transport of probe particles in a polymer network: effects of probe size, network rigidity and probe–polymer interaction

Computer simulations of sticky probes (red) comparable to the mesh size of the polymer network (blue) show fat-tailed displacement distributions, confirming stretching of the network, creating a local heterogeneity.

Mesoscopic non-equilibrium measures can reveal intrinsic features of the active driving

We show that 2-point non-equilibrium measures of fluctuating probe particles in an active system reveal features of the internal driving.

Passive microrheology

The underlying theory of passive microrheology is introduced as an in-depth examination of the Generalized Stokes-Einstein Relation (GSER) from the starting point of the Langevin equation. The chapter includes a careful treatment of the assumptions that must be made for the technique to work, and what happens when these assumptions are violated. Methods of interpreting passive microrheology experiments and the general limits of operation are highlighted. The Generalized Stokes-Einstein Relation (GSER) is the principal defining equation of passive microrheology. It is a physical relation between the thermal motion of probe particles and the material rheology. Specifically, it relates the observable displacement of the probe particles to the surrounding material’s rheological response.

A symmetrical method to obtain shear moduli from microrheology

Passive microrheology deduces shear elastic moduli from thermally fluctuating motion of probe particles. We introduce and test an analysis method for direct determination of these moduli from the mean-squared displacement of a probe.

Multiple particle tracking microrheology measured using bi-disperse probe diameters

Multiple particle tracking microrheology using probe particles with different diameters to simultaneous characterize material properties at multiple length scales.

Japanese wh-phrases as operators with unspecified quantificational force

Japanese wh-expressions appear in various kinds of operator-variable structures, including wh-questions and sentences with universal and existential quantification. The nature of the operator-variable relation is determined by an associated particle, such as the question marker ka or the universal particle mo. Given this, it has been widely assumed since Kuroda (1965) that the wh-expressions are to be interpreted as variables bound by those quantificational particles. This paper argues against this prevailing view by proposing that these wh-expressions are operators with unspecified quantificational force. Building on an insight by Nishigauchi (1990), I argue that they must covertly move to positions that allow them to probe particles and to acquire specific quantificational forces from them. I demonstrate that this analysis captures the main properties of Japanese wh-expressions as well as the differences between them and their Chinese counterparts. Huang (1982) proposed a covert movement analysis for argument wh-phrases in Chinese, which was extended to Japanese, for example, in Lasnik & Saito (1984) and Richards (2001). But Tsai (1999) has convincingly shown that they are subject to unselective binding and are interpreted in situ as variables. If the analysis for Japanese in this paper is correct, it shows that Huang’s approach can be – and should be – maintained for wh-phrases in Japanese with some refinements.