Can oil and water mix?

Common experience tells us that oil and water do not mix. Yet, it turns out that they can mix when oil is dispersed as small droplets in water. This strange behavior has long vexed scientists because there is no explanation ...

Growing droplets in the matrix

The mechanism of molecular self-organization was assessed in a new model by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS). In their study, they simulated how environmental factors such ...

Researchers develop new way to study neurodegenerative diseases

Some proteins in cells can separate into small droplets like oil droplets in water, but faults in this process may underlie neurodegenerative diseases in the brains of older people. Now, Rutgers researchers have developed ...

On the line: Watching nanoparticles get in shape

Liquid structures—liquid droplets that maintain a specific shape—are useful for a variety of applications, from food processing to cosmetics, medicine, and even petroleum extraction, but researchers have yet to tap into ...

Oil droplet predators chase oil droplet prey

Oil droplets can be made to act like predators, chasing down other droplets that flee like prey. The behavior, which is controlled by chemical signaling produced by the droplets, mimics behavior seen among living organisms ...

Polymers get caught up in love-hate chemistry of oil and water

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee achieved a rare look at the inner workings of polymer self-assembly at an oil-water interface to advance materials for neuromorphic computing and ...

Plant cells eat their own... membranes and oil droplets

Biochemists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered two ways that autophagy, or self-eating, controls the levels of oils in plant cells. The study, published in The Plant Cell on ...

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