1. Stretched DNA - Prof. P. Pincus (UCSB)

Magnetic tweezer studies of the force-elongation of single stranded DNA at various salt concentrations by the Saleh group at UCSB have discovered several distinct scaling regimes.  At relatively high forces, an unusual L ln f  behavior is observed where L is the end-to-end length and f is the applied force.  I shall review our understanding of these scaling properties with a speculation concerning the logarithmic behavior in analogy to one dimensional ferromagnets.

2. Confinement Effects on Soft Matter - Prof. Mahn-Won Kim (KAIST)

This talk opens with a question “What is a soft matter?” Soft matter shows large physical effect by a small external excitation. One of soft matters is made of geometrically anisotropic molecules called liquid crystals (LCs).
Confined liquid crystals show a variety of structures depending on the balance between bulk elastic energy and surface anchoring energy. The experimental study and simple theoretical model on the confinement-induced structural transition of LCs in prolate spheroids and elliptic cylinders will be addressed in this presentation.
The presentation will be ended by providing one example of active soft materials.