TY - JOUR A1 - Missaoui, Amine A1 - Harth, Kirsten A1 - Trittel, Torsten A1 - Klopp, Christoph A1 - Stannarius, Ralf A1 - Lacaze, Emanuelle T1 - Shape instabilities of islands in smectic films under lateral compression JF - Soft Matter Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1039/D2SM00144F SN - 1744-6848 VL - 16 SP - 3193 EP - 3205 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Klopp, Christoph A1 - Trittel, Torsten A1 - Harth, Kirsten A1 - Stannarius, Ralf T1 - Smectic free-standing films under fast lateral compression JF - Soft Matter N2 - Smectic films in a collapsing catenoid develop spontaneous wrinkling patterns like solid sheets. Smectic freely-suspended films can wrinkle like solid sheets. This has been demonstrated earlier with shape-fluctuating smectic bubbles. Here, we exploit the collapse of smectic catenoid films with a central equatorial film to expose the latter to rapid lateral compression. Wrinkle formation is observed in the planar film and the thickness dependence of the undulation wavelength is measured. In addition to the central film, its border undergoes an undulation instability as well. Y1 - 2022 UR - http://xlink.rsc.org/?DOI=D1SM01207J U6 - https://doi.org/10.1039/D1SM01207J SN - 1744-683X, 1744-6848 SP - 146 EP - 155 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Klopp, Christoph A1 - Trittel, Torsten A1 - Harth, Kirsten A1 - Stannarius, Ralf T1 - Coalescence of biphasic droplets embedded in free standing smectic A films JF - Soft Matter N2 - We investigate micrometer-sized flat droplets consisting of an isotropic core surrounded by a nematic rim in freely suspended smectic A liquid-crystal films. In contrast to purely isotropic droplets which are characterized by a sharp edge and no long-range interactions, the nematic fringe introduces a continuous film thickness change resulting in long-range mutual attraction of droplets. The coalescence scenario is divided in two phases. The first one consists in the fusion of the nematic regions. The second phase involves the dissolution of a thin nematic film between the two isotropic cores. The latter has many similarities with the rupture of thin liquid films between droplets coalescing in an immiscible viscous liquid. Coalescence of biphasic droplets in free-standing smectic films is controlled in part by the rupture of a thin nematic membrane separating the isotropic droplet cores. Y1 - 2023 UR - https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/sm/d3sm01549a U6 - https://doi.org/10.1039/d3sm01549a SN - 1744-683X VL - 20 IS - 5 SP - 1036 EP - 1046 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Trittel, Torsten A1 - Klopp, Christoph A1 - Harth, Kirsten A1 - Stannarius, Ralf T1 - Stability and Rupture of Liquid Crystal Bridges under Microgravity JF - Crystals KW - smectic liquid-crystals KW - Rayleigh-Plateau instability KW - TEXUS suborbital rocket KW - microgravity Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst12081092 VL - 12 IS - 8 PB - MDPI ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vinken, Mathieu A1 - Grimm, Daniela A1 - Baatout, Sarah A1 - Baselet, Bjorn A1 - Beheshti, Afshin A1 - Braun, Markus A1 - Carstens, Anna Catharina A1 - Casaletto, James A. A1 - Cools, Ben A1 - Costes, Sylvain V. A1 - De Meulemeester, Phoebe A1 - Doruk, Bartu A1 - Eyal, Sara A1 - Ferreira, Miguel J. S. A1 - Miranda, Silvana A1 - Hahn, Christiane A1 - Akyuz, Sinem Helvacioglu A1 - Herbert, Stefan A1 - Krepkiy, Dmitriy A1 - Lichterfeld, Yannik A1 - Liemersdorf, Christian A1 - Marcus, Krüger A1 - Marchal, Shannon A1 - Ritz, Jette A1 - Schmakeit, Theresa A1 - Stenuit, Hilde A1 - Tabury, Kevin A1 - Trittel, Torsten A1 - Wehland, Markus A1 - Zhang, Yu Shrike A1 - Putt, Karson S. A1 - Zhang, Zhong-Yin A1 - Tagle, Danilo A. T1 - Taking the 3Rs to a higher level: replacement and reduction of animal testing in life sciences in space research JF - Biotechnology advances N2 - Human settlements on the Moon, crewed missions to Mars and space tourism will become a reality in the next few decades. Human presence in space, especially for extended periods of time, will therefore steeply increase. However, despite more than 60 years of spaceflight, the mechanisms underlying the effects of the space environment on human physiology are still not fully understood. Animals, ranging in complexity from flies to monkeys, have played a pioneering role in understanding the (patho)physiological outcome of critical environmental factors in space, in particular altered gravity and cosmic radiation. The use of animals in biomedical research is increasingly being criticized because of ethical reasons and limited human relevance. Driven by the 3Rs concept, calling for replacement, reduction and refinement of animal experimentation, major efforts have been focused in the past decades on the development of alternative methods that fully bypass animal testing or so-called new approach methodologies. These new approach methodologies range from simple monolayer cultures of individual primary or stem cells all up to bioprinted 3D organoids and microfluidic chips that recapitulate the complex cellular architecture of organs. Other approaches applied in life sciences in space research contribute to the reduction of animal experimentation. These include methods to mimic space conditions on Earth, such as microgravity and radiation simulators, as well as tools to support the processing, analysis or application of testing results obtained in life sciences in space research, including systems biology, live-cell, high-content and real-time analysis, high-throughput analysis, artificial intelligence and digital twins. The present paper provides an in-depth overview of such methods to replace or reduce animal testing in life sciences in space research. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biotechadv.2025.108574 VL - 81 IS - 7/8 PB - Elsevier ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Klopp, Christoph A1 - Trittel, Torsten A1 - Stannarius, Ralf T1 - Coarsening of quasi two-dimensional emulsions formed by islands in free-standing smectic films JF - ChemPhysChem N2 - We study the coarsening behavior of assemblies of islands on smectic A freely suspended films in ISS microgravity experiments. The islands can be regarded as liquid inclusions in a two-dimensional fluid in analogy to liquid droplets of the discontinuous phase of an emulsion. The coarsening is effectuated by two processes, predominantly by island coalescence, but to some extend also by Ostwald ripening, whereby large islands grow at the expense of surrounding smaller ones. A peculiarity of this system is that the continuous and the discontinuous phases consist of the same material. We determine the dynamics, analyze the self-similar aging of the island size distribution and discuss characteristic exponents of the mean island growth. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/cphc.202400166 VL - 25 IS - 12 SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - Wiley ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Trittel, Torsten A1 - Puzyrev, Dmitry A1 - Stannarius, Ralf T1 - Platonic solids bouncing on a vibrating plate JF - Physical Review E N2 - The energy transfer between bouncing particles and rigid boundaries during impacts is crucially influenced not only by restitution coefficients of the material but also by particle shapes. This is particularly important when such particles are mechanically agitated with vibrating plates. Inertial measurement units are able to measure all acceleration and rotational velocity components of an object and store these data for subsequent analysis. We employ them to measure the dynamics of cubes and icosahedra on vibrating plates to study the efficiency of energy transfer into the individual degrees of freedom (DOFs) of the excited object. The rotational DOFs turn out to be much less excited than the vertical translational motion. Most remarkably, there is only little difference between the two Platonic solids in both the absolute energies and the energy partition ratios. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.109.034903 VL - 109 IS - 3 PB - APS ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Trittel, Torsten A1 - Puzyrev, Dmitry A1 - Harth, Kirsten A1 - Stannarius, Ralf T1 - Rotational and translational motions in a homogeneously cooling granular gas JF - npj microgravity N2 - A granular gas composed of monodisperse spherical particles was studied in microgravity experiments in a drop tower. Translations and rotations of the particles were extracted from optical video data. Equipartition is violated, the rotational degrees of freedom were excited only to roughly 2/3 of the translational ones. After stopping the mechanical excitation, we observed granular cooling of the ensemble for a period of three times the Haff time, where the kinetic energy dropped to about 5% of its initial value. The cooling rates of all observable degrees of freedom were comparable, and the ratio of rotational and translational kinetic energies fluctuated around a constant value. The distributions of translational and rotational velocity components showed slight but systematic deviations from Gaussians at the start of cooling. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41526-024-00420-5 VL - 10 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 6 PB - Springer ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Klopp, Christoph A1 - Trittel, Torsten A1 - Stannarius, Ralf T1 - Coarsening of Quasi Two-Dimensional Emulsions Formed by Islands in Free-Standing Smectic Films JF - CHEMPHYSCHEM N2 - We study the coarsening behavior of assemblies of islands on smectic A freely suspended films in ISS microgravity experiments. The islands can be regarded as liquid inclusions in a two-dimensional fluid in analogy to liquid droplets of the discontinuous phase of an emulsion. The coarsening is effectuated by two processes, predominantly by island coalescence, but to some extend also by Ostwald ripening, whereby large islands grow at the expense of surrounding smaller ones. A peculiarity of this system is that the continuous and the discontinuous phases consist of the same material. We determine the dynamics, analyze the self-similar aging of the island size distribution and discuss characteristic exponents of the mean island growth. Smectic islands on a thin freely suspended smectic film form a quasi two-dimensional emulsion, without a liquid subphase. We describe the coarsening dynamics that involves island coalescence and Ostwald ripening. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/cphc.202400166 SN - 1439-4235 SP - 1 EP - 13 PB - Wiley ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Harth, Kirsten A1 - Trittel, Torsten A1 - Mohammadi, Mahdieh A1 - Puzyrev, Dmitry A1 - Enezz, Mohammad A1 - Cruz Hidalgo, Raul A1 - Stannarius, Ralf ED - Alam, M. ED - Das, S.L. ED - Bose, M. ED - Murthy, T.G. ED - Chikkadi, V. ED - Singh, A. ED - Luding, S. T1 - Granular gases of rough spheres: Velocity, rotation and collision statistics from in-situ measurements, optical data and simulations JF - EPJ Web of Conferences N2 - Granular gases are not only of interest in fundamental physics, but they can also serve as a test ensembles for the validity of collision models employed in (loose) granular matter. The theoretical literature mainly addresses spheres under ideal conditions and simulations allow full access to all particle parameters, but experiments cannot fulfill these idealizations. We investigate granular gases of soft, rough spheres by combining microgravity experiments and adjusted simulations. We introduce Smart Particles with embedded autarkic micro-sensors for in-situ measurements of rotation rates and accelerations. Additionally, we extract 3D positions, translations and orientations of the particles from stereoscopic video data using Machine-Learning based algorithms. We address the partition of kinetic energy between the degrees of freedom, the angular and translational velocity as well as collision statistics. A simulation is adjusted to experiment parameters, showing good agreement of translational motion, but qualitative differences in the decay of rotational kinetic energy. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202534003012 VL - 340 PB - EDP Sciences ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Puzyrev, Dmitry A1 - Trittel, Torsten A1 - Harth, Kirsten A1 - Sata, Sai Preetham A1 - Stannarius, Ralf A1 - Cruz Hidalgo, Raúl ED - Alam, M. ED - Das, S.L. ED - Bose, M. ED - Murthy, T.G. ED - Chikkadi, V. ED - Singh, A. ED - Luding, S. T1 - AI-aided visual data analysis for granular gases: Complex particles, high density, and other challenges JF - EPJ Web of Conferences N2 - Microgravity experiments with three-dimensional (3D) granular gases, i.e., ensembles of freemoving macroscopic particles which collide inelastically, produce large amounts of stereo video footage which require processing and analysis. The main steps of data treatment are particle detection, 3D matching and tracking in stereoscopic views, and quantification of ensemble statistical properties such as, e.g. mean kinetic energy or collision processes. Frequent overlapping or clustering of particles and their complicated movement patterns require smart software solutions. In recent years, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) methods were successfully used for analysis of granular systems. We have applied such techniques to the granular gases of rod-like particles and developed a software tool which enables a full cycle of semi-automatic experimental data analysis. The approach is now tested on more complex, non-convex particles, shaped as 3D crosses (hexapods). Another challenge is optical analysis of dense granular gases, where individual particles cannot be tracked. We present a preliminary result of application of an ML method for number density profiles extraction in VIP-Gran experiment with dense ensemble of rod-like particles. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202534012013 VL - 340 PB - EDP Sciences ER -