@article {JCP_Gavazzoni2025, title = {Optimizing oil{\textendash}water separation using fractal surfaces}, journal = {The Journal of Chemical Physics}, volume = {162}, number = {4}, year = {2025}, note = {n/a}, month = {01}, pages = {044702}, abstract = {

Oil has become a prevalent global pollutant, stimulating the research to improve the techniques to separate oil from water. Materials with special wetting properties{\textemdash}primarily those that repel water while attracting oil{\textemdash}have been proposed as suitable candidates for this task. However, one limitation in developing efficient substrates is the limited available volume for oil absorption. In this study, we investigate the efficacy of disordered fractal materials in addressing this challenge, leveraging their unique wetting properties. Using a combination of a continuous model and Monte Carlo simulations, we characterize the hydrophobicity and oleophilicity of substrates created through ballistic deposition (BD). Our results demonstrate that these materials exhibit high contact angles for water, confirming their hydrophobic nature while allowing significant oil penetration, indicative of oleophilic behavior. The available free volume within the substrates varies from 60\% to 90\% of the total volume of the substrate depending on some parameters of the BD. By combining their water and oil wetting properties with a high availability of volume, the fractal substrates analyzed in this work achieve an efficiency in separating oil from water of nearly 98\%, which is significantly higher compared to micro-pillared surfaces made from the same material but lacking a fractal design.

}, issn = {0021-9606}, doi = {10.1063/5.0247599}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0247599}, author = {Gavazzoni,Cristina and Lazzari, Davi and da Silva Ramos, Iara Patr{\'\i}cia and Brito, Carolina} } @article {PRL_Gavazzoni2024, title = {Testing Theories of the Glass Transition with the Same Liquid but Many Kinetic Rules}, journal = {Phys. Rev. Lett.}, volume = {132}, year = {2024}, note = {n/a}, month = {Jun}, pages = {248201}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, abstract = {n/a}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.248201}, url = {https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.248201}, author = {Gavazzoni,Cristina and Brito, Carolina and Wyart, Matthieu} } @article {SoftMatter_Lazzari2024, title = {Tuning collective actuation of active solids by optimizing activity localization}, journal = {Soft Matter}, volume = {20}, year = {2024}, note = {n/a}, pages = {8570-8580}, publisher = {The Royal Society of Chemistry}, abstract = {

Active solids{,} more specifically elastic lattices embedded with polar active units{,} exhibit collective actuation when the elasto-active feedback{,} generically present in such systems{,} exceeds some critical value. The dynamics then condensates on a small fraction of the vibrational modes{,} the selection of which obeys non trivial rules rooted in the nonlinear part of the dynamics. So far{,} the complexity of the selection mechanism has limited the design of specific actuation. Here{,} we investigate numerically how localizing activity to a fraction of modes enables the selection of non-trivial collective actuation. We perform numerical simulations of an agent-based model on triangular and disordered lattices and vary the concentration and the localization of the active agents on the lattice nodes. Both contribute to the distribution of the elastic energy across the modes. We then introduce an algorithm{,} which{,} for a given fraction of active nodes{,} evolves the localization of the activity in such a way that the energy distribution on a few targeted modes is maximized {\textendash} or minimized. We illustrate on a specific targeted actuation{,} how the algorithm performs as compared to manually chosen localization of the activity. While{,} in the case of the ordered lattice{,} a well-educated guess performs better than the algorithm{,} and the latter outperform the manual trials in the case of the disordered lattice. Finally{,} the analysis of the results in the case of the ordered lattice leads us to introduce a design principle based on a measure of the susceptibility of the modes to be activated along certain activation paths.

}, doi = {10.1039/D4SM00868E}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/D4SM00868E}, author = {Lazzari, Davi and Dauchot, Olivier and Brito, Carolina} } @article {10.1063/5.0177250, title = {Chemical physics of controlled wettability and super surfaces}, journal = {The Journal of Chemical Physics}, volume = {159}, number = {15}, year = {2023}, note = {n/a}, month = {10}, pages = {150402}, abstract = {n/a}, issn = {0021-9606}, doi = {10.1063/5.0177250}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0177250}, author = {Brito, Carolina and Butt, Hans-J{\"u}rgen and Giacomello, Alberto} } @article {PlosOne_Anteneodo2023, title = {Physics scientific events in Brazil: Female participation}, journal = {PLOS ONE}, volume = {18}, number = {7}, year = {2023}, note = {n/a}, month = {07}, pages = {1-9}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, abstract = {

It is known that diversity matters to improve scientific excellence and that scientific events are important occasions to discuss new ideas and create networks, beyond the fact that it helps to put the work of the scientists in evidence. Hence, increasing diversity in scientific events is crucial to improve their scientific quality and help to promote minorities. In Brazil, important physics scientific events are organized by the Brazilian Physical Society (SBF, in Portuguese), and in this work, some aspects related to the participation of women in these physics events are analyzed from 2005 to 2021. The analysis shows that women{\textquoteright}s participation has increased over the years, reaching in some areas of Physics the same percentage as the one observed in the SBF community (always below 25\%). However, female participation as members of organizing committees and as keynote speakers is always lower. Some proposals are listed to change the current picture of inequality.

}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0287931}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287931}, author = {Anteneodo, Celia and Brito, Carolina and Menezes, D{\'e}bora P} } @article {JCP_SilvaRamos2023, title = {Hierarchical structured surfaces enhance the contact angle of the hydrophobic (meta-stable) state}, journal = {The Journal of Chemical Physics}, volume = {158}, number = {15}, year = {2023}, note = {n/a}, month = {04}, pages = {154703}, abstract = {

The relation between wetting properties and geometric parameters of fractal surfaces are widely discussed on the literature and, however, there are still divergences on this topic. Here we propose a simple theoretical model to describe the wetting properties of a droplet of water placed on a hierarchical structured surface and test the predictions of the model and the dependence of the droplet wetting state on the initial conditions using simulation of the 3-spin Potts model. We show that increasing the auto-similarity level of the hierarchy {\textendash} called n {\textendash} does not affect considerably the stable wetting state of the droplet but increases its contact angle. Simulations also explicit the existence of metastable states on this type of surfaces and shows that, when n increases, the metastability becomes more pronounced. Finally we show that the fractal dimension of the surface is not a good predictor of the contact angle of the droplet.

}, issn = {0021-9606}, doi = {10.1063/5.0146948}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0146948}, author = {da Silva Ramos, Iara Patr{\'\i}cia and Gavazzoni,Cristina and Lazzari, Davi and Brito, Carolina} } @article {Brito2023, title = {Physics in Latin America}, journal = {Nature Reviews Physics}, volume = {5}, number = {9}, year = {2023}, note = {n/a}, pages = {502{\textendash}504}, abstract = {

The southern skies and tall mountains of Latin America have cultivated a long history of astronomy on the continent. Today, the continent hosts over 80 observatories that are collaborative research centres for the region and the world. But what about other areas of physics? These have benefited from a culture of collaboration, but there are still challenges in fully developing the potential of research on the continent, such as insufficient researchers or resources. In this Viewpoint, seven physicists discuss the varying research landscapes of different areas of physics across the continent.

}, issn = {2522-5820}, doi = {10.1038/s42254-023-00618-8}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-023-00618-8}, author = {Brito, Carolina and David Vanegas Forero and Karen Hallberg and Gonzalo Palma and Joel Saavedra Alvear and Gonzalo Tancredi and Wilfredo Tavera} } @article {ANM_Rasera2023, title = {Slowing Sintering to Increase the Lifetime of Cu Nanoparticles on Metal Oxide Supports}, journal = {ACS Applied Nano Materials}, volume = {6}, number = {7}, year = {2023}, note = {n/a}, pages = {6435{\textendash}6443}, publisher = {American Chemical Society}, abstract = {n/a}, doi = {10.1021/acsanm.3c01092}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1021/acsanm.3c01092}, author = {Fabio Rasera and Alisson S. Thill and L{\'\i}via P. Matte and Gustavo Z. Girotto and Helena V. Casara and Guilherme B. Della Mea and Naira M. Balzaretti and Fernanda Poletto and Brito, Carolina and Fabiano Bernardi} } @article {AABC_Brito2022, title = {Harassment in Brazilian universities: how big is this problem? The Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) as a case study}, journal = {Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ci{\^e}ncias}, volume = {94}, number = {2}, year = {2022}, note = {n/a}, pages = {e20201720}, publisher = {Academia Brasileira de Ci{\^e}ncias}, abstract = {n/a}, issn = {0001-3765}, doi = {10.1590/0001-3765202220201720}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1590/0001-3765202220201720}, author = {Brito, Carolina and Barbosa, Marcia C and PAVANI, DANIELA B. and COSTA, ANGELO BRANDELLI and NARDI, HENRIQUE C.} } @article {doi:10.1063/5.0041070, title = {Modeling oil{\textendash}water separation with controlled wetting properties}, journal = {The Journal of Chemical Physics}, volume = {154}, number = {10}, year = {2021}, note = {

n/a

}, pages = {104704}, abstract = {

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}, doi = {10.1063/5.0041070}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0041070}, author = {Gavazzoni,Cristina and Silvestrini, Marion and Brito, Carolina} } @article {FETTER2021125832, title = {On the stability of the Brazilian presidential regime: A statistical analysis}, journal = {Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications}, volume = {571}, year = {2021}, note = {

n/a

}, pages = {125832}, abstract = {

Brazil{\textquoteright}s presidential system is characterized by the existence of many political parties that are elected for the Chamber of Deputies and unite in legislative coalitions to form a majority. Since the re-democratization in 1985, Brazil has had 8 direct presidential elections, among which there were two impeachments of the elected presidents. In this work we identify clear differences between stable presidential periods and Legislative terms with an impeachment by analyzing the votes that took place in the Chamber of Deputies from 1991 to 2019. Our statistical analysis are blind to the content of the bills. We start by measuring the cohesion of the parties and the congress for each bill. We then quantify the agreement between the votes of congressmen and observe that there is a stronger polarization among congressmen during legislative periods where there was no impeachment, referred here as stable legislative periods. Using clustering algorithms, we are able to associate these polarized groups observed during the stable periods with the opposition to the government and government base. For periods with an impeachment, the data shows that the congress split up in more than two groups. To characterize the impeachment of Collor and Dilma Rousseff (in 1992 and 2016, respectively) we analyze how the agreement between congressmen and the government evolved over time and we also propose a division of the congressmen in three groups. We identified that, in periods with an impeachment, the third group aligns itself against the president.

}, keywords = {K-means, Political term stability, Shannon entropy}, issn = {0378-4371}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2021.125832}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437121001047}, author = {Frederico Fetter and Daniel Gamermann and Brito, Carolina} } @article {PhysRevLett.124.208001, title = {Jamming with Tunable Roughness}, journal = {Phys. Rev. Lett.}, volume = {124}, year = {2020}, note = {

n/a

}, month = {May}, pages = {208001}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, abstract = {

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}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.208001}, url = {https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.208001}, author = {Ikeda, Harukuni and Brito, Carolina and Wyart, Matthieu and Zamponi, Francesco} } @article {PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.010136, title = {Brazilian physicists community diversity, equity, and inclusion: A first diagnostic}, journal = {Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.}, volume = {16}, year = {2020}, note = {

n/a

}, month = {Jun}, pages = {010136}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, abstract = {

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}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.010136}, url = {https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.010136}, author = {Anteneodo, Celia and Brito, Carolina and Alves-Brito, Alan and Alexandre, Simone Silva and D{\textquoteright}Avila, Beatriz Nattrodt and Menezes, D{\'e}bora Peres} } @article {5807, title = {Direct coupling analysis of epistasis in allosteric materials}, journal = {PLOS Computational Biology}, volume = {16}, year = {2020}, note = {

n/a

}, month = {2020/03/02}, pages = {e1007630 -}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, abstract = {

Author summary Allostery in proteins is the property of highly specific responses to ligand binding at a distant site. To inform protocols of de novo drug design, it is fundamental to understand the impact of mutations on allosteric regulation and whether it can be predicted from evolutionary correlations. In this work we consider allosteric architectures artificially evolved to optimize the cooperativity of binding at allosteric and active site. We first characterize the emergent pattern of epistasis as well as the underlying mechanical phenomena, finding the four types of epistasis (Synergistic, Sign, Antagonistic, Saturation), which can be both short or long-range. The numerical evolution of these allosteric architectures allows us to benchmark Direct Coupling Analysis, a method which relies on co-evolution in sequence data to infer direct evolutionary couplings, in connection to allostery. We show that Direct Coupling Analysis predicts quantitatively point mutation costs but underestimates strong long-range epistasis. We provide an argument, based on a simplified model, illustrating the reasons for this discrepancy. Our analysis suggests neural networks as more promising tool to measure epistasis.

}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007630}, author = {Bravi, Barbara and Ravasio, Riccardo and Brito, Carolina and Wyart, Matthieu} } @article {5806, title = {Infinitesimal asphericity changes the universality of the jamming transition}, journal = {Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment}, volume = {2020}, year = {2020}, note = {

n/a

}, month = {2020}, pages = {033302}, publisher = {IOP Publishing}, abstract = {

The jamming transition of non-spherical particles is fundamentally different from the spherical case. Non-spherical particles are hypostatic at their jamming points, while isostaticity is ensured in the case of the jamming of spherical particles. This structural difference implies that the presence of asphericity affects the critical exponents related to the contact number and the vibrational density of states. Moreover, while the force and gap distributions of isostatic jamming present power-law behaviors, even an infinitesimal asphericity is enough to smooth out these singularities. In a recent work (Brito et al 2018 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 115 11736{\textendash}41), we have used a combination of marginal stability arguments and the replica method to explain these observations. We argued that systems with internal degrees of freedom, like the rotations in ellipsoids, or the variation of the radii in the case of the breathing particles fall in the same universality class. In this paper, we review comprehensively the results about the jamming with internal degrees of freedom in addition to the translational degrees of freedom. We use a variational argument to derive the critical exponents of the contact number, shear modulus, and the characteristic frequencies of the density of states. Moreover, we present additional numerical data supporting the theoretical results, which were not shown in the previous work.

}, isbn = {1742-5468}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1742-5468/ab74cb}, author = {Ikeda, Harukuni and Brito, Carolina and Wyart, Matthieu} } @article {wodak2019allostery, title = {Allostery in its many disguises: from theory to applications}, journal = {Structure}, year = {2019}, note = {

n/a

}, publisher = {Cell Press}, abstract = {

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}, author = {Wodak, Shoshana J and Paci, Emanuele and Dokholyan, Nikolay V and Berezovsky, Igor N and Horovitz, Amnon and Li, Jing and Hilser, Vincent J and Bahar, Ivet and Karanicolas, John and Stock, Gerhard and others} } @unpublished {anteneodo2019brazilian, title = {Brazilian physicists community diversity, equity and inclusion: a first diagnostic}, journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.08082}, year = {2019}, note = {

n/a

}, abstract = {

n/a

}, author = {Anteneodo, Celia and Brito, Carolina and Alves-Brito, Alan and Alexandre, Simone Silva and D{\textquoteright}Avila, Beatriz Nattrodt and Menezes, D{\'e}bora Peres} } @article {kapteijns2019fast, title = {Fast generation of ultrastable computer glasses by minimization of an augmented potential energy}, journal = {Physical Review E}, volume = {99}, number = {1}, year = {2019}, note = {

n/a

}, pages = {012106}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, abstract = {

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}, author = {Kapteijns, Geert and Ji, Wencheng and Brito, Carolina and Wyart, Matthieu and Lerner, Edan} } @article {lazzari2019geometric, title = {Geometric and chemical nonuniformity may induce the stability of more than one wetting state in the same hydrophobic surface}, journal = {Physical Review E}, volume = {99}, number = {3}, year = {2019}, note = {

n/a

}, pages = {032801}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, abstract = {

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}, author = {Lazzari, Davi and Brito, Carolina} } @article {ravasio2019mechanics, title = {Mechanics of allostery: contrasting the induced fit and population shift scenarios}, journal = {Biophysical journal}, volume = {117}, number = {10}, year = {2019}, note = {

n/a

}, pages = {1954{\textendash}1962}, publisher = {Cell Press}, abstract = {

n/a

}, author = {Ravasio, Riccardo and Flatt, Solange Marie and Yan, Le and Zamuner, Stefano and Brito, Carolina and Wyart, Matthieu} } @booklet {menezes2019women, title = {Women in Physics: Scissors Effect from the Brazilian Olympiad of Physics to Professional Life}, journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.05536}, year = {2019}, note = {

n/a

}, abstract = {

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}, author = {Menezes, D{\'e}bora P and Brito, Carolina and Anteneodo, Celia} } @article {ferrari2018geographic, title = {Geographic and gender diversity in the Brazilian Academy of Sciences}, journal = {Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ci{\^e}ncias}, volume = {90}, number = {2}, year = {2018}, note = {

n/a

}, pages = {2543{\textendash}2552}, publisher = {Academia Brasileira de Ci{\^e}ncias}, abstract = {

n/a

}, author = {Ferrari, Nath{\'a}lia C and Martell, Raquel and Okido, Daniela H and Romanzini, Grasiele and Magnan, Viviane and Barbosa, M{\'a}rcia C and Brito, Carolina} } @article {yan2018principles, title = {Principles for optimal cooperativity in allosteric materials}, journal = {Biophysical journal}, volume = {114}, number = {12}, year = {2018}, note = {

n/a

}, pages = {2787{\textendash}2798}, publisher = {Cell Press}, abstract = {

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}, author = {Yan, Le and Ravasio, Riccardo and Brito, Carolina and Wyart, Matthieu} } @article {brito2018theory, title = {Theory for swap acceleration near the glass and jamming transitions for continuously polydisperse particles}, journal = {Physical Review X}, volume = {8}, number = {3}, year = {2018}, note = {

n/a

}, pages = {031050}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, abstract = {

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}, author = {Brito, Carolina and Lerner, Edan and Wyart, Matthieu} } @article {brito2018universality, title = {Universality of jamming of nonspherical particles}, journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, volume = {115}, number = {46}, year = {2018}, note = {

n/a

}, pages = {11736{\textendash}11741}, publisher = {National Academy of Sciences}, abstract = {

n/a

}, author = {Brito, Carolina and Ikeda, Harukuni and Urbani, Pierfrancesco and Wyart, Matthieu and Zamponi, Francesco} } @article {yan2017architecture, title = {Architecture and coevolution of allosteric materials}, journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, volume = {114}, number = {10}, year = {2017}, note = {

n/a

}, pages = {2526{\textendash}2531}, publisher = {National Academy of Sciences}, abstract = {

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}, author = {Yan, Le and Ravasio, Riccardo and Brito, Carolina and Wyart, Matthieu} }