Evidence map›Paper›PMID 28760961›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017

Autonomous reciprocating migration of an active material.

Lin Ren, Meng Wang, Changwei Pan, Qingyu Gao, Yang Liu, Irving R Epstein

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Self-Oscillation in Active Wires with Asymmetric Willis-Type Viscosity.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Lin RenCollege of Chemical Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221008 Jiangsu, People's Republic of China.
Meng WangCollege of Chemical Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221008 Jiangsu, People's Republic of China.
Changwei PanCollege of Chemical Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221008 Jiangsu, People's Republic of China.
Qingyu GaoCollege of Chemical Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221008 Jiangsu, People's Republic of China; gaoqy@cumt.edu.cn epstein@brandeis.edu.
Yang LiuCollege of Chemical Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221008 Jiangsu, People's Republic of China.
Irving R EpsteinDepartment of Chemistry, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454-9110; gaoqy@cumt.edu.cn epstein@brandeis.edu.ORCID 0000-0003-3180-4055

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Periodic to-and-fro migration is a sophisticated mode of locomotion found in many forms of active matter in nature. Providing a general description of periodic migration is challenging, because many details of animal migration remain a mystery. We study periodic migration in a simpler system using a mechanistic model of a photosensitive, active material in which a stimulus-responsive polymer gel is propelled by chemical waves under the regulation of an illumination gradient sensed by the gel, which plays a role analogous to the environment in periodic animal migration. The reciprocating gel migration results from autonomous transitions between retrograde and direct wave locomotion modes arising from the gradient distribution of the illumination intensity. The local dynamics of the chemical waves modulates the asymmetry between push and pull forces to achieve repeated reorientation of the direction of locomotion. Materials that display similar intelligent, self-adaptive locomotion might be tailored for such functions as drug delivery or self-cleaning systems.

Indexed as

active matterBelousov–Zhabotinsky reactionchemomechanical transductionperiodic migration

Identifiers

PMID28760961
PMCPMC5565432

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.