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Jan 23, 2021 1 min, 59 secs

Egg yolk submerged in liquid egg white encased in a hard shell is an example of what physicists call "soft matter in a liquid environment." Other examples include the red blood cells that flow through our circulatory systems and our brains, surrounded by cerebrospinal fluid (CBR) inside a hard skull.

They point to red blood cells as an example.

The precise cause of CTE is still a matter of ongoing research, but the prevailing theory holds that repetitive brain trauma can damage blood vessels in the brain, causing inflammation and the growth of clumps of a protein called Tau.

Prior studies have shown that deformation of soft matter in a liquid environment occurs in response to sudden changes in the fluid field, such as shear flow or a sudden change of the flow pathway.

Wu et al. were interested in the specific case of soft matter in a liquid environment that is also enclosed in a rigid container—like the yolk of an egg, surrounded by liquid egg white, all encased in a shell.

For the second setup (see Fig 1B in gallery), they connected the container to an electric motor to study two types of rotational impact: accelerating rotational impact and decelerating rotational impact (i.e., when the outer contained is speeding up or slowing down as it rotates).

were somewhat surprised to find that, in the case of translational impact, there was almost no deformation of the yolk.

In the case of accelerating rotational impact, the team found that the yolk would start out in a spherical shape and then begin to stretch horizontally to form an ellipsoid.

They got similar results, confirming that "the dominant mechanism leading to the deformation of soft matter in a liquid environment is a result of mechanical forces instead of biological responses," they wrote.

Based on this, "We suspect that rotational, especially decelerational rotational, impact is more harmful to brain matter," said Wu, and that centrifugal force likely plays a critical role.

"The large deformation of brain matter during this process induces the stretch of neurons and causes the damage." This could explain why a boxer can get knocked out by a sharp blow to the chin.

"We hope to apply the lessons learned from it to the study of brain biomechanics as well as other physical processes that involve soft capsules in a liquid environment, such as red blood cells.".

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