We numerically calculate the drag on a sphere or a filament immersed in an incompressible viscous monolayer or membrane on one, or between two, viscous infinitely deep bulk phases. We show that contributions due to the Marangoni effect of the monolayer or membrane account for a significant part of the total drag. Effects of protrusion of objects into the three-dimensional fluids adjacent to the monolayer and membrane are investigated. Known analytical expressions in the limit of a very viscous membrane or monolayer are recovered by our numerics. A sphere in a membrane exhibits maximal drag when symmetrically immersed with the equator coinciding with the membrane plane. No discontinuity of the drag arises when the sphere is totally immersed into the subphase and detaches from the monolayer. Effects of protrusion are more important for objects moving in a membrane or monolayer of low surface viscosity. At large surface shear viscosity protrusions must be larger than the length defined by the ratio of surface to bulk viscosities to alter the drag on the object. Our calculations may be useful for the measurement of hydrodynamic radii of lipid rafts in membranes and for electrocapillary effects of spheres immersed in a surface

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We have observed what appears to be a first-order phase change from deeply supercooled liquid triphenyl phosphite at 1 atm to a rigid, "apparently" amorphous phase which we denote as the "glacial phase". This is a new, crisper, and rather different addition to the examples of polyamorphism that have recently been studied. In order to "deeply" supercool the liquid, it must be quick-quenched to a low temperature: if heated slowly, but immediately, it crystallizes; if allowed to stand for several hours at low temperature, it transforms to the glacial phase; and if subsequently heated it, too, crystallizes, but at a higher temperature than that for liquid crystallization. The glacial phase can be clearly distinguished from both the normal crystal and the ordinary glass. We propose a model for the formation of this "apparently" amorphous glacial phase.

We study the autonomous motion of catalytic nanorods in Gibbs monolayers. The catalytic activity of the rods on a hydrogen peroxide aqueous subphase gives rise to anomalous translational and rotational diffusion. The rods perform a Levy-walk superdiffusive motion that can be decomposed into thermal orientation fluctuations and an active motion of the rods with a constant velocity along their long axis. Since interfacial dissipation increases relative to bulk phase dissipation when miniaturizing the size of objects moving in the interface, the autonomous nanorods allow for precise measurements of surface shear viscosities as low as a few nN s/m. The cross over from active motion toward passive diffusion when increasing the surfactant concentration is explained by a loss of friction asymmetry of the rods.

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Lateral force microscopy in the wearless regime was used to study the friction behavior of a lipid monolayer on mica. In the monolayer, condensed domains with long-range orientational order of the lipid molecules were present. The domains revealed unexpectedly strong friction anisotropies and non-negligible friction asymmetries. The angular dependency of these effects correlated well with the tilt direction of the alkyl chains of the monolayer, as determined by electron diffraction and Brewster angle microscopy. The molecular tilt causing these frictional effects was less than 15 degrees, demonstrating that even small molecular tilts can make a major contribution to friction.

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