"The nucleus shape came as a surprise and, of course, it has implications for the landing site selection," he said.
Related sites Rosetta mission Hubble Space Telescope study of comet, with derived nucleus shape Stardust mission.
Changes in the cell shape also affected the nucleus shape, whereas variations in the cell spreading area modulated the nucleus volume, indicating a possible link between nucleus morphology (both shape and volume) and DNA synthesis.
Besides circular and elliptoid shapes, some unusual nucleus shapes of BMSCs have been achieved, such as square, cross, dumbbell, and asymmetric sphere-protrusion.
The critical nucleus shape is predicted to be either a perfect cube or a perfect octahedron, while the equilibrium growth forms are the truncated shapes.
A model for the critical nucleus shapes and the growth forms of small cuboctahedral particles is proposed considering the Helmholtz free energies for nucleation and growth.
Regarding comet P/Halley, it was possible, using the nucleus shape derived from the cameras, to show that the observed dust "filament" structures are the signatures of the nucleus shape, and are insensitive to whether the nucleus is assumed compositionally homogeneous or inhomogeneous.
Enforced cell shape distortion resulting in large scale rearrangement of cytoskeletal network and altered nucleus shape has been proposed as a physical impetus by which mechanical deformation is translated into biochemical response.
Compared to spread-out SMCs on nonpatterned surfaces, SMCs on micropatterned surfaces demonstrated elongated morphology, significantly lower cell and nucleus shape indexes, less spreading, a lower proliferation rate, and a similar response (but to a lesser extent) to platelet-derived growth factor, transforming growth factor-β, and mechanical stretching.
Using parameters suitable for this comet, and an arbitrary aspherical nucleus shape and rotation mode, the model is capable to generate large-scale gas spirals of the kind observed in this comet, thus demonstrating that the existence of such spirals does not require surface heterogeneity (active/inactive areas).
