  Vesicular capsules are used to carry biochemicals in biology and liposome
technology. Being water-permeable with differing interior and exterior
compositions, they are necessarily under osmotic stress. Recent studies have
underlined the different thermodynamic behavior of osmotically stressed
vesicles in comparison to vesicles subjected to a hydrostatic pressure as
studied earlier. Through their different behavior one gains access to the
parameters affecting the osmotic swelling of vesicles, such as the
membrane-permeability coefficients of solute molecules.
