  Mechanically active cells in soft media act as force dipoles. The resulting
elastic interactions are long-ranged and favor the formation of strings. We
show analytically that due to screening, the effective interaction between
strings decays exponentially, with a decay length determined only by geometry.
Both for disordered and ordered arrangements of cells, we predict novel phase
transitions from paraelastic to ferroelastic and anti-ferroelastic phases as a
function of Poisson ratio.
