Functional Interdependence in Coupled Dissipative Structures: Physical Foundations of Biological Coordination

Coordination within and between organisms is one of the most complex abilities of living systems, requiring the concerted regulation of many physiological constituents, and this complexity can be particularly difficult to explain by appealing to physics. A valuable framework for understanding biological coordination is the coordinative structure, a self-organized assembly of physiological elements that collectively performs a specific function. Coordinative structures are characterized by three properties: (1) multiple coupled components, (2) soft-assembly, and (3) functional organization. Coordinative structures have been hypothesized to be specific instantiations of dissipative structures, non-equilibrium, self-organized, physical systems exhibiting complex pattern formation in structure and behaviors. We pursued this hypothesis by testing for these three properties of coordinative structures in an electrically-driven dissipative structure. Our system demonstrates dynamic reorganization in response to functional perturbation, a behavior of coordinative structures called reciprocal compensation. Reciprocal compensation is corroborated by a dynamical systems model of the underlying physics. This coordinated activity of the system appears to derive from the system’s intrinsic end-directed behavior to maximize the rate of entropy production. The paper includes three primary components: (1) empirical data on emergent coordinated phenomena in a physical system, (2) computational simulations of this physical system, and (3) theoretical evaluation of the empirical and simulated results in the context of physics and the life sciences. This study reveals similarities between an electrically-driven dissipative structure that exhibits end-directed behavior and the goal-oriented behaviors of more complex living systems.     

Discharge Systems and Plasma-Assisted Electron Emission in Forevacuum Pressure Range

Russian Physics Journal - The paper presents a review of the current status of research into processes in hollow-cathode and arc discharges that provide the electron emission from forevacuum plasma...     

Time Reversal and Tomographic Representation for Signal Processing in Living Systems

The tomographic representation for signal processing opens new opportunities for studies of living system signals. Some signals can be described by functions of time f(t), which are approximately connected with each other by reversing of time. In this case, there is a possibility to observe transformation of tomograms for such functions. We obtain the correspondence of tomograms for functions f(t) and f(?t) in the vicinity of the frequency scale and illustrate by the examples of electric impedance of rat femoral artery pulsing in two different modes. We show that the use of a reference signal for signal processing of living systems provides new opportunities for employing both – their standard Fourier transforms and tomograms – to obtain new additional and useful information.

     

The Microscopic Foundations of Vlasov Theory for Jellium-Like Newtonian N-Body Systems

The kinetic equations of Vlasov theory, in the weak formulation, are rigorously shown to govern the $N\rightarrow \infty $ limit of the Newtonian dynamics of $D\ge 2$ -dimensional $N$ -body systems with attractive harmonic pair interactions and locally integrable repulsive inverse power law pair interactions, provided a mild higher moment hypothesis on the forces (which is shown to propagate globally in time for each $N$ ) will hold uniformly in $N$ at later times if it holds uniformly in $N$ initially (the uniformity in $N$ of this moment condition is demonstrated to hold for an open set of initial data). Logarithmic interactions are included as a limiting case. The proof is based on the Liouville equation, more precisely the first member of the pertinent BBGKY hierarchy, and does not invoke the Hewitt–Savage theorem, nor any regularization of the interactions. In addition, a rigorous proof of the virial theorem and of some of its interesting ramifications is given.     

On Subsystem Recognition in Compound Physical Systems

After a discussion on property lattices, I introduce a category of such latticesand structure-preserving maps. A careful analysis of the notions of physicalsystem and of subsystem leads to the construction of a particular family ofmorphisms that are used for the construction of the coproduct in this category.     

Observable Properties of q-Deformed Physical Systems

Examples are given of q-deformed systems that may be interpreted by the standard rules of quantum theory in terms of new degrees of freedom and supplementary quantum numbers.     

Temperature Effect of Infrared Rays Absorbed by the Protein Molecules in the Living Systems

The principal features of Infrared absorption of the protein molecules are anomalous red shifts of the main peaks and increases of intensity of the anomalous bands with decreasing temperature which are proved by experiments. We think that these anomalous phenomena are caused by the self-trapping of amide-I vibrational quantum (vibron). We thus proposed a soliton model of the vibrons interacting with optical vibration of amino acid residue (phonon) to study theoretically these phenomena. We find farther out the exponential-reductions of the intensity of the anomalous bands in the infrared absorption with increasing temperature in the protein molecules by using this model. This shows that the living things including human beings and animals can absorb more much infrared lights at low temperature than that at high temperature.     

Observable Properties of q-Deformed Physical Systems

Letters in Mathematical Physics -     

The Definition of Physical Observable in Singular Systems

The explicit expression of evolution of the phase space function in time is derived. The physical observables are shown, in general, not always to have weakly vanishing Poisson brackets with all the first-class constraints according to Bergmann's physical requirement and then the corrected definition of the physical observable is given. The relations between this definition with the extended Dirac's conjecture and the gauge conditions are discussed.     

Action and Momentum Functionals in Phase Spaces of Physical Systems

In the present paper, it is demonstrated that nonlinear evolutionary equations can be derived by variations of the functionals directly induced by the phase space geometry of a physical system.     

A Molecular Dynamical Theory of Ultraweak Bio－photon Emission in the LivingSystems and Its Propertes（1）

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Physical Optics Simulation in Matlab for High-Performance Systems

Two advanced optical system applications are implemented in a Matlab™ based simulation engine. The applications are aligning a micro-optic fiber coupler and scanning an optical disk with a readout system having an effective numerical aperture of 1.8. Many phenomena, like scalar diffraction, vector diffraction, addition of aberrations, thin-film interactions, and Babinet decomposition are described in the examples. A powerful graphical user interface (GUI) is also described that allows users to define optical elements, program operations and control program flow. Users can also easily interface custom field operations to the simulation engine.     

物理"海马"、数学"海马"与生物"海马"

在C60-TCNQ(一种有机分子名称的缩写)和纯的TCNQ有机分子薄膜中,文章作者得到了一种形似海洋中生存的动物海马的图案结构,取名为"海马"分形结构.这种"海马"图案在旋转180度时具有近似的对称性,但是不同于简单的二维反转对称.在数学中用复变函数的多项式,通过Julia对复杂空间中函数的纯粹数学映射(即z→z2 c,其中c=-0.74543 0.1130i),也能模拟出相似的"海马"图案.对于"海马"分形,文章作者提出如下的一种形成机制,即:在薄膜形成初期过程中,中性分子或团簇中存在部分荷电粒子,由于库仑排斥作用,成核和生长过程中会形成对称性破缺,最终形成"海马"状分形."海马"的有趣图案,加深了人们对自然与科学统一的认识,激发了人们对自然本源的探索激情.     

Physical Foundations of Quantum Theory: Stochastic Formulation and Proposed Experimental Test—Addendum and Erratum

The Addendum of this note presents a brief perspective and an additional development pertaining to a previous paper. The even forceK _n as well as the odd forceK ₀ of the time-inversion-covariant (TIC) equation of motion in the presence of a magnetic field are derived from the results of the previous paper by a hint of generalization in classical physics. Then, by following identical steps as in the previous paper, the Addendum completes the derivation of the stochastic Hamilton-Jacobi and the Schrödinger equations in the electromagnetic field. The Erratum of our note points out minor typographical errors plus one clarification of a definition.     

Physical Mechanism of Formation of the Bimodal Structure in the Meiyu Front System

The bimodal structure of the Meiyu front system is readdressed after Zhou et al.（2005）. The physical mechanism of the formation of the bimodal distribution is discussed. The bimodal structure of the Melyu front system considerably results from atmospheric moisture gradients, though atmospheric temperature gradients are also not negligible. According to the definition of equivalent potential temperature, and by scale analysis, we find that atmospheric equivalent potential temperature gradients, which could be regarded as an indicator of the Meiyu front system, could be mainly attributed to the variations of atmospheric potential temperature gradients with a scaling factor of 1 and moisture gradients multiplied by a scaling factor of an order of about 2.5 × 10^3, which means that small variations of atmospheric moisture gradients could lead to large variations of equivalent potential temperature gradients, and thus large variations of the Meiyu front system. Quantitative diagnostics with a mesoscale simulation data in the vicinity of the Meiyu front system show that moisture gradients contribute to equivalent potential temperature gradients more than potential temperature gradients.     

Sigma-Phase in Fe-Cr and Fe-V Alloy Systems and its Physical Properties

This review addresses the physical properties of the σ-phase in Fe-Cr and Fe-V alloy systems as revealed both with experimental—mostly with the Mössbauer spectroscopy—and theoretical methods. In particular, the following questions relevant to the issue have been addressed: identification of σ and determination of its structural properties, kinetics of α-to-σ and σ-to-α phase transformations, Debye temperature and Fe-partial phonon density of states, Curie temperature and magnetization, hyperfine fields, isomer shifts and electric field gradients.