Related papers: Cause of Chirality Consensus
A thermodynamic argument has been developed which relates the chirality of the constituents of a mixture of enantiomers to the system excess volume, and thereby to its Gibbs free enthalpy. A specific connection is shown between the excess…
Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution. Here we show that molecules taking part in biochemical processes from small molecules to proteins are critical quantum mechanically. Electronic…
I study the physical nature of traces (or memories). Surprisingly, (i) systems separation with (ii) temperature differences and (iii) long thermalization times, are sufficient conditions to produce macroscopic traces. Traces of the past are…
Constraints on changes in expression levels across all cell components imposed by the steady growth of cells have recently been discussed both experimentally and theoretically. By assuming a small environmental perturbation and considering…
Recent theoretical progress in nonequilibrium thermodynamics, linking the physical principle of Maximum Entropy Production ("MEP") to the information-theoretical "MaxEnt" principle of scientific inference, together with conjectures from…
Microbes require several complex organic molecules for growth. A species may obtain a required factor by taking up molecules released by other species or by synthesizing the molecule. The patterns of uptake and synthesis set a flow of…
We study the statistical underpinnings of life. We question some common assumptions about the thermodynamics of life and illustrate how, contrary to widespread belief, even in a closed system entropy growth can accompany an increase in…
Chirality, or handedness, enters astrophysics in three distinct ways. Magnetic field and vortex lines tend to be helical and have a systematic twist in the northern and southern hemispheres of a star or a galaxy. Helicity is here driven by…
Structural hierarchy, in which materials possess distinct features on multiple length scales, is ubiquitous in nature; diverse biological materials, such as bone, cellulose, and muscle, have as many as ten hierarchical levels. Structural…
Chirality is a pervasive form of symmetry that is intimately connected to the physical properties of solids, as well as the chemical and biological activity of molecular systems. However, its control with light is challenging, because…
Molecular chirality leads to a wonderful variety of equilibrium structures, from the simple cholesteric phase to the twist-grain-boundary phases, and it is responsible for interesting and technologically important materials like…
It is often claimed that the fundamental laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric and that therefore our experience of the passage of time is an illusion. This paper will critically discuss these claims and show that they are…
The Principle of Insufficient Reason (PIR) assigns equal probabilities to each alternative of a random experiment whenever there is no reason to prefer one over the other. The Maximum Entropy Principle (MaxEnt) generalizes PIR to the case…
The claim that life is an emergent phenomenon exhibiting novel properties and principles is often criticized for being in conflict with causal closure at the microscopic level. I argue that advances in cosmological theory suggesting an…
The observed general time-asymmetric behavior of macroscopic systems -- embodied in the second law of thermodynamics -- arises naturally from time-symmetric microscopic laws due to the great disparity between macro and micro-scales. More…
Recent experiments on monolayers of spindle-like cells plated on adhesive stripe-shaped domains have provided a convincing demonstration that certain types of collective phenomena in epithelia are well described by active nematic…
Kingman's model describes the evolution of a one-locus haploid population of infinite size and discrete generations under the competition of selection and mutation. A random generalisation has been made in a previous paper which assumes all…
Chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) describes how chiral molecules and materials generate spin polarization even at thermal equilibrium. This observation has challenged established principles of microscopic reversibility and Onsager…
A general theory of thermodynamically consistent biomechanical--biochemical growth in a body, considering mass addition in the bulk and at an incoherent interface, is developed. The incoherency arises due to incompatibility of growth and…
The homochirality of the molecules of life has been a vexing problem with no generally accepted solution to date. Since a racemic mixture of chiral nucleotides frustrates the extension and replication of RNA and DNA, understanding the…