Related papers: Life's Solutions are Not Ideal
Ions in water are important in biology, from molecules to organs. Classically, ions in water are treated as ideal noninteracting particles in a perfect gas. Excess free energy of ion was zero. Mathematics was not available to deal…
Classical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics describe systems in which nothing interacts with nothing. Even the highly refined theory of simple fluids does not deal very well with electrical interactions, boundary conditions, or…
Chemistry is about chemical reactions. Chemistry is about electrons changing their configurations as atoms and molecules react. Chemistry studies reactions as if they occurred in ideal infinitely dilute solutions. But most reactions occur…
Ions in water are the liquid of life. Life occurs almost entirely in 'salt water'. Water itself (without ions) is lethal to animal cells and damaging for most proteins. Water must contain the right ions in the right amounts if it is to…
The movement of ionic solutions is an essential part of biology and technology. Fluidics, from nano- to micro- to microfluidics, is a burgeoning area of technology which is all about the movement of ionic solutions, on various scales. Many…
Biochemists know that the law of mass action is not exact and not very useful because we cannot transfer it (with unchanged parameters) from one condition to another. I argue that exact equations require calibrated multiscale analysis to…
Recent developments in molecular theories and simulation of ions and polar molecules in water are reviewed. The hydration of imidazole and imidazolium solutes is used to exemplify the theoretical issues. The treatment of long-ranged…
The theory of real relativistic fluids is in the rather unique situation that there is a natural relativistic extension of the nonrelativistic theory, but it is physically untenable. On the other hand, mounting evidence that matter created…
The origins of life stands among the great open scientific questions of our time. While a number of proposals exist for possible starting points in the pathway from non-living to living matter, these have so far not achieved states of…
We present a hydrodynamic theory describing pair diffusion in systems with periodic boundary conditions, thereby generalizing earlier work on self-diffusion [D\"unweg and Kremer, J. Chem. Phys. 1993, 99, 6983-6997; Yeh and Hummer, J. Phys.…
The results of molecular dynamics simulations of the properties of water in an aqueous ionic solution close to an interface with a model metallic electrode are described. In the simulations the electrode behaves as an ideally polarizable…
Solvents comprise two thirds of all industrial emissions. Traditional organic solvents easily reach the atmosphere as they have high vapor pressure and are linked to a host of negative environmental effects including climate change, urban…
Theoretical physics is the search for simple and universal mathematical descriptions of the natural world. In contrast, much of modern biology is an exploration of the complexity and diversity of life. For many, this contrast is prima facie…
Conventional lithium-ion batteries, and many next-generation technologies, rely on organic electrolytes with multiple solvents to achieve the desired physicochemical and interfacial properties. The complex interplay between these properties…
Solvation of ions is ubiquitous on our planet. Solvated ions have a profound effect on the behavior of ionic solutions, which is crucial in nature and technology. Experimentally, ions have been classified into "structure makers" or…
A molecular theory of liquid water is identified and studied on the basis of computer simulation of the TIP3P model of liquid water. This theory would be exact for models of liquid water in which the intermolecular interactions vanish…
Life occurs in concentrated `Ringer Solutions' derived from seawater that Lesser Blum studied for most of his life. As we worked together, Lesser and I realized that the questions asked of those solutions were quite different in biology…
Chemistry occurring at or near the surfaces of aqueous droplets and thin films in the atmosphere influences air quality and climate. Molecular dynamics simulations are becoming increasingly useful for gaining atomic-scale insight into the…
Ionic liquids are promising candidates for novel electrolytes as they possess large electrochemical and thermodynamic stability and offer a high degree of tunability. As purely-ionic electrolyte without neutral solvent they exhibit…
Due to recent advances in synthetic biology and artificial life, the origin of life is currently a hot topic of research. We review the literature and argue that the two traditionally competing "replicator-first" and "metabolism-first"…