Related papers: Charting dissipation across the microbial world
Particle motion at the micro-scale is an incessant tug-of-war between thermal fluctuations and applied forces on one side, and the strong resistance exerted by fluid viscosity on the other. Friction is so strong that completely neglecting…
Reaction-diffusion equations describe various spatially extended processes that unfold as traveling fronts moving at constant velocity. We introduce and solve analytically a model that, besides such fronts, supports solutions advancing as…
In a glassy system different degrees of freedom have well-separated characteristic times, and are described by different temperatures. The stationary state is essentially non-equilibrium. A generalized statistical thermodynamics is…
Cancer cells are often seen to prefer glycolytic metabolism over oxidative phosphorylation even in the presence of oxygen-a phenomenon termed the Warburg effect. Despite significant strides in the decades since its discovery, a clear basis…
Entropy serves as a central observable in equilibrium thermodynamics. However, many biological and ecological systems operate far from thermal equilibrium. Here we show that entropy production can characterize the behavior of such…
Recent advances in nonequilibrium statistical physics have provided unprecedented insight into the thermodynamics of dynamic processes. The author recently used these advances to extend Landauer's semi-formal reasoning concerning the…
Many mechanisms, functions and structures of life have been unraveled. However, the fundamental driving force that propelled chemical evolution and led to life has remained obscure. The 2nd law of thermodynamics, written as an equation of…
We consider viscous, heat conducting mixtures of molecularly miscible chemical species forming a fluid in which the constituents can undergo chemical reactions. Assuming a common temperature for all components, we derive a closed system of…
Metabolic energy consumption has long been thought to play a major role in the aging process ({\it 1}). Across species, a gram of tissue on average expends about the same amount of energy during life-span ({\it 2}). Energy restriction has…
Early recordings of nervous conduction revealed a notable thermal signature associated with the electrical signal. The observed production and subsequent absorption of heat arise from physicochemical processes that occur at the cell…
For non-motile microorganisms, spatial expansion in quiescent fluids is presumed to be limited by diffusion. We report that microbial colonies can explosively circumvent this constraint through a self-amplifying physical process. As…
Entropy decreases on the Earth due to day/night temperature differences. This decrease exceeds the decrease in entropy on the Earth related to evolution by many orders of magnitude. Claims by creationists that science is somehow…
Photosynthesis transfers energy efficiently through a series of antenna complexes to the reaction center where charge separation occurs. Energy transfer in vivo is primarily monitored by measuring fluorescence signals from the small…
A colloidal particle immersed in a bath of bacteria is a typical example of a passive particle in an active bath. To model this, we take an overdamped harmonically trapped particle subjected to a thermal and a non-equilibrium noise arising…
Recently, a formal analogy between the fluctuating diffusivity and thermodynamics has been proposed based on phenomena of heterogeneous diffusion observed in living cells. This not only offers the analogs of the quantity of heat and work as…
Colloids coupled to a bath of swimming cells generically display enhanced diffusion. This transport dynamics stems from a subtle interplay between the active and passive particles that still resists our understanding despite decades of…
The entropy production rate of cancer cell is always higher than healthy cell under the case of no external field applied. Different entropy production between two kinds of cells determines the direction of entropy flow among cells. The…
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…
We consider a finite, closed and selfbound many--body system in which a collective degree of freedom is excited. The redistribution of energy and momentum into a finite number of the non-collective degrees of freedom is referred to as…
The name 'sorption heat engines' is proposed for simple negative entropy generators that are driven by thermal cycling and work on alternating adsorption and desorption. These generators are in general not explicitly recognized as heat…