Related papers: Heatomics
We consider the generic model of a finite-size quantum electron system connected to two (temperature and particle) reservoirs. The quantum open system is driven out of equilibrium by the presence of both a temperature and a chemical…
The free energy principle (FEP) is a mathematical framework that describes how biological systems self-organize and survive in their environment. This principle provides insights on multiple scales, from high-level behavioral and cognitive…
Viewed as one of the grandest questions in modern science, understanding fundamental physical constants has been discussed in high-energy particle physics, astronomy and cosmology. Here, I review how condensed matter and liquid physics…
The driving force behind the origin and evolution of life has been the thermodynamic imperative of increasing the entropy production of the biosphere through increasing the global solar photon dissipation rate. In the upper atmosphere of…
The organization of live cells to tissues is associated with the mechanical interaction between cells, which is mediated through their elastic environment. We model cells as spherical active force dipoles surrounded by an infinite elastic…
Micro-calorimetry offers significant potential as a quantitative method for studying the structure and function of biological systems, for instance, by probing the excess heat released by cellular or sub-cellular structures, isothermal or…
It is probably not a coincidence that two of the pioneers of thermodynamics, Helmholtz and Mayer, were physicians. Thermodynamics studies the transformations of energy, and such transformations ceaselessly take place in all living systems…
Nonequilibrium steady state (NESS) is a quasistationary state, in which exist currents that continuously produce entropy, but the local observables are stationary everywhere. We propose a theory of NESS under the framework of quantum chaos.…
Merely by existing, all physical systems contain information, and physical dynamics transforms and processes that information. This note investigates the information processing power of living systems. Living systems harvest free energy…
The emergence of life from inanimate matter presents a thermodynamic challenge: the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates a global trend towards disorder, yet life constitutes localized pockets of profound organization. This paper presents…
Self-propulsion allows living systems to display unusual collective behavior. Unlike passive systems in thermal equilibrium, active matter systems are not constrained by conventional thermodynamic laws. A question arises however as to what…
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 establish a correspondence between two very general paradigms for systems that persist away from thermal equilibrium. In the first paradigm, a nonequilibrium steady state (NESS) is maintained by applying fixed thermodynamic forces that…
Nature's many complex systems--physical, biological, and cultural--are islands of low-entropy order within increasingly disordered seas of surrounding, high-entropy chaos. Energy is a principal facilitator of the rising complexity of all…
$\alpha$ decay is one of the prominent decay modes in the nucleosynthesis of heavy and super-heavy elements synthesized at temperatures of the order of Giga Kelvin. To facilitate the investigation of the role played by the $\alpha$ decay…
Biological tissues transform between solid-like and liquid-like states in many fundamental physiological events. Recent experimental observations further suggest that in two-dimensional epithelial tissues these solid-liquid transformations…
This paper investigates the role of size in biological organisms. More specifically, how the energy demand, expressed by the metabolic rate, changes according to the mass of an organism. Empirical evidence suggests a power-law relation…
Primates exhibit a robust deviation from canonical allometric scaling: at fixed body mass, their lifespans exceed those of non-primate mammals by factors of two to three. A rhesus macaque (8 kg) lives 25-40 years, whereas a cat of similar…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
The heat theorem (i.e. the second law of thermodynamics or the existence of entropy) is a manifestation of a general property of hamiltonian mechanics and of the ergodic Hypothesis. In nonequilibrium thermodynamics of stationary states the…