Related papers: Metastability of life
Well protected human and laboratory animal populations with abundant resources are evolutionary unprecedented, and their survival far beyond reproductive age may be a byproduct rather than tool of evolution. Physical approach, which takes…
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…
As biomedical sciences discover new layers of complexity in the mechanisms of life and disease, mathematical models trying to catch up with these developments become mathematically intractable. As a result, in the grand scheme of things,…
Spatial birth-and-death processes with a finite number of particles are obtained as unique solutions to certain stochastic equations. Conditions are given for existence and uniqueness of such solutions, as well as for continuous dependence…
Several aspects of mathematical astrobiology are discussed. It is argued that around the time of the origin of life the handedness of biomolecules must have established itself through an instability. Possible pathways of producing a certain…
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…
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…
Motivated by the wide range of known self-replicating systems, some far from genetics, we study a system composed by individuals having an internal dynamics with many possible states that are partially stable, with varying mutation rates.…
In a series of essays, beginning with this article, we are going to develop a new formulation of micro-phenomena based on the principles of reality and causality. The new theory provides with us a new depiction of micro-phenomena assuming…
The advent of molecular biology has led to the identification of definitive causative factors for a number of diseases, most of which are monogenic. Causes for most common diseases across the population, however, seem elusive and cannot be…
Recent advances in classical density functional theory are combined with stochastic process theory and rare event techniques to formulate a theoretical description of nucleation, including crystallization, that can predict nonclassical…
Several independent observations have suggested that catastrophe transition in microtubules is not a first-order process, as is usually assumed. Recent {\it in vitro} observations by Gardner et al.[ M. K. Gardner et al., Cell {\bf147}, 1092…
We try to find conditions, the fulfillment of which allows a universe born in a metastable false vacuum state to survive and not to collapse. The conditions found are in the form of inequalities linking the depending on time $t$…
Nearly all cell models explicitly or implicitly deal with the biophysical constraints that must be respected for life to persist. Despite this, there is almost no systematicity in how these constraints are implemented, and we lack a…
The question "What is life?" has been asked and studied by the researchers of various fields. Nevertheless, no global theory which unified various aspects of life has been proposed so far. Considering that the physical principle for the…
It is shown that the phenomenon of irreversibility in many-body and few-body systems can be explained and described within the framework of the concept of direct (not instantaneous) interaction of particles without using probabilistic…
It is often stated that quantum mechanics only makes statistical predictions and that a quantum state is described by the various probability distributions associated with it. Can we describe a quantum state completely in terms of…
Standard evolutionary theories of aging and mortality, implicitly based on assumptions of spatial averaging, hold that natural selection cannot favor shorter lifespan without direct compensating benefit to individual reproductive success.…
Cancer has been characterized as a constellation of hundreds of diseases differing in underlying mutations and depending on cellular environments. Carcinogenesis as a stochastic physical process has been studied for over sixty years, but…
The phenomenon of life is discussed within a framework of its origin as defined by four hypotheses. The 1. hypothesis says: Life, as we know, is (H-C-N-O) based and relies on the number of bulk (Na-Mg-P-S-Cl-K-Ca) and trace elements…