Singular Filaments Organizing Chemical Reactions in Three Dimensions

化学反应体系倾向于在空间和时间上自组织，除非体积元素之间通常的质量和能量转移的介质(例如扩散、对流、辐射)被抑制。在一个仅由分子扩散内部耦合的水溶液等温反应系统中，一个足够简单的例子在理论和实验上都是有效的。数学分析、计算机模拟和化学实验都揭示了这种可激发反应体系中存在毫米尺度的“组织中心”。温弗瑞博士计划通过实验和计算机模拟来研究这些组织中心的解剖和行为。这样的系统不仅物理化学家、工程师和数学家感兴趣，而且生物物理学家也对研究神经肌肉组织中的活动模式，即纤颤、心律失常和癫痫发作感兴趣。例如，最近对温弗里博士关于在反应扩散介质中新发现的三维波也应该在心肌中观察到的命题进行的实验测试表明，这个命题是合理的。在心肌中，尽管潜在的物理原理截然不同，但方程实际上是相同的。这些结果对心脏病专家具有直接的实际意义。

Chemically-reacting systems tend to organize themselves in space and time, unless the usual agents of mass and energy transfer among volume elements (e.g. diffusion, convection, radiation) are suppressed. An instance simple enough to be fruitfully tractable in both theory and experiment has come to light in an aqueous isothermal reaction system internally coupled by molecular diffusion alone. Mathematical analysis, computer simulation, and chemical experiments have revealed the existence of mm-scale "organizing centers" in such excitable reaction systems. Dr. Winfree plans to study the anatomy and behavior of such organizing centers experimentally and by computer simulation. Such systems are of interest not only to physical chemists, engineers, and mathematicians, but also to biophysicists studying the activity patterns in neuromuscular tissue, i.e. fibrillations, cardiac rhythms and arrhythmias, and epileptic seizures. For example, recent experimental tests of Dr. Winfree's proposition that the newly discovered three-dimensional waves in reaction-diffusion media should also be observed in heart muscle, where the equations are practically the same even though the underlying physics is quite different, indicate that the proposition is sound. These results are of immediate practical interest to cardiologists.