Organizing Centers in Chemically Excitable Media

Arthur Winfree教授获得了理论与计算化学项目的资助，对可激介质进行理论和实验研究。可兴奋介质是对超过某个阈值的刺激作出剧烈反应的化学系统。这些研究对神经冲动的传递、包括致命性心律失常在内的心肌收缩、固体燃料火箭的燃烧稳定性等多种应用产生了深远的影响。在实验室和超级计算机中，Winfree研究可激介质中的波动几何，这些介质的方程已经足够为人所知，可以在实验室测量和计算机模拟之间进行关键的比较。他特别研究了这种类似于流体中涡环形成的三维介质的自组织行为。理论上，这些组织中心以各种不同的拓扑形式存在，其中一些对于某些特征尺寸可能是动态稳定的。著名的Belousov-Zhabotinsky化学反应被用作合成模型系统来实验证实数值模拟的结果。

Professor Arthur Winfree is supported by a grant from the Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Program to perform theoretical and experimental studies on excitable media. Excitable media are chemical systems which respond dramatically to a stimulus that exceeds some threshold. These studies have a far reaching impact on such diverse applications as: transmission of nerve impulses, heart muscle contraction including lethal arrhythmias, and burn stability in solid-fuel rockets. In the laboratory and in supercomputers Winfree studies wave geometry in excitable media whose equations are well enough known to permit critical comparison between laboratory measurements and computer simulations. In particular he studies the self-organizing behavior of such 3-dimensional media which resembles vortex ring formation in fluids. In theory, these organizing centers exist in a variety of topologically distinct forms, some of which may be dynamically stable for certain characteristic sizes. The well-known Belousov-Zhabotinsky chemical reaction has been used as a synthetic model system to experimentally confirm numerically simulated results.