Singular Filaments Organizing Chemical Reactions in Three Dimensions

化学反应系统倾向于将自己组织成 空间和时间，除非通常的物质和能量 在体积元素之间的传递（例如，扩散，对流， 辐射）被抑制。 一个足够简单的例子 在理论和实验上都是富有成效的， 光在含水等温反应系统中内部耦合 通过分子扩散。 数学分析、计算机 模拟和化学实验已经揭示了 在这种兴奋的反应中， 系统. Winfree博士计划研究 这样的组织中心实验和计算机 仿真 这样的系统不仅引起物理化学家的兴趣， 工程师和数学家，还有研究 神经肌肉组织的活动模式，即 纤颤、心律失常和癫痫 癫痫发作 例如，最近的实验测试博士。 温弗里的主张，新发现的三维 反应扩散介质中的波也应该被观察， 心脏肌肉，其中方程几乎相同， 尽管基本的物理原理是完全不同的，表明， 这个提议是合理的。 这些结果是立竿见影的 心脏病专家的实际兴趣。

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.