Physics and biology:from molecules to life

It has long been appreciated that Physics is essential to the understanding of many aspects of biology. As Jacques Prost points out in his Preface to Physics and Biology, the explosion of research activity at the interface between the two subjects over the last twenty years has led to investment on an unprecedented scale

Essentials of in vivo Biomedical Imaging

Review of Essentials of in vivo Biomedical Imaging edited by Simon R. Cherry, Ramsey D. Badawi and Jinyi Qi, CRC Press, London, 2015, pp. xvi + 272. Scope: edited book, £63.99, ISBN 978-1-4398-9874-1 (Hardcover). Level: postgraduates, research scientists

Superfluid States of Matter

Review of Superfluid States of Matter by Boris Svistunov, Egor Babaev, and Nikolay Prokof ’ev, CRC Press, London, 2015, pp. xix + 561. Scope: monograph, £63.99, ISBN 978-1-4398-0275-5 (Hardcover). Level: postgraduates, research scientists

Mid-Ocean Ridges

The Earth’s mid-ocean ridges form a single, connected, topological feature which, as Roger Searle points out, is the longest mountain range in the world. They have developed as a result of the sea floor spreading associated with tectonic movements. Although this idea is now very soundly based and almost universally accepted, it is actually of surprisingly recent origin

Controlled thermonuclear fusion by Jean Louis Babin

Thermonuclear fusion offers the possibility of virtually unlimited, low-carbon, electrical power generation without leaving an extensive legacy of radioactive waste. For almost as long as I can remember, its practical application has been predicted to be about 30 or 40 years in the future, so why does it never seem to come closer to reality

Methods in molecular biophysics: structure, dynamics, function for biology and medicine, 2nd edition:Book review

Biological problems have been considered in the context of physics since at least the seventeenth century when e.g. Newton commented on information transmission along nerves. But it was the introduction of the double helix model of DNA, in the middle of the twentieth century, that demonstrating unequivocally that the processes of life are governed by basic physical principles. Since then, an immense number of specialised methods has been developed, applying physics to understand the structures and (to a lesser extent) functions of biomolecules. Zaccai et al. describe a wide variety of these methods in their comprehensive textbook

The origin and nature of life on earth: the emergence of the fourth geosphere, by Eric Smith and Harold J. Morowitz

We now know a great deal about the nature of life on Earth. We understand how it functions and, in many cases, how it can be modified; but how it arose here in the first place remains an enduring mystery. It is well established that life in some form, probably akin to bacteria, was already flourishing about 3.8 billion years ago, i.e. almost as soon as the young Earth had cooled enough for it not to be cooked. Once life had appeared, it is not difficult to envisage how the combination of random mutation and Darwinian evolution (survival of the fittest) has brought us and the Earth to where we are today. There remain some notable residual problems, e.g. the seemingly improbable appearance of the complicated eukaryotic cell which forms the building blocks for the higher forms of life like plants and people but, in a rough-and-ready kind of way, the story seems clear and convincing. Unfortunately, however, no evidence remains about how the process got started

Ionic Coulomb blockade

Classical ionic conduction through an inorganic monolayer nanopore is analogous to the quantum-mechanical phenomenon of electronic Coulomb blockade in quantum dots