310 research outputs found
The Significance of Non-ergodicity Property of Statistical Mechanics Systems for Understanding Resting State of a Living Cell
A better grasp of the physical foundations of life is necessary before we can
understand the processes occurring inside a living cell. In his physical theory
of the cell, American physiologist Gilbert Ling introduced an important notion
of the resting state of the cell. He describes this state as an independent
stable thermodynamic state of a living substance in which it has stored all the
energy it needs to perform all kinds of biological work. This state is
characterised by lower entropy of the system than in an active state. However,
Ling's approach is primarily qualitative in terms of thermodynamics and it
needs to be characterised more specifically. To this end, we propose a new
thermodynamic approach to studying Ling's model of the living cell (Ling's
cell), the center piece of which is the non-ergodicity property which has
recently been proved for a wide range of systems in statistical mechanics [7].
These approach allowed us to develop general thermodynamic approaches to
explaining some of the well-known physiological phenomena, which can be used
for further physical analysis of these phenomena using specific physical
models
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