Effects of low-level deuterium enrichment on bacterial growth

Using very precise (up to 0.05%) measurements of the growth parameters for bacteria E. coli grown on minimal media, we aimed to determine the lowest deuterium concentration at which the adverse effects that are prominent at higher enrichments start to become noticeable. Such a threshold was found at 0.5% D, a surprisingly high value, while the ultralow deuterium concentrations (up to 0.25% D) showed signs of the opposite trend. Bacterial adaptation for 400 generations in isotopically different environment confirmed preference for ultralow (up to 0.25% D) enrichment. This effect appears to be similar to those described in sporadic but multiple earlier reports. Possible explanations include hormesis and isotopic resonance phenomena, with the latter explanation being favored.Comment: Accepted to PLoS One. Press embargo applie

Dynamics of filaments of scroll waves

This has been written as a chapter for "Engineering Chemical Complexity II", and as such does not have an abstract.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure

A new universal law for the Liesegang pattern formation

Classical regularities describing the Liesegang phenomenon have been observed and extensively studied in laboratory experiments for a long time. These have been verified in the last two decades, both theoretically and using simulations. However, they are only applicable if the observed system is driven by reaction and diffusion. We suggest here a new universal law, which is also valid in the case of various transport dynamics (purely diffusive, purely advective, and diffusion-advection cases). We state that ptot~Xc, where ptot yields the total amount of the precipitate and Xc is the center of gravity. Besides the theoretical derivation experimental and numerical evidence for the universal law is provided. In contrast to the classical regularities, the introduced quantities are continuous functions of time

Electron-conformational transformations in nanoscopic RyR channels govern both the heart's contraction and beating

We show that a simple biophysically based electron-conformational model of RyR channel is able to explain and describe on equal footing the oscillatory regime of the heart's cell release unit both in sinoatrial node (pacemaker) cells under normal physiological conditions and in ventricular myocytes under Ca$^{2+}$ SR overload.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Localization of response functions of spiral waves in the FitzHugh-Nagumo system

Dynamics of spiral waves in perturbed, e. g. slightly inhomogeneous or subject to a small periodic external force, two-dimensional autowave media can be described asymptotically in terms of Aristotelean dynamics, so that the velocities of the spiral wave drift in space and time are proportional to the forces caused by the perturbation. The forces are defined as a convolution of the perturbation with the spiral's Response Functions, which are eigenfunctions of the adjoint linearised problem. In this paper we find numerically the Response Functions of a spiral wave solution in the classic excitable FitzHugh-Nagumo model, and show that they are effectively localised in the vicinity of the spiral core.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure