Alan Turing, in "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" [Turing AM (1952) Philos Trans R Soc Lond 237(641):37-72], described how, in circular arrays of identical biological cells, diffusion can interact with chemical reactions to generate up to six periodic spatiotemporal chemical structures. Turing proposed that one of these structures, a stationary pattern with a chemically determined wavelengt...

The Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction is quite a fascinating scientific phenomenon such that its cyclical nature can be seen as analogues to: the heartbeat, circadian rhythms, the menstrual cycle, variations in hormone levels, and many others. A nerve cell is thus an example of an excitable medium: the nerve cell returns to its resting steady state after small stimuli, but a sufficiently large stim...

We obtain the diffusion matrix, D, consisting of the main and cross-diffusion coefficients for a loaded AOT microemulsion, a quaternary system containing water (1)/AOT (2)/species (3)/octane (4). Here "species" is a component of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction: NaBr, NaBrO(3), bathoferroin, ferroin, or Br(2). The main and cross-diffusion coefficients of each species depend crucially on its so...

Science can be as stimulating to the eye as it is to the mind, according to Felice Frankel, 'artist in residence' at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is working with researchers there to help them find better ways of communicating their work visually. Although she started out as a biologist, Frankel has also had a successful career as a landscape and architectural photographer. No...

Microfluidics provides a powerful technology for both the production of molecular computing components and for the implementation of molecular computing architectures. The potential commercial applications of microfluidics drive rapid progress in this field-but at the same time focus interest on materials that are compatible with physiological aqueous conditions. For engineering applications th...