results: of the 50 samples tested by the elisa method, 26 samples (52%) were positive for igg . no samples were positive for igm. of the 50 samples tested by the chemiluminescence method, 28 samples (56%) were positive for igg. no samples were positive for igm. conclusions: a significant relationship between the age of the youngest child and the infection rate was seen. no significant correlati...

In part I of these lecture notes, I introduce the basic tools of non equilibrium statistical mechanics: linear response, Brownian motion, Langevin equation, (Pauli) master equation. Part II is devoted to a derivation of quantum master equations from the Schrödinger equation, and to some of their applications to quantum optics and to Brownian motion. Finally, in part III, I examine more recent d...

Supramolecular polymerization has been traditionally focused on the thermodynamic equilibrium state, where one-dimensional assemblies reside at the global minimum of the Gibbs free energy. The pathway and rate to reach the equilibrium state are irrelevant, and the resulting assemblies remain unchanged over time. In the past decade, the focus has shifted to kinetically trapped (non-dissipative n...

Suppose we flow through an adsorption or chromatograph column so fast that the adsorption is not at equilibrium at a given point in the column. This departure from equilibrium could be either due to diffusion resistance within the porous particles of the column or due to kinetic limitation of the adsorption process. Alternatively, you may wish to separate different size macromolecules by the di...

The coexistence of several schools in non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a reality.At the beginning of the 21st century, the thermodynamics of systems far from. However, it turns out that many nonequilibrium phenomena can be described.An alternate evolutionary hypothesis is discussed: non-equilibrium. Literature on non-equilibrium thermodynamics and its relationship to evolutionary.The online ve...

This is a brief review of recently derived relations describing the behaviour of systems far from equilibrium. They include the Fluctuation Theorem, Jarzynski’s and Crooks’ equalities, and an extended form of the Second Principle for general steady states. They are very general and their proofs are, in most cases, disconcertingly simple.

These lecture notes give a basic introduction to the physics of phase transitions under non-equilibrium conditions. The notes start with a general introduction to non-equilibrium statistical mechanics followed by four parts. The first one discusses the universality class of directed percolation, which plays a similar role as the Ising model in equilibrium statistical physics. The second one giv...

We employ the influence functional technique to trace out the photonic contribution from full quantum electrodynamics. The reduced density matrix propagator then is constructed for the electron field. We discuss the role of time-dependent renormalization in the propagator and focus our attention to the possibility of obtaining a dynamically induced superselection rule. As a final application of...