From Lancaster University, UK, comes a report that physicists are using equations to reveal the hidden complexities of the human body. The report goes on:
From the beating of our hearts to the proper functioning of our brains, many systems in nature depend on collections of 'oscillators'; perfectly-coordinated, rhythmic systems working together in flux, like the cardiac muscle cells in the heart.
Unless they act together, not much happens. But when they do, powerful changes occur. Cooperation between neurons results in brain waves and cognition, synchronized contractions of cardiac cells cause the whole heart to contract and pump the blood around the body. Lasers would not function without all the atomic oscillators acting in unison. Soldiers even have to break step when they reach a bridge in case oscillations caused by their marching feet cause the bridge to collapse.
But sometimes those oscillations go wrong.
To uncover these phenomena, they took a new approach to the solution of a set of equations proposed by the Japanese scientist Yoshiki Kuramoto in the 1970s. His theory showed it was possible in principle to predict the properties of a system as a whole from a knowledge of how oscillators interacted with each other on an individual basis.
Therefore, by looking at how the microscopic cardiac muscle cells interact we should be able to deduce whether the heart as a whole organ will contract properly and pump the blood round. Similarly, by looking at how the microscopic neurons in the brain interact, we might be able to understand the origins of whole-brain phenomena like thoughts, or dreams, or amnesia, or epileptic fits.
Physicists Dmytro Iatsenko , Professor Peter McClintock, and Professor Aneta Stefanovska have reported a far more general solution of the Kuramoto equations than anyone has achieved previously, with some quite unexpected results.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Monday June 23 2014, @02:51AM
I keep clicking but my clicking does nothing! You broke my internets!
(Score: 2) by Marand on Monday June 23 2014, @02:56AM
Okay, now that the joke's out of the way...
Why was that left in there? That's the sort of thing editing is supposed to clean up before publishing. It wasn't even well hidden! it's on its own line!
Now it's just left there, like this little vestigial bit of summary, a reminder of its evolutionary history; proof that this summary's ancestor was once some poor web 2.0 article that nature has since forgotten.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday June 23 2014, @09:19AM
You're not clicking at the right frequency. Think oscillations. Your oscillations are off and don't match the "energy" that soylent requires for this article...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 23 2014, @02:51AM
My translation: we fooled around with these equations but we are yet to make any sense of the results. Doesn't matter though, here's my PhD thesis, give me that title
(to borrow the terminology from TFA: after I read it, it left me with "glassy eyes")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 23 2014, @03:02AM
I'm giving up, I still feel more enlightenment can be achieved from elsewhere [xkcd.com].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday June 23 2014, @09:21AM
Yep. PhD's are supposed to add something to science with their thesis. However nowadays it seems that all that gets added to science is confusion.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hellcat on Monday June 23 2014, @03:25AM
I have a problem with every new solution to explaining life that reduces one of our elements down to something we're more familiar with. So every heart cell or neuron can be described / simplified as an oscillator? Perhaps. And perhaps it help us understand a bit more about ourselves. But to think that something as complex as a cell is going to give it up just because we describe it as an oscillator is dreamy.
At least Kuramoto wasn't aiming that high. He came up with equations specifically for oscillator-based coupled systems (granted, biological some of them were), but extending them is more an exercise.
We might as well be talking about Conway's game of Life in the same context. Why isn't that getting applied to our hearts and minds?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 23 2014, @04:33AM
Yes*
---
* for some values of usefulness derived from the approximation [xkcd.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by jmc23 on Monday June 23 2014, @03:35PM
As long as the comparison is appropriate for that specific LOD, then there is no problem it's actually an asset and appropriate.
What you're really complaining about, but don't know it, is that people aren't aware that reality operates differently at differing Levels Of Detail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 23 2014, @06:18AM
The submission queue is running low. Please send in your submissions to help avoid posting crap stories like this. Thank you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 23 2014, @08:31AM
When it was first proposed that blood 'circulated' around the body, the idea was laughed at, the 'experts' scoffed, and it seemed such a preposterous idea. Now physicists have identified a peculiarity in the behaviour of the body and are trying to find some way to explain their findings in ways that are understandable and, more importantly, usable and able to enhance science further. Quoting from the article:
I don't think that is a waste of time. Simply because a story doesn't fit your own particular niche (h'ware, s'ware, whatever) doesn't indicate that it is worthless research. It also doesn't mean it is of no interest to somebody else.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Monday June 23 2014, @07:35AM
Science: poking fun at hippies and their "vibrations", waiting 40 years, then trying to explain life with "oscillations" as if nothing had happened.
Boo.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday June 23 2014, @08:05AM
We break out of boring, repetitive patterns, just because we cannot stand that the pattern continue? I that what you are suggesting? Then why are we here, doing the exact opposite of that? I want to click, I must click, . . . if I click, master will give me a treat! Or at least some mojo, or karma, of at least like me more than Cory Doctorow.