119 lines
7.0 KiB
Plaintext
119 lines
7.0 KiB
Plaintext
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| File Name : BODYCHAO.ASC | Online Date : 05/18/95 |
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| Contributed by : Jerry Decker | Dir Category : BIOLOGY |
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| From : KeelyNet BBS | DataLine : (214) 324-3501 |
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| A FREE Alternative Sciences BBS sponsored by Vanguard Sciences |
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| KeelyNet * PO BOX 870716 * Mesquite, Texas * USA * 75187 |
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| Voice/FAX : (214) 324-8741 InterNet - keelynet@ix.netcom.com |
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| WWW sites - http://www.eskimo.com/~billb & http://www.protree.com |
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This article deals with an advanced approach to organ malfunction and what
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could be a potential cause of disease. The use of 'phase space' to represent
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complex dimensional fields in a simplified manner also has correlations to the
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study of over/unity devices, where a self-sustaining wave can be intentionally
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triggered and maintained. We invite your comments on the subject.
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Yearly Subscriptions vary from $15 to about $20 per year, write
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Science Digest, PO BOX 10090, Des Moines, Iowa, 50347-0090.
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Science Digest - September 1995 (page 20)
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Chaotic Body Rhythms
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A biologist uses topology to link unrelated phenomena
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Purdue biologist Arthur Winfree believes an underlying mathematical model that
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describes two seemingly unrelated phenomena - the internal biological clock,
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which determines sleep-wake cycles, and an obscure chemical process called the
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Belousov-Zhabotinshky reaction - also describes a third: fibrillation, the
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uncontrolled, erratic fluttering of the heart that is a major cause of sudden
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cardiac death.
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If he is right, fibrillation can result from such relatively mild, usually
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harmless stimuli as the premature firing of a few nerves. Should it happen at
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JUST THE WRONG MOMENT of the heartbeat cycle, it TRIGGERS a rotating, three
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dimensional wave of electric potential that moves through coronary tissue.
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This self-sustaining wave irrevocably overrides the heart's normal, rhythmic
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beating; even someone with a healthy heart is susceptible. In fact, this
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could explain sudden heart failure in disease-free people.
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Winfree is careful to emphasize that his ideas are unproven; yet they earned
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him a grant from the MacArthur Foundation last November. He is currently on
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leave from Purdue, working at the University of California, San Diego, and at
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the La Jolla Veterans Administration Hospital. "I'm trying," he explains, "to
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learn some cardiology."
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The theory Winfree is pursuing rests on a branch of mathematics known as
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TOPOLOGY, the study of the PROPERTIES OF GEOMETRIC SHAPES - and, by analogy,
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of systems that can be represented by geometric shapes. "My original work on
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the problem had to do with biological clocks," he says.
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Biologists had long believed that over the long term an organism would
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alternate sleeping and waking at regular intervals. A disturbing stimulus,
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such as a change in the pattern of light and darkness, might ADVANCE or RETARD
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THE CYCLE without CHANGING its FUNDAMENTAL RHYTHM. In fact, this is just what
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happened in experiments.
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"I thought that might not be the whole story, though," recalls Winfree. "The
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cycle is governed by the INTERACTION of many chemical compounds at many
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locations in the body. With topology, you can treat all those concentrations
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as a space of many dimensions, called a PHASE SPACE. You needn't define its
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structure in DETAIL to examine its PROPERTIES."
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Winfree treated the sleep-wake cycle as a one-dimensional slice of this many-
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dimensional phase space. He then described a two-dimensional slice, analogous
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in structure to a soap film stretched on a circular metal wire. He defined
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the wire as the ordinary rhythm - movement around the circle represents
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passage through the cycle over time. The soap film is a set of POSSIBLE
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disruptions.
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In the case of a disruption, represented by a point on the film, the normal
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rhythm resumes from some PREDICTABLE SPOT along the metal rim, just as a point
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on a soap film rushes to a PARTICULAR spot on the rim when the film breaks.
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"Nearly every spot on the film can be assigned a corresponding point on the
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rim," says Winfree. "But according to the topological theorem of
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NONRETRACTION, this can be true only if there is at least one point on the
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surface that does NOT have such a correspondence. A soap bubble cannot
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retract onto the rim unless you break it at some point." By analogy, Winfree
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predicted, there should be a point in the sleep-wake cycle where an applied
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stimulus would not RESTART the cycle but would result in an ARRHYTHMIC
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pattern.
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"Eric Patterson, a graduate student in biology, tried it on mosquitoes," he
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says, "and found we could PRODUCE a state in which the insects slept, then
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woke and buzzed around for a while, then dropped off again, in no DISCERNIBLE
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pattern."
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Winfree wondered whether it might be possible to treat other rhythmic
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biochemical systems the same way. "Since the mathematical model is abstract,"
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explains Winfree, "there seemed to be no reason it couldn't apply to such
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things as rhythmic chemical reactions, the cycle of cell reproduction, the
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menstrual cycle or even fibrillation."
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The jury is still out on menstruation; the analogy just doesn't work when it
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comes to cell reproduction. In the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, though, a
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TRIGGERING BEAM of ultraviolet light interrupts the orderly interaction of a
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mixture of chemicals, sending a ROTATING WAVE FRONT of activity through them.
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"We can't say for sure, but the evidence is very good that the same sort of
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thing goes on in the heart," Winfree concludes. "The contraction of millions
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of heart cells, based on combinations of electrical and chemical stimuli, make
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up the phase space. And a mild stimulus occurring AT THE PROPER TIME should
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disrupt the pattern ENTIRELY."
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Does the mathematical model have a basis in reality? Two pieces of evidence
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suggest it does. The first is that electrodes placed on the surface of
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laboratory animals' hearts have detected what APPEAR to be the ROTATING SPIRAL
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WAVES of electricity that Winfree predicts.
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The second comes from the work of George Ralph Mines, a physiologist who did
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heart research at the University of Montreal in the early years of this
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century. Mines suspected that fibrillation could be caused by mild stimuli to
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the heart, though he had no theory to explain it. He may have been proved
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right. One day, in 1917, he was found alone in his lab, dying of heart
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failure. Attached to his chest were the wires of a machine he had been using
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to deliver weak shocks to lab animals.
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Michael D. Lemonick
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