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The living organisms and systems possess extraordinary properties of programmed development, differentiation, growth, response, movement, duplication of key molecules and in m any cases higher mental functions. But the organisms are physical objects so they must follow laws of physics yet they do not seem to obey them. Physicists cannot easily persuade themselves to accept this as finally true. Non-living objects are governed by these laws of physics and they can explain these properties. However, in the living systems too phenomena encountered like coupled non-linear interactions, manybody effects, cooperativity, coherence, phase transitions, reversible metastable states are being understood better with the aid of powerful theoretical and experimental techniques and hope is raised that these may let us understand the mysteriousness of life. Contributors to this volume are a small fraction of rapidly growing scientific opinion that these aspects of living bodies are to be expected in a hitherto inadequately suspected state of matter which is in the main directed by these physical properties pushed almost to limit. This state of matter, the living matter, deserves to be called The Living State. Mishra proposes that given hydrogenic orbitals, atoms showing easy hybridisability and multiple valances, molecules with low-lying electronic levels, "loosestructure", and a metabolic pump in thermodynamically open system, various fundamental properties of living state can emerge automatically. Structurally these are all known to be present.
List of contents
1. Some remarks on the organisation of living matter and its thermal disorganization.- 2. Enhanced Excitation in Biosystem.- 3. Dynamics of DNA Excited States.- 4. On the Field Structure of Metabolic Space-Time.- 5. The Boundaries of the Living State.- 6. Biological Generation of Electronically Excited States: Possible Roles.- 7. The Substrate for Biological Information Processing.- 8. Fractal Models.- 9. Perception in an Amoeboid Cell.- 10. What is a Physical Theory of Living State?.- 11. Superinformation Processing: The Feasibility of Proton Superflow in the Living State.- 12. Focal Myocardial Necrosis Induced by a Magnesium-deficeint Diet: A Quantitative Study of Intracellular Dynamics.- 13. The Bhopalator -A Molecular Model of the Living Cell; New Developments.- 14. The Living State, The Matrix of Self Organisation.- 15. Nonlinear Infrared Coherent Radiation as an Energy Coupling Mechanism in Living Systems.- 16. Possible Varieties of States Consistent With Fröhlich's Conjecture.- 17. Dynamical Aspects of Cell-Matrix Interactions.- Author Index.
