One of the new discoveries in quantum biology is the role of Environment Assisted Quantum Transport (ENAQT) in excitonic transport processes. In disordered quantum systems transport is most efficient when the environment just destroys quantum interfe
rences responsible for localization, but the coupling does not drive the system to fully classical thermal diffusion yet. This poised realm between the pure quantum and the semi-classical domains has not been considered in other biological transport processes, such as charge transport through organic molecules. Binding in receptor-ligand complexes is assumed to be static as electrons are assumed to be not able to cross the ligand molecule. We show that ENAQT makes cross ligand transport possible and efficient between certain atoms opening the way for the reorganization of the charge distribution on the receptor when the ligand molecule docks. This new effect can potentially change our understanding how receptors work. We demonstrate room temperature ENAQT on the caffeine molecule.
Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution. Here we show that molecules taking part in biochemical processes from small molecules to proteins are critical quantum mechanically. Electronic Hamiltonians of biomo
lecules are tuned exactly to the critical point of the metal-insulator transition separating the Anderson localized insulator phase from the conducting disordered metal phase. Using tools from Random Matrix Theory we confirm that the energy level statistics of these biomolecules show the universal transitional distribution of the metal-insulator critical point and the wave functions are multifractals in accordance with the theory of Anderson transitions. The findings point to the existence of a universal mechanism of charge transport in living matter. The revealed bio-conductor material is neither a metal nor an insulator but a new quantum critical material which can exist only in highly evolved systems and has unique material properties.
We apply order statistics (OS) to the bright end ($M_r < -22$) of the luminosity distribution of early-type galaxies spectroscopically identified in the SDSS DR7 catalog. We calculate the typical OS quantities of this distribution numerically, measur
ing the expectation value and variance of the $k^{th}$ most luminous galaxy in a sample with cardinality $N$ over a large ensemble of such samples. From these statistical quantities we explain why and in what limit the $k^{th}$ most luminous galaxies can be used as standard candles for cosmological studies. Since our sample contains all bright galaxies including the brightest cluster galaxies (BCG), based on OS we argue that BCGs can be considered as statistical extremes of a well-established Schechter luminosity distribution when galaxies are binned by redshift and not cluster-by-cluster. We presume that the reason behind this might be that luminous red ellipticals in galaxy clusters are em not random em samples of an overall luminosity distribution but biased by the fact that they are in a cluster containing the BCG. We show that a simple statistical toy model can reproduce the well-known magnitude gap between the BCG and the second brightest galaxy of the clusters.
We determine the evolution of the co-moving density of the most massive ($M_* geq 10^{12} M_odot$) early-type galaxy population in the redshift range of $z = 0.15$ - 0.45 in different stellar mass ranges using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey D
ata Release 7 (SDSS DR7) catalog. We find that the co-moving number density of these galaxies grew exponentially, weakly depending on the stellar mass range, as a function of cosmic time with a time-scale of $tau simeq 1.16 pm 0.16$ Gyr for at least 4 Gyr ending around $z simeq 0.15$. This is about a factor of ten of growth between $z=0.5$ - 0.15. Since $z simeq 0.15$ a constant co-moving number density can be measured. According to theoretical models the most massive early-type galaxies gain most of their stellar mass via dry merging but the major merger rate measured by others cannot account for the high growth in number density we measured thus, stellar mass gain from minor mergers and slow, smooth accretion seems to play an important role. We outline a simple analytic model that explains the observed evolution based on the exponential decline of the luminosity function and sets constraints on the time dependence of the close-pair fraction of merger candidate galaxies.
