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shaun.ashley@physics.gatech.edu
Summary Sentence: Excitation Waves in Capillaries, in Nature, and on Humans
Full Summary: No summary paragraph submitted.
Niklas Manz Excitation waves are propagating spatiotemporal structures observed in many biological, chemical, and physical systems. They can be described as a reaction-diffusion (RD) wave in which an autocatalytic reaction zone propagates via diffusion without mass transport. More common types of RD waves are the propagation of an action potential in a nerve, the spread of electrical depolarization waves on the heart surface, the (human spectator) stadium wave, or a forest fire.
All RD systems can be described with one set of nonlinear differential equations and experimentally investigated with, for example, a chemical tabletop model system, the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction or with match sticks.
I will give an overview of this research field and present two projects which are also relevant to research in the Physics Department at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
