Notes - early father figure / quantum biology / quantum thought and light /

         Mid-morning. You and Carol read the paper on the deck for a change; there are plenty of trees out back to enjoy. Besides, morning shade is comfortable enough until late morning. Carol is thinking about walking this morning before it is too hot so that is where you are presently.

         0935 hours. We are at Pine Hill Lakes Park, far north lot. Carol is on her walk, mostly in the north woods. I wish this left shoulder would progress faster. I did sleep better with a pain pill and I took one again just before we left.

         Your sugar was up to 155, not good, orndorff. Sometimes you would just like to get out of here too quickly. Pain reminds you of where you are. "No pain, no gain," isn't that the saying? - Amorella

         Of course it is, but not in this context. That is what an athletic coach might say, not you.

         You only had one of personal note, Jim Scarfpin, athletic director and head football coach at Westerville High School. - Amorella

         I liked and admired him. He was a tough, old school coach. Shoot, when I was a freshman in 1956-57 we still had the old leather helmets from the thirties and forties. Coach Scarfpin went along with that era. We even played single wing. I was a pulling guard or pulling tackle, I can't remember which. He reminded me of Knute Rockne, an early hero of mine. He was also a father figure to me like my Uncle Ernie. I remember there was an old movie about his Notre Dame team -- they wore those old leather helmets too.

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Knute Kenneth Rockne March 4, 1888 – March 31, 1931) was an American football player and coach, both at the University of Notre Dame. He is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. His biography at the College Football Hall of Fame calls him "without question, American football's most-renowned coach." He was a native Norwegian and was trained as a chemist at the Notre Dame. He is credited with popularizing the forward pass.

Edited from Wikipedia Offline

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         His daughter Judy and I were in the same class at Westerville. We were always friends. I missed seeing her this year at the picnic. Bill Miller and Judy Scarfpin were close boyfriend/girlfriend in high school and in the freshman year of college at Miami, then drifted apart. At seventy they still see each other at the picnics though. That is so very cool and romantic as far as I am concerned; old friends are a treasure, no question about it. I see Carol coming up out of the woods. Time to go. (1009)

         1056 hours. Stopped up the get a haircut and beard trim but Mary Ann won't be in until Monday. She trims my beard better than anyone I've used for a barber since Sao Paulo days. I liked Brazilian haircuts because they were more European in design and attitude. Of course, what did/do I know. I never in my life have had a Continental or even a UK haircut.

         Mid-afternoon. You are back at the far north lot of Pine Hill Lakes and you both just finished a cone from the Mason Whippy-Dip on U.S. 42. - Amorella

         I thought it was State Route 42 all this time. Pretty bad. No wonder I have to rely on sources whenever possible in writing fiction. Carol is laughing at the Joel Stein column on backyard camping in latest Time. Thunder rumblings to our southwest. There was a 30 percent chance of showers but since I washed the car I'm sure the percentages have gone up dramatically. We should switch cars if we are going to run errands.

         1709 hours. Most cool BBC Science News yesterday. I may find it useful in the Merlyn books.

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SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

21 June 2013 Last updated at 05:26 ET

Plants 'seen doing quantum physics'

By Jason Palmer

Science and technology reporter, BBC News

The idea that plants make use of quantum physics to harvest light more efficiently has received a boost.

Plants gather packets of light called photons, shuttling them deep into their cells where their energy is converted with extraordinary efficiency.

A report in Science journal adds weight to the idea that an effect called a "coherence" helps determine the most efficient path for the photons.

Experts have called the work "a nice proof" of some contentious ideas.

Prior work has shown weaker evidence that these coherences existed in relatively large samples from plants.

But the new study has been done painstakingly, aiming lasers at single molecules of the light-harvesting machinery to show how light is funnelled to the so-called reaction centres within plants where light energy is converted into chemical energy.

What has surprised even the researchers behind the research is not only that these coherences do indeed exist, but that they also seem to change character, always permitting photons to take the most efficient path into the reaction centres.

Until very recently, quantum mechanics - a frequently arcane branch of physics most often probed in laboratory settings at the coldest temperatures and lowest pressures - would not have been expected in biological settings.

The fact that plants and animals are extremely warm and soft by comparison would suggest that delicate quantum states should disappear in living things, leaving behaviour explicable by the more familiar "classical physics" that is taught in school.

But the new results join the ranks of a field that seems finally to be gaining ground: quantum biology.

'Something shocking'

Niek van Hulst of the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Castelldefels, Spain, and colleagues studied the light-harvesting complexes of purple bacteria to address the question.

These are literally like antennas that gather up light, and are arranged like adjacent rings.

When laser light is shone on just one isolated ring, some of it is re-released in the form of what is called fluorescence.

But what the team saw is that over time, that amount of fluorescence rose and fell - a sign that the energy was coming and going elsewhere: a coherence.

This is linked to the quantum mechanical notion of a "superposition": that a particle can effectively be in multiple places at once - or try multiple paths simultaneously.

"What you see here is this photon comes in, and it sees many energy pathways," explained Prof van Hulst.

"Where does it go? It goes to the one that's most efficient, the one where this quantum effect tells you it has the highest probability (of being put to use)," he told BBC News.

But the soft, flexible, warm conditions at room temperature mean that, as things move and jiggle - as life tends to do - that most efficient path can change. Remarkably, so did the evident path along the rings.

"Nature is very robust at keeping this up no matter what happens - this for me is something shocking," Prof van Hulst continued.

"The result is that this fluffy stuff at room temperature where everything is variable, it just works - with an efficiency of 90%: way, way better than any solar cell we can make ourselves."

'Several questions'

Rienk van Grondelle of the Free University Amsterdam called the work "a very nice proof that the ideas that existed about these coherences are actually correct".

"The system is able to overcome this problem by sampling two or three of those pathways at the same time and simply use the one that is best - I think it's very, very beautiful," he told BBC News.

Other researchers are less convinced. Daniel Turner of the University of Toronto has been working on similar problems and says that the study's primary proof - the comings and goings of the fluorescence - are "not necessarily directly relevant to how photosynthesis works in natural conditions".

"There are still several questions regarding how the results of this and other… measurements of highly purified protein extracts relate to the natural sunlight conditions experienced by photosynthetic organisms," he told BBC News.

Even the notion of what is meant by "quantum effects" in relation to biology, he said, was still up for debate.

But for Prof van Grondelle, the paper is another impressive addition to this debate.

"Of course (the acceptance of quantum effects in biology) is not going to come from one single paper," he said.

"It will take more evidence, and maybe more elaborate evidence that this is really happening. But this is how science goes."

From: bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22996054

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         What you would like to see as plausible is the concept you are using in the story (similar quantum physics in thought and light). The environmental edge of the universe; a doorway to the beyond via quantum connections may be plausible. This would allow for me, Amorella, to possibly be a naturally existing separate non-physical consciousness (at least in a fiction).

         That isn't my thought exactly, but it is clearer than my own present thinking.

         Post. - Amorella