Narrow Escape
The Narrow escape problem is a ubiquitous problem in biology, biophysics and cellular biology which has the following formulation: a Brownian particle (ion, molecule, or protein) is confined to a bounded domain (a compartment or a cell) by a reflecting boundary, except for a small window through which it can escape. The narrow escape problem is that of calculating the mean escape time. This time diverges as the window shrinks, thus rendering the calculation a singular perturbation problem.
Read more about this topic: Brownian Motion
Famous quotes containing the words narrow escape, narrow and/or escape:
“Anyone who has passed though the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)