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 and/or escape:
“There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.”
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919)
“What does this mean? The individual,
Nature, mutation, strife?
I fell, though I am simple, still the whole
Is complex; and that life,
A huge, doomed throbbing—has a wiry soul
That must escape the knife.”
—Roy Fuller (b. 1912)