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:
“A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“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)