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 (17781830)
“Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
—Bible: New Testament Jesus, in Matthew, 7:14.
From the Sermon on the Mount.
“A prince must be prudent enough to know how to escape the bad reputation of those vices that would lose the state for him, and must protect himself from those that will not lose it for him, if this is possible; but if he cannot, he need not concern himself unduly if he ignores these less serious vices.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli (14691527)