Remarks about Diffusion Mediated Transport: Thinking about Motion in Small Systems



Stuart Hastings
Department of Mathematics
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
sph+@pitt.edu

and

David Kinderlehrer
Center for Nonlinear Analysis and
Department of Mathematical Scieneces
Carnegie Mellon Univeristy
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
davidk@andrew.cmu.edu



Abstract: We describe a dissipation principle/variational principle which may be useful in modeling motion in small viscous systems and provide brief illustrations to brownian motor or molecular rachet situations which are found in intracellular transport. Monge-Kantorovich mass transport and Wasserstein metric play an interesting role in these developments. Some properties of the system that ensure the presence of transport are discussed.

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