Direction of Spontaneous Processes in Non-Equilibrium Systems with Movable/Permeable Internal Walls.

We consider three different systems in a heat flow: an ideal gas, a van der Waals gas, and a binary mixture of ideal gases. We divide each system internally into two subsystems by a movable wall. We show that the direction of the motion of the wall, after release, under constant boundary conditions, is determined by the same inequality as in equilibrium thermodynamics dU-dQ≤0. The only difference between the equilibrium and non-equilibrium laws is the dependence of the net heat change, dQ, on the state parameters of the system. We show that the same inequality is valid when introducing the gravitational field in the case of both the ideal gas and the van der Waals gas in the heat flow. It remains true when we consider a thick wall permeable to gas particles and derive Archimedes' principle in the heat flow. Finally, we consider the Couette (shear) flow of the ideal gas. In this system, the direction of the motion of the internal wall follows from the inequality dE-dQ-dWs≤0, where dE is the infinitesimal change in total energy (internal plus kinetic) and dWs is the infinitesimal work exchanged with the environment due to the shear force imposed on the flowing gas. Ultimately, we synthesize all these cases within a general framework of the second law of non-equilibrium thermodynamics.

A network model to predict ionic transport in porous materials.

Understanding the dynamics of electric-double-layer (EDL) charging in porous media is essential for advancements in next-generation energy storage devices. Due to the high computational demands of direct numerical simulations and a lack of interfacial boundary conditions for reduced-order models, the current understanding of EDL charging is limited to simple geometries. Here, we present a network model to predict EDL charging in arbitrary networks of long pores in the Debye-Hückel limit without restrictions on EDL thickness and pore radii. We demonstrate that electrolyte transport is described by Kirchhoff's laws in terms of the electrochemical potential of charge (the valence-weighted average of the ion electrochemical potentials) instead of the electric potential. By employing the equivalent circuit representation suggested by these modified Kirchhoff's laws, our methodology accurately captures the spatial and temporal dependencies of charge density and electric potential, matching results obtained from computationally intensive direct numerical simulations. Our network model provides results up to six orders of magnitude faster, enabling the efficient simulation of a triangular lattice of five thousand pores in 6 min. We employ the framework to study the impact of pore connectivity and polydispersity on electrode charging dynamics for pore networks and discuss how these factors affect the time scale, energy density, and power density of capacitive charging. The scalability and versatility of our methodology make it a rational tool for designing 3D-printed electrodes and for interpreting geometric effects on electrode impedance spectroscopy measurements.

Fundamental Relation for the Ideal Gas in the Gravitational Field and Heat Flow.

We formulate the first law of global thermodynamics for stationary states of the ideal gas in the gravitational field subjected to heat flow. We map the non-uniform system (described by profiles of the density and temperature) onto the uniform one and show that the total internal energy U(S*,V,N,L,M*) is the function of the following parameters of state: the non-equilibrium entropy S*, volume V, number of particles, N, height of the column L along the gravitational force, and renormalized mass of a particle M*. Each parameter corresponds to a different way of energy exchange with the environment. The parameter M* changes internal energy due to the shift of the centre of mass induced by the heat flux. We give analytical expressions for the non-equilibrium entropy S* and effective mass M*. When the heat flow goes to zero, S* approaches equilibrium entropy. Additionally, when the gravitational field vanishes, our fundamental relation reduces to the fundamental relation at equilibrium.

Parameters of State in the Global Thermodynamics of Binary Ideal Gas Mixtures in a Stationary Heat Flow.

In this paper, we formulate the first law of global thermodynamics for stationary states of the binary ideal gas mixture subjected to heat flow. We map the non-uniform system onto the uniform one and show that the internal energy U(S*,V,N1,N2,f1*,f2*) is the function of the following parameters of state: a non-equilibrium entropy S*, volume V, number of particles of the first component, N1, number of particles of the second component N2 and the renormalized degrees of freedom. The parameters f1*,f2*, N1,N2 satisfy the relation (N1/(N1+N2))f1*/f1+(N2/(N1+N2))f2*/f2=1 (f1 and f2 are the degrees of freedom for each component respectively). Thus, only 5 parameters of state describe the non-equilibrium state of the binary mixture in the heat flow. We calculate the non-equilibrium entropy S* and new thermodynamic parameters of state f1*,f2* explicitly. The latter are responsible for heat generation due to the concentration gradients. The theory reduces to equilibrium thermodynamics, when the heat flux goes to zero. As in equilibrium thermodynamics, the steady-state fundamental equation also leads to the thermodynamic Maxwell relations for measurable steady-state properties.

Steady-state thermodynamics of a system with heat and mass flow coupling.

Equilibrium thermodynamics describes the energy exchange of a body with its environment. Here, we describe the global energy exchange of an ideal gas in the Coutte flow in a thermodynamic-like manner. We derive a fundamental relation between internal energy as a function of parameters of state. We analyze a non-equilibrium transition in the system and postulate the extremum principle, which determines stable steady states in the system. The steady-state thermodynamic framework resembles equilibrium thermodynamics.

Fundamental Relation for Gas of Interacting Particles in a Heat Flow.

There is a long-standing question of whether it is possible to extend the formalism of equilibrium thermodynamics to the case of nonequilibrium systems in steady-states. We have made such an extension for an ideal gas in a heat flow. Here, we investigated whether such a description exists for the system with interactions: the van der Waals gas in a heat flow. We introduced a steady-state fundamental relation and the parameters of state, each associated with a single way of changing energy. The first law of nonequilibrium thermodynamics follows from these parameters. The internal energy U for the nonequilibrium states has the same form as in equilibrium thermodynamics. For the van der Waals gas, U(S*,V,N,a*,b*) is a function of only five parameters of state (irrespective of the number of parameters characterizing the boundary conditions): the effective entropy S*, volume V, number of particles N, and rescaled van der Waals parameters a*, b*. The state parameters, a*, b*, together with S*, determine the net heat exchange with the environment. The net heat differential does not have an integrating factor. As in equilibrium thermodynamics, the steady-state fundamental equation also leads to the thermodynamic Maxwell relations for measurable steady-state properties.

Thermodynamics of stationary states of the ideal gas in a heat flow.

There is a long-standing question as to whether and to what extent it is possible to describe nonequilibrium systems in stationary states in terms of global thermodynamic functions. The positive answers have been obtained only for isothermal systems or systems with small temperature differences. We formulate thermodynamics of the stationary states of the ideal gas subjected to heat flow in the form of the zeroth, first, and second law. Surprisingly, the formal structure of steady state thermodynamics is the same as in equilibrium thermodynamics. We rigorously show that U satisfies the following equation dU = T*dS* - pdV for a constant number of particles, irrespective of the shape of the container, boundary conditions, the size of the system, or the mode of heat transfer into the system. We calculate S* and T* explicitly. The theory selects stable nonequilibrium steady states in a multistable system of ideal gas subjected to volumetric heating. It reduces to equilibrium thermodynamics when heat flux goes to zero.

Effective screening of Coulomb repulsions in water accelerates reactions of like-charged compounds by orders of magnitude.

The reaction kinetics between like-charged compounds in water is extremely slow due to Coulomb repulsions. Here, we demonstrate that by screening these interactions and, in consequence, increasing the local concentration of reactants, we boost the reactions by many orders of magnitude. The reaction between negatively charged Coenzyme A molecules accelerates ~5 million-fold using cationic micelles. That is ~104 faster kinetics than in 0.5 M NaCl, although the salt is ~106 more concentrated. Rate enhancements are not limited to micelles, as evidenced by significant catalytic effects (104-105-fold) of other highly charged species such as oligomers and polymers. We generalize the observed phenomenon by analogously speeding up a non-covalent complex formation-DNA hybridization. A theoretical analysis shows that the acceleration is correlated to the catalysts' surface charge density in both experimental systems and enables predicting and controlling reaction rates of like-charged compounds with counter-charged species.

Transient dynamics in the outflow of energy from a system in a nonequilibrium stationary state.

We investigate the thermal relaxation of an ideal gas from a nonequilibrium stationary state. The gas is enclosed between two walls, which initially have different temperatures. After making one of the walls adiabatic, the system returns to equilibrium. We notice two distinct modes of heat transport and associated timescales: one connected with a traveling heat front and the other with internal energy diffusion. At the heat front, which moves at the speed of sound, pressure, temperature, and density change abruptly, leaving lower values behind. This is unlike a shock wave, a sound wave, or a thermal wave. The front moves multiple times between the walls and is the dominant heat transport mode until surpassed by diffusion. We found that it can constitute an order 1 factor in shaping the dynamics of the outflow of internal energy. We found that cooling such a system is quicker than heating, and that hotter bodies cool down quicker than colder ones. The latter is known as the Mpemba effect.

Charging dynamics of electrical double layers inside a cylindrical pore: predicting the effects of arbitrary pore size.

Porous electrodes are found in energy storage devices such as supercapacitors and pseudocapacitors. However, the effect of electrode-pore-size distribution on their energy storage properties remains unclear. Here, we develop a model for the charging of electrical double layers inside a cylindrical pore for arbitrary pore size. We assume small applied potentials and perform a regular perturbation analysis to predict the evolution of electrical potential and ion concentrations in both the radial and axial directions. We validate our perturbation model with direct numerical simulations of the Poisson-Nernst-Planck equations, and obtain quantitative agreement between the two approaches for small and moderate potentials. Our analysis yields two main characteristic features of arbitrary pore size: (i) a monotonic decrease of the charging timescale with an increase in relative pore size (pore size relative to Debye length); (ii) large potential changes for overlapping double layers in a thin transition region, which we approximate mathematically by a jump discontinuity. We quantify the contributions of electromigration and charge diffusion fluxes, which provide mechanistic insights into the dependence of charging timescale and capacitance on pore size. We develop a modified transmission circuit model that captures the effect of arbitrary pore size and demonstrate that a time-dependent transition-region resistor needs to be included in the circuit. We also derive phenomenological expressions for average effective capacitance and charging timescale as a function of pore-size distribution. We show that the capacitance and charging timescale increase with smaller average pore sizes and with smaller polydispersity, resulting in a gain of energy density at a constant power density. Overall, our results advance the mechanistic understanding of electrical-double-layer charging.

Quantitative analysis of biochemical processes in living cells at a single-molecule level: a case of olaparib-PARP1 (DNA repair protein) interactions.

Quantitative description of biochemical processes inside living cells and at single-molecule levels remains a challenge at the forefront of modern instrumentation and spectroscopy. This paper demonstrates such single-cell, single-molecule analyses performed to study the mechanism of action of olaparib - an up-to-date, FDA-approved drug for germline-BRCA mutated metastatic breast cancer. We characterized complexes formed with PARPi-FL - fluorescent analog of olaparib in vitro and in cancer cells using the advanced fluorescent-based method: Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) combined with a length-scale dependent cytoplasmic/nucleoplasmic viscosity model. We determined in vitro olaparib-PARP1 equilibrium constant (6.06 × 108 mol L-1). In the cell nucleus, we distinguished three states of olaparib: freely diffusing drug (24%), olaparib-PARP1 complex (50%), and olaparib-PARP1-RNA complex (26%). We show olaparib accumulation in 3D spheroids, where intracellular concentration is twofold higher than in 2D cells. Moreover, olaparib concentration was tenfold higher (506 nmol L-1vs. 57 nmol L-1) in cervical cancer (BRCA1 high abundance) than in breast cancer cells (BRCA1 low abundance) but with a lower toxic effect. Thus we confirmed that the amount of BRCA1 protein in the cells is a better predictor of the therapeutic effect of olaparib than its penetration into cancer tissue. Our single-molecule and single-cell approach give a new perspective of drug action in living cells. FCS provides a detailed in vivo insight, valuable in drug development and targeting.

Continuous nonequilibrium transition driven by heat flow.

We discovered an out-of-equilibrium transition in the ideal gas between two walls, divided by an inner, adiabatic, movable wall. The system is driven out-of-equilibrium by supplying energy directly into the volume of the gas. At critical heat flux we have found a continuous transition to the state with a low-density, hot gas on one side of the movable wall and a dense, cold gas on the other side. Molecular dynamic simulations of the soft-sphere fluid confirm the existence of the transition in the interacting system. We introduce a stationary state Helmholtz-like function whose minimum determines the stable positions of the internal wall. This transition can be used as a paradigm of transitions in stationary states and the Helmholtz-like function as a paradigm of the thermodynamic description of these states.

Generalized Rotne-Prager-Yamakawa approximation for Brownian dynamics in shear flow in bounded, unbounded, and periodic domains.

Inclusion of hydrodynamic interactions is essential for a quantitatively accurate Brownian dynamics simulation of colloidal suspensions or polymer solutions. We use the generalized Rotne-Prager-Yamakawa (GRPY) approximation, which takes into account all long-ranged terms in the hydrodynamic interactions, to derive the complete set of hydrodynamic matrices in different geometries: unbounded space, periodic boundary conditions of Lees-Edwards type, and vicinity of a free surface. The construction is carried out both for non-overlapping as well as for overlapping particles. We include the dipolar degrees of freedom, which allows one to use this formalism to simulate the dynamics of suspensions in a shear flow and to study the evolution of their rheological properties. Finally, we provide an open-source numerical package, which implements the GRPY algorithm in Lees-Edwards periodic boundary conditions.

Charging Dynamics of Overlapping Double Layers in a Cylindrical Nanopore.

The charging of electrical double layers inside a cylindrical pore has applications to supercapacitors, batteries, desalination and biosensors. The charging dynamics in the limit of thin double layers, i.e., when the double layer thickness is much smaller than the pore radius, is commonly described using an effective RC transmission line circuit. Here, we perform direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the Poisson-Nernst-Planck equations to study the double layer charging for the scenario of overlapping double layers, i.e., when the double layer thickness is comparable to the pore radius. We develop an analytical model that accurately predicts the results of DNS. Also, we construct a modified effective circuit for the overlapping double layer limit, and find that the modified circuit is identical to the RC transmission line but with different values and physical interpretation of the capacitive and resistive elements. In particular, the effective surface potential is reduced, the capacitor represents a volumetric current source, and the charging timescale is weakly dependent on the ratio of the pore radius and the double layer thickness.

Ions in an AC Electric Field: Strong Long-Range Repulsion between Oppositely Charged Surfaces.

Two oppositely charged surfaces separated by a dielectric medium attract each other. In contrast we observe a strong repulsion between two plates of a capacitor that is filled with an aqueous electrolyte upon application of an alternating potential difference between the plates. This long-range force increases with the ratio of diffusion coefficients of the ions in the medium and reaches a steady state after a few minutes, which is much larger than the millisecond timescale of diffusion across the narrow gap. The repulsive force, an order of magnitude stronger than the electrostatic attraction observed in the same setup in air, results from the increase in osmotic pressure as a consequence of the field-induced excess of cations and anions due to lateral transport from adjacent reservoirs.

Sampling rare events in stochastic reaction-diffusion systems within trajectory looping.

In bistable reaction-diffusion systems, transitions between stable states typically occur on timescales orders of magnitude longer than the chemical equilibration time. Estimation of transition rates within explicit Brownian dynamics simulations is computationally prohibitively costly. We present a method that exploits a single trajectory, generated by a prior simulation of diffusive motions of molecules, to sample chemical kinetic processes on timescales several orders of magnitude longer than the duration of the diffusive trajectory. In this approach, we "loop" the diffusive trajectory by transferring chemical states of the molecules from the last to the first time step of the trajectory. Trajectory looping can be applied to enhance sampling of rare events in biochemical systems in which the number of reacting molecules is constant, as in cellular signal transduction pathways. As an example, we consider a bistable system of autophosphorylating kinases, for which we calculate state-to-state transition rates and traveling wave velocities. We provide an open-source implementation of the method.

GRPY: An Accurate Bead Method for Calculation of Hydrodynamic Properties of Rigid Biomacromolecules.

Two main problems that arise in the context of hydrodynamic bead modeling are an inaccurate treatment of bead overlaps and the necessity of using volume corrections when calculating intrinsic viscosity. We present a formalism based on the generalized Rotne-Prager-Yamakawa approximation that successfully addresses both of these issues. The generalized Rotne-Prager-Yamakawa method is shown to be highly effective for the calculation of transport properties of rigid biomolecules represented as assemblies of spherical beads of different sizes, both overlapping and nonoverlapping. We test the method on simple molecular shapes as well as real protein structures and compare its performance with other computational approaches.

The Rotne-Prager-Yamakawa approximation for periodic systems in a shear flow.

Rotne-Prager-Yamakawa approximation is a commonly used approach to model hydrodynamic interactions between particles suspended in fluid. It takes into account all the long-range contributions to the hydrodynamic tensors, with the corrections decaying at least as fast as the inverse fourth power of the interparticle distances, and results in a positive definite mobility matrix, which is fundamental in Brownian dynamics simulations. In this communication, we show how to construct the Rotne-Prager-Yamakawa approximation for the bulk system under shear flow, which is modeled using the Lees-Edwards boundary conditions.

Spontaneous NF-κB activation by autocrine TNFα signaling: a computational analysis.

NF-κB is a key transcription factor that regulates innate immune response. Its activity is tightly controlled by numerous feedback loops, including two negative loops mediated by NF-κB inducible inhibitors, IκBα and A20, which assure oscillatory responses, and by positive feedback loops arising due to the paracrine and autocrine regulation via TNFα, IL-1 and other cytokines. We study the NF-κB system of interlinked negative and positive feedback loops, combining bifurcation analysis of the deterministic approximation with stochastic numerical modeling. Positive feedback assures the existence of limit cycle oscillations in unstimulated wild-type cells and introduces bistability in A20-deficient cells. We demonstrated that cells of significant autocrine potential, i.e., cells characterized by high secretion of TNFα and its receptor TNFR1, may exhibit sustained cytoplasmic-nuclear NF-κB oscillations which start spontaneously due to stochastic fluctuations. In A20-deficient cells even a small TNFα expression rate qualitatively influences system kinetics, leading to long-lasting NF-κB activation in response to a short-pulsed TNFα stimulation. As a consequence, cells with impaired A20 expression or increased TNFα secretion rate are expected to have elevated NF-κB activity even in the absence of stimulation. This may lead to chronic inflammation and promote cancer due to the persistent activation of antiapoptotic genes induced by NF-κB. There is growing evidence that A20 mutations correlate with several types of lymphomas and elevated TNFα secretion is characteristic of many cancers. Interestingly, A20 loss or dysfunction also leaves the organism vulnerable to septic shock and massive apoptosis triggered by the uncontrolled TNFα secretion, which at high levels overcomes the antiapoptotic action of NF-κB. It is thus tempting to speculate that some cancers of deregulated NF-κB signaling may be prone to the pathogen-induced apoptosis.