S. W. Rhee | Searcharxiv

arXiv2005

Glucose metabolism and oscillatory behavior of pancreatic islets

A variety of oscillations are observed in pancreatic islets.We establish a model, incorporating two oscillatory systems of different time scales: One is the well-known bursting model in pancreatic beta-cells and the other is the glucose-insulin feedback model which considers direct and indirect feedback of secreted insulin. These two are coupled to interact with each other in the combined model, and two basic assumptions are made on the basis of biological observations: The conductance g_{K(ATP)} for the ATP-dependent potassium current is a decreasing function of the glucose concentration whereas the insulin secretion rate is given by a function of the intracellular calcium concentration. Obtained via extensive numerical simulations are complex oscillations including clusters of bursts, slow and fast calcium oscillations, and so on. We also consider how the intracellular glucose concentration depends upon the extracellular glucose concentration, and examine the inhibitory effects of insulin.

q-bio.CB↗

arXiv2001

Vortex Dynamics in the Two-Fluid Model

We have used two-fluid dynamics to study the discrepancy between the work of Thouless, Ao and Niu (TAN) and that of Iordanskii. In TAN no transverse force on a vortex due to normal fluid flow was found, whereas the earlier work found a transverse force proportional to normal fluid velocity u and normal fluid density. We have linearized the time-independent two-fluid equations about the exact solution for a vortex, and find three solutions which are important in the region far from the vortex. Uniform superfluid flow gives rise to the usual superfluid Magnus force. Uniform normal fluid flow gives rise to no forces in the linear region, but does not satisfy reasonable boundary conditions at short distances. A logarithmically increasing normal fluid flow gives a viscous force. As in classical hydrodynamics, and as in the early work of Hall and Vinen, this logarithmic increase must be cut off by nonlinear effects at large distances; this gives a viscous force proportional to u/ln(u), and a transverse contribution which goes like u/(ln u)^2, even in the absence of an explicit Iordanskii force. In the limit u goes to zero the TAN result is obtained, but at nonzero u there are important corrections that were not found in TAN. We argue that the Magnus force in a superfluid at nonzero temperature is an example of a topological relation for which finite-size corrections may be large.

cond-mat↗