A nonlinear Monte Carlo simulation: oxygen transport in the brain

Environmental decoherence appears to be the biggest obstacle for successful construction of quantum mind theories. Nevertheless, the quantum physicist Henry Stapp promoted the view that the mind could utilize quantum Zeno effect to influence brain dynamics and that the efficacy of such mental efforts would not be undermined by environmental decoherence of the brain. To address the physical plausibility of Stapp's claim, we modeled the brain using quantum tunneling of an electron in a multiple-well structure such as the voltage sensor in neuronal ion channels and performed Monte Carlo simulations of quantum Zeno effect exerted by the mind upon the brain in the presence or absence of environmental decoherence. The simulations unambiguously showed that the quantum Zeno effect breaks down for timescales greater than the brain decoherence time. To generalize the Monte Carlo simulation results for any n-level quantum system, we further analyzed the change of brain entropy due to the mind probing actions and proved a theorem according to which local projections cannot decrease the von Neumann entropy of the unconditional brain density matrix. The latter theorem establishes that Stapp's model is physically implausible but leaves a door open for future development of quantum mind theories provided the brain has a decoherence-free subspace.

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Electron Scattering in Solids

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100133618 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 48 (2) ◽

pp. 4-5

Author(s):

Ryuichi Shimizu ◽

Ze-Jun Ding

Keyword(s):

Monte Carlo Simulation ◽

Monte Carlo ◽

Angular Distribution ◽

Elastic Scattering ◽

Electron Scattering ◽

Cross Sections ◽

Expansion Method ◽

Electron Excitation ◽

Partial Wave Expansion ◽

Backscattered Electrons

Monte Carlo simulation has been becoming most powerful tool to describe the electron scattering in solids, leading to more comprehensive understanding of the complicated mechanism of generation of various types of signals for microbeam analysis.The present paper proposes a practical model for the Monte Carlo simulation of scattering processes of a penetrating electron and the generation of the slow secondaries in solids. The model is based on the combined use of Gryzinski’s inner-shell electron excitation function and the dielectric function for taking into account the valence electron contribution in inelastic scattering processes, while the cross-sections derived by partial wave expansion method are used for describing elastic scattering processes. An improvement of the use of this elastic scattering cross-section can be seen in the success to describe the anisotropy of angular distribution of elastically backscattered electrons from Au in low energy region, shown in Fig.l. Fig.l(a) shows the elastic cross-sections of 600 eV electron for single Au-atom, clearly indicating that the angular distribution is no more smooth as expected from Rutherford scattering formula, but has the socalled lobes appearing at the large scattering angle.

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Determination of Stoichiometry of GaAs Component in (Gaas)Ge Epitaxially Grown Thin Films by Electron Microprobe X-Ray Analysis

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100134922 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 48 (2) ◽

pp. 264-265

Author(s):

D. R. Liu ◽

S. S. Shinozaki ◽

R. J. Baird

Keyword(s):

Thin Film ◽

Thin Films ◽

Monte Carlo Simulation ◽

Monte Carlo ◽

Compound Semiconductors ◽

Energy Dispersive Analysis ◽

X Ray ◽

Metastable Alloys ◽

Lower Voltage

The epitaxially grown (GaAs)Ge thin film has been arousing much interest because it is one of metastable alloys of III-V compound semiconductors with germanium and a possible candidate in optoelectronic applications. It is important to be able to accurately determine the composition of the film, particularly whether or not the GaAs component is in stoichiometry, but x-ray energy dispersive analysis (EDS) cannot meet this need. The thickness of the film is usually about 0.5-1.5 μm. If Kα peaks are used for quantification, the accelerating voltage must be more than 10 kV in order for these peaks to be excited. Under this voltage, the generation depth of x-ray photons approaches 1 μm, as evidenced by a Monte Carlo simulation and actual x-ray intensity measurement as discussed below. If a lower voltage is used to reduce the generation depth, their L peaks have to be used. But these L peaks actually are merged as one big hump simply because the atomic numbers of these three elements are relatively small and close together, and the EDS energy resolution is limited.

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