Ural Federal University: Physicists Have Prepared an Issue of One of the Oldest Natural Science Publications

Professors from the Department of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics at Ural Federal University, Dmitriy Aleksandrov and Andrey Zubarev, have prepared a special issue of one of the oldest and most authoritative scientific publications in the natural sciences, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. This year’s thematic issue Transport phenomena in complex systems consists of two parts, with 13 articles published in the first part.

“The issue presents the results of theoretical, computational, and experimental studies of transport phenomena in various complex systems. These are porous and composite media, with physical and chemical reactions, phase and structural transformations. Particular attention is paid to transfer phenomena in biological systems that are complicated by internal physical and chemical reactions. These are, for example, hemodynamics in stenosed and thrombosed blood vessels, magnet-induced generation and distribution of heat in biological tissues, abnormal transfer in living cells. These studies create a scientific basis for progressive methods in the treatment of cancer, heart attack, and stroke,” explains Dmitri Alexandrov, professor of the Department of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics.

Part of the research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant 18-19-00008, Kinetics of phase transitions in metastable systems: nucleation and crystal growth with applications to crystallization of biochemical compounds).Anomalous, attenuated, nonlinear, and field-induced transport phenomena in composite and biological media, as well as in media with internal physical and chemical reactions and phase transitions, are of interest to researchers, physicists, and engineers. The reason is that these phenomena are widespread in nature and are actively used in advanced industrial and biomedical technologies, the scientists say.

“The published work is at the forefront of transfer phenomena. This is relevant research applicable to the fields of biological and medical technology. For example, in order to create drugs, it is necessary to understand and describe the phenomena that occur in the body: the transfer of drug compounds in blood vessels, phase transformations in proteins and insulin, and others,” says Andrey Zubarev, Chief Researcher at the Laboratory of Mathematical Modeling of Physical and Chemical Processes in Multiphase Media.