Getullio Talpo’s scientific contributions

Living systems cannot be thermal systems, but instead are coherent systems. The dynamic origin of coherence is discussed in the case of electromagnetically coupled particles. Permanent nonvanishing electromagnetic fields are shown to be present but trapped in the coherent systems. The dynamics of enzymes is sketched as an outcome of the coherent electromagnetic structure of living matter. The emergence of bound water is analyzed. Circulation of ions is shown to be driven by the Josephson effect. Ion cyclotron resonance briefly is discussed.

Herbert Fröhlich suggested that coherence could be an essential attribute of the dynamics of living matter. The concept of coherence and its expansion provide one of the major roads for introducing modern physics into life sciences. In this article, we show that a system made of an ensemble of metabolically active yeast cells can be a good benchmark for the discussion of the concept of coherence, of ordered states, and of their dynamics. Moreover, it can be used for probing the potentialities of coherence in the description and prediction of the behavior of interacting systems.

A series of experiments on rats have been performed, to study the effects of long time (50 days) exposure to electromagnetic fields of extremely low frequency (ELF, i.e. less than 100 Hz) and amplitude (non thermal), testing whether the metabolic processes would be affected. The background lies on recent observations on the behaviour of isolated enzymes in vitro exposed to EFL fields. In these experiments, the cyclotron (or Larmor) frequency of the metallic ion has been used to "stimulate" the metalloproteins redox-active site, thus obtaining a clear variation of the enzyme functionality. In this paper we have extended for the first time the check to more complex animal metabolism. The novelty of this approach implies that a large amount of data had to be analyzed since it was not possible, in principle, to select only a few parameters among all the potential effects. Several biochemical parameters have been evaluated by comparing their values during the periods of exposure (field ON) and non exposure (field OFF). The evidence that long term exposure to electromagnetic fields with a well defined frequency may have relevant effects on parameters such as body weight, blood glucose and fatty acid metabolism has been obtained.

In this study we show a reproduction of the Zhadin experiment, which consists of the transient increase of the electrolytic current flow across an aqueous solution of L-arginine and L-glutamic acid induced by a proper low frequency alternating magnetic field superimposed to a static magnetic field of higher strength. We have identified the mechanisms that were at the origin of the so-far poor reproducibility of the above effect: the state of polarization of the electrode turned out to be a key parameter. The electrochemical investigation of the system shows that the observed phenomenon involves the transitory activation of the anode due to ion cyclotron frequency effect, followed again by anode passivation due to the adsorption of amino acid and its oxidation products. The likely occurrence of similar ion cyclotron resonance (ICR) phenomena at biological membranes, the implications on ion circulation in living matter, and the consequent biological impact of environmental magnetic fields are eventually discussed.

A recent experiment on a physical, nonbiological system of ions at room temperature has proved that microscopic ion currents can be induced by applying simultaneously two parallel magnetic fields, one rather weak static field, (-->)B(0) and one much weaker alternating field, (-->) B(ac),[B(ac) approximately 10(-3) B(0)] whose frequency coincides with the cyclotron frequency v = qB(0)/2pim of the selected ion. As a result, ionic bursts lasting up to 20 s and with amplitude up to 10 nA arise. The much larger exchanges of energy induced by thermal agitation (the "kT-problem") appear to play no role whatsoever. We have analyzed this problem in the framework of coherent quantum electrodynamics, reaching the following conclusions: (a) as has been shown in previous articles, water molecules in the liquid and solute ions are involved in their ground state in coherent ordered configurations; (b) ions are able to move without collisions among themselves in the interstices between water coherence domains; (c) because of coherence, ions can follow classical orbits in the magnetic fields. A full quantitative understanding of the experiments is thus reached.