Spatial scales of living cells and their energetic and informational capacity.

Physical (thermodynamic and kinetic), chemical, and biological reasoning restrict the spatial dimensions of living cells (prokaryotic and eukaryotic) and confine them to between 1 and 100 µm. Cells should necessarily be macroscopic, dissipative objects, resisting thermal fluctuations and providing sufficient informational capacity. The upper limit of the spatial dimensions of cells is supplied by their ability to withstand gravity and inertia forces under reasonable deformations.

Estimation of the intrinsic heterogeneity of ionic glass-forming melts.

The supercooled ionic melt is considered as a kind of binary composite material with an intrinsic heterogeneity (liquid medium and denser packed clusters) dependent on temperature. The conductivities of phases are extracted from the high (liquid) and low (glass) temperature experimental data. Effective conductivity of such a composite has been estimated using the checkerboardlike model with the presence of heterogeneity on different length scales.