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+ O (1)
Equation (1) says it all. The hydrogen
ion (protons) and electrons go to reduce (or
ix) carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, and
biomass of photosynthetic organisms, which
serve as food for herbivores, and down the
food web to include the vast majority of ani-
mal species. The air breathers break down
carbohydrates with oxygen in the mitochon-
dria of cells to obtain energy for growth and
reproduction, regenerating carbon dioxide
and water. This completes the living dynamo
of photosynthesis and respiration, the magic
roundabout that turns inanimate substances
into living organisms. However, it takes lots
of energy to split water, 12.6 eV, to be pre-
cise, and requires an energetic photon in the
soft X-ray region that would destroy life, and
is not what green plants and cyanobacteria
use. For photosynthesis, they use mainly red
and to some extent blue light in the visible
spectrum.
More than 50 years ago, Nobel Laure-
ate Albert Szent-Gyrgyi, the father of bio-
chemistry, already suggested
28
that water at
interfaces is the key to life. He proposed that
water at interfaces such as membranes is in
the excited state, and hence requires consid-
erably less energy to split than water in the
ground state. A sign of the excited water is
that a voltage should appear at the boundary
between interfacial water and bulk water,
which was indeed observed. This property of
water enables energy transfer to take place
in living organisms. Most if not all water in
living organisms is interfacial water, since it
is almost never further away from surfaces
such as membranes or macromolecules than
a fraction of a micron.
A vivid demonstration of interfacial water
was achieved by the Gerald Pollacks research
team at the University of Washington.
29,30
Using a hydrophilic gel and a suspension
of microspheres just visible to the eye, they
created interfacial water apparently tens of
microns or even hundreds of microns thick
on the surface of the gel, which excludes the
microspheres as well as other solutes such as
proteins and dyes, and hence is referred to
Ho 228
Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics
as an exclusion zone (EZ). EZ water is about
10-fold more viscous than bulk water, it has a
peak of light absorption at 270 nm, and emits
luorescence. Del Giudice and colleagues
23,24
suggest that EZ water is in fact a giant coher-
ent domain stabilized on the surface of the
attractive gel. Inside the cell, the EZ would
form on surfaces of membranes and macromol-
ecules, as envisaged by Szent-Gyrgi. Because
the coherent domain is excited water with a
plasma of almost free electrons, it can easily
transfer electrons to molecules on its surface.
The interface between fully coherent inter-
facial water and normal bulk water becomes
a redox pile. In line with this proposal, EZ
water does indeed act as a battery, as Pollacks
research team demonstrated.
31,32
VI. LIQUID CRYSTALLINE WATER AND
THE SUPERCONDUCTING ELECTRIC
CURRENTS OF LIFE
The core chemistry of life is reduction-
oxidation or redox reactions that transfer
electrons between chemical species, and the
movement of electrons is nothing if not an
electric current. However, water electricity is
special in that it also involves the movement
of positive charges associated with protons.
33
Water jump conducts protons down a chain
of water molecules connected by hydrogen
bonds, in which a proton leaps on at one
end of the chain, and a second leaps off at
the other end, while electrons are displaced
in the other direction. Jump conduction is
a form of semiconduction, much faster than
electrical conduction through wires, because
the charge displacements involved are very
short ranged.
Evidence that collagen fibers conduct
electricity, and that this is due to the water
associated with the ibers, goes back to the
1970s. Bardelmeyer,
34
in the Netherlands,
found that electrical conductivity in the bovine
Achilles tendon is fully determined by the
water of hydration, and the electric current
is primarily carried by protons at water con-
tents up to 45%, and by small ions at water
contents beyond 65%. Between water contents
of 8.5 and 126%, conductivity went up by eight
orders of magnitude. He also estimated that
pure waters dissociation constant is 10
5
that
of absorbed water; i.e. adsorbed water is more
likely to let go of protons. Similarly, Naoki
Sasaki in Japan found that the conductivity
of collagen increased markedly with water
absorbedat an exponent of 5.15.4between
a water content of 0.1 and 0.3 g/g,
35
suggest-
ing that continuous chains (of ive or more
ordered water molecules) adsorbed in collagen
enable proton jump conduction to take place.
Another important property of collagen
discovered in the late 1980s is its capacity
for second harmonic generation (SHG), i.e.,
combining photons interacting with it to
form new photons with twice the energy and
therefore double the frequency and half the
wavelength.
36
Since then, in vivo SHG imag-
ing has been widely developed for diagnostic
purposes (Fig. 4).
37
It should be noted that
SHG was previously restricted to crystal-
line material such as quartz. And although
it is clear that SHG in collagen depends on
hydration, there have been very few studies
to elucidate the precise role of water.
A paper
38
submitted to a conference in
2003 reported results of experiments in which
type 1 collagen bundles obtained from rat
tails were structurally modiied by increas-
ing non-enzymatic cross-linking, or thermal
denaturation, or by collagenase digestion,
or dehydration. Although they found that
the hydration state signiicantly affected the
Superconducting Liquid-Crystalline Water Meridians 229
Volume 3, Number 34, 2012
polarization dependence of SHG, there was
little or no change as a result of extensive
structural modiications from cross-linking,
thermal denaturation, or collagenase digestion
short of complete disintegration. These results
strongly suggest that the liquid crystalline
water adsorbed in collagen is the source of
the SHG.
A second paper
39
from a different research
group published in 2005 said, SHG radiates
from the shell of a collagen ibril rather than
from its bulk. The effective thickness of the
SHG shell was strongly dependent on the ionic
strength of the surrounding solution, increas-
ing as ionic strength decreases. However, the
authors have not attributed the SHG shell to
liquid crystalline water.
Some time ago, researchers at Drexel
University, the University of Illinois, and the
Tokyo Institute of Technology demonstrated
for the irst time the formation of structured
water conined in carbon nanotubes <5 nm
in diameter, which was completely different
from the more ordinary looking water con-
ined in larger nanotubes (Fig. 5).
40,41
I sug-
gested that the water conined in the small
nanotubes, being far more ordered, could be
superconducting because jump conduction
could occur simultaneously down multiple
chains of hydrogen-bonded water molecules.
42
Later, Gary Fullerton and colleagues at
Texas University offered a convincing model
of liquid crystalline nanotubes of water
interwoven with the triple-helix molecules
of collagen molecules in the collagen ibers
43
(Fig. 6), which again suggested to me that
such a water structure in the extracellular
matrix could also be superconducting.
44
As you have seen earlier, the proton is
actually in a delocalized quantum state, even
FIG. 4: Second harmonic generation in vivo imaging of collagen, courtesy of Caroline Pehlke, University of Wis-
consin, Madison
Ho 230
Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics
in bulk water under ambient conditions. This
delocalization has now been conirmed for
water conined in nanotubes.
45
Delocalized
protons imply that jump conduction can be
very fast indeed.
VII. SUPERCONDUCTING QUANTUM
COHERENT WATER NANOTUBES
Recently, researchers led by physicist George
Reiter at the University of Houston obtained
direct evidence of both quantum coherence and
proton superconductivity of water conined in
carbon nanotubes and other nanospaces, using
deep neutron inelastic scattering at the ISIS
Facility of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in
Oxford, UK. In this technique, intense beams
of neutrons are ired at the water molecules
and scattered from the nuclei of hydrogen
atoms, i.e., protons, so that both the energy
FIG. 6: Collagen water structure revealed
FIG. 5: Structured water conned in narrow nanotube (right) compared to ordinary water in wide nanotube (left)
Superconducting Liquid-Crystalline Water Meridians 231
Volume 3, Number 34, 2012
of the neutron and the proton is changed. The
momentum of the proton is mainly determined
by the wave function of the protons ground
state (least energetic state). Let me show
you their latest indings on water conined
in nanopores and channels, which are very
similar to those obtained in carbon nanotubes.
Xerogel is a glass sponge with Si-OH (silanol)
groups lining the surface of pores that can form
hydrogen bonds with water. Proton momentum
distribution of the water in the 24 (2.4 nm)
pores at room temperature could be described
as though all the molecules were conined in a
double-well potential. For larger pores of 82 ,
the average momentum distribution was closer
to that of bulk water, though still quite distinct.
46
Two systems similar to xerogel are the
perlurosulphonic acid membranes Naion 1120
and Dow 858. These are ionomers (polymers
consisting of repeats of both electrically neutral units
and a fraction of ionized units, usually no more than
15%), with hydrophobic poly(tetraluoroethylene)
(PTFE) backbones and random side chains
of perluoroether terminating with sulphonic
acids. When hydrated, they exhibit nanophase
separation where water ions exist in domains
a few nanometres in diameter surrounded by
the hydrophobic backbones. The sulphonic acid
group (SO
3
H) donates its proton to water when
there is suficient water in the pores, making
them very good proton conductors. The momen-
tum distribution at room temperature for the
two membranes are dramatic, and corresponds
to a kinetic energy difference compared to bulk
water of +107 meV/proton for Naion and +124
meV/proton for Dow 858 (Fig. 7).
47
That means
the water in the membrane pores is excited
relative to the bulk water.
At a concentration of 14H
2
O/SO
3
H for both
membranes, Dow 858 has a signiicantly higher
conductivity than Naion, consistent with the
greater proton delocalization, judging by the
depth and position of the minimum in the
momentum distribution (Fig. 7).
Thus, confinement leads to excitation
of water and quantum delocalization of the
proton, greatly facilitating proton conduction.
The authors also pointed out,
47
The changes
in the zero-point motion [ground state] of the
protons in conined water, as in living cells
FIG. 7: Proton momentum distribution of proton exchange membranes compared to bulk water; inset, proton
momentum distribution of xerogel (see text)
Ho 232
Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics
can be expected to play a signiicant role in the
energetics of the cells, where typical distances
between components are on the order of 20 .
VIII. SUPERCONDUCTING PROTON
MEMBRANES
Recent work on the structure of proton
exchange membranes (PEMs) sheds further
light on their proton conducting properties.
The chemical structure of Naion combines
a hydrophobic, Telon-like backbone with
hydrophilic ionic side groups. Its structure
when hydrated has been determined recently
to consist of long parallel, but otherwise ran-
domly packed, water channels surrounded by
partially hydrophilic side branches, forming
inverse micelle cylinders (Fig. 8). (Inverse
micelles are formed by detergents with their
hydrophilic ends facing inside and hydro-
phobic ends facing out.) At 20% by volume
of water, the water channels have diameters
between 1.8 and 3.5 nm, with an average of
2.4 nm. Naion crystallites (small crystal struc-
tures) constituting ~10% of the volume, form
cross-links that are crucial for the mechanical
properties of Naion ilms, and are elongated
and parallel to the water channels, with cross
sections of ~5 nm
2
.
Naion ilms have a proton conductivity of
~0.1 S/cm (S, sieman = 1 amp/V), among the
highest in PEMs. (For comparison, the electri-
cal conductivity of copper, one of the highest,
is 596,000 S/cm, that of water 0.00055 S/cm,
and silicon, a semiconductor, 0.156 S/cm.
48
Electrospinning is one technique that
can produce polymer ibers nanometers in
diameter by applying a high-voltage electric
ield to a polymer solution ejecting out of a
metal syringe needle. This has been applied
to make Naion ibers. The high-purity Naion
nanofibers made by electrospinning had
proton conductivity as high as 1.5 S/cm at a
iber diameter of 400 nm. Also, an order of
magnitude increase in humidity sensitivity
was observed in Naion nanoibers compared
to the bulk ilm
49
(Fig. 9).
As shown in Fig. 9, the conductivity of the
Naion ibers increases exponentially as iber diameter
decreases (left graph). The proton conductivities of
the ibers with diameters >2 m is similar to the bulk
Naion ilm (0.1 S/cm). However, when the iber
diameter is <1 m, proton conductivity increases
sharply with decreasing iber diameter and reaches
a value as high as 1.5 S/cm for the 400 nm diameter
nanoiber; at least an order of magnitude higher than
the bulk Naion ilm. Conductivity of the iber also
increases 100-fold as relative humidity rises from 50
to 90% (Fig. 9, right graph); in comparison, conduc-
tivity of the bulk ilm has increased only 10-fold.
FIG. 8: Parallel water channel (inverse micelle cylinder)
model of hydrated Naon; (a) an inverse micelle cylinder
in cross section and longitudinal section; (b) approxi-
mately hexagonal packing of water channels; (c) cross
section through the cylindrical water channels (white)
and the Naon crystallites (black) in the noncrystalline
Naon matrix (gray)
Superconducting Liquid-Crystalline Water Meridians 233
Volume 3, Number 34, 2012
IX. INVERSE MICELLE CHANNELS,
CYTOSKELETON, COLLAGEN FIBERS,
AND ACUPUNCTURE MERIDIANS
The inverse micelle model of Nafion is
especially relevant to the living cell, where
interstices between ibers of the cytoskeleton
and cytoplasmic membranes effectively form
inverse micelle nanospaces and channels that
are now known to drastically alter enzyme/
substrate relationships and enzyme activity
compared to bulk phase thermodynamic mod-
els that still dominate conventional cell biology
(see Chapter 18 of Ref. 17). The model may be
even more relevant to the connective tissue
collagen ibers interwoven with nanotubes of
water, most likely the anatomical correlates
of the acupuncture meridians of traditional
Chinese medicine. It would be a simple mat-
ter to measure the proton conductivity of
single collagen ibrils for a start. I predict it
would be at least as high as the electrospun
Naion ibers.
If our hypothesis is right, acupuncture,
and all forms of subtle energy medicine,
including homeopathy and other traditional
healing practices, may have their mechanism
of action mediated via quantum coherent
liquid crystalline water. I should mention
that our hypothesis is fully consistent with
Shui-Yin Los proposal
50
that stable clustered
water forms the meridian system, which was
arrived at independently through a differ-
ent line of enquiry. And the clinical results
reported by many other contributions at the
same conference have been most encouraging
and amazing.
Contemporary Western science may be
just the universal Rosetta stone to unify and
translate between the great medical traditions
of the world, and bring real health and well-
being to all nations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I thank all my colleagues past and present for my
adventures in art and science, especially Julian
Haffegee, Zhou Yu Ming, Michael Lawrence, David
Knight, and Peter Saunders, my life-long fellow
FIG. 9: Conductivity of Naon nanober as a function of diameter (left) and relative humidity (right)
Ho 234
Forum on Immunopathological Diseases and Therapeutics
traveler in science without borders.
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