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| | Physics News update 753 |
 | | Unlike the case of mammals, which maintain their body temperature by constant metabolism in cells all over the body, heat in the skunk cabbage is produced chiefly in the spadix, the plant’s central spike-like flowering stalk through chemical reactions in the cells’ mitochondria. |
 | | Moreover, the researchers, studying subtle oscillations in the plant’s internal temperature, claim that the thermo-regulation process is chaotic and that this represents the first evidence for deterministic chaos among the higher plants. |
 | | The resultant trajectory in the abstract phase space (where, typically, one plots the plant’s temperature at one time versus the temperature at another time) is a strange attractor, which the authors refer to as a Zazen attractor, a "Zen meditation" attractor. |
| www.aip.org /pnu/2005/753.html (902 words) |
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