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Thank you so much for your reply!

I looked for information on the net by "Xiaocheng Zhang" and only found nuclear reactor and finance information. Is this name one that inverts to " Zhang Xiaocheng?" There is much more available on that construction.

Alex Kaivarainen is seen as a kook by a number of people precisely because he makes certain claims concerning consciousness and quantum mechanics. I found it quite interesting that Democratic Underground is among the debunkers (LOL!)

Evidently, you put Penrose, Hameroff and Kaivarainen in the same bucket. I respectfully disagree. Hameroff’s work Cytoplasmic Gel States and Ordered Water: Possible Roles in Biological Quantum Coherence fits nicely with Kaivarainen:

Actin gelation and microtubule assembly produce cytoplasmic rearrangements such as amoeboid movements, mitosis and cleavage, neurite growth and synaptic formation. The regulation and control of these self-organizing behaviors are not well understood. There is some suggestion that quantum coherence is involved in living matter, and in consciousness [3,21,22].

Herbert Frohlich, an early contributor to the understanding of superconductivity, also predicted quantum coherence in living cells (based on earlier work by Oliver Penrose and Lars Onsager [23]) Frohlich [24-26] theorized that sets of protein dipoles in a common electromagnetic field (e.g. proteins within a polarized membrane, subunits within an electret polymer like microtubules) undergo coherent conformational excitations if energy is supplied. Frohlich postulated that biochemical and thermal energy from the surrounding "heat bath" provides such energy. Cooperative, organized processes leading to coherent excitations emerged, according to Frohlich, because of structural coherence of hydrophobic dipoles in a common voltage gradient.

Coherent excitation frequencies on the order of 109 to 1011 Hz (identical to the time domain for functional protein conformational changes, and in the microwave or gigaHz spectral region) were deduced by Fr hlich who termed them acousto-conformational transitions, or coherent (pumped) phonons. Such coherent states are termed Bose-Einstein condensates in quantum physics and have been suggested by Marshall [27] to provide macroscopic quantum states which support the unitary binding of consciousness. Experimental evidence for Frohlich-like coherent excitations in biological systems includes observation of gigaHz-range phonons in proteins [28], sharp-resonant non-thermal effects of microwave irradiation on living cells [29], gigaHz induced activation of microtubule pinocytosis in rat brain [30], and laser Raman spectroscopy detection of Frohlich frequency energy [31-32]. Coherent Frohlich excitations in cytoskeletal microtubules have been suggested to mediate information processing [5,7,9]. Related work has focused on water at the surfaces of quantum coherent biostructures. In the context of quantum field theory, an historical line of theoretical proposals [33-35] have examined interactions between the electric dipole field of water and the quantized electromagnetic field of the (cytoskeletal) biostructure.

In quantum field theory, fundamental fields fill the universe. Constituents of matter (electrons, protons, neutrons) are seen as the energy quanta of the matter field, which interacts with the quantum electromagnetic field by exchanging, creating and annihilating photons. ("Our world is made of matter and light" - [35]) The significant point for biology and neuroscience is that the allowed energy states ("eigenstates") of a quantum field are mutually correlated with other energy eigenstates. A quantum field is thus coherent, unitary, and avoids thermal disorder. Such properties characterize life, and consciousness. Jibu and Yasue [35] have specified "Quantum Brain Dynamics" (QBD) in which the quantized electromagnetic field interacts with the rotational field of water molecule dipoles within neural dendrites and glia. Lowest energy eigenstates ("ground," or "vacuum" states) of the water dipole field are memory states in QBD. The dynamic exchange - creation and annihilation of quasi-particles ("corticons") between the two fields - is consciousness, in the Jibu/Yasue view, and is proposed to interface to cytoskeletal dynamics which in turn interface with dendritic and neural network levels of brain function.

Here we consider three proposals in which ordered water may play a role in biological quantum coherence essential for living systems and consciousness: 1) quantum optical coherence in microtubule inner cores ("super-radiance" and "self-induced transparency"); 2) cellular "vision"; 3) isolation of microtubules from environmental decoherence.

Roger Penrose had this to say in Beyond the Doubting of a Shadow

14.5 With regard to the theoretical possibility of quantum coherence within microtubules, the model of Jibu et al (1994) seems well-founded, in which super-radiance effects are anticipated within microtubules (analogous to the activity of a laser), where the electromagnetic field interacts with ordered water. For this process to occur, it would be necessary for the water within the tubes actually to adopt this ordered structure, and to be appropriately free of the wrong kind of impurities, such as chloride ions. (Apparently, sodium, calcium, magnesium, and potassium ions, in low enough concentrations should not disturb the ordering.) It should be mentioned, however, that the type of coherent activity that is anticipated in the model of Jibu et al may not be sufficient for my purposes. Though it is a necessarily quantum effect, it is not, as it stands, a quantum-coherent effect of the type that my arguments require. Genuine quantum coherence seems to be necessary in order that the quantum/classical borderline can be probed, where the (non-computable) effect of the missing OR theory can significantly make its mark. (This comment has relevance to Klein's query at the end of his Section 1. Classical coherence in the brain may well occur, but it does not provide an opening for non-computational activity, which I argue is a characteristic feature of consciousness.) The Jibu et al mechanism may be part (though not all) of what is needed.

14.6 An interesting possibility has come my way, which may conceivably have relevance to the question of how quantum coherence might get conveyed between one neuron and another (a question raised by Klein). As noted in Shadows, Figs. 7.11, 7.12 on pp. 365, 366, there are some particular molecules (clathrins) that inhabit synaptic boutons, which have the highly symmetrical structure of a truncated icosahedron (like a modern soccer ball). These clathrin molecules have importance in the release of neurotransmitter chemicals at synapses (whereby the nerve signals are transmitted from neuron to neuron). Although I do not have specific suggestions to make here, I am struck by the extraordinary symmetry of these molecules. It has been brought to my attention (by Roy Douglas, cf. Douglas and Rutherford 1995) that, according to the Jahn-Teller effect, such highly symmetrical molecules would have a large energy gap between the lowest quantum energy level and the next. This lowest level would be highly degenerate, and there would be interesting quantum-mechanical effects when this degeneracy is broken.

14.7 Energy gaps and symmetry breaking, of this general nature, are central to the understanding of superconductivity - and superconductivity is one of the few clear phenomena in which large-scale quantum coherence takes place. Known observationally since 1911, and explained quantum-mechanically in 1957, superconductivity had been thought originally to be an exclusively very low-temperature phenomenon, occurring only at a few degrees above absolute zero. It is now known to occur at much higher temperatures of -158 degrees Celsius, or perhaps even -23 degrees (although this is not properly explained). It does not seem to be out of the question that there might be similar effects at the somewhat higher temperatures of microtubules. Perhaps there are understandings to be obtained about the behaviour of microtubules from the experimental insights gained from such high-temperature superconductors.

It appears you have an honest dispute with these other scientists. So be it. I lean to the Penrose point of view.

I’ve just started looking through this page of quantum links, but thought other Freepers might like a heads up also.

I looked for information on the net by "Xiaocheng Zhang" and only found nuclear reactor and finance information. Is this name one that inverts to " Zhang Xiaocheng?" There is much more available on that construction

Try spelling the name correctly.

Actually, my criticism of quantum coherence ideas in water are essentially those of Tegmark, who says coherence lifetimes in these sorts of microtubule systems should be 10^-13 s. Hameroff's argument that bound water forms part of the quantum system is specious 'Bound water' in macromolecules exchanges in and out on timescales of nanoseconds to seconds, depending on the coordination shell; exchange with free water will destroy any coherence; Brownian motion will also destroy any coherence.

Coherent excitation frequencies on the order of 10^9 to 10^11 Hz (identical to the time domain for functional protein conformational changes, and in the microwave or gigaHz spectral region) were deduced by Fr hlich who termed them acousto-conformational transitions, or coherent (pumped) phonons

This corresponds to a time scale of 10 ps - 1 ns. I have no argument with that. It is 5 - 7 orders of magnitude too short to sustain the sort of long-time coherences he needs for his theory to work.