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Super-Conducting Liquid Crystalline Water Aligned with Collagen Fibres in the Fascia as Acupuncture Meridians of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Mae-Wan Ho*

Institute of Science in Society, 29 Tytherton Road, London N19 4PZ, UK; m.w.ho@i-sis.org.uk

ABSTRACT: New evidence indicates that hydrogen is quantum delocalized between neighboring water mol-

ecules even in the liquid state, predisposing water to proton conduction, especially in conined nanospaces; water nanotubes aligned by collagen ibers fulill all the criteria for proton superconduction, making them excellent candidates for the meridians of traditional Chinese medicine, as irst proposed 15 years ago.KEY WORDS: quantum coherence, liquid crystalline water, meridians, collagen, proton conduction

ABBREVIATIONS: CD: coherence domain; EZ: exclusion zone; PEM: Proton exchange membrane

I. INTRODUCTION

More than 20 years ago, I peered down a

polarizing light microscope and saw a rainbow

dancing in a worm. It took a while to deci-pher the meaning of that vision. Typically, colors are generated by birefringent crystals such as quartz with ordered arrangement of atoms, or liquid crystals with regular align-

ment of electrically polarized molecules. Bire-fringent crystals split plane-polarized white lightcontaining all the frequencies in the visible spectrum from red to violetinto two orthogonally oriented rays, one propagating

more slowly than the other. When the two rays are recombined with a second polarizer

(analyzer), the two rays interfere, and that is how colors are generated. In order to amplify the effect, a full wave platethe wavelength of green lightis added, hence the character-

istic pink background (Fig. 1).Because the expert in charge of the polar-

izing microscope was on leave, my colleague

Michael Lawrence and I stumbled on a new

setting that is especially good for viewing bio-logical liquid crystals. Instead of positioning the vibrating directions of the wave plate at the usual 45 deg to the polarizers, we placed it at a small angle of 7.5 deg (Fig. 2).13

The rainbow in the worm means that organisms are liquid crystalline and coherent

to a high degree, even quantum coherent. This means that the entire organism is electrically

polarized from head to tail, like a single uni-axial crystal. Not only are the macromolecules in all the tissues and cells perfectly aligned, but also the 80% by weight of water. Actually, it is the water that makes the entire organ-ism liquid crystalline because this water is

liquid crystalline, in the sense that the indi-

vidual molecules are ordered and electrically

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aligned, much more so than in bulk water. Above all, in order to see the rainbow colors in the living organism, the liquid crystalline

molecules not only have to be aligned, but

also moving coherently, macromolecules and

water molecules together. Because coherent molecular motions are much slower than vis-

ible light vibrations, the ordered alignment

of molecules will still be registered by the light passing through. The most active parts

are always the brightest, indicating that the

molecular motions are the most coherent. The effect is similar to sharp images of fast-moving objects captured on the briefest exposures using a very sensitive camera. In other words, the color images of live organisms are direct evidence of coherent molecular motions in the organism, which would have been impossible

without the liquid crystalline water.The liquid crystalline living water enables

FIG. 1: Polarizing light microscope (left) and birefringence (right)

FIG. 2: The new setting stumbled on (left) that is especially good for biological liquid crystals

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macromolecules to function as quantum molec-ular machines that transfer and transform energy at close to 100% eficiency. If not for that, life would be impossible. The archetypal quantum molecular energy machine is the

enzyme. Enzymes speed up chemical reactions in organisms by a factor of 10101023, and they cannot do that without water, although the

role of water is still hardly recognized in the conventional biochemical community.4 Water gives lexibility to proteins, reduces the energy barrier between reactants and products, and

increases the probability of quantum tunnel-ing by a transient compression of the energy barrier.5

The rainbow worm was the immediate inspiration for my book, The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms, irst published in 1993 and now in its third 2008 edition.6 It presents empirical evidence and theoretical arguments in support of the idea that the organism is quantum coherent, and

that liquid crystalline water plays the lead

in creating and maintaining the coherence

of organisms.II. LIQUID CRYSTALLINE WATER

MERIDIAN PROPOSED

The rainbow worm tells us that a liquid crys-talline continuum extends without interrup-tion throughout the extracellular matrix to the interior of every single cell. 6 Soon after our discovery, I suspected it might be the key to the rapid intercommunication within the

body that enables organisms to function as perfectly coordinated wholes. Moreover, this liquid crystalline continuum may also be the

basis of all forms of subtle energy medicine, as Jim Oschman had proposed in his idea of the living matrix that responds to touch

and massage.7 In 1998, I published an article with David

Knight, the abstract of which stated:8 We propose that the acupuncture system and the

DC body ield detected by western scientists both inhere in the continuum of liquid crys-talline collagen ibers that make up the bulk of the connective tissues. Bound water layers on the collagen ibers provide proton conduc-tion pathways for rapid intercommunication throughout the body, enabling the organism

to function as a coherent whole. This liquid crystalline continuum mediates hyperreactiv-

ity to allergens and the bodys responsiveness

to different forms of subtle energy medicine. It constitutes a body consciousness working in tandem with the brain consciousness of the nervous system. We review supporting evidence from biochemistry, cell biology, biophysics, and neurophysiology, and suggest

experiments to test our hypothesis.I have reviewed recent evidence on how liv-

ing crystalline water embodies and generates

the DC ield present in all living organisms elsewhere.9 The more speciic proposalthat water aligned with collagen ibers is the ana-tomical and functional basis of the acupunc-ture meridiansis also very much alive.10

Acupuncture was irst recorded in the 4700-year-old Huan Di Nei Jing, said to be the oldest medical textbook in the world, and written down from even earlier theories by Shen Nung, the father of Chinese medi-cine. Shen Nung proposed that the body had an energy qi,11 the low of which inluences a persons health in combination with the

balance of yin and yang. If the low of qi is insuficient, unbalanced, or interrupted, yin and yang become unbalanced, and illness

may occur. Qi travels throughout the body along meridians. There are 14 main meridians

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running vertically up and down the surface of the body (Fig. 3). Acupuncture meridians tend to be located along connective tissue

planes between muscles, or between a muscle

and bone or tendon. Acupuncture restores the balance by treating speciic acupuncture points, locations where the meridians come to

the surface of the skin, and are easily acces-sible by acupuncture needling, moxibustion, and acupressure.

Measurements of DC skin conductance or impedance showed that acupuncture points

and meridians have distinctive electrical prop-

erties compared to the surrounding skin. It has been claimed that acupuncture points usually

have impedance lower by a factor of 10100, and acupuncture meridians have character-

istics similar to electrical transmission lines

(reviewed elsewhere8). These claims have not been borne out by more recent measurements.

Ultrasound imaging found that 80% of acupuncture points and 50% of meridian intersections of the arm appeared to coincide with intermuscular or intramuscular con-

nective tissue planes,12 whereas impedances measured at 10 and 100 kHz over three body sites, i.e., upper arm (large Intestine merid-ian), thigh (liver), and lower leg (bladder),

found small but signiicantly reduced electrical impedance at the large intestine meridian,

but not at the other meridians. Collagenous bands, associated by increased ultrasound

echogenicity, were thought to be associated

with lower electrical impedance at acupunc-

ture meridians.13 However, measurements carried out by another research team using

different instrumentation on a further set of three acupuncture points, each matched by a

nearby meridian point and off-meridian point, did not ind signiicantly lower impedance values at acupuncture points compared to

the other points, nor were there signiicantly lower values at meridian points compared to

off-meridian points.14Reliable measurements of skin imped-

ance are not easy to obtain, and the precise

interpretation of skin impedance is unclear.15 It is known, for example, that the amount of adipose tissue in the skin will increase imped-ance values,16 since fat is nonconducting. As far as I know, our original proposal is the only one that focuses on the liquid crystalline water structured with the collagen ibers in the connective tissue, rather than collagen

itself, or the connective tissue as such.Many new and important indings on the

liquid crystalline water have emerged since

the third edition of Ref. 6, and I was inspired to write a sequel, Living Rainbow H2O.17 The

FIG. 3: The urinary bladder meridian, one of 14 in tra-

ditional Chinese medicine

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new book is my own synthesis of recent ind-ings in the quantum physics and chemistry of water that tell you why it is so it for life. It tells you why water is the means, medium, and message of life, and also contains much that is relevant for updating the liquid crys-talline water meridian hypothesis. I shall describe these and other indings that have appeared or come to my attention since my

new book was published.III. WATER IS WEIRD AND WONDERFULLY

FIT FOR LIFE

To begin, the water molecule is a dipole with separated positive and negative charges asso-

ciated with the oxygen and the two hydrogen atoms, respectively, so it can engage in dipole

interactions with other molecules of water or other dipoles. However, it seems to prefer to hydrogen bond whenever possible, where

the hydrogen atom of one molecule is shared between two oxygen atoms in neighboring molecules. The favored coniguration is a tetrahedron in which a molecule accepts two

hydrogen atoms and donates two hydrogen

atoms to neighboring molecules. It is esti-

mated that at ordinary temperatures and

pressures, over 90% of the water molecules are hydrogen bonded, although the hydrogen

bonds licker on and off randomly in a matter of picoseconds.

Water is notorious for anomalous properties due

to its propensity to form hydrogen bonds (Table 1).18

And the same anomalies are widely regarded as pre-

cisely the qualities that make water it and essential for life.

IV. QUANTUM DELOCALIZATION OF

HYDROGEN BOND

The key to waters remarkable properties is the hydrogen bond interconnecting water mol-

ecules, which is usually regarded as classical

and electrostatic; but that is contradicted by many observations.

The Nobel laureate chemist Linus Pauling (19011994) was the irst to suggest in 1935 that the hydrogen bond and covalent bond

in ice may switch places in view of residual entropy (randomness) existing even at very low temperatures,19 and thus, the hydrogen bond must be at least partly covalent. In 1999, researchers at Bell Labs New Jersey,

TABLE 1: Major anomalies of water

Neighbors of oxygen form gases with hydrogen at ordinary temperatures and pressures, but water boils at 100C

Other liquids increase in density on becoming solid, but ice is lighter than water and floats on it, most fortunately for fish and other aquatic inhabitants

Liquid water can be supercooled below 0C without freezing, but on heating, the super-cooled liquid does not expand like other liquids; instead it contracts to a maximum

density at about 4C

Waters compressibility atypically decreases with increasing temperature, reaching a minimum at about 46.5C

At ordinary temperatures below 35C, increasing pressure results in decreased viscosity, again at odds with other liquids

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the European Synchrotron Radiation Facil-ity of Grenoble in France, and the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa teamed up to study the hydrogen bond in ordinary

ice Ih with inelastic X-ray scattering at the

Grenoble facility.20 Beams of X-rays are bounced off electrons so both the energy of the electron and the X-ray are changed. The team investigated the intensity of scatter-ing as a function of energy or momentum (Compton proile) at different orientations of a carefully prepared slab of ice. They found that the results were in good agreement with

the predictions based on a fully quantum mechanical model, while predictions based on

the classical electrostatic model did not agree

with the data at all. Not only do electrons of the hydrogen bonds fail to conform to the classical electrostatic model, the protons also

are quantum mechanical.Researchers at the FOM Institute for

Atomic and Molecular Physics in the Neth-erlands used ultrafast femtosecond pulses of infrared light to excite and probe the O-H covalent bond vibration in liquid water.21 The absorption spectrum obtained was reproduced

by quantum mechanical calculation of the vibrational wave functions, and not by cal-culations based on the classical electrostatic

model. In other words, the excited proton can be found simultaneouslydelocalizedat the O-H bond distance from either of two neighbor-ing oxygen atoms (belonging to two different water molecules). This delocalization increases the probability of proton transfer. The energy of excitation to the delocalized state is

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domains surrounded by incoherent regions. This picture, according to Del Giudice and colleagues, is relected in the many observa-tions supporting a two-state model of liquid water.27 (It is more accurate to say that liq-uid water is in a quantum coherent state in

which the molecules dance rapidly between

two conigurations.)The really special thing about water is

that the coherent oscillation occurs between

the ground state and an excited state at 12.06 eV, just below the ionizing threshold of water at 12.60 eV. In liquid water, the CD of about 100 nm in diameter contains millions of water molecules, and hence some millions of almost free electronsforming a plasmathat can be readily donated to electron acceptors.

I said that water is the means of lifewhy? Because it is water that fuels the dynamo of life; water is the basis of the energy metabolism that powers all living processes,

the chemistry and the electricity of life. The abundant life on Earth, including the human species, depends ultimately on photosynthesis

in green plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. In the process, the energy of sunlight is trapped by chlorophyll (the green pigment in chloro-

plasts) to split water into hydrogen, electrons,

and oxygen [Eq. (1)], giving life access to an enormous energy source, and perhaps more

importantly, liberating oxygen for the evolu-tion of air-breathing organisms that illed the earth with teaming millions of species.

H2O 2 H+ + 2 e + 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 suggested28 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

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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 colleagues23,24 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.31,32VI. 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 105 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 paper38 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

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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 paper39 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

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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 confined in narrow nanotube (right) compared to ordinary water in wide nanotube (left)

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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.46Two 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 (SO3H) 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 14H2O/SO3H 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)

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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 nm2.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 ilm49 (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

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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 proposal50 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 Nafion nanofiber as a function of diameter (left) and relative humidity (right)

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traveler in science without borders.

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G. QED coherence and the thermody-namics of the water. Int J Mod Phys B. 1995;9:181341.

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