Physicsts reveal how to cope with 'frustration'
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - 12:23
in Physics & Chemistry
For most people, frustration is a condition to be avoided. But for scientists studying certain "frustrated" ensembles of interacting components - that is, those which cannot settle into a state that minimizes each interaction - it may be the key to understanding a host of puzzling phenomena that affect systems from neural networks and social structures to protein folding and magnetism.