Breisgau – Researchers at the National Institute of Optics of the National Research Council (Ino-Cnr), coordinated by Leonardo Sacconi, measured for the first time some electrical properties of the heart cells by exploiting an analogy between electrical current and transport of matter . The study, carried out in collaboration with the European laboratory of non-linear spectroscopy (Lens), the University of Florence and the University of Freiburg in Breisgau (Germany), is published in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of The United States of America (Pnas). “The work was inspired by a research published in 1951 in the geological field in which the water diffusion rate within porous rocks has been measured by measuring the rocks ability to conduct electrical current,” says Sacconi. (9colonne)