Abstract
IT has often been assumed, as in the theory of active transport of ions, that metabolic energy is required to transfer sodium ions from a low intracellular concentration to a higher concentration in blood serum or an external fluid1–3. On that assumption, the efficiency of any transport mechanism would be expressed as the ratio of output of work to input of energy. Theoretical calculations have been based on the following approximation, derived from the laws of ideal solutions: 
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JOSEPH, N. Efficiency of Ion Transport Mechanisms. Nature 209, 398–399 (1966). https://doi.org/10.1038/209398a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/209398a0
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