Related papers: A null model for testing thermodynamic optimizatio…
We propose a new global optimization method ({\em Simulated Tempering}) for simulating effectively a system with a rough free energy landscape (i.e. many coexisting states) at finite non-zero temperature. This method is related to simulated…
The notion that the whole is more than the sum of its parts has a long tradition in science. This, of course, also applies to the Earth system. With its myriad of processes, spanning from purely physical to life and human activity, the…
Disordered systems theory provides powerful tools to analyze the generic behaviors of highdimensional systems, such as species-rich ecological communities or neural networks. By assuming randomness in their interactions, universality…
Maximum-entropy ensembles are key primitives in statistical mechanics from which thermodynamic properties can be derived. Over the decades, several approaches have been put forward in order to justify from minimal assumptions the use of…
The increasing recognition of the association between adverse human health conditions and many environmental substances as well as processes has led to the need to monitor them. An important problem that arises in environmental statistics…
Ecosystem models are often used to predict the consequences of management decisions in applied ecology, including fisheries management and threatened species conservation. These models are high-dimensional, parameter-rich, and nonlinear,…
Seasonal climate variations affect electricity demand, which in turn affects month-to-month electricity planning and operations. Electricity system planning at the monthly timescale can be improved by adapting climate forecasts to estimate…
Energy systems optimization problems are complex due to strongly non-linear system behavior and multiple competing objectives, e.g. economic gain vs. environmental impact. Moreover, a large number of input variables and different variable…
For biological experiments aiming at calibrating models with unknown parameters, a good experimental design is crucial, especially for those subject to various constraints, such as financial limitations, time consumption and physical…
Entropy and free-energy estimation are key in thermodynamic characterization of simulated systems ranging from spin models through polymers, colloids, protein structure, and drug-design. Current techniques suffer from being model specific,…
Living systems operate far from equilibrium, yet few general frameworks provide global bounds on biological transients. In high-dimensional biological networks like ecosystems, long transients arise from the separate timescales of…
We consider a particular instance of the lift of controlled systems recently proposed in the theory of irreversible thermodynamics and show that it leads to a variational principle for an optimal control in the sense of Pontryagin. Then we…
Energy and pollution are urging problems of the 21th century. By gradually changing the actual power grid system, smart grid may evolve into different systems by means of size, elements and strategies, but its fundamental requirements and…
A recently introduced general-purpose heuristic for finding high-quality solutions for many hard optimization problems is reviewed. The method is inspired by recent progress in understanding far-from-equilibrium phenomena in terms of {\em…
Ecologists are interested in modeling the population growth of species in various ecosystems. Studying population dynamics can assist environmental managers in making better decisions for the environment. Traditionally, the sampling of…
A primary motivation for our research in Digital Ecosystems is the desire to exploit the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems. Ecosystems are thought to be robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve complex,…
The appeal of thermodynamics to problems outside physics is undeniable, as is the growing recognition of its apparent universality, yet in the absence of a rigorous formalism divorced from the peculiarities of molecular systems all attempts…
Living organisms exhibit remarkable adaptations across all scales, from molecules to ecosystems. We believe that many of these adaptations correspond to optimal solutions driven by evolution, training, and underlying physical and chemical…
The system decomposition theory has recently been developed for the dynamic analysis of nonlinear compartmental systems. The application of this theory to the ecosystem analysis has also been introduced in a separate article. Based on this…
Experience collected in mesoscopic dynamic modeling of externally driven systems indicates absence of potentials that could play role of equilibrium or nonequilibrium thermodynamic potentials yet their thermo-dynamics-like modeling is often…