Related papers: Synthetic circuit designs for Earth terraformation
Climate change is a major threat to crop potential and is characterized by both long-term shifts in temperature and precipitation patterns as well as increased occurrence of extreme weather events, these extreme weather events are the most…
While fields like Artificial Life have made huge strides in quantifying the mechanisms that distinguish living systems from non-living ones, particular mechanisms remain difficult to reproduce in silico. Known as open-endedness, we've been…
As the recent financial crisis showed, today there is a strong need to gain "ecological perspective" of all relevant interactions in socio-economic-techno-environmental systems. For this, we suggested to set-up a network of Centers for…
So far proposed quantum computers use fragile and environmentally sensitive natural quantum systems. Here we explore the new notion that synthetic quantum systems suitable for quantum computation may be fabricated from smart nanostructures…
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,…
A celebrated and controversial hypothesis conjectures that some biological systems --parts, aspects, or groups of them-- may extract important functional benefits from operating at the edge of instability, halfway between order and…
The most serious threat to ecosystems is the global climate change fueled by the uncontrolled increase in carbon emissions. In this project, we use mean field control and mean field game models to analyze and inform the decisions of…
It is shown that the Earth System (ES) can, due to the impact of human activities, exhibit chaotic behaviour. Our arguments are based on the assumption that the ES can be described by a Landau-Ginzburg model, which, in itself, predicts that…
The biosignatures of life on Earth do not remain static, but change considerably over the planet's habitable lifetime. Earth's future biosphere, much like that of the early Earth, will consist of predominantly unicellular microorganisms due…
The response of ecosystems to perturbations is considered from a thermodynamic perspective by acknowledging that, as for all macroscopic systems and processes, the dynamics and stability of ecosystems is subject to definite thermodynamic…
Self-organized spatial patterns of vegetation are frequent in drylands and, because pattern shape correlates with water availability, they have been suggested as important indicators of ecosystem health. However, the mechanisms underlying…
Rapidly expanding insect populations, deforestation, and global climate change threaten to destabilize key planetary carbon pools, especially the Earth's forests which link the micro-ecology of insect infestation to climate. To the extent…
Recently, an evolutionary game dynamics model taking into account the environmental feedback has been proposed to describe the co-evolution of strategic actions of a population of individuals and the state of the surrounding environment;…
Approximately one billion years (Gyr) in the future, as the Sun brightens, Earth's carbonate-silicate cycle is expected to drive CO$_2$ below the minimum level required by vascular land plants, eliminating most macroscopic land life. Here,…
Along with the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the loss of primary forests and other natural ecosystems is a major disruption of the Earth system causing global concern. Quantifying planetary warming from carbon emissions,…
Turing patterns are a cornerstone of biological self-organization, yet their emergence typically requires finely tuned parameters occupying narrow regions of high-dimensional space. This poses a fundamental challenge: how can evolving…
The pace and unpredictability of evolution are critically relevant in a variety of modern challenges: combating drug resistance in pathogens and cancer, understanding how species respond to environmental perturbations like climate change,…
The importance of computing in astronomy continues to increase, and so is its impact on the environment. When analyzing data or performing simulations, most researchers raise concerns about the time to reach a solution rather than its…
The implications of technological innovation for sustainability are becoming increasingly complex with information technology moving machines from being mere tools for production or objects of consumption to playing a role in economic…
The engineered control of cellular function through the design of synthetic genetic networks is becoming plausible. Here we show how a naturally occurring network can be used as a parts list for artificial network design, and how model…