Related papers: The Prosumer Economy -- Being Like a Forest
We present numerical results based on a simplified ecological system in evolution, showing features of extinction similar to that claimed for the biosystem on Earth. In the model each species consists of a population in interaction with the…
Humans are the ultimate ecosystem engineers who have profoundly transformed the world's landscapes in order to enhance their survival. Somewhat paradoxically, however, sometimes the unforeseen effect of this ecosystem engineering is the…
What determines biodiversity in nature is a prominent issue in ecology, especially in biotic resource systems that are typically devoid of cross-feeding. Here, we show that by incorporating pairwise encounters among consumer individuals…
We consider users which may have renewable energy harvesting devices, or distributed generators. Such users can behave as consumer or producer (hence, we denote them as prosumers) at different time instances. A prosumer may sell the energy…
Ecosystems are governed by dynamic processes such as competition for resources, reproduction and dispersal. These shape their biodiversity and how the system responds to change. Current approaches to modelling ecosystems, especially plants,…
Ecosystems can undergo sudden shifts to undesirable states, but recent studies with simple single species ecosystems have demonstrated that advance warning can be provided by the slowing down of population dynamics near a tipping point.…
With online shopping gaining massive popularity over the past few years, e-commerce platforms can play a significant role in tackling climate change and other environmental problems. In this study, we report that the "attitude-behavior" gap…
This paper proposes a novel energy sharing mechanism for prosumers who can produce and consume. Different from most existing works, the role of individual prosumer as a seller or buyer in our model is endogenously determined. Several…
This study simulates the evolution of artificial economies in order to understand the tax relevance of administrative boundaries in the quality of life of its citizens. The modeling involves the construction of a computational algorithm,…
The overconsumption of consumers under today's increasingly scarce natural resources has overwhelmed the textile industry in middle-income countries, such as Romania. It is becoming more and more essential to encourage sustainable clothing…
The collapse of large social systems, often referred to as civilizations or empires, is a well known historical phenomenon, but its origins are the object of an unresolved debate. In this paper, we present a simple biophysical model which…
Although definitions of technology exist to explain the patterns of technological innovations, there is no general definition that explain the role of technology for humans and other animal species in environment. The goal of this study is…
Human activity has an enormous impact on Earth, changing organisms, environments and landscapes, leading to the decline of original ecosystems and irreversible changes that create new combinations of living beings and materials. As a…
Cooperative behavior, the costly provision of benefits to others, is common across all domains of life. This review article discusses cooperative behavior in the microbial world, mediated by the exchange of extracellular products called…
A fundamental goal of microbial ecology is to understand what determines the diversity, stability, and structure of microbial ecosystems. The microbial context poses special conceptual challenges because of the strong mutual influences…
Why do some national music markets sustain a rich musical diversity whereas others converge on mostly formulaic output? The existing models of cultural consumption (superstar economics, rational addiction, Bayesian social learning) each…
There are both technical and social issues regarding the design of sustainable scientific software. Scientists want continuously evolving systems that capture the most recent knowledge while developers and architects want sufficiently…
Every year, millions of functional systems become e-waste because users are pressured to send their systems to landfills due to a lack of vendor support and difficulty in recycling. Vendors cite ``cybersecurity'' as the driver for short…
We propose a stylized model of a complex economy to explore the economic tradeoffs imposed by the so called "green transition" -- the shift towards more sustainable production paradigms -- using tools from the Statistical Mechanics of…
Prosumer households that generate and store electricity from rooftop PV installations play an increasing role in electricity markets around the world. As retail tariffs usually do not convey time-varying wholesale price signals to…