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For years, a main focus of ecological research has been to better understand the complex dynamical interactions between species which comprise food webs. Using the connectance properties of a widely explored synthetic food web called the…

Ecologists have long argued about the strength of density dependence and population regulation, respectively defined as the short-term and long-term rates of return to equilibrium. Here, I give three arguments for the intractability of…

Microbial ecosystems are remarkably diverse, stable, and often consist of a balanced mixture of core and peripheral species. Here we propose a conceptual model exhibiting all these emergent properties in quantitative agreement with real…

Rapid increases in food supplies have reduced global hunger, while rising burdens of diet-related disease have made poor diet quality the leading cause of death and disability around the world. Today's "double burden" of undernourishment in…

We present a formal model for studying fashion trends, in terms of three parameters of fashionable items: (1) their innate utility; (2) individual boredom associated with repeated usage of an item; and (3) social influences associated with…

Evolutionary transitions among ecological interactions are widely known, although their detailed dynamics remain absent for most population models. Adaptive dynamics has been used to illustrate how the parameters of population models might…

It is still common wisdom amongst economists, politicians and lay people that economic growth is a necessity of our social systems, at least to avoid distributional conflicts. This paper challenges such belief moving from a purely physical…

We revisit the modeling of the diauxic growth of a pure microorganism on two distinct sugars which was first described by Monod. Most available models are deterministic and make the assumption that all cells of the microbial ecosystem…

Obesity does not emerge abruptly; rather, it develops gradually over extended periods. The gradual progression often prevents early recognition of physiological changes until excess adiposity is established. A common belief is that weight…

In the modern knowledge economy, success demands sustained focus and high cognitive performance. Research suggests that human cognition is linked to a finite resource, and upon its depletion, cognitive functions such as self-control and…

Much of our understanding of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms derives from analysis of low-dimensional models: with few interacting species, or few axes defining "fitness". It is not always clear to what extent the intuition derived…

Metabolism and evolution are closely connected: if a mutation incurs extra energetic costs for an organism, there is a baseline selective disadvantage that may or may not be compensated for by other adaptive effects. A long-standing, but to…

Integrated global food system analysis is hampered by the fragmentation of data among food types, processes, and scales. Studies also often neglect the connection to human metabolism -- the ultimate driver of food demand. Here we use a…

We explore a model of duopolistic competition in which consumers learn about the fit of each competitor's product. In equilibrium, consumers comparison shop: they learn only about the relative values of the products. When information is…

This article expands Milton Friedman's spending matrix to analyse 'spending efficiency' and 'preference compatibility' across different economic systems against five key outcome criteria. By generalising Friedman's typology, it compares…

The "Law of the Minimum" states that growth is controlled by the scarcest resource (limiting factor). This concept was originally applied to plant or crop growth (Justus von Liebig, 1840) and quantitatively supported by many experiments.…

This paper studies identification and estimation of a dynamic discrete choice model of demand for differentiated product using consumer-level panel data with few purchase events per consumer (i.e., short panel). Consumers are…

To study the assumption that the utility maximization hypothesis implicitly adds to consumer theory, we consider a mathematical representation of pre-marginal revolution consumer theory based on subjective exchange ratios. We introduce two…

The contradiction between physical and economical sciences concerning the growth of the production/consumption mechanism is analyzed. It is then shown that if one wishes to keep the security level stable or to enhance it in a growing…

We integrate dual-process theories of human cognition with evolutionary game theory to study the evolution of automatic and controlled decision-making processes. We introduce a model where agents who make decisions using either automatic or…