Related papers: Dynamic and Thermodynamic Models of Adaptation

This paper introduces a variational formulation of natural selection, paying special attention to the nature of "things" and the way that different "kinds" of "things" are individuated from - and influence - each other. We use the Bayesian…

Background: Acceleration of adaptation dynamics by stress-induced hypermutation has been found experimentally. Evolved evolvability is a prominent explanation. We investigate a more generally applicable explanation by a physical constraint.…

The purpose of this study is to consider the near future of civilization in the framework of thermodynamics. Kardashev's proposal to evaluate the development of celestial civilizations by the amount of energy they are able to use was…

We use the saddle-approach, recently introduced in the numerical investigation of simple model liquids, in the analysis of a mean-field solvable system. The investigated system is the k-trigonometric model, a k-body interaction mean field…

Thermodynamic relations are derived from first principles of mechanics for non-equilibrium processes. Since the key role herein is played by the law of increase of entropy, the latter is analyzed at first. It is shown that its derivation…

In this paper, a model for understanding the effects of selection using systems- level computational approaches is introduced. A number of concepts and principles essential for understanding the motivation for constructing the model will be…

It has been known for about a century that psychophysical response curves (perception of a given physical stimulus vs. stimulus intensity) have a large dynamic range: many decades of stimulus intensity can be appropriately discriminated…

We consider two minimal mathematical models for cancer dynamics and self-adaptation. We aim to capture the interplay between the rapid progression of cancer growth and the possibility to leverage and enhance self-adaptive defense mechanisms…

The inheritance of characteristics induced by the environment has often been opposed to the theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet, while evolution by natural selection requires new heritable traits to be produced and transmitted, it…

The origin and shape of metabolic scaling has been controversial since Kleiber found that basal metabolic rate of animals seemed to vary as a power law of their body mass with exponent 3/4, instead of 2/3, as a surface-to-volume argument…

This paper gives a concise, mathematically rigorous description of phenomenological equilibrium thermodynamics for single-phase systems in the absence of chemical reactions and external forces. The present approach is similar to that of…

The climate change attribution problem is addressed using empirical decomposition. Cycles in solar motion and activity of 60 and 20 years were used to develop an empirical model of Earth temperature variations. The model was fit to the…

A complex interplay between the academic issue about generalization of the thermodynamics and the practical matter about setting standards for a sustainable evolution of both tailored devices and natural systems is considered. It is…

We define a mathematical notion of complex adaptive system by following the original intuition of G.K. Zipf about the principle of least effort, an intuitive idea which is nowadays informally widespread in complex systems modeling. We call…

The theory of small-system thermodynamics was originally developed to extend the laws of thermodynamics to length scales of nanometers. Here we review this "nanothermodynamics," and stress how it also applies to large systems that subdivide…

Ecological patterns arise from the interplay of many different processes, and yet the emergence of consistent phenomena across a diverse range of ecological systems suggests that many patterns may in part be determined by statistical or…

Many natural and technological systems fail to adapt to changing external conditions and move to a different state if the conditions vary too fast. Such "non-adiabatic" processes are ubiquitous, but little understood. We identify these…

In any ecosystem, the conditions of the environment and the characteristics of the species that inhabit it are entangled, co-evolving in space and time. We introduce a model that couples active agents with a dynamic environment, interpreted…

Genetic information and environmental factors determine the path of an individuals life and therefore, the evolution of its entire species. We have succeeded in proposing and studying a model that captures this idea. In our model, a…

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.…