Related papers: Integrating Evolutionary Biology into Physics Clas…
This paper is concerned with complex macroscopic behaviour arising in many-body systems through the combinations of competitive interactions and disorder, even with simple ingredients at the microscopic level. It attempts to indicate and…
Research has shown that it is challenging to change departmental culture to support the adoption of transformed teaching practices. Michigan State University is working to transform its introductory physics courses by engaging faculty in…
The scheme of a unified Darwinian evolutionary theory for physical and biological systems is described. Every physical system is methodologically endowed with a classical information processor what turns every system into an agent being…
In unified field theories with more than four dimensions, the form of the equations of physics in spacetime depends in general on the choice of coordinates in higher dimensions. The reason is that the group of coordinate transformations in…
Many physical situations are characterized by interfaces with a non trivial shape so that relevant geometric features, such as interfacial area, curvature or unit normal vector, can be used as main indicators of the topology of the…
Physical geometry studies mutual disposition of geometrical objects and points in space, or space-time, which is described by the distance function d, or by the world function \sigma =d^{2}/2. One suggests a new general method of the…
When students are learning to use math in physics, one of the most important ideas they need to learn is that equations are not just calculational tools; they represent relationships between physical variables that change together (covary).…
The effect of class size on student learning has numerous policy implications and has been a major subject of conversation and research for decades. Despite this, few studies have been done on class size in the context of university…
Motivated by the results of recent laboratory experiments (Yoshida et al. Nature, 424, 303-306 (2003)) as well as many earlier field observations that evolutionary changes can take place in ecosystems over relatively short ecological time…
One of the main activities in science teaching, and in particular in Physics teaching, is not only the discussion of both modern problems and problems which solution is an urgent matter. It means that the picture of an active and alive…
The existence of life is one of the most fundamental problems of astrophysics. The intriguing existence of progressively complex and apparently improbable living beings should be a general tendency of life in the Universe. We are looking…
Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…
Theory and empirical science should be in constant dialogue, but often find it hard to understand one another. Here we describe a graduate-level university course we developed to improve matters. The course was designed to help…
We show how Geophysics may illustrate and thus improve classical Mechanics lectures concerning the study of Coriolis force effects. We are then interested in atmospheric as well as oceanic phenomena we are familiar with, and are for that…
Spatiotemporal patterns are often modeled using reaction-diffusion equations, which combine complex reactions between constituents with ideal diffusive motion. Such descriptions neglect physical interactions between constituents, which…
Evolutionary forms are skew-symmetric differential forms the basis of which, as opposed to exterior forms, are deforming manifolds (with unclosed metric forms). Such differential forms arise when describing physical processes. A specific…
This short text summarizes the work in biology proposed in our book, Perspectives on Organisms, where we analyse the unity proper to organisms by looking at it from different viewpoints. We discuss the theoretical roles of biological time,…
The dynamic instability of the living systems and the "superposition" of different forms of randomness are viewed as a component of the contingently increasing organization of life along evolution. We briefly survey how classical and…
Concepts rooted in physics are becoming increasingly important in biology as we transition to an era in which quantitative descriptions of all processes from molecular to cellular level are needed. In this essay I discuss two unexpected…
We pursue research leading towards the nature of causality in the universe. We establish the equation of the universe's evolution from the universe-state function and its series expansion, in which causes and effects connect together to…