Related papers: Choices in the transformative Anthropocene
In this brief report we discuss how continuous changes on the physical parameters that determine the weather conditions may lead to long term climate variability. This variability of the weather patterns are a response to continuous random…
A hard difficulty in Astrobiology is the precise definition of what life is. All living beings have a cellular structure, so it is not possible to have a broader concept of life hence the search for extraterrestrial life is restricted to…
1. Anthropogenic actions cause rapid ecological changes, meaning that animals have to respond before they have time to adapt. Tools to quantify emergent spatial patterns from animal-habitat interaction mechanisms are vital for predicting…
Earth's future detectability depends upon the trajectory of our civilization over the coming centuries. Human civilization is also the only known example of an energy-intensive civilization, so our history and future trajectories provide…
In biology, the evolution of increasingly cooperative groups has shaped the history of life. Genes collaborate in the control of cells; cells efficiently divide tasks to produce cohesive multicellular individuals; individual members of…
Research shows that the global society as organized today, with our current technological and economic system, is impossible to sustain. We are living in the Anthropocene, an era in which human activities in highly industrialized countries…
Nature is in constant flux, so animals must account for changes in their environment when making decisions. How animals learn the timescale of such changes and adapt their decision strategies accordingly is not well understood. Recent…
In both natural and artificial studies, evolution is often seen as synonymous to natural selection. Individuals evolve under pressures set by environments that are either reset or do not carry over significant changes from previous…
The Anthropocene is characterized by escalating ecological crises rooted not only in technological and economic systems but also in deeply ingrained anthropocentric worldviews that shape human-nature relationships. As digital environments…
In the past decades human activities caused global Earth system changes, e.g., climate change or biodiversity loss. Simultaneously, these associated impacts have increased environmental awareness within societies across the globe, thereby…
In biology and ecology, individuals or communities of individuals living in unpredictable environments often alternate between different evolutionary strategies to spread and reduce risks. Such behavior is commonly referred to as…
Understanding why we age is a long-lived open problem in evolutionary biology. Aging is prejudicial to the individual and evolutionary forces should prevent it, but many species show signs of senescence as individuals age. Here, I will…
Scientific knowledge and advances are a cornerstone of modern society. They improve our understanding of the world we live in and help us navigate global challenges including emerging infectious diseases, climate change and the biodiversity…
The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology is rapidly accelerating the pace of biological discovery and engineering. AI techniques, such as large language models and biological design tools, are enabling the…
One of the fundamental principles driving diversity or homogeneity in domains such as cultural differentiation, political affiliation, and product adoption is the tension between two forces: influence (the tendency of people to become…
Future health ecosystems demand the integration of emerging data technology with an increased focus on preventive medicine. Cybernetics extracts the full potential of data to serve the spectrum of health care, from acute to chronic…
We explore the connection between migration patterns and emergent behaviors of evolving populations in spatially heterogeneous environments. Despite extensive studies in ecologically and medically important systems, a unifying framework…
Our view of the microbial world and its impact on human health is changing radically with the ability to sequence uncultured or unculturable microbes sampled directly from their habitats, ability made possible by fast and cheap next…
Current research challenges in sustainability science require us to consider nonlinear changes e.g. shifts that do not happen gradually but can be sudden and difficult to predict. Central questions are therefore how we can prevent harmful…
Elastic autoscaling is the fundamental mechanism that enables the cloud-based services to continually evolve themselves - through changing the related software configurations and hardware resource provisions - under time-varying workloads.…