BIOLOGY

dU = Mdt = δQ - dH; dH > 0

“The study of those thermodynamic systems that can replace their internal energy”.

ECOLOGY

pdt + mdt = dh + du; pdt > 0

“The study of the exact processes by which a thermodynamic system replaces its internal energy”.

E  N  T  E  R           H  E  R  E

Recent Posts

Geography and the Gibbs energy

The ‘Gibbs energy’ is invariably difficult to explain to those who don’t know what it is. And despite its importance, it was only at the end of the nineteenth century that Max Rubner, the German physicist and physiologist, at last convinced other scientists that the energy that biological organisms use in metabolic processes exactly equals [...]

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Circumambulations: what are they, and why are they relevant to biology?

So what is a circumambulation, and why is it relevant to biology and evolution? Brian Charlesworth wrote in his book Evolution in age-structured populations (Cambridge University Press, 1994) that: “… the concept of generation time is a rather arbitrary one”. He then lists several alternatives. It is surely rather strange that something so fundamental to [...]

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“Engeny” in biology and ecology. What is it and why should we bother to measure it?

ENGENY (see definition) is how we measure  Darwinian competition and evolution. It is important to correctly quantify this because as Theodosius Dobzhansky said with the title of his 1973 paper, Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution (March 1973 edition of American Biology Teacher). A really big issue is, of course, [...]

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