Self-Organization in Complex Ecosystems. (MPB-42)

Self-Organization in Complex Ecosystems. (MPB-42)
Author: Ricard V. Solé
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2006-03-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0691070407

Download Self-Organization in Complex Ecosystems. (MPB-42) Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Describing a theoretical view of ecosystems based on how they self-organise to produce complex patterns, this book focuses on very simple models that despite their simplicity encapsulate fundamental properties of how ecosystems work.

Air Pollution Calculations

Air Pollution Calculations
Author: Daniel A. Vallero
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 674
Release: 2023-09-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0443139881

Download Air Pollution Calculations Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Air Pollution Calculations: Quantifying Pollutant Formation, Transport, Transformation, Fate and Risks, Second Edition enhances the systems science aspects of air pollution, including transformation reactions in soil, water, sediment and biota that contribute to air pollution. This second edition will be an update based on research and actions taken since 2019 that affect air pollution calculations, including new control technologies, emissions measurement, and air quality modeling. Recent court cases, regulatory decisions, and advances in technology are discussed and, where necessary, calculations have been revised to reflect these updates. Sections discuss pollutant characterization, pollutant transformation, and environmental partitioning. Air partitioning, physical transport of air pollutants, air pollution biogeochemistry, and thermal reactions are also thoroughly explored. The author then carefully examines air pollution risk calculations, control technologies and dispersion models. The text wraps with discussions of economics and project management, reliability and failure, and air pollution decision-making. Provides real-life current cases as examples of quantitation of emerging air pollution problems Includes straightforward derivation of equations, giving practitioners and instructors a direct link between first principles of science and applications of technologies Presents example calculations that make scientific theory real for the student and practitioner

Frontiers in Ecology, Evolution and Complexity

Frontiers in Ecology, Evolution and Complexity
Author: Mariana Benítez
Publisher: CopIt ArXives
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1938128052

Download Frontiers in Ecology, Evolution and Complexity Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Advances in molecular biology, remote sensing, systems biology, bioinformatics, non-linear science, the physics of complex systems and other fields have rendered a great amount of data that remain to be integrated into models and theories that are capable of accounting for the complexity of ecological systems and the evolutionary dynamics of life. It is thus necessary to provide a solid basis to discuss and reflect on these and other challenges both at the local and global scales. This volume aims to delineate an integrative and interdisciplinary view that suggests new avenues in research and teaching, critically discusses the scope of the diverse methods in the study of complex systems, and points at key open questions. Finally, this book will provide students and specialists with a collection of high quality open access essays that will contribute to integrate Ecology, Evolution and Complexity in the context of basic research and in the field of Sustainability Sciences.

Agent-Based Business Process Simulation

Agent-Based Business Process Simulation
Author: Emilio Sulis
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2022-07-27
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3030988163

Download Agent-Based Business Process Simulation Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book provides a conceptual clarification of the interconnections between agent-based modeling and business process management (BPM) and presents practical examples of agent-based models dealing with BPM and simulation in NetLogo. The book is structured in three parts. Part I starts with the motivation for the work and introduces the general structure of the book. Next, chapter 2 provides a brief introduction to main BPM concepts including the business process lifecycle, which describes the analysis of an organization by means of modeling and simulation, business process performance indicators, and the automatic extraction of information from event data. Chapter 3 then offers a summary of the concept of agent and the studies concerning agent-based approaches that involve business process analysis and management studies. Part II of the book introduces in chapter 4 the NetLogo tool adopted throughout the remaining book. After that, chapter 5 focuses on agent-oriented modeling as a problem domain analysis and design approach for creating decision-support systems based on agent-based simulations. Chapter 6 further describes the topic of agent-based modeling and simulation for business process analysis. The final part III starts with chapter 7 that reviews some BPM applications by introducing programs enabling to manage models represented in standard formats, such as BPMN, Petri nets, and the eXtensible Event Stream standard language. Subsequently, chapter 8 describes a number of case studies from different areas, and eventually, chapter 9 introduces some examples of advanced topics of process mining and agent-based simulation with process discovery, conformance checking, and agent-based applications utilizing Petri nets. The book is primarily written for researchers and advanced graduate and PhD students who look for an introduction to the fruitful exploitation of agent-based modeling to business process management. The book is also useful for industry practitioners who are interested in supporting their business decisions with computational simulations. The book is complemented by a dedicated web site with lots of additional details and models in NetLogo for further evaluation by the reader.

Multicellularity

Multicellularity
Author: Karl J. Niklas
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262545853

Download Multicellularity Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Scholars consider the origins and consequences of the evolution of multicellularity, addressing a range of organisms, experimental protocols, theoretical concepts, and philosophical issues. The evolution of multicellularity raises questions regarding genomic and developmental commonalities and discordances, selective advantages and disadvantages, physical determinants of development, and the origins of morphological novelties. It also represents a change in the definition of individuality, because a new organism emerges from interactions among single cells. This volume considers these and other questions, with contributions that explore the origins and consequences of the evolution of multicellularity, addressing a range of topics, organisms, and experimental protocols. Each section focuses on selected topics or particular lineages that present a significant insight or challenge. The contributors consider the fossil record of the paleontological circumstances in which animal multicellularity evolved; cooptation, recurrent patterns, modularity, and plausible pathways for multicellular evolution in plants; theoretical approaches to the amoebozoa and fungi (cellular slime molds having long provided a robust model system for exploring the evolution of multicellularity), plants, and animals; genomic toolkits of metazoan multicellularity; and philosophical aspects of the meaning of individuality in light of multicellular evolution. Contributors Maja Adamska, Argyris Arnellos, Juan A. Arias, Eugenio Azpeitia, Mariana Benítez, Adriano Bonforti, John Tyler Bonner, Peter L. Conlin, A. Keith Dunker, Salva Duran-Nebreda, Ana E. Escalante, Valeria Hernández-Hernández, Kunihiko Kaneko, Andrew H. Knoll, Stephan G. König, Daniel J. G. Lahr, Ottoline Leyser, Alan C. Love, Raul Montañez, Emilio Mora van Cauwelaert, Alvaro Moreno, Vidyanand Nanjundiah, Aurora M. Nedelcu, Stuart A. Newman, Karl J. Niklas, William C. Ratcliff, Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo, Ricard Solé

Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions (MPB-49)

Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions (MPB-49)
Author: A. Townsend Peterson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2011-11-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0691136882

Download Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions (MPB-49) Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Terminology, conceptual overview, biogeography, modeling.

A Theory of Global Biodiversity (MPB-60)

A Theory of Global Biodiversity (MPB-60)
Author: Boris Worm
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2018-06-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 069115483X

Download A Theory of Global Biodiversity (MPB-60) Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The number of species found at a given point on the planet varies by orders of magnitude, yet large-scale gradients in biodiversity appear to follow some very general patterns. Little mechanistic theory has been formulated to explain the emergence of observed gradients of biodiversity both on land and in the oceans. Based on a comprehensive empirical synthesis of global patterns of species diversity and their drivers, A Theory of Global Biodiversity develops and applies a new theory that can predict such patterns from few underlying processes. The authors show that global patterns of biodiversity fall into four consistent categories, according to where species live: on land or in coastal, pelagic, and deep ocean habitats. The fact that most species groups, from bacteria to whales, appear to follow similar biogeographic patterns of richness within these habitats points toward some underlying structuring principles. Based on empirical analyses of environmental correlates across these habitats, the authors combine aspects of neutral, metabolic, and niche theory into one unifying framework. Applying it to model terrestrial and marine realms, the authors demonstrate that a relatively simple theory that incorporates temperature and community size as driving variables is able to explain divergent patterns of species richness at a global scale. Integrating ecological and evolutionary perspectives, A Theory of Global Biodiversity yields surprising insights into the fundamental mechanisms that shape the distribution of life on our planet.

Time in Ecology

Time in Ecology
Author: Eric Post
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2019-02-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0691182353

Download Time in Ecology Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Ecologists traditionally regard time as part of the background against which ecological interactions play out. In this book, Eric Post argues that time should be treated as a resource used by organisms for growth, maintenance, and offspring production. Post uses insights from phenology—the study of the timing of life-cycle events—to present a theoretical framework of time in ecology that casts long-standing observations in the field in an entirely new light. Combining conceptual models with field data, he demonstrates how phenological advances, delays, and stasis, documented in an array of taxa, can all be viewed as adaptive components of an organism’s strategic use of time. Post shows how the allocation of time by individual organisms to critical life history stages is not only a response to environmental cues but also an important driver of interactions at the population, species, and community levels. To demonstrate the applications of this exciting new conceptual framework, Time in Ecology uses meta-analyses of previous studies as well as Post’s original data on the phenological dynamics of plants, caribou, and muskoxen in Greenland.

A New Ecology

A New Ecology
Author: Soeren Nors Nielsen
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2019-08-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0444637648

Download A New Ecology Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A New Ecology: Systems Perspective, Second Edition, gives an overview of the commonalities of all ecosystems from a variety of properties, including physical openness, ontic openness, directionality, connectivity, a complex dynamic for growth and development, and a complex dynamic response to disturbances. Each chapter details basic and characteristic properties that help the reader understand how they can be applied to explain a wide spectrum of current ecological research and environmental management applications. Contains revised, updated or redeveloped chapters that include the most current research and technology Reviews universal traits of ecosystems from multiple perspectives, giving the reader a complete overview of the systems perspective of ecology Offers broad examples of ecology as a systems science, from the history of science, to philosophy and the arts Brings together the systems perspective in a framework of four columns for greater understanding, including thermodynamics, network theory, hierarchy theory and biochemistry Contains new chapter on the application of the theory to environmental management