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The Gaia hypothesis (/ ˈ ɡ aɪ. ə /), also known as the Gaia theory, Gaia paradigm, or the Gaia principle, proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.
Research concerning the relationship between the thermodynamic quantity entropy and both the origin and evolution of life began around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910 American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a theory of history based on the second law of ...
These two controls, when both are successful, are usually sufficient to eliminate most potential confounding variables: it means that the experiment produces a negative result when a negative result is expected, and a positive result when a positive result is expected. Other controls include vehicle controls, sham controls and comparative controls.
All homeostatic control mechanisms have at least three interdependent components for the variable being regulated: a receptor, a control center, and an effector. [3] The receptor is the sensing component that monitors and responds to changes in the environment, either external or internal. Receptors include thermoreceptors and mechanoreceptors.
In 1785, he stated that Earth was a superorganism and that its proper study should be physiology. [12]: 10 The Gaia hypothesis, proposed in the 1960s by James Lovelock, suggests that life on Earth functions as a single organism that defines and maintains environmental conditions necessary for its survival. [13] [14]
The balance of nature, also known as ecological balance, is a theory that proposes that ecological systems are usually in a stable equilibrium or homeostasis, which is to say that a small change (the size of a particular population, for example) will be corrected by some negative feedback that will bring the parameter back to its original "point of balance" with the rest of the system.
We might have to shave off just a bit of time from our clocks, and tech engineers aren't happy about it.
The paleo record of climatic, ecological and biogeochemical changes shows that the Earth system has experienced tipping points, when a very small increment for a control variable (like CO 2) triggers a larger, possibly catastrophic, change in the response variable (global warming) through feedbacks in the natural Earth System itself.