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In biology, a biological life cycle (or just life cycle when the biological context is clear) is a series of stages of the life of an organism, that begins as a zygote, often in an egg, and concludes as an adult that reproduces, producing an offspring in the form of a new zygote which then itself goes through the same series of stages, the ...
Organisms have evolved a great variety of life histories, from Pacific salmon, which produce thousands of eggs at one time and then die, to human beings, who produce a few offspring over the course of decades. The theory depends on principles of evolutionary biology and ecology and is widely used in other areas of science.
This field is foundational to understanding life at a microscopic scale and has broad applications in medicine, drug discovery, epidemiology, biotechnology, agriculture, protein engineering, and environmental science. There are a wide variety of research topics in this field. Algebraic geometry modeling of protein structure. [53]
Writer Alex Bellos described The Mathematics of Life as "a testament to the versatility of maths and how it is shaping our understanding of the world." [4] Kirkus Reviews called the book "an ingenious overview of biology with emphasis on mathematical ideas—stimulating but requiring careful reading despite the lack of equations."
Life arose from the Earth's first ocean, which formed some 3.8 billion years ago. [33] Since then, water continues to be the most abundant molecule in every organism. Water is important to life because it is an effective solvent, capable of dissolving solutes such as sodium and chloride ions or other small molecules to form an aqueous solution.
The term curiosity can also denote the behavior, characteristic, or emotion of being curious, in regard to the desire to gain knowledge or information. Curiosity as a behavior and emotion is the driving force behind human development, such as progress in science, language, and industry. [5]
A (purely) periodic sequence (with period p), or a p-periodic sequence, is a sequence a 1, a 2, a 3, ... satisfying . a n+p = a n. for all values of n. [1] [2] [3] If a sequence is regarded as a function whose domain is the set of natural numbers, then a periodic sequence is simply a special type of periodic function.
The definition of life has long been a challenge for scientists and philosophers. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] This is partially because life is a process, not a substance. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] This is complicated by a lack of knowledge of the characteristics of living entities, if any, that may have developed outside Earth.