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In economics, the law of increasing costs is a principle that states that to produce an increasing amount of a good a supplier must give up greater and greater amounts of another good. The best way to look at this is to review an example of an economy that only produces two things - cars and oranges. If all the resources of the economy are put ...
Exponential growth. Exponential growth is a process that increases quantity over time at an ever-increasing rate. It occurs when the instantaneous rate of change (that is, the derivative) of a quantity with respect to time is proportional to the quantity itself. Described as a function, a quantity undergoing exponential growth is an exponential ...
Willard Gibbs, Graphical Methods in the Thermodynamics of Fluids The concept of entropy is described by two principal approaches, the macroscopic perspective of classical thermodynamics, and the microscopic description central to statistical mechanics. The classical approach defines entropy in terms of macroscopically measurable physical properties, such as bulk mass, volume, pressure, and ...
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 ...
v. t. e. In futures studies and the history of technology, accelerating change is the observed exponential nature of the rate of technological change in recent history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future and may or may not be accompanied by equally profound social and cultural change.
Population dynamics have been used in several control theory applications. Evolutionary game theory can be used in different industrial or other contexts. Industrially, it is mostly used in multiple-input-multiple-output ( MIMO) systems, although it can be adapted for use in single-input-single-output ( SISO) systems.
Optimal foraging theory predicts that this bee will forage in a way that will maximize its hive's net yield of energy. Optimal foraging theory ( OFT) is a behavioral ecology model that helps predict how an animal behaves when searching for food. Although obtaining food provides the animal with energy, searching for and capturing the food ...
Liebig's law has been extended to biological populations (and is commonly used in ecosystem modelling). For example, the growth of an organism such as a plant may be dependent on a number of different factors, such as sunlight or mineral nutrients (e.g., nitrate or phosphate). The availability of these may vary, such that at any given time one ...