Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Biological processes are those processes that are necessary for an organism to live and that shape its capacities for interacting with its environment. Biological processes are made of many chemical reactions or other events that are involved in the persistence and transformation of life forms. [1]
This glossary of biology terms is a list of definitions of fundamental terms and concepts used in biology, the study of life and of living organisms.It is intended as introductory material for novices; for more specific and technical definitions from sub-disciplines and related fields, see Glossary of cell biology, Glossary of genetics, Glossary of evolutionary biology, Glossary of ecology ...
Reflective equilibrium, the state of balance or coherence among a set of beliefs arrived at by a process of deliberative mutual adjustment; Comfortable equilibrium, or the Clarinda Equilibrium refers to the psychological state of mental harmony and equanimity with the frequently opposing stresses and strains of complicated circumstances in ...
A closely related approach, relational biology, is concerned mainly with understanding life processes in terms of the most important relations, and categories of such relations among the essential functional components of organisms; for multicellular organisms, this has been defined as "categorical biology", or a model representation of ...
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.
Creating a cellular model has been a particularly challenging task of systems biology and mathematical biology. It involves the use of computer simulations of the many cellular subsystems such as the networks of metabolites , enzymes which comprise metabolism and transcription , translation , regulation and induction of gene regulatory networks.
Using the balance between energy input and expenditure as the basis for applying the concept of allostasis, two types of allostatic overload have been proposed. [25] Sterling (2004) proposed several interrelated points that constitute the allostasis model: [22] [26] Organisms are designed to be efficient.