scholarly journals Life’s Energy and Information: Contrasting Evolution of Volume- versus Surface-Specific Rates of Energy Consumption

Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 1025 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastassia M. Makarieva ◽  
Andrei V. Nefiodov ◽  
Bai-Lian Li

As humanity struggles to find a path to resilience amidst global change vagaries, understanding organizing principles of living systems as the pillar for human existence is rapidly growing in importance. However, finding quantitative definitions for order, complexity, information and functionality of living systems remains a challenge. Here, we review and develop insights into this problem from the concept of the biotic regulation of the environment developed by Victor Gorshkov (1935–2019). Life’s extraordinary persistence—despite being a strongly non-equilibrium process—requires a quantum-classical duality: the program of life is written in molecules and thus can be copied without information loss, while life’s interaction with its non-equilibrium environment is performed by macroscopic classical objects (living individuals) that age. Life’s key energetic parameter, the volume-specific rate of energy consumption, is maintained within universal limits by most life forms. Contrary to previous suggestions, it cannot serve as a proxy for “evolutionary progress”. In contrast, ecosystem-level surface-specific energy consumption declines with growing animal body size in stable ecosystems. High consumption by big animals is associated with instability. We suggest that the evolutionary increase in body size may represent a spontaneous loss of information about environmental regulation, a manifestation of life’s algorithm ageing as a whole.

1970 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Balasubramanian ◽  
Rajkumar Rajkumar ◽  
K K Singh

Experiment to identify ambient grinding conditions and energy consumed was conducted for fenugreek. Fenugreek seeds at three moisture content (5.1%, 11.5% and 17.3%, d.b.) were ground using a micro pulverizer hammer mill with different grinding screen openings (0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 mm) and feed rate (8, 16 and 24 kg h-1) at 3000 rpm. Physical properties of fenugreek seeds were also determined. Specific energy consumptions were found to decrease from 204.67 to 23.09 kJ kg-1 for increasing levels of feed rate and grinder screen openings. On the other hand specific energy consumption increased with increasing moisture content. The highest specific energy consumption was recorded for 17.3% moisture content and 8 kg h-1 feed rate with 0.5 mm screen opening. Average particle size decreased from 1.06 to 0.39 mm with increase of moisture content and grinder screen opening. It has been observed that the average particle size was minimum at 0.5 mm screen opening and 8 kg h-1 feed rate at lower moisture content. Bond’s work index and Kick’s constant were found to increase from 8.97 to 950.92 kWh kg-1 and 0.932 to 78.851 kWh kg-1 with the increase of moisture content, feed rate and grinder screen opening, respectively. Size reduction ratio and grinding effectiveness of fenugreek seed were found to decrease from 4.11 to 1.61 and 0.0118 to 0.0018 with the increase of moisture content, feed rate and grinder screen opening, respectively. The loose and compact bulk densities varied from 219.2 to 719.4 kg m-3 and 137.3 to 736.2 kg m-3, respectively.  


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5617
Author(s):  
Raman Kumar ◽  
Sehijpal Singh ◽  
Ardamanbir Singh Sidhu ◽  
Catalin I. Pruncu

This paper’s persistence is to make an inclusive analysis of 268 documents about specific energy consumption (SEC) in machining operations from 2001 to 2020 in the Scopus database. A systematic approach collects information on SEC documents’ primary data; their types, publications, citations, and predictions are presented. The VOSviewer 1.1.16 and Biblioshiny 2.0 software are used for visualization analysis to show the progress standing of SEC publications. The selection criteria of documents are set for citation analysis. The ranks are assigned to the most prolific and dominant authors, sources, articles, countries, and organizations based on the total citations, number of documents, average total citation, and total link strength. The author-keywords, index-keywords, and text data content analysis has been conducted to find the hotspots and progress trend in SEC in machining operations. The most prolific and dominant article, source, author, organization, and country are Anderson et al. “Laser-assisted machining of Inconel 718 with an economic analysis”, the Int J Mach Tools Manuf, Shin Y.C., form Purdue University Singapore, and United States, respectively, based on total citations as per defined criteria. The author keywords “specific cutting energy” and “surface roughness” dominate the machining operations SEC. SEC’s implication in machining operations review and bibliometric analysis is to deliver an inclusive perception for the scholars working in this field. It is the primary paper that utilizes bibliometric research to analyze the SEC in machining operations publications expansively. It is valuable for scholars to grasp the hotspots in this field in time and help the researchers in the SEC exploration arena rapidly comprehend the expansion status and trend.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuyin Xi ◽  
Ronald S. Lankone ◽  
Li-Piin Sung ◽  
Yun Liu

AbstractBicontinuous porous structures through colloidal assembly realized by non-equilibrium process is crucial to various applications, including water treatment, catalysis and energy storage. However, as non-equilibrium structures are process-dependent, it is very challenging to simultaneously achieve reversibility, reproducibility, scalability, and tunability over material structures and properties. Here, a novel solvent segregation driven gel (SeedGel) is proposed and demonstrated to arrest bicontinuous structures with excellent thermal structural reversibility and reproducibility, tunable domain size, adjustable gel transition temperature, and amazing optical properties. It is achieved by trapping nanoparticles into one of the solvent domains upon the phase separation of the binary solvent. Due to the universality of the solvent driven particle phase separation, SeedGel is thus potentially a generic method for a wide range of colloidal systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 973
Author(s):  
Gigel Paraschiv ◽  
Georgiana Moiceanu ◽  
Gheorghe Voicu ◽  
Mihai Chitoiu ◽  
Petru Cardei ◽  
...  

Our paper presents the hammer mill working process optimization problem destined for milling energetic biomass (MiscanthusGiganteus and Salix Viminalis). For the study, functional and constructive parameters of the hammer mill were taken into consideration in order to reduce the specific energy consumption. The energy consumption dependency on the mill rotor spinning frequency and on the sieve orifices in use, as well as on the material feeding flow, in correlation with the vegetal biomass milling degree was the focus of the analysis. For obtaining this the hammer mill was successively equipped with 4 different types of hammers that grind the energetic biomass, which had a certain humidity content and an initial degree of reduction ratio of the material. In order to start the optimization process of hammer mill working process, 12 parameters were defined. The objective functions which minimize hammer mill energy consumption and maximize the milled material percentage with a certain specific granulation were established. The results obtained can serve as the basis for choosing the optimal working, constructive, and functional parameters of hammer mills in this field, and for a better design of future hammer mills.


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