Carbon is the basis of all organic matter on Earth, and is recycled through the ecosystem in two primary processes: one in which carbon is exchanged among living organisms, and one in which carbon is cycled over long periods of time through fossilized organic remains, weathering of rocks, and volcanic activity. Human activities, including increased agricultural practices and the burning of fossil fuels, has greatly affected the balance of the natural carbon cycle.

Throughout its ~4.5 billion year history, the Earth has experienced periods of warming and cooling. However, the current drastic increase in global temperatures is well outside of the Earth’s cyclic norms, and evidence for human-caused global climate change is compelling. Paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate conditions, provides ample evidence for human-caused global climate change by comparing recent conditions with those in the past.

Net production efficiency (NPE) is the efficiency at which organisms assimilate energy into biomass for the next trophic level. Due to low metabolic rates and less energy spent on thermoregulatory processes, the NPE of ectotherms (cold-blooded animals) is 10 times higher than endotherms (warm-blooded animals).

Applying the conservation of energy principle or the work-energy theorem to an incompressible, inviscid fluid in laminar, steady, irrotational flow leads to Bernoulli's equation. It states that the sum of the fluid pressure, potential, and kinetic energy per unit volume is constant along a streamline.
All the terms in the equation have the dimension of energy per unit volume. The kinetic energy per unit volume is called the kinetic energy density, and the potential energy per unit volume is...

Organisms must balance energy intake with the energy required for growth, maintenance and reproduction. These trade-offs result in a variety of survivorship and reproductive strategies, including semelparity and iteroparity. Semelparous species, like annual plants, have only one reproductive episode in their lifetimes and consequently have short lifespans. Iteroparous species, by contrast, have many reproductive events during their lifetimes but have relatively few offspring. These two...

When designing or analyzing a structural member, it is important to consider the internal loadings developed within the member. These internal loadings include normal force, shear force, and bending moment. Engineers can ensure that the structural member can support the applied external forces by calculating these internal loadings.
To illustrate this, let's consider a beam OC of 5 kN, inclined at an angle of 53.13° with the horizontal and supported at both ends. Determine the internal...