This book provides an introduction to the significant role of physics in evolution, based on the ideas of matter and energy resource flow, organism self-copying, and ecological change. The text employs these ideas to create quantitative models for important evolutionary processes. Many fields of science and engineering have come up against the problem of complex design-when details become so numerous that computer power alone cannot make progress. Nature solved the complex-design problem using evolution, yet how it did so has been a mystery. Both laboratory experiments and computer-simulation attempts eventually stopped evolving. Something more than Darwin's ideas of heredity, variation, and selection was needed. The solution is that there is a fourth element to evolution: ecological change. When a new variation is selected, this can change the ecology, and the new ecology can create new opportunities for even more new variations to be selected. Through this endless cycle, complexity can grow automatically. This book uses the physics of resource flow to describe this process in detail, developing quantitative models for many evolutionary processes, including selection, multicellularity, coevolution, sexual reproduction, and the Serengeti Rules. The text demonstrates that these models are in conceptual agreement with numerous examples of biological phenomena, and reveals, through physics, how complex design can arise naturally. This will serve as a key text on the part physics plays in evolution, and will be of great interest to students at the university level and above studying biophysics, physics, systems biology, and related fields.

This book provides an introduction to the significant role of physics in evolution, based on the ideas of matter and energy resource flow, organism self-copying, and ecological change. The text employs these ideas to create quantitative models for important evolutionary processes. Many fields of science and engineering have come up against the problem of complex design-when details become so numerous that computer power alone cannot make progress. Nature solved the complex-design problem using evolution, yet how it did so has been a mystery. Both laboratory experiments and computer-simulation attempts eventually stopped evolving. Something more than Darwin's ideas of heredity, variation, and selection was needed. The solution is that there is a fourth element to evolution: ecological change. When a new variation is selected, this can change the ecology, and the new ecology can create new opportunities for even more new variations to be selected. Through this endless cycle, complexity can grow automatically. This book uses the physics of resource flow to describe this process in detail, developing quantitative models for many evolutionary processes, including selection, multicellularity, coevolution, sexual reproduction, and the Serengeti Rules. The text demonstrates that these models are in conceptual agreement with numerous examples of biological phenomena, and reveals, through physics, how complex design can arise naturally. This will serve as a key text on the part physics plays in evolution, and will be of great interest to students at the university level and above studying biophysics, physics, systems biology, and related fields.

How can computer modeling and simulation tools be used to understand and analyze common situations and everyday problems? Readers will find here an easy-to-follow, enjoyable introduction for anyone even with little background training. Examples are incorporated throughout to stimulate interest and engage the reader. Build the necessary skillsets with operating systems, editing, languages, commands, and visualization. Obtain hands-on examples from sports, accidents, and disease to problems of heat transfer, fluid flow, waves, and groundwater flow. Includes discussion of parallel computing and graphics processing units. This introductory, practical guide is suitable for students at any level up to professionals looking to use modeling and simulation to help solve basic to more advanced problems. Michael W. Roth, PhD, serves as Dean of the School of STEM and Business at Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo, Iowa. He was most recently Chair for three years at Northern Kentucky University's Department of Physics, Geology and Engineering Technology, and holds several awards for teaching excellence.

How can computer modeling and simulation tools be used to understand and analyze common situations and everyday problems? Readers will find here an easy-to-follow, enjoyable introduction for anyone even with little background training. Examples are incorporated throughout to stimulate interest and engage the reader. Build the necessary skillsets with operating systems, editing, languages, commands, and visualization. Obtain hands-on examples from sports, accidents, and disease to problems of heat transfer, fluid flow, waves, and groundwater flow. Includes discussion of parallel computing and graphics processing units. This introductory, practical guide is suitable for students at any level up to professionals looking to use modeling and simulation to help solve basic to more advanced problems. Michael W. Roth, PhD, serves as Dean of the School of STEM and Business at Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo, Iowa. He was most recently Chair for three years at Northern Kentucky University's Department of Physics, Geology and Engineering Technology, and holds several awards for teaching excellence.