Talk:Biological thermodynamics

Proposed Merger
The bioenergetics and biological thermodynamics articles basically refer to exactly the same field of study. I suggest we merge bioenergetics to biological thermodynamics, but have bioenergetics redirect to the very different bioenergetic analysis, which as far as I can tell is the most common usage of the term "bioenergetic". We could then simply include a disambiguation link on the bioenergetic analysis page toward the biological thermodynamics page.

This just might help avoid the switching and reswitching (a very slow edit war...) between discussing biological thermodynamics and bioenergetic analysis on the bioenergetics page, which is highly visible if you click its history tab...

--BadLeprechaun 15:57, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Merged with bioenergetics
I'm in the process of merging bioenergetics into this page, mainly to prevent confusion with bioenergetic analysis (BA). I should be done in the next few minutes. Bioenergetics will disambiguate to both this page (BT) and BA. For now, I will put BA and BT each including Otheruses4 links to each other (of the type, this article is about blabla, for blibli, see -wikilink-). The paragraph below is the entire old article from bioenergetics, in case anybody feels I missed something in merging into here.

Bioenergetics, loosely defined, is the study of energy investment and flow through living systems. This broad definition includes the study of thousands of different processes ranging from cellular respiration and the production of ATP, to the study of evolutionary costs accompanying the development of a particular trait, such as the immune system. One question this area of science seeks to answer is whether protective benefit of a particular trait is worth the energy investment it requires.

--BadLeprechaun 02:50, 22 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment: energetics, and biological thermodynamics, or biothermodynamics, etc., are closely related topics; but each has a separate agenda. See, for example, Nicholls and Ferguson's 2002 Bioenergetics as it contrasts with Haynie's 2001 Biological Thermodynamics; the latter is more thermodynamically-focused, the former is more biochemically-focused.  Short on time presently. --Sadi Carnot 16:33, 25 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the tip, Sadi. However, I'm not quite sure how I would divide the two (bioenergetics, biological thermodynamics) at this point, as what was there in the past was rather identical. Do you think you could start the bioenergetics article, even as a stub, and I might pick it up later when I have time? If you do, please make sure to leave a proper visible link to bioenergetic analysis so that the switching back and forth between the two subjects (the biology and the psychotherapy) on that page doesn't start again. Thanks, and I'll look into bioenergetics eventually. --BadLeprechaun 00:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I also did a redirect of biochemical thermodynamics into this page, as is used in Robert Alberty's 2003 Thermodynamics of Biochemical Reactions. My general intuition is that "energetics" or "bioenergetics" are outdated terms, although they are still used in some books. --Sadi Carnot 01:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * In PubMed, "bioenergetics" gets 194201 hits, while "biological thermodynamics" gets 2. I understand the goal of maintaining the distinction between this topic and bioenergetic analysis, but that might be better served by moving this page to something like bioenergetics (metabolism). --Arcadian 12:30, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I don’t think so. I have at least 5-6 textbooks on biological thermodynamics, e.g. Hammes’ 2000 Thermodynamics and Kinetics for the Biological Sciences, and there is a big distinction between the simple term “energetics”, the pinnacle example being ATP-energetics (discussed without references to math or thermodynamics quantities), and “thermodynamics”, using differential calculus. Each topic can be a stand-alone article give some work. --Sadi Carnot 05:26, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I just noticed this merger. In my view Wikipedia should have an article called Bioenergetics. "My general intuition is that 'energetics' or 'bioenergetics' are outdated terms" <-- I think the scientific literature shows that your intuition is wrong. In the past year, 26 articles have been added to the PubMed database with "bioenergetics" in the title. 216 in the past 10 years. 143 in the 10 years before that. 103 in the 10 years before that. For total articles using the term the numbers are 77,992 articles in the past 10 years, 51,623 in the 10 years before that and 31,675 in the 10 years before that. The Molecular & Cellular Bioenergetics Gordon Research Conference is now held annually (see). The term "bioenergetics" is also increasingly used in the study of food chains and ecosystems. As pointed out above by Arcadian, "biological thermodynamics" is not a term used by the biologists who work on bioenergetics. It is not constructive for Wikipedia to have its content on bioenergetics in an article called Biological thermodynamics. David D. was correct. It is clear from this that User:BadLeprechaun does not know the subject area. --JWSchmidt 14:30, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Review
"Sadi Carnot" has been systematically adding disruptive edits to Wikipedia over a long period of time. User:Sadi Carnot created bogus articles containing original research and many links to the editor's personal website and self-published work on pseudoscientific theories. Starting with pages such as Articles for deletion/Human chemistry, the bogus editing is in the process of being fully discovered and removed from Wikipedia. "Sadi Carnot" also had another account: User:Wavesmikey. This article needs to be reviewed by experts for original research and deceptions. --JWSchmidt 03:36, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Destructive Anonymous Edits by Google IP
Someone from Google (IP 66.249.84.113 )has been stripping a large amount of content from this article without giving adequate reasoning. I am no expert on anything in this article, so if the stripping of data is warranted and well founded, I'm all for it. They have however reverted my restoration of the previously existing content and I don't have any interested in getting into an edit/undo war with them. I am happy to make my changes with an account while they anonymously, and without reason strip the content of this article. I'd like to see someone else chime in on whether the information is appropriate. This is the edit in question http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=618434940&oldid=618415044. Tenthrow (talk) 18:00, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I feel like some citations are needed for the section, but on the whole it conveys important information about differing metabolisms. Once citations are integrated, I don't see any reason not to reintegrate it into the article. RocioNadat 18:46, 25 July 2014 (UTC)


 * The stripped content was about dieting! That is ... utterly and completely inappropriate for this article.  It was the right thing to do. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 00:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Axel Kleidon
As currently written, this article seems to completely lack "balance". The fix would be to look at what Axel Kleidon has written (he has a book on this topic -- it should be a key reference for this stuff. This one, according to google scholar: "Non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the production of entropy: life, earth, and beyond Authors Axel Kleidon, Ralph D Lorenz Publication date 2004/11/18 Publisher Springer Science & Business Media Description The present volume studies the application of concepts from non-equilibrium thermodynamics to a variety of research topics. Emphasis is on the Maximum Entropy Production (MEP) principle and applications to Geosphere-Biosphere couplings. Written by leading researchers from a wide range of backgrounds, the book presents a first coherent account of an emerging field at the interface of thermodynamics, geophysics and life sciences. Total citations Cited by 314" 67.198.37.16 (talk) 00:43, 16 November 2020 (UTC)