"What is heat?" was the title of a 1954 article by Freeman J. Dyson, published in Scientific American. Apparently, it was appropriate to ask this question at that time. The answer is given in the very first sentence of the article: heat is disordered energy. We will ask the same question again, but with a different expectation for its answer. Let us imagine that all the thermodynamic knowledge is already available: both the theory of phenomenological thermodynamics and that of statistical thermodynamics, including quantum statistics, but that the term "heat" has not yet been attributed to any of the variables of the theory. With the question "What is heat?" we now mean: which of the physical quantities deserves this name? There are several candidates: the quantities Q, H, Etherm and S. We can then formulate a desideratum, or a profile: What properties should such a measure of the quantity or amount of heat ideally have? Then, we evaluate all the candidates for their suitability. It turns out that the winner is the quantity S, which we know by the name of entropy. In the second part of the paper, we examine why entropy has not succeeded in establishing itself as a measure for the amount of heat, and we show that there is a real chance today to make up for what was missed.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e23081078 | DOI Listing |
Commun Biol
January 2025
Department of Medical Microbiology, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Aedes mosquitoes transmit pathogenic arthropod-borne (arbo) viruses, putting nearly half the world's population at risk. Blocking virus replication in mosquitoes is a promising approach to prevent arbovirus transmission, the development of which requires in-depth knowledge of virus-host interactions and mosquito immunity. By integrating multi-omics data, we find that heat shock factor 1 (Hsf1) regulates eight small heat shock protein (sHsp) genes within one topologically associated domain in the genome of the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
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January 2025
Xingtai Naknor Technology Co., Ltd, Xingtai, 054000, China.
The heating oil circuit plays an essential role in the heating calendering roller for the lithium battery pole piece. To achieve the optimization of the heating oil circuit, a fluid-thermal-structural coupling method and a multi-objective optimization procedure are proposed to obtain the optimal solution. A fluid-thermal-structural coupling flowchart based on the numerical modeling for the calendering roller temperature distribution is created to automate the analysis processes in the optimization iteration.
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January 2025
College of Environment and Bioengineering, Henan University of Engineering, Zhengzhou, 451191, China.
This study aims to explore the mechanism behind the influence of stress on gas adsorption by coal during deep mining and improve the accuracy of gas disaster prevention and control. To achieve this aim, thermodynamic analysis was conducted on the process of gas adsorption by loaded coal, and modified thermodynamic model proposed by previous scholars. It is found that stress plays an important role in gas adsorption by coal.
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January 2025
Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
The evolutionary history underlying gradients in species richness is still subject to discussions and understanding the past niche evolution might be crucial in estimating the potential of taxa to adapt to changing environmental conditions. In this study we intend to contribute to elucidation of the evolutionary history of liverwort species richness distributions along elevational gradients at a global scale. For this purpose, we linked a comprehensive data set of genus occurrences on mountains worldwide with a time-calibrated phylogeny of liverworts and estimated mean diversification rates (DivElev) and mean ages (AgeElev) of the respective genera per elevational band.
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January 2025
KAUST Solar Center (KSC), Physical and Engineering Division (PSE), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The controlled growth of two-dimensional (2D) perovskite atop three-dimensional (3D) perovskite films reduces interfacial recombination and impedes ion migration, thus improving the performance and stability of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Unfortunately, the random orientation of the spontaneously formed 2D phase atop the pre-deposited 3D perovskite film can deteriorate charge extraction owing to energetic disorder, limiting the maximum attainable efficiency and long-term stability of the PSCs. Here, we introduce a meta-amidinopyridine ligand and the solvent post-dripping step to generate a highly ordered 2D perovskite phase on the surface of a 3D perovskite film.
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