William Driscoll

Hi, everyone! I'm heading to Beijing with some background in Earth science, ecology, and evolutionary biology, and a ton to learn in physics, economics, and so on. I look forward to meeting and learning from you all ('nimen'...English really needs a plural "you").

Questions:

1. What topics do you have some expertise in and would you be willing to help others learn them?

I could help a bit with ecological and evolutionary theory. I could explain some of the ideas behind optimization concepts in river network evolution. I’ve got a fairly decent working knowledge of biological scaling and some of the important theories pertaining to scale in biology. I also have an informal understanding of some basic ideas from nonequilibrium thermodynamics, particularly those of Prigogine et al., although I still have a lot more to learn about these and other ideas.

2. What do you want to learn at the CSSS?

I am mainly interested in the interface between biology and physics for the moment. For example, I am interested in learning about statistical thermodynamic approaches to understanding what life is “doing”, in the sense of Schrodinger and Prigogine. I am also curious about how these kinds of ideas can add to our conceptions of ecology and evolution. A direct approach to these questions would obviously be interesting, but I also think this may also be a great opportunity to strengthen my understanding of some purely physical concepts (judging from what I’ve seen from many of you), which should in turn assist in such direct approaches.

3. Do you have any projects or research interests that would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach?

I don’t have a lot beyond the conceptual stage right now, so see below.

4. Do you have any ideas for what sort of project you would like to work on with other CSSS students this summer?

I have a few ideas for potential projects, but I'm not married to any of these:

A. Using Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem (stressing the importance of “environmental degradation” as a negative contribution to average fitness in response to positive contributions from adaptation, maintaining average fitness near zero over long periods of time) and an approximation of Hutchinson’s niche concept (a niche as an “N-dimensional hyper-volume” in which every dimension is some environmental parameter that influences or may influence fitness) to understand correlations between resource gradients and species diversity.

B. Developing an analogy between drainage networks and simple ecosystems. For example, Strahler stream order (where a stream with no tributaries is Order 1, a stream with Order 1 streams as tributaries is Order 2, etc…) and trophic level appear to be roughly analogous, as do the general consumption patterns (in an Eltonian food chain, smaller organisms are consumed by larger; higher order streams are larger than smaller). Furthermore, both organisms and channels may be characterized by power laws relating size (mass in organisms; discharge in channels) to other characteristics (e.g. metabolic rate; stream power). These observations have lead to the development of optimality principles (with varying degrees of acceptance) which may be illuminating when used to compare and contrast these two nonequilibrium structures.

C. Understanding the source of thermodynamic nonequilibrium that powers life as a physical system. Beyond the obvious observation that solar energy powers a vast majority of life, how can we characterize thermodynamic “boundary conditions” on Earth in such a way as to facilitate the translation of ideas from nonequilibrium thermodynamics into useful concepts in ecology and evolution? Hoelzer, Smith, and Pepper (2006) and Morowitz and Smith (2007) have brought up some interesting ideas related to this type of thing recently, if anyone is curious.

5. Suppose you could travel one-hundred years in the future and ask researchers any three questions. What would those questions be?

A. Is life a physical system yet? Why or why not? B. How are we dealing with HIV and cancer? (I know this is really two very distinct questions. Sorry.) C. Is there anything sitting in plain sight in 2007 that will be seen dramatically differently in 2107 (e.g. life before and after The origin of species, disease before and after the discovery of microbes, etc.), and if so, how will we see it then and why?