Abstract

Calorimetry of living systems and classical thermodynamics developed in parallel, from Lavoisier’s early ice calorimeter experiments on guinea pigs, followed by Dubrunfaut’s macrocalorimetric research of fermentation processes and Atwater-Rosa’s whole-body calorimetry on humans and domestic animals, to the introduction of the famous Tian-Calvet instrument that found entrance into so many different fields of biology. In this work, six examples of living-system calorimetry and thermodynamics are presented. These are: (i) glycolytic oscillations far off the thermodynamic equilibrium; (ii) growth and energy balances in fermenting and respiring yeast cultures; (iii) direct and indirect calorimetric monitoring of electrically stimulated reptile metabolism; (iv) biologic and climatic factors influencing the temperature constancy and distribution in the mound of a wood ant colony as an example of a complex ecological system; (v) energetic considerations on the clustering of European honeybees in winter as a means to save energy and stored food as well as for their Japanese counterparts in defending against hornet predators; and (vi) energetic and evolutionary aspects of the mass specific entropy production rate, the so-called bound dissipation or psiu-function. The examples presented here are just a very personal selection of living systems from a broad spectrum at all levels of complexity. Common for all of them is that they were investigated calorimetrically on the background of classical and irreversible thermodynamics.

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