Subject: Re: Question: 10% energy absorption from food
From: [email-masked] (Toby Bradshaw)
Date: 12 Aug 1994 14:18:27 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,bionet.plants

In article <[email-masked]>,
Alec Edgington <[email-masked]> wrote:

>Nothing, no fly or joule, is wasted in nature.

Have you seen flies in amber, or wondered why no organisms directly
use the joules from radioactive decay to power their metabolism?  Are
you familiar with hexokinase/hexosephosphatase "futile cycles" in
biochemistry?  "Nature" includes an amalgam of organisms that CAN
survive, none of which is "optimized" in the way an engineer would
define the term.  Waste is inherent in biology, as it must be if
the second law of thermodynamics is true.

-Toby Bradshaw
[email-masked]