期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2002
卷号：99
期号：9
页码：5822-5824
DOI：10.1073/pnas.082633699
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：General optimization results from physics indicate that maximum efficiency of a process, in the sense of minimum overall entropy production, is achieved when the rate of entropy production is constant over time, however not in ordinary clock time but on an, in general varying, "eigen time" scale, intrinsic to the system. We identify the eigen time of a biological system with "physiological time," which generally scales with the 1/4 power of body mass, M1/4, over a vast range of species. Since it is equally well established that metabolic rate scales as M3/4, it follows that organisms produce entropy at the same intrinsic rate, fulfilling a necessary condition for maximum efficiency, and are all, furthermore, equally efficient on the physiological eigen time scale.
