Table of Contents

Autobiography of Ilya A. Prigogine (1917 - 2003); Towards a thermodynamics of biological systems; Is entropy far from equilibrium a state function?; Global change and human change: a prescription for adaptive evolution from ecological network theory; Ecosystems becoming; A common framework for emergy and exergy based LCA in accordance with environ theory; A nonthermodynamic constraint to trophic transfer efficiency based on network utility analysis; Emergy, empower and the eco-exergy to empower ratio: a reconciliation of H. T. Odum with Prigogine?; Sustaining our commonwealth of nature and knowledge; The character of earth history; Thermodynamics, information, and complexity in artificial and living systems; Ecological utility analysis: determination of interaction types between organisms in ecosystems; Process ecology: a transactional worldview; The origins of irreversibility; Reversibility in science and in engineering; The nature of spontaneity-driven processes; The conjunction of non-living and living in human systems: why do novelties emerge?; Cascading thresholds to heteroclinicity in an ecosystem model; City out of chaos: social patterns and organization in urban systems; Quo vadis thermodynamics and the city: a critical review of applications of thermodynamic methods to urban systems; Four-dimensional design: from strategies to cases - generation of fractal grammar for reusing building elements; Scale-linking design for systematic health: sustainable communities and cities in context; An exploration of the mathematics behind the ecological footprint; The eco-costs/value ratio, a tool to determine the long-term strategy of de-linking economy and environmental ecology; Extreme events in nature - a challenge for the understanding of complex dynamics; Evolutionism and holism: two different paradigms for the phenomenon of biological evolution; Monitoring of movement behaviors of chironomid larvae after exposure to diazinon using fractal dimension and self-organizing map; Order and chaos in the natural world: exploring and understanding variability in the lagoon of Venice; An experimental model for mimicking biological systems: the Belousov - Zhabotinsky reaction in lipid membranes; With arsenic on the Etruscans' footprints; Steps towards an evolutionary medicine