The aim of this article is to analyse the relation between the second law of thermodynamics and the so-called arrow of time. For this purpose, a number of different aspects in this arrow of time are distinguished, in particular those of time-(a)symmetry and of (ir)reversibility. Next I review versions of the second law in the work of Carnot, Clausius, Kelvin, Planck, Gibbs, Carathéodory and Lie...

Statistical Mechanics and the Second Law of TherRespiration: DR. M. H. HALLER and DR. D. H. modynamics: DR. P. W. BRIDGMAN ................ 419 ROSE. Vegetable Peptone Agars for Quantitative Work with Lactobacillus Acidophilus: DR. FREDA Obituary: M. BACHMANN and PROFESSOR W. D. FROST ............ 439 Charles Sheldon Hastings: PROFESSOR FREDERICK E. BEACH. Recent Deaths .................... 428...

A heat engine undergoes a cyclic operation while in equilibrium with the net result of conversion of heat into work. Quantum effects such as superposition of states can improve an engine's efficiency by breaking detailed balance, but this improvement comes at a cost due to excess entropy generated from collapse of superpositions on measurement. We quantify these competing facets for a quantum r...

Evidence implies that basic laws of thermodynamics must be tested by experiments. In this paper, an experiment is designed to measure the entropy of a system with at least one known (measurable) equation of state, especially the gas systems. Since the entropy can be measured now, the formulae related to the second law of thermodynamics can be examined by other experiments.

We show that the entropy created by Ohmic dissipation inside an accreting charged black hole may exceed the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy by a large factor. Since only the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy is released during evaporation, the black hole appears to destroy entropy. To avoid this startling result, the interior of the black hole must contain a proliferation of complementary causal patches — ...

We propose that in time dependent backgrounds the holographic principle should be replaced by the generalized second law of thermodynamics. For isotropic open and flat universes with a fixed equation of state, the generalized second law agrees with the cosmological holographic principle proposed by Fischler and Susskind. However, in more complicated spacetimes the two proposals disagree. A modi...

I just read with great interest the well-written paper by Buchholz and Schoeller that discusses thermodynamics and weight-loss diets (1). However, the authors ignored the fact that the energy utilization of different diets depends on the biochemical pathways taken (2). For example, a low-carbohydrate diet dramatically increases gluconeogenesis relative to a high-carbohydrate diet. Obviously, gl...