#metabolisms

Jun Ogawa : Research profile 

Postbiotics: Novel gut microbiota-derived materials that promote our health and are useful as functional foods and pharmaceuticals (video 8m 44s)

The concept of resilience in ecological systems was first introduced by the Canadian ecologist C.S. Holling in order to describe the persistence of natural systems in the face of changes in ecosystem variables due to natural or anthropogenic causes. Resilience has been defined in two ways in ecological literature:

as the time required for an ecosystem to return to an equilibrium or steady-state following a perturbation (which is also defined as stability by some authors). This definition of resilience is used in other fields such as physics and engineering, and hence has been termed ‘engineering resilience’ by Holling.

as "the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks".

The second definition has been termed ‘ecological resilience’, and it presumes the existence of multiple stable states or regimes.

Title quoted from Joel Garreau

Wowie. I’m just. Good grief.

I had to take a second to be intrigued/entertained by the “bathroom problem” terminology. A bathroom is not an inherent thing that all sentient people can be assumed to have. And, though we try to ignore the subject in polite conversation, organisms produce waste in natural processes. They need not be a problem for anyone.

I understand what you meant, though, so hopefully I can explain adequately without offending any sensibilities.

The wood sprites have stairs on their trees. They generally use those or simply glide down from their home branches to an area outside the main thoroughfare of the village. There, they can dig a small trench, do their business, cover it, and be on their way (a stop by the stream to wash off certainly wouldn’t be amiss, but they have water basins in their homes, too). This is not so different from what humans generally do if there’s not a bathroom available. Sadly, we haven’t always had indoor plumbing.

That’s how it’s done in Wellwood. There are some wood sprite communities out there that might keep a sort of “outhouse” structure on their home trees for households to share. It’s a bucket of dirt in a closed room that gets refreshed every so often. Five stars.

As far as potential “emergencies” go (Spirit save me), I’ll add that gastrointestinal issues among wood sprites are astronomically rare. Their metabolisms are incredibly efficient and robust, and honestly they can be like tiny living compost bins. They are able to digest many things that other mammals can’t (sugars like cellulose, which humans can’t digest), making their lives much easier in times of scarcity (they are literally surrounded by cellulose). Conveniently, it means they can control things like their regularity with greater ease. They also don’t vomit involuntarily, the lucky little guys.

Faster metabolism does mean that chemicals like alcohol and caffeine get distributed very quickly. Bowman got hyper very fast in Lich because of this. In his canon, you can see in Bowman of Wellwood that a few drinks of beer made him wobbly, much to his chagrin. Drunken sprite. They’re all lightweights.

I digress, anon.

Our bodies occasionally need complete detoxification of free radicals and physically destructive toxins to effectively boost our metabolisms, in turn shedding unwanted layers of fat.