Daily Sigma Xi headquarters now provides a very efficient way to keep up on developments in science and engineering. They make available to members a daily E-mail service of abstracts from the news services of the top stories of the day. Each abstract also includes the URL for clicking on the source of the story, which then provides the entire text. To get this service, one needs to enroll, using one's membership number. A simple membership problem is compounded into a complex, protracted relation.
Further research is suggested for developing a fundamental quantitative relation.
There are about a half-dozen characteristics that define each class. Suffice it to say here that closed systems tend to maximize entropy, while open systems attempt to minimize it. An example of a closed system is a flashlight. Turn it on, the batteries run more energy, and that's the end of it. All of these tend to minimize entropy and hence to perpetuate their own existence by making intelligent decisions.