Information and Life
Communication, one of the most important functions of life, occurs at any spatial scale from the molecular one up to that of populations and ecosystems, and any time scale from that of fast chemical reactions up to that of geological ages. Information theory, a mathematical science of communication...
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| Language: | English |
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Dordrecht :
Springer Netherlands : Imprint: Springer,
2014.
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| Edition: | 1st ed. 2014. |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7040-9 |
Table of Contents:
- 1. Introduction
- 2. What is information? 2.1 Information in a usual meaning. 2.2 Features of information as a scientific entity. 2.3 Comments on the definitions of information. 2.4 An information as a nominable entity. 2.5 Short history of communication engineering. 2.6 Communication over space or over time
- 3. Basic principles of communication engineering. 3.1 Physical inscription of a single symbol. 3.2 Physical inscription of a sequence. 3.3 Receiving a binary symbol in the presence of noise. 3.4 Communicating sequences in the presence of noise
- 4. Information theory for literal communication. 4.1 Shannon’s paradigm and its variants. 4.2 Quantitative measures of information. 4.3 Source coding
- 5. Channel capacity and channel coding. 5.1 Channel models. 5.2 Capacity of a channel. 5.3 Channel coding needs redundancy. 5.4 On the fundamental theorem of channel coding. 5.5 Error-correcting codes
- 6. Information as a fundamental entity. 6.1 Algorithmic information theory. 6.2 Emergent information in populations. 6.3 Physical entropy and information. 6.4 Information bridges the abstract and the concrete
- 7. An introduction to the second part. 7.1 Relationship with biosemiotics. 7.2 Content and spirit of the second part
- 8. Heredity as a communication problem. 8.1 The enduring genome. 8.2 Consequences meet biological reality. 8.3 A toy living world. 8.4 Identifying genomic error-correcting codes
- 9. Information is specific to life. 9.1 Information and life are indissolubly linked. 9.2 Semantic feedback loops. 9.3 Information as a fundamental entity. 9.4 Nature as an engineer
- 10. Life within the physical world. 10.1 A poorly understood divide. 10.2 Maxwell’s demon in physics and in life
- 10.3 A measurement as a means for acquiring information
- 11. Conclusion.