Relative Entropy in Biological Systems by John Baez and Blake Pollard https:/
The Information Theory of Life: @ChristophAdami on self-perpetuating information strings. | @QuantaMagazine https:/
The FBI worries about the security of your Big Data. Should you? http:/
The FBI worries about the security of your Big Data. Should you? http:/
DNA Cyclic Codes Over The Ring $ \F_2[u,v]/\langle u^2-1,v^3-v,uv-vu \rangle$ http:/
Paul, thanks for the provocative piece, though the state of the art is certain much further along that your piece intimates. For the general reader, I would suggest reading MIT professor Cesar Hidalgo's recent book Why Information Grows (MIT Press, 2015) for some general structure and philosophy.
One of the best definitions and frameworks I've seen thus far has to be that of Christoph Adami. To start, and depending on your level of sophistication, take a look at his recent arXiv paper (Information-theoretic considerations concerning the origin of life - http:/
For further references, I maintain a nice list of resources at Information Theory and Biology Resources [http:/
For those who like to watch video material, I'll refer them to some videos from the NIMBioS Workshop on Information and Entropy in Biological Systems [http:/
I've just come across two Coase references in as many days... The first was by way of Cesar Hidalgo's new book "Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies" which posits a relatively simple framework for economies based on our favorite topic of information theory. http:/
Thanks for the further references and the podcast.
The Evolution of Information Gathering: Operational Constraints by Cynthia F. Kurtz
The Evolution of Information Gathering: Operational Constraints
Cynthia F. Kurtz
1991 Master's Thesis, SUNY Stony Brook, Ecology & Evolution
Abstract: I present two new approaches to the study of information in foraging theory. First, rather than determine the cost a forager should pay to obtain information, I concentrate on the consequences of information use in an interacting population. I describe a density-dependent model which tracks genotypes with high and low information access through evolutionary time. Stable polymorphisms result. I suggest that the value of information is not monotonically increasing. Second, I present a scheme for partitioning the information used in the decision making process. Three types of information are recognized: internal information, or an individual's internal state; external information, or environmental factors; and relational information, or rules for predicting transformations of internal state. Interactions between the three types are examined in an extension of the basic model.
BBC interview with @cesifoti on book Why Information Grows http:/
.@small_societies Do you happen to have a bibliography of books in the vein of Judith Rodin's Resilience Dividend? http:/
Only 1 copy of Arieh Ben-Naim's new book Information, Entropy, Life & the Universe left on day 1 http:/
Upcoming @BIRS_Math Advances and Challenges in Protein-RNA: Recognition, Regulation and Prediction (15w5063) http:/
First, let's unpack your question a bit. What we're really doing is taking mathematical form, function, and theory and apply it in some sort of unifying manner to unify the areas of information theory and statistical thermodynamics.
You can also ask your question in the reverse direction to apply the mathematics of information to thermodynamics as well as there should be a mathematical duality of sorts, if in fact the two are directly related.
First, let's unpack your question a bit. What we're really doing is taking mathematical form, function, and theory and apply it in some sort of unifying manner to unify the areas of information theory and statistical mechanics and thermodynamics.
You can also ask your question in the reverse direction to apply the mathematics of information to thermodynamics as well as there should be a mathematical duality of sorts, if in fact the two are directly related.
The original link between the two areas stems from a paper by E.T. Jaynes entitled "Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics" (downloadable from http:/
Since then, in my opinion, the best source tying the fields together mathematically is A Farewell To Entropy: Statistical Thermodynamics Based on Information by Arieh Ben-Naim [http:/
As for other connections, I've not seen anything as direct, primarily as there aren't any other major concepts with the exact same name. However, because of the underlying mathematics, I strongly suspect that there are many similar 'concepts'. A few in particular, I have a feeling will come out of the more rigorous mathematical frameworks based on Lieb and Yngvason’s concptualization of thermodynamics (see Resource Convertibility (Part 1)[https:/
Another fruitful area of conceptual similarities is slowly grown out of quantum information theory and the statistical mechanics of black holes, though there is some heavily rarified air surrounding these given the required background needed to operate with them both simultaneously.
Some brief thoughts for a scientific link blog for @wbialek
If you're going to invest the time to collect interesting papers for yourself, a group, or even for the broader public, take a few minutes to think about how to not only most easily collect, but to curate them, make them searchable, and thus make them useful in a longer and broader context.
Depending on your needs and interests, I'd recommend building a link blog on a free broad platform like Wordpress that will let you save the title of the article, the URL, a short synopsis, and then tag it with metadata (categories like physics, chemistry, biology, math, etc. or sub-specific tags like information theory, statistical thermodynamics, etc.), and then broadcast it to various social media sites like Twitter, Google+, and others.
Other options with similar functionality to consider are:
WithKnown https:/
example: http:/
Radio3: http:/
example:http:/
Mendeley: https:/
Given the value I think I'd personally get out of you doing something like this, I'm happy to volunteer some time to build, set up, and simplify the process for you. I'm pretty sure that with a minimum of work, you could have a simple bookmarklet on your webbrowser that would easily allow you to "clip" the article you want, add any quick bits of metadata or tags, and then automatically publish it to one or more of your social media sites automatically, keeping the work to doing it well under a minute while allowing you to easily come back and search, sort, and filter later if you choose.