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Displaying entries 16 through 30 of 70 found.

Pedia Sapiens: A Planetary Progeny Comes to Her/His Own Actual Factual Knowledge

Okamura, Keisuke. Atlas of Science Collaboration, 1971-2020. arXiv:2308.16810. We begin to post this 127 page contribution by an Institute for Future Initiatives, University of Tokyo scholar so it is available online. The topical Table of Contents goes from Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Science and Biotechnology to Earth Science, Astronomy to Pure Mathematics. Altogether, as the text often notes, the document strongly evinces the 21st century occasions of welling global collaborations.

The evolving landscape of interinstitutional collaborative research across 15 natural science disciplines is explored using the open data sourced from OpenAlex. This extensive exploration spans the years from 1971 to 2020, facilitating a thorough investigation of leading scientific output producers and their collaborative relationships based on coauthorships. The findings are visually presented on world maps and other diagrams, offering a clear and insightful portrayal of notable variations in both national and international collaboration patterns across various fields and time periods. These visual representations serve as valuable resources for science policymakers, diplomats and institutional researchers, providing them with a comprehensive overview of global collaboration and aiding their intuitive grasp of the evolving nature of these partnerships over time

This booklet, entitled ‘Atlas of Science Collaboration’, aims to offer a broad overview of international and interinstitutional research collaboration, shedding light on its present status and evolution on a global scale. It is meant as a valuable resource for those seeking a general understanding of the collaborative relationships that have been established between research institutions in the world of science.

Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet Incubator Lifescape

Chen, Lei, et al. Metallic Quantum Criticality enabled by Flat Bands in a Kagome Lattice. arXiv:2307.09431. This frontier work by a Rice University research group about a robust preference for critical states across phenomena is reviewed more in the lead Ecode section.

Yukalov, Vyacheslav. Selected Topics of Social Physics: Nonequilibrium Systems. arXiv:2307.10833. The author is a senior complexity expert (search) who was at ETH Zurich in collaboration with Didier Sornette and is now jointly at the Bogolubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Dubna, Russia and the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Three main sections are Dynamical Social Systems, Generalized Evolution Equations and Models of Financial Markets. See also Quantum Operation of Affective Artificial Intelligence by YY at 2305.08112. In many formats, we record a growing realization that universe and human from enlivened substance to political populace are deep (wo)manifestations of implicate codified patterns and processes.

This review article is the second part of the project Selected Topics of Social Physics. The first part has been devoted to equilibrium systems. The present part considers nonequilibrium systems. The style of the paper is a tutorial which makes it easy to read for nonspecialists to grasping the basics of social physics and describes recent original models that could be of interest to experienced researchers in the field. The present material is based on the lectures that the author had been giving during several years at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (Abstract)

Vilovic, Iva, et al. Variations in climate habitability parameters and their effect on Earth's biosphere during the Phanerozoic Eon. arXiv:2308.08470. Technical University of Berlin, MPI and Gottingen University astrobiologists Iva Viloviæ, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, and René Heller post a latest, deeply sophisticated reconstructuin into better or worse phases for life's occasion. At once, an arduous trek is revealed to show how variable the course can be. We ask whom is our long emergent global knowsphere that can then retrospectively achieve this? As a philosophia witness, whatever manner of fantastic reality might we find this place to be? Might it imply an especial, Earthmost candidate?

We compiled environmental and biological properties of the Phanerozoic Eon from various data sets and did a correlation analysis to assess changes relevant to the habitability of Earth's biosphere. We showed that environmental parameters such as oxygen, global surface temperatures, runoff rates and carbon dioxide are interrelated. There were several periods with a thriving biosphere, with present day biodiversity and biomass. High oxygen contents are diagnostic of continental plant life and can provide an even more habitable environment compared to today. Beyond Earth, these results will help us to understand how environmental parameters affect extra solar biospheres and guide our search for extraterrestrial life. (Abstract)

Our study emphasizes that Earth experienced periods during which habitability parameters varied strongly throughout the Phanerozoic. A more thriving biosphere was characterized by higher oxygen levels and runoff rates, as well as moderate global surface temperatures. We found a direct correlation of oxygen content to a highly thriving biosphere and show that a high oxygen content is diagnostic of increased biomass production in the last 300 Ma when plants dominated the continents.

Sokolowski, Thomas, et al. Deriving a genetic regulatory network from an optimization principle. arXiv:2302.05680. We cite this entry as a recent scientific explanation by senior complexity theorists posted in Austria, Grrmany, the USA and France including William Bialek and Gaspar Thacik of life's long course to seek toward preferred betterment. A local, global, and lately a galactic tendency in some Darwinian way seems to manifestly strive and select at every time and space. Might it even apply to ovular bioplanets like our own?

Many biological systems approach physical limits to their performance, such that their behavior and underlying mechanisms could be reach an optimal regime. Here we explore the gap gene network of the Drosophila embryo, and its 50+ parameters by optimizing the information that gene expression levels convey about nuclear positions. Optimal networks are found to recapitulate the architecture and spatial profiles of the real organism. Our framework defines the many tradeoffs involved in maximizing functional performance, and explores alternative networks so that(Abstract)

Optimization is the mathematical language of choice for a number of fundamental problems in physical and statistical sciences. Stochastic optimization likewise constitutes the
foundation of evolutionary theory, where selection continually improves organismal fitness by favoring adaptive traits ( 1, 2 ). This evolutionary force pushes against quantifiable physical constraints and there are many examples where the organisms we see today operate very close to the physical limit: photon counting in vision ( 3), diffraction limited imaging in insect eyes (4 ), molecule counting in bacterial chemotaxis ( 5 ), and more. Experimental evidence for optimal performance can be promoted to an optimization principle from which one can
derive non–trivial predictions about the functional behavior and underlying mechanisms, sometimes with no free parameters (6, 7). Attempts at such ambitious ab initio predictions include the optimization of coding efficiency in visual andauditory sensory processing ( 8 – 11); growth rates in metabolic networks ( 12); matter flux in transport networks (13); and information transmission in regulatory network. (1)

Waegell, Mordecai, et al. The Generative Programs Framework. arXiv:2307.11282. We select thus paper by Chapman University Institute of Quantum Studies physicists including Emily Adlam as a way to show thatsuch theoretical views are quite ongoing into the 2020s. Indeed a self-making uniVerse may awaken in its phenomenal Earthuman phase so to begin a long quest to learn, understand, vivify and prevail.

Recently there has been significant interest in using causal modelling to understand the structure of physical theories. However, the notion of `causation'limits a physical theory to the forms that they may take. In this paper, we set out a more general framework to say that any quantitative theory can be represented in the form of a generative program as a list of instructions showing how the empirical information-processing program can be represented. We discuss some applications of our framework to philosophical questions about realism, operationalism, free will, locality and fine-tuning.

Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human. New York: Scribners, 2022. This posting is an initial notice of an epochal volume which could stand as the most erudite, strongest statement of nature's ubiquitous, basic part/whole definitive complementarity. A longer will follow.

Many readers might read the word song as metaphorical. But in my view, it is far from a metaphor. What the young man laments is that he hasn’t learned the interconnectedness of the individual inhabitants of the rain forest – their ecology and interdependence- how the forest acts and lives as a whole. A “song” can be both an internal message and also an external one: a message sent out from one being to another rto signal connective cooperativity. We can name cell, and their contents but have yet to learn such songs of cell biology. (362)

But powerful as it might be, “atomism” is reaching its explanatory limits, We can learn much about the physical, chemical and biological worlds through evolutionary agglomerations of atomistic units but these methods are straining at their limits. Genes, by themselves, are quite incomplete explanations of the complexities and diversities of organisms; we need to add gene-gene and gene-environment to explain organismical physiology and fates. (364-365)

The laws that govern the Newtonian ball are as real and tangible as they were during the conception of the universe. By the same logic, a cell and a gene are real. It’s just that they aren’t real in isolation. They are fundamentally cooperative, integrating units and together they they build, maintain and repair organisms. (365)

Perhaps one manifesto for the future of cell biology is to integrate “atomism” and “holism.” Multicellularity evolved again and again, because cells while retaining their boundaries could find multiple benefits in citizenship. That, more than any other, is the advantage of understanding cellular system, and beyond to cellular ecosystems. (365-366)

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a professor of medicine at the Irving Cancer Research Institute, Columbia University. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. He is the author of The Gene: An Intimate History, and The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, a 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner..

Pană, Gabriel Tiberiu and Alexandru Nicolin. Motifs in seismic networks: Romania, Italy, United States of America, and Japan. arXiv:2308.05193. University of Bucharest physicists report a latest verification of critical dynamics in effect with all manner of Earthquaking phenomena. As typical of such entries about a certain domain into the 2020s the first paragraph cites that just the same as being found everywhere else, a similar presence occurs in crustal shaking.

We describe seismic activity in Romania, Italy, and Japan, as well as the California seismic zone based on the statistical analysis of the underlying networks used to model these zones. Our results on network connectivity and motifs allow for a complex display of seismic activities, while reinforcing the current understanding of seismicity as a critical phenomenon consistent with power-law, i.e., scale-free, distributions over large intervals. (Excerpt)

Lingam, Manasvi, et al. Planetary Scale Information Transmission in the Biosphere and Technosphere: Limits and Evolution. arXiv:2309.07922. ML, Florida Institute of Technology, Adam Frank, University of Rochester and Amedeo Balbi, University of Rome astroscholars provide insightful suggestions to better serve our future searches for advanced, neighbor exoworlds. In regard, they propose this natural and human knowledgeable, communicative quality can be a prime indicator of their presence. Once more, in still another view, this immaterial, implicate feature can well define the central course of life, mind and personal procreativity.

Information transmission via communication between agents is ubiquitous on Earth, and is a vital facet of living systems. In this paper, we aim to quantify this rate of information transmission associated with Earth's biosphere and technosphere (i.e., a measure of global information flow) by means of a heuristic order-of-magnitude model. By adopting ostensibly conservative values for the salient parameters, we estimate that the global information transmission rate for the biosphere might be ∼1024 bits/s, and that it may perhaps exceed the corresponding rate for the current technosphere by ∼9 orders of magnitude. However, under the equivocal assumption of sustained exponential growth, we find that information transmission in the technosphere can potentially surpass that of the biosphere ∼90 years in the future, reflecting its increasing dominance.

It is widely accepted that information processing constitutes a fundamental aspect of life. In this “informational” realm, the significance and ubiquity of information transmission between organisms/agents via appropriate communication channels is thoroughly documented, ranging from microscopic to macroscopic scales and spanning multiple modalities. A number of authors have hypothesized that exploring information transmission via communication might be valuable for understanding various major evolutionary events in Earth’s history. The proposals have ranged from abiogenesis and early evolution of (proto)life to breakthroughs in cooperation, collective behavior, multicellularity and cognition. (1, 2)

Fuchs, Christopher. QBism, Where Next?. arXiv:2303.01446. The UM Boston polyscholar and main conceiver of this theory about possible influences that human observers may have upon physical realities offers a latest array of notable features. We also include since into the 2020s and this year a real presence of individual agency through evolution to ourselves has gained a wide and deep recognition.

This paper expresses how refreshing it has been since a few philosophers have started to engage with QBism. The aim of this exposition is to lay out the structure of QBism as clearly as possible for that phenomenal audience. In regard we state eight tenets: 1) A quantum state is an agent's personal judgment. 2) A quantum measurement is an agent's action upon its external world. 3) Quantum measurement outcomes are personal to the agent performing the action. 4) The quantum formalism is normative rather than descriptive. 5) Unitary evolution too expresses an agent's degrees of belief. 6) Even probability-one assignments are judgments without ontic content. 7) Subjective certainty about what an outcome will be does not negate that unperformed measurements have no outcomes. And, 8) quantum theory is a single-user theory for each of us.

Luppi, Andrea, et al. Information decomposition reveals hidden high-order contributions to temporal irreversibility. . Cambridge University, University of Sussex, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Oxford University, and Imperial College London, London theorists including Gustavo Deco and Fernando
Rosas provide a latest 2020s sophisticated definition for a directionality to the passage of life and ecosmic duration

Temporal irreversibility, often referred to as the arrow of time, is a fundamental concept in statistical mechanics. Markers of irreversibility also provide a powerful characterisation of information processing in biological systems. Here we propose a theoretic framework for the arrow of time in a multivariate series, which yields different types of irreversible information dynamics. We identify an irreversibility in the hyperactive regime of a biophysical model of brain dynamics, showing that our view is both theoretically principled and empirically useful. (Excerpt)

Aragon-Calvo, Miguel. Hierarchical Reconstruction of the Cosmic Web, The H-Spine method. arXiv:2308.16186. In a paper to appear in MNRAS, a UNAM astronomer describes this 2020s instance of a robust confirmation of an ecosmic anatomy and physiology nested vitality. (my gloss). See Hierarchical structure of the cosmic web and galaxy properties by MAC and colleagues at 2304.14387, The Opacity Limit at 2308.16810 for more evidence and visit the author's website for an array of artistic versions.

The cosmic web consists of a nested hierarchy of structures: voids, walls, filaments, and clusters. These structures interconnect and can encompass one another, collectively shaping an intricate network. Here we introduce the Hierarchical Spine (H-Spine) method, a framework designed to characterize these aspects. The H-Spine method captures the geometry and interconnectivity between cosmic structures as well as their nesting relations as a more complete description of the cosmic web. (excerpt)

The distribution of galaxies in the Universe, along with their underlying density field, form an interconnected web of structures spanning a wide range of scales and densities. This complex pattern, revealed in early galaxy maps and later confirmed in large redshift surveys is the result of the gravitational collapse of primordial fluctuations. The growth of structures
in the universe is driven by the hierarchical gravitational collapse of matter in which small primordial density fluctuations, originated during the inflationary epoch, grew and merged to
form more massive structures. (1)

Grudic, Michael and Philip Hopkins. The Opacity Limit. arxiv:2308.16268. As Carnegie Observatories and CalTecn astronomers describe a dense theoretical finesse, they also provide another vivid affirmation which stands as an seamless extension of nature's univeral scalar geometries. With Miguel Aragon-Calvo, et al, the early inklings of the 2000s by now stretch wide and deep across the celestial raiment, as a major Earthwise vista.

The opacity limit is an important concept in star formation: isothermal collapse cannot proceed without limit, because eventually cooling radiation is trapped and the temperature rises quasi-adiabatically, setting a minimum Jeans mass. We derive expressions for the thermal evolution of dust-cooled collapsing gas clumps in various limiting cases, and a general power-law dust opacity law. (Excerpt)

We live in a hierarchical universe, consisting of nestedstructures spanning a vast range of scales from the cosmic web down to to moons and asteroids. It is natural for inhabitants of such a universe to ask: where does structure formation stop? Gravity is scale-free but other processes are not, so surely at times the laws of physics must step in and say no more, preventing some structures from spawning substructures. (1)

Millar, T. J.. Faraday Discussion on Astrochemistry at High Resolution. arXiv.2307.13350. An emeritus Queen’s University Belfast astroscholar provides concluding remarks as a fifty year retrospect of scientific discoveries across the galactic raiment of the natural occasion of an increasing presence of just biochemical precursors that innate living complexities require to reach an evolutionary development. The survey courses from early 1970 assays to today’s computational prowess.

Fifty years on from the first detailed chemical kinetic modelling of astronomical sources, I provide some introductory comments on the history of astrochemistry, summarise some personal views on the topics covered in this discussion meeting, and conclude with some thoughts on its future development.

The development of astrochemistry over the past 50 years has been astounding, driven forward by the innovation of thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians whose ingenuity has led to the availability of facilities such as the ALMA and JWST. With these, we are able to probe astrochemistry from galactic size scales at high redshi, to au scales in protoplanetary disks and to even smaller scales in exoplanetary atmospheres. (9)

Rivilla, Victor, et al. First glycine isomer detected in the interstellar medium: glycolamide (NH2C(O)CH2OH). arXiv:2307.11507. Sixteen astrobiologists posted in Spain, Chile, and the USA make major note of the actual presence of this biomolecule across these celestial reaches. The second quote attests to how robustly just the vital biochemicals for life to complexify and emerge seem to proceed, on their way to our prodigious assay.

We report the first detection in the interstellar medium of a C2H5O2N isomer: syn-glycolamide (NH2C(O)CH2OH). The high sensitivity of an ultra-deep spectral survey carried out with the Yebes telescopes allowed us to identify multiple transitions of this species. The abundances of the C2H5O2N isomers are not at thermodynamic equilibrium, thus chemical kinetics need to be invoked. Therefore, as shown by several recent molecular detections towards this molecular cloud, it stands out as the best target to discover new species with carbon, oxygen and nitrogen with increasing chemical complexity. (Excerpt)

We discuss different routes to produce glycolamide on the surface of dust grains, based on reactions between simple radicals (OH, NH2, CH3 and CH2OH) and larger phases generated from abundant precursors already detected in the cloud (CO, HNCO, CH3CHO, NH2CHO, H2CCO, HCOCH2OH or NH2COCH3) after H−, OH−and NH2−additions, and/or H−abstractions. The formation of these radicals is expected to be enhanced in the presence of the intense cosmic-ray secondary ultraviolet field likely present in G+0.693, providing a natural explanation for the detection of glycolamide, and opening the window for the detection of equally or even more complex species. (9)

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