An Answer to Schrödinger’s What Is Life?

That semiosis is specific to the living world is the cornerstone of biosemiotics. For checking an information-theoretic interpretation of this statement already proposed at the 2009 Biosemiotics Gathering in Prague, it is first attempted here to answer a question asked by Kupiec and Sonigo in Ni Dieu ni Gène (2000) on what differentiates living objects and those resulting from a geophysical process. Similar questions were asked by Schr?dinger in his essay What Is Life? where the emphasis was laid on the relationship of the atomic scale of the genes and the macroscopic scale of living beings. This essay was published in 1944, before information was introduced as a scientific entity, at a time when DNA was not yet identified as the vector of heredity. We undertake answering some of these questions, arguing that the living world is made of organisms, i.e., of assemblies possessing in a genome the information needed for their replication and their maintenance while the inanimate world only contains aggregates. In short, a biological process keeps its order through the use of information. For defining order, it is proposed that an orderly object can be produced by a construction (e.g., the copy of a template) using available data within some given context. In other words, replicating an orderly object does not bring new information into its context. Order in this meaning appears as specific to the living world, at variance with the inanimate world which is basically disorderly. A better understanding of what separates the living world from the inanimate world results: the use of information is the distinguishing feature which defines their border. Any living thing contains a symbolic information, referred to as its genome, inscribed into DNA molecules. This genome can indeed be copied but, its support being embedded in the physical world, it incurs disturbances which result in symbol errors. Keeping its order thus needs endowing any genome with error correction ability: it must belong to a redundant code, i.e., a set of sequences separated by some minimum distance. The larger its minimum distance, the more immune to errors are the elements of a code. Then genomes become as distinct as to ensure order. Identity and specificity result. Although conservative according to the above definition of order, the living world actually exhibits an extreme diversity which even tends to increase as evolution proceeds. In sharp contrast, homogeneity and monotony are observed in the inanimate world, assumed however non-conservative. In order to solve this paradox and justify the proposed definition of order, it is argued that the error-correcting means which ensure the conservation of genomes fail with some low, but non-zero, probability. Although very infrequent, regeneration errors result in genomes largely different from the initial ones; and the correction mechanisms conserve the mutated genomes just as the original ones. The operation of life changes scales, since the regeneration errors which originate in atomic events have observable consequences at the macroscopic scale.     

Components and Public Health Impact of Population Growth in the Arab World

The Arab world, which consists of the 22 member states of the Arab League, is undergoing a rapid transition in demographics, including fertility, mortality, and migration. Comprising a distinctive geographic region spread across West Asia and North East Africa and unified by the Arabic language, these states share common values and characteristics despite having diverse economic and political conditions. The demographic lag (high fertility and low mortality) that characterizes the Arab world is unique, but the present trend of declining fertility, combined with the relatively low mortality, brings about significant changes in its population size. This research aimed to: (i) assess the population growth in the Arab world over 3 time periods, (ii) explore its components, and (iii) understand its public health impact. Data from the International Data Base (IDB) of the U.S. Census Bureau for 3 time periods (1992, 2002, and 2012) in 21 countries of the Arab world were analyzed by dividing them into four geographic sectors, namely, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), West Asia, Maghreb, and the Nile Valley African Horn. The population of the Arab world has grown considerably due to both natural growth and migration. The immigration is pronounced, especially into resource-intensive GCC nations, not only from East Asian and Central African countries but also from resource-thrifty (limited-resource) Arab nations. The migrations within, as well as outside, the Arab world reveal an interesting demographic phenomenon that requires further research: migration flows and trends. However, the transformations in public health statistics related to mortality—the impact of demographic changes—depict a new era in the Arab world.     

The Anthropology in American Historical Archaeology

Since its infancy, American historical archaeology has maintained a relationship, albeit often a tenuous one, with its anthropological parentage. Given both the history of the field and its practitioners' often-tortured efforts to define their intentions, goals, and perspectives, it is not surprising, perhaps, that many anthropologists may not recognize the important contributions historical archaeology can make to the anthropological project. A multifaceted and wide-ranging examination of the post-Columbian world gives historical archaeology a special ability to investigate modern history and to provide insights into the historical circumstances of today's world, [historical archaeology, post-Columbian archaeology, history of American archaeology]     

‘Deep engagement’ and disengaged reason

In this paper, I explore what it would mean to pursue modes of ‘deeper engagement’ and how this might be done without abandoning the capacity for disengaged reasoning. Charles Taylor recognises disengaged reasoning as ‘one of the most important developments of the modern era’ and as essential to the pursuit of the good society, even though (like everything else) when taken to an extreme it corrupts or distorts the modes of being‐in‐the‐world. In A Secular Age, Taylor continues a long‐running critique of disengaged reason and its contributions to the malaise of modernity, focusing especially on its conflictual relationship with religious belief and its central role in the disenchantment of the world. My objective here is to relativise and contextualise the relationship between disengaged and engaged modes of being, in part by exploring some of the ways in which we may be deeply engaged in the world and with one another while also employing the critical faculties that enable us to analyse dispassionately, amongst other things, theistic and other interpretations of being‐in‐the‐world.     

Abstraction in art with implications for perception

The relationship between people and art is complex and intriguing. Of course, artworks are our creations; but in interesting and important ways, we are also created by our artworks. Our sense of the world is informed by the art we make and by the art we inherit and value, works that, in themselves, encode others' world views. This two-way effect is deeply rooted and art encodes and affects both a culture's ways of perceiving the world and its ways of remaking the world it perceives. The purpose of this paper is to indicate ways in which a study of abstraction in art can be used to discover insights into, to quote the call for papers for this issue, 'our perception of the world, acquired through experience' and 'the way concepts are formed and manipulated to achieve goals'.     

Towards a general theory of neural computation based on prediction by single neurons

Although there has been tremendous progress in understanding the mechanics of the nervous system, there has not been a general theory of its computational function. Here I present a theory that relates the established biophysical properties of single generic neurons to principles of Bayesian probability theory, reinforcement learning and efficient coding. I suggest that this theory addresses the general computational problem facing the nervous system. Each neuron is proposed to mirror the function of the whole system in learning to predict aspects of the world related to future reward. According to the model, a typical neuron receives current information about the state of the world from a subset of its excitatory synaptic inputs, and prior information from its other inputs. Prior information would be contributed by synaptic inputs representing distinct regions of space, and by different types of non-synaptic, voltage-regulated channels representing distinct periods of the past. The neuron's membrane voltage is proposed to signal the difference between current and prior information ("prediction error" or "surprise"). A neuron would apply a Hebbian plasticity rule to select those excitatory inputs that are the most closely correlated with reward but are the least predictable, since unpredictable inputs provide the neuron with the most "new" information about future reward. To minimize the error in its predictions and to respond only when excitation is "new and surprising," the neuron selects amongst its prior information sources through an anti-Hebbian rule. The unique inputs of a mature neuron would therefore result from learning about spatial and temporal patterns in its local environment, and by extension, the external world. Thus the theory describes how the structure of the mature nervous system could reflect the structure of the external world, and how the complexity and intelligence of the system might develop from a population of undifferentiated neurons, each implementing similar learning algorithms.     

基于生物防治的西花蓟马治理及思考

西花蓟马Frankliniella occidentalis（Pergande）是世界性的大害虫,对温室中蔬菜花卉造成巨大的危害。20世纪70年代后在世界范围内广泛而迅速地传播蔓延,近年入侵中国。西花蓟马对农药产生了广泛的抗性,使得生物防治一直作为其综合治理中的主导措施。本文综述了世界上西花蓟马生物防治的现状,以期为中国西花蓟马的治理提供一定的借鉴作用。     

Is Boron a Prebiotic Element? A Mini-review of the Essentiality of Boron for the Appearance of Life on Earth

Boron is probably a prebiotic element with special importance in the so-called "sugars world". Boron is not present on Earth in its elemental form. It is found only in compounds, e.g., borax, boric acid, kernite, ulexite, colemanite and other borates. Volcanic spring waters sometimes contain boron-based acids (e.g., boric, metaboric, tetraboric and pyroboric acid). Borates influence the formation of ribofuranose from formaldehyde that feeds the "prebiotic metabolic cycle". The importance of boron in the living world is strongly related to its implications in the prebiotic origins of genetic material; consequently, we believe that throughout the evolution of life, the primary role of boron has been to provide thermal and chemical stability in hostile environments. The complexation of boric acid and borates with organic cis-diols remains the most probable chemical mechanism for the role of this element in the evolution of the living world. Because borates can stabilize ribose and form borate ester nucleotides, boron may have provided an essential contribution to the "pre-RNA world".     

Between a Pristine Myth and an Impoverished Future

Early European naturalists saw Amazonian landscapes as pristine, but modern research has found a complex historical ecology, similar to that of other tropical and temperate regions. Although the pristine myth has been thoroughly debunked, too many biodiversity researchers fail to incorporate historical ecology into their analyses. For a world society out of balance with its natural resource base, careful interpretation is essential to understand trends, including impoverishment of planetary biodiversity. If world society avoids civilizational collapse, parts of Amazonia's historical ecology can contribute to future sustainability and improved survival of its biodiversity.     

On the Relation between the Small World Structure and Scientific Activities

The modern science has become more complex and interdisciplinary in its nature which might encourage researchers to be more collaborative and get engaged in larger collaboration networks. Various aspects of collaboration networks have been examined so far to detect the most determinant factors in knowledge creation and scientific production. One of the network structures that recently attracted much theoretical attention is called small world. It has been suggested that small world can improve the information transmission among the network actors. In this paper, using the data on 12 periods of journal publications of Canadian researchers in natural sciences and engineering, the co-authorship networks of the researchers are created. Through measuring small world indicators, the small worldiness of the mentioned network and its relation with researchers’ productivity, quality of their publications, and scientific team size are assessed. Our results show that the examined co-authorship network strictly exhibits the small world properties. In addition, it is suggested that in a small world network researchers expand their team size through getting connected to other experts of the field. This team size expansion may result in higher productivity of the whole team as a result of getting access to new resources, benefitting from the internal referring, and exchanging ideas among the team members. Moreover, although small world network is positively correlated with the quality of the articles in terms of both citation count and journal impact factor, it is negatively related with the average productivity of researchers in terms of the number of their publications.     

Tapinoma melanocephalum (Fabricius), a new exotic pest in Korea

Tapinoma melanocephalum (Fabricius) is established as a house pest in various regions of the world, not limited to its original climate zones. T. melanocephalum seems likely to become established in Korea as well, based on our observations of the species from a private house in Seoul, Korea, its history of establishment in the world, and a few unofficial records in Korea. Diagnosis of the species is provided with pictures of specimens. Morphological characteristics identifying T. melanocephalum from the Korean indigenous Tapinoma species are provided.     

Sultans of Spin: Syrian Sacred Music on the World Stage

This article examines how the performance of a variety of Islamic music in transnational cultural circuits helps to promote the idea of a style of sacred music within the category of world music. Taking as an example the performance of the mawlawiyya, or "Whirling Dervish," music and dance by a Syrian–based ensemble, I show how the idea of an authentic local Syrian sacred music tradition requires its performance globally. I use the concept of the "world stage" to examine how musical performance practices that are represented as authentic local traditions obtain both their authenticity and their local specificity through their staging in global contexts. I further explore how such musical styles as sacred and Sufi emerge as naturalized categories in world music discourse, and how processes of differentiation and commodification reconfigure both the "local" and "global." [Keywords: world music, globalization, style, Syria, Islam]     

Arginine cofactors on the polymerase ribozyme

The RNA world hypothesis states that the early evolution of life went through a stage in which RNA served both as genome and as catalyst. The central catalyst in an RNA world organism would have been a ribozyme that catalyzed RNA polymerization to facilitate self-replication. An RNA polymerase ribozyme was developed previously in the lab but it is not efficient enough for self-replication. The factor that limits its polymerization efficiency is its weak sequence-independent binding of the primer/template substrate. Here we tested whether RNA polymerization could be improved by a cationic arginine cofactor, to improve the interaction with the substrate. In an RNA world, amino acid-nucleic acid conjugates could have facilitated the emergence of the translation apparatus and the transition to an RNP world. We chose the amino acid arginine for our study because this is the amino acid most adept to interact with RNA. An arginine cofactor was positioned at ten different sites on the ribozyme, using conjugates of arginine with short DNA or RNA oligonucleotides. However, polymerization efficiency was not increased in any of the ten positions. In five of the ten positions the arginine reduced or modulated polymerization efficiency, which gives insight into the substrate-binding site on the ribozyme. These results suggest that the existing polymerase ribozyme is not well suited to using an arginine cofactor.     

Biotechnology worldwide and the 'European Biotechnology Thematic Network' Association (EBTNA)

The European Biotechnology Congress 2011 held under the auspices of the European Biotechnology Thematic Network Association (EBTNA) in conjunction with the Turkish Medical Genetics Association brings together a broad spectrum of biotechnologists from around the world. The subsequent abstracts indicate the manner in which biotechnology has permeated all aspects of research from the basic sciences through to small and medium enterprises and major industries. The brief statements before the presentation of the abstracts aim to introduce not only Biotechnology in general and its importance around the world, but also the European Biotechnology Thematic Network Association and its aims especially within the framework of education and ethics in biotechnology.     

« Sens et essence du monde et du moi onirique » dans <Emphasis Type="Italic">Rêve et Existence</Emphasis> de Ludwig Binswanger

This paper reflects on one of Ludwig Binswanger’s best-known essays, in an effort to clarify the mode of existence of the person within the oneiric world and, therefore, the manifestation mode of that world itself. The author argues that what matters most in the expression of that world is not that it consists of images, but that it is devoid of syntax. This makes it both global and perfective and explains why nothing in it is actually determined by the ego of the dreamer. Its space has no horizon, no perspective and no vantage point, and its temporality is in gestation (chronogenetics), with no concept of the separation of present, past and future. It is characterised by process and lacking in structure. In addition, it is strangely familiar, because it echoes the past in a way that indicates inevitable fate. While the dreaming ego is well folded into that world, its mode of existence remains impersonal; it doesn’t decide for itself, and it doesn’t confront what is coming. The strangeness encountered is not that of the Other, but that of the stranger the ego perceives within itself. Dreaming, therefore, offers the opportunity for human beings to experience existence when it is still undecided — Freud called it the id and Schelling Gemüt — in a place where the ego has not yet become a person. It is only in the waking world that people can integrate their still inchoative egos and give them a destination.     

Synthesis, characterization and hybridization studies of new nucleo-gamma-peptides based on diaminobutyric acid.

In the present work, we report the synthesis and the characterization of a new chiral nucleoaminoacid, in which a diaminobutyric moiety is connected to the DNA nucleobase by an amidic bond, and its oligomerization to give the corresponding nucleo-gamma-peptide. The ability of this synthetic polymer to bind complementary DNA was studied in order to explore its possible use in antigene/antisense or diagnostic applications. Our interest in the presented DNA analogue was also supported by the importance of gamma-aminoacid-containing compounds in natural products of biological activity and by the known stability of gamma-peptides to enzymatic degradation. Furthermore, our work could contribute to the study of the role of nucleopeptides as prebiotic material in a PNA world that could successively lead to the actual DNA/RNA/protein world, as recently assumed.     

Dimensions of global population projections: what do we know about future population trends and structures?

The total size of the world population is likely to increase from its current 7 billion to 8–10 billion by 2050. This uncertainty is because of unknown future fertility and mortality trends in different parts of the world. But the young age structure of the population and the fact that in much of Africa and Western Asia, fertility is still very high makes an increase by at least one more billion almost certain. Virtually, all the increase will happen in the developing world. For the second half of the century, population stabilization and the onset of a decline are likely. In addition to the future size of the population, its distribution by age, sex, level of educational attainment and place of residence are of specific importance for studying future food security. The paper provides a detailed discussion of different relevant dimensions in population projections and an evaluation of the methods and assumptions used in current global population projections and in particular those produced by the United Nations and by IIASA.     

Constructions dans l’analyse: le transfert comme construction d’un espace porteur et comme reconstruction

The author argues that Binswanger’s daseinsanalyse is far from contradicting what Freud established in the field of analytical therapy. On the contrary, it enriches psychotherapy by making explicit what it is capable of constructing. This paper focuses on the transferential aspect of this construction. Übertragung, or transference, calls upon the world of the patient, its emotional space inhabited by the patient’s body and the bodies of others. This world, along with its underlying dramatics, not only requires recognition, but also carriage (Tragung) to the analyst’s side, at least if the analyst is to succeed in revealing the unconscious part of this world to foster its transformation rather than repetitions of the mechanisms that freeze it. The author reflects on the “gestation” and “carriage” metaphors to show how therapeutically effective the “carrier-experienced space” can be.