Related papers: Fundamental Complexity Measures of Life
Herein we consider various concepts of entropy as measures of the complexity of phenomena and in so doing encounter a fundamental problem in physics that affects how we understand the nature of reality. In essence the difficulty has to do…
Despite the common misconception of nearly static organisms, plants do interact continuously with the environment and with each other. It is fair to assume that during their evolution they developed particular features to overcome problems…
Diversity is a central concept in many fields. Despite its importance, there is no unified methodological framework to measure diversity and its three components of variety, balance and disparity. Current approaches take into account…
Living systems, particularly multicellular systems, often seem hopelessly complex. But recent studies have suggested that beneath this complexity, there may be unifying quantitative principles that we are only now starting to unravel. All…
Complexity is an inherent attribute of any project. The purpose of defining and documenting complexity is to have an early warning tool allowing a project team to focus on certain areas and aspects of the project in order to prevent and…
Measuring interdisciplinarity is a pertinent but challenging issue in quantitative studies of science. There seems to be a consensus in the literature that the concept of interdisciplinarity is multifaceted and ambiguous. Unsurprisingly,…
The implications of large-scale coherence in biological systems and possible links to quantum theory are only beginning to be explored. Whether quantum-like coherent phenomena are relevant, or even possible at all, at the high temperatures…
In systems biology, it is becoming increasingly common to measure biochemical entities at different levels of the same biological system. Hence, data fusion problems are abundant in the life sciences. With the availability of a multitude of…
While evolution has inspired algorithmic methods of heuristic optimisation, little has been done in the way of using concepts of computation to advance our understanding of salient aspects of biological phenomena. We argue that under…
A general notion of information-related complexity applicable to both natural and man-made systems is proposed. The overall approach is to explicitly consider a rational agent performing a certain task with a quantifiable degree of success.…
We define {\em semantic complexity} using a new concept of {\em meaning automata}. We measure the semantic complexity of understanding of prepositional phrases, of an "in depth understanding system", and of a natural language interface to…
Our binary intuitive understanding of life and lifelikeness is good enough for daily life, but not for research in the natural sciences. Here we propose an operational definition of lifeness of a particular entity as a scalar, product of…
Evolution is the fundamental physical process that gives rise to biological phenomena. Yet it is widely treated as a subset of population genetics, and thus its scope is artificially limited. As a result, the key issues of how rapidly…
The fast changing reality in technical and natural domains perceived by always more accurate observations has drawn attention on new and very broad class of systems with specific behaviour represented under the common wording complexity.…
Written language is complex. A written text can be considered an attempt to convey a meaningful message which ends up being constrained by language rules, context dependence and highly redundant in its use of resources. Despite all these…
Development and growth are complex and tumultuous processes. Modern economic growth theories identify some key determinants of economic growth. However, the relative importance of the determinants remains unknown, and additional variables…
Understanding functional diversity, the range and variability of species' roles and actions within their communities, is key to predicting and preserving the functions that sustain both nature and human well-being. In this paper, we provide…
Interpreting experimental data in high school experiments can be a difficult task for students, especially when there is large variation in the data. At the same time, calculating the standard deviation poses a challenge for students. In…
We extend previously proposed measures of complexity, emergence, and self-organization to continuous distributions using differential entropy. This allows us to calculate the complexity of phenomena for which distributions are known. We…
A full accounting of biological robustness remains elusive; both in terms of the mechanisms by which robustness is achieved and the forces that have caused robustness to grow over evolutionary time. Although its importance to topics such as…