Life is part of the environment.

Understanding how living organisms survive in an organized state despite the second law, is a common statement. But is this specific to life alone? Earth is highly differentiated, also into highly structured and ordered forms, and also form these forms. Snowflakes can have over 5000 fractal structural chrystal forms, (dendritic growth patterns, here a review), etc. Exchanges of energy with the environment constantly produce large amounts of entropy, to maintain the self-organized structure, negentropy, in Life. We say that Life creates entropy, in that way helping the second law,  but is that exactly what happens? What about the snowflakes? The time-aspect? The stability expressed as recreation?

The integration of the organism and the biosphere is important for 'What is Life' and how living matter differ from ordinary matter. Life is generally said to be an open thermodynamic system, and so thermodynamic principles should not be able to use, because in open systems we get no stable, final equilibrium state. In spite of this fact there are suggestions how thermodynamics could work in living, open systems (non-equilibrium thermodynamics) using also physical descriptions as entanglement, formations of clusters etc..Clusters and networks are the same kind of phenomenon. In what degree ordinary matter is a closed system, and whether Universe is closed or not has also been debated. In fact we have difficulties telling exactly ‘What is Matter’, also considering it make up only about 5% of total matter, where most matter is non-interactive dark matter and (dark) energy. If it is so, but the calculations are more and more exact, so today we have no reason to doubt this?

Open systems mean that we must include interference from environment, which includes environmental and also social  aspects, biometeorology, geomedicine, chronobiology, psychosomatics, consciousness, homeopathy, acupuncture, yoga, meditation, transpersonal psychology, suggests D.Rakovic 2009.

It is not only energy that flows through living matter-systems, also ordinary matter do, and especially carbon as CO2 in/out (carbon interference) and competition between N and C in metabolic chains, expressing space changes and perturbations (the ‘real’ structure formation). Life is based on carbon. But there is also some kind of Silicon based life seen in diatomeers, plants ex.

This open system is easily realized in epigenetics, as markers from environment, the Nurture-aspect, and a pool of freely exchangeable genes (transposons and circulating nucleotides and DNA islands as ALU or CGislands) and DNA (the Nature-aspect or analog for ‘Self’) between individual organisms. Nucleic acid trafficking may be involved in intercellular signalling during development, in epigenetic remodelling, tissue regeneration and fine tuning of the adaptive immune system. It may also be involved in cancer development and immune surveillance. Also rewrite the genetic text in brain developement using tunneling nanotubes? DNA-trafficking or horizontal transfer of DNA may be important during tumour progression. The hidden Markov Models are such an model approach, using the CG-island signal.

Perineural nets as stabilizers and barriers of/to the extracellular environment and neurons are another couple. The neuronal activity (but not GA-activity) forms PN-sheets. Epigenetic markers also stabilize the genome and build a barrier? Development can be thought of as the stabilization of connections to match the current environment but with considerable residual plasticity that can be revealed if there is a shift in the excitatory: inhibitory balance or the removal of the structural stabilizers. The laminal structure of the basement membrane and its importance for developement is another similar question.In fact almost every atom is exchanged in the body in the growing/repair process by time, turnover, metabolism.

So how is the body described physically then? Complexity networks describes memory or dissipation holding the body together, as negentropy, but neither matter nor energy is iniert? Everything comes from outside and rearrange itself. Or can reorganizations within the borders create iniert energy? This is why a body has to move and change in order to live? A fight between change and stability? I have a strong feeling our blind fixation on the second law, although fundamental, has made us forget the stability and conservation aspect, also fundamental. Like Life would be intermediate between first and second law? Third law (The entropy of a perfect crystal at absolute zero is exactly equal to zero, or zero at the absolute temp.), or a fourth law (there have been dozens of various supposed "fourth laws")? Onsager's fourth law of thermodynamics with symmetry relation? Symmetry and asymmetry?  Including "quasi-thermodynamic" theories by Thomson and Helmholtz respectively. Life rocks.

Onsagers fourth law express the equality of certain ratios between flows and forces in thermodynamic systems out of equilibrium, but where a notion of local equilibrium exists."Reciprocal relations" occur between different pairs of forces and flows in a variety of physical systems. For example, consider fluid systems described in terms of temperature, matter density, and pressure. In this class of systems, it is known that temperature differences lead to heat flows from the warmer to the colder parts of the system; similarly, pressure differences will lead to matter flow from high-pressure to low-pressure regions. What is remarkable is the observation that, when both pressure and temperature vary, temperature differences at constant pressure can cause matter flow (as in convection) and pressure differences at constant temperature can cause heat flow. Perhaps surprisingly, the heat flow per unit of pressure difference and the density (matter) flow per unit of temperature difference are equal, as a consequence of the time reversibility of microscopic dynamics (microscopic reversibility).

How describe this in spacelike, timelike or lightlike cones?
Is the living matter a subsystem of ordinary matter or contrarily? The matter flows through, and the energy, both irreversibly. Like the arrow of time. The organism border is no real border. Why do we then need borders and selves? For the big principle of self-organization? The networks are? Like the Hopf fibration neural networks and MRI, magnetic resonance? Neuronal networks are most longlived structures (= analog for Self?, Big CD-diamond?). Still synapses are born /deleted at a big pace, so not even them are completely inner structures. This allow the spaces to pass through each other, like galaxies travel through each other.? See Mathematical Methods for Neurosciences,
Time is coded by asymmetry, as is gravity? L-formations of sugars are also asymmetric.
Hopf Fibration and Quantum Entanglement in Qubit Systems (entanglement in high dimensional systems are problematic, topology and transmission requires entanglement)

Basically, a Hopf fibration is a map from a higher dimensional unit sphere to a lower dimensional unit sphere which is not null-homotopic. The simplest example of a Hopf fibration is a map from a three-sphere into a two-sphere in three dimensional Euclidean space S3 S1→ S2, which helps to define the well known Bloch sphere as the representation of one pure qubit. In this case, two complex numbers are necessary for the normalization condition that depends on four real parameters. These real numbers define a three-sphere and using the Hopf fibration, all the states differing by a global phase are identified with a unique point in the two-sphere. (Mosseri R. and Dandoloff R., J. Phys. A: Math. Gen 34, 10243 (2001)).

Epigenome as external world, fixed into small molecules inside the cell? So the external world lies tight against the Self, and regulate it? The same is seen in perineural sheet and neuron. Cancers too? Glia cells are responsible for the extracellular homeostasis, and relay light etc. Is there an intracellular homeostasis too? "There are many "pumps" that function in the cell membrane to supply the intracellular environment with these substances. The pump is inhibited when a cells has a sufficient amount of a given substance." This was better. Membranes again! So, what regulates the epigenome? Time? Almost everything, is it holistic, like light? Light is massless? As is magnetic extremals?

An interesting study of this system/subsystem question is the system approach of cancer. Cancers are usually seen as ’anarchistic’ conglomerates expressing opportunism. Glioblastoma  tumors are responding to multiple signals, as one is inhibited the signal is delivered another route. The secret was that they used the cytosceleton for the message delivery, not membrane impulses. DC cells (dendritic immune cells) act like patrolling sentries, prowling boundaries between the body and the outer world on and under skin, within the epidermis and within mucous membranes in the mouth, nose, ear and colon. Glucosensing cells form a network important for the regulation of Self seen as homeostasis, etc. Social interaction is seen in memory and EGO (socially constructed Self)?

If we look at the total abundance of atoms in Universe those describing Life is in big majority. So Life was maybe prior to ordinary matter? Organic molecules are also generally found in space. There is something fundamental missing here? Water forms entropy and order, both, says Gerald Pollack. This is also what Life does in photosynthesis. So, Life is about membranes and surfaces? "As you lower the temperature the liquid crystal starts to become organized and imprints that order into the surfactant itself, causing it to self assemble," about liquid chrystals. This can be called memory?

To understand the energy-aspect (chi?) we must understand
1) its interactions on matter (relativistic GR) or What is Matter,
2) resonant wave-wave interactions through a massless system (as stochastic resonance, biophotons emission, charge exchange).
3) the epigenetics as a regulating outer, bigger system, and its relation to the smaller gene pool (Self),  the causative force,
4) the changes and homeostasis/allostasis, expressed as diseases, invoke on the whole, (as in the Yin/Yang principle?)
5) psychosomatic disease. On energy dispersion, under stress we tend to focus more on the rewards than on the risks of any decision. Intention and free will. Riskmanagement.
6) psychosis and schizophrenia etc, neurological disorders, the uttermost effect of inner noise, but also very much outer noise when the 'antenna' in and metals become too strong. extracellular matrix. As for MultipleSclerosis the Fe-content is strongly linked to expression of the disease.