Zone-Reflex

Quantum.informational medicine from Belgrade.

2011-12-31T01:38:00.000-08:00

I got a letter from Rakovic' with greetings for the New Year. It contained an interesting link. Abstracts in english.

SYMPOSIUM OF QUANTUM-INFORMATIONAL MEDICINE QIM 2011:
HOLISTIC APPROACHES & TECHNIQUES BASED ON ACUPUNCTURE & CONSCIOUSNESS
Belgrade, 23-25 September 2011

EDITORS NOTE p.12-14, D. Raković, M. Mićović, S. Arandjelović

ACUPUNCTURE-BASED & CONSCIOUSNESS-BASED HOLISTIC MEDICINE:
QUANTUM-INFORMATIONAL PSYCHOSOMATIC FRAMEWORK

Contemporary medicine has put its emphasis on „alopatic-dosed non-economic“ highly pharmaceutic-oriented medicine technologies. On the contrary, in the past years more attention is payed to bioadequate „homeopatic-dosed economic“ bioresonant quantum-informational medicine technologies, related to usage of such values of the field energy, appearing in normal functioning of human organism [1–4]. On these lines, contemporary investigations of psychosomatic diseases imply the necessity of application of holistic methods, oriented to healing the person as a whole and not disease as a symptom of disorder of the whole, suggesting their macroscopic quantum origin [3,4].

In the focus of these quantum-holistic methods are body's acupuncture system and consciousness – which have quantum-informational structure of quantum-holographic Hopfield-like associative neural network, within the Feynman propagator version of Schrödinger equation [5] – with very significant quantum-holographic psychosomatic implications [3]. In this context, it should be noted that Resonant Recognition Model (RRM) of biomolecular recognition implies that on the biomolecular level information processing is going on in the inverse space of Fourier spectra of the primary sequences of biomolecules [6], similarly to (quantum) holographic ideas that cognitive information processing is going on in the inverse space of Fourier spectra of the perceptive stimuli [7], thus supporting idea on quantum-holographic fractal coupling of various hierarchical levels in biological species.

In the context of quantum-informational bioresonant therapies [3,4,8,9], their goal would be a resonant re-emitting of corresponding band of electromagnetic (EM) spectrum of microwave/ultralowfrequency-modulated radiation of the treated psychosomatically disordered (palpatory painful) state (as one of hundreds possible disordered states) thus enabling that its initial memory attractor is resonantly excited becoming more shallower and wider on the account of deepening of the (energy-dominating) attractor of healthy acupuncture (palpatory painless) state – which is then altogether quantum-holographically projected on the lower EM quantum-holographic cellular level, thus changing the expression of genes [3]. In this context, homeopathy might be also categorized into quantum-informational bioresonant therapies, as (non)disolved homeopathic initial substance [10-12] with characteristic EM memory-attractor states (like any other substance, as demonstrated by muscle test of the Applied kineziology [13]), can interact with macroscopic quantum-sensory EM level of the acupuncture system/consciousness and imprint inthere its program of homeopathic correction.

On the other hand, in the context of quantum-informational meridian (psycho)therapies [3,14], via simultaneous effects of visualization of the treated (psychologically traumatic) problem and tapping/touching upon the selected acupuncture points, new boundary conditions are imposed in the energy-state space of the acupuncture system/consciousness, and memory attractor of the initial psychosomatic disorder becomes shallower and wider, with greater overlap and followed associative integration into memory attractor of normal (energy-dominating) ego-state. In this context, techniques of energy healing of the acupuncture system/consciousness [15], positively-visualizing meditation healing [16], and various psychotherapeutic techniques for recognition/integration of psychological conflicts and personality growth [17]) might be also categorized into quantum-informational therapies, via introspective emotional/ traumatic excitation with imposed new (psychologically healing) boundary conditions in the energy-state space of the acupuncture system/consciousness.

In the same context it is important to make half-a-year diagnostics and balansing of the acupuncture system, whose disbalanse presumably originates from the restituted patient’s mental loads from his non-reprogrammed mental transpersonal environment of the quantum-holographic collective consciousness [3] (as supported by the Tibetan pulse diagnostics, enabling precise diagnosis of psychosomatic disorders not only of the patient himself but also of his family members and enemies [18]).

This implies that memory attractors of quantum-holographic network of collective consciousness might be treated as psychosomatic collective disorders which represent generalized field-related quantum-holistic records (including inter-personal finally-reprogramable nonlocal loads, via hesychastic prayer or circular psychotherapies from all relevant meta-positions included in the problem [3]) – which might represent basis of quantum-informational medicine of collective consciousness.

So, on the basis of this quantum-holographic context, it might be said that three front lines of integrative psychosomatic medicine do exist [3]: (1) Spirituality and circular (psycho)therapies from all relevant meta-positions, with possibility of permanent erasing of mutual memory attractors on the level of collective consciousness; (2) Eastern (quantum)holistic medicine and non-circular (psycho)therapies, whose efforts temporary erase memory attractors on the level of acupuncture system/individual consciousness, and prevent or alleviate their somatization, as a consequence of the indolence on the first level; (3) Western symptomatic medicine, whose activities on the somatic level via immunology, pharmacology, biomedical diagnostics and surgery hinder or soothe somatized consequences of the carelessness on the first two levels. It should be stressed, that necessary activities on the second and third levels, with neglect of the first level, have a consequence of further transfer of memory attractors on the level of individual and collective consciousness in this and further generations, thus accumulating quantum-holographic loads which afterwards cause not only illnesses, but also interpersonal fights, wars, and other troubles.

Symposium “Quantum-Informational Medicine QIM 2011: Acupuncture-Based & Consciousness-Based Holistic Approaches & Techniques” provides fundamental quantum-informational framework for better understanding of the nature of psychosomatic diseases as well as limitations of the healing methods, which might help in developing strategies for psychosomatic integrative medicine in the 21st century.

The Editors are indebted to their institutions and numerous sponsors, as well as to members of QIM 2011 Program Commitee, Organizing Commitee, and Secretariat, for logistic support to QIM 2011. We also kindly acknowledge QIM 2011 Symposium plenary and oral speakers and QIM 2011 Workshop teachers for their reports on pioneer research and enthusiastic work in the emerging field of acupuncture-based & consciousness-based holistic medicine and all QIM 2011 Round Table Knowledge Federation Dialog Belgrade 2011 invited participants for their related critical consideration of partial and holistic oriented approaches to physics and engineering, medicine and biology, psychology and transpersonal phenomena, art and philosophy, society and religion.

References
1. http://www.issseem.org; V. N. Volchenko, Inevitability, reality and possibility of reaching subtle world, Consciousness and Physical Reality, Nos. 1-2 (1996), in Russian.
2. V. Stambolović (ed), Alternative Approaches to Health Improvement, ALCD, Belgrade, 2003, in Serbian.
3. www.dejanrakovicfund.org; D. Raković, Holistic quantum-holographic framework for psychosomatics, Med Data Rev, 3(2) (2011) 211-214, Invited paper; D. Raković, Integrative Biophysics, Quantum Medicine, and Quantum-Holographic Informatics: Psychosomatic-Cognitive Implications, IASC & IEPSP, Belgrade, 2009; D. Raković, A. Škokljev, D. Djordjević, Introduction to Quantum-Informational Medicine, With Basics of Quantum-Holographic Psychosomatics, Acupuncturology and Reflexotherapy, ECPD, Belgrade, 2009, in Serbian; D. Raković, Fundamentals of Biophysics, 3rd ed, IASC & IEFPG, Belgrade, 2008, in Serbian.
4. Group of authors, Anti-Stress Holistic Handbook, With Fundamentals of Acupuncture, Microwave Resonance Therapy, Relaxation Massage, Airoionotherapy, Autogenic Training, and Consciousness, IASC, Belgrade, 1999, in Serbian; Z. Jovanović-Ignjatić, Quantum-Holographic Medicine: Via Acupuncture and Microwave-resonance (Self)regulatory Mechanisms, Quanttes, Belgrade, 2010, in Serbian.
5. M. Peruš, Neuro-quantum parallelism in mind-brain and computers, Informatica 20 (1996) 173-183.
6. I. Cosic, The Resonant Recognition Model of Macromolecular Bioactivity: Theory and Applications, Birkhauser Verlag, Basel, 1997; G. Keković, D. Raković, B. Tošić, D. Davidović, I. Cosic, Quantum-mechanical foundations of Resonance Recognition Model, Acta Phys. Polon. A 17(5) (2010) 756-759.
7. K. Pribram, Languages of the Brain: Experimental Paradoxes and Principles in Neuropsychology, Brandon, New York, 1971; K. Pribram, Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, 1991.
8. S. P. Sit'ko, L. N. Mkrtchian, Introduction to Quantum Medicine, Pattern, Kiev, 1994; N. D. Devyatkov, O. Betskii (eds), Biological Aspects of Low Intensity Millimetre Waves, Seven Plus, Moscow, 1994; Yu. P. Potehina, Yu. A. Tkachenko, A.M. Kozhemyakin, Report on Clinical Evaluation for Apparatus EHF-IR Therapies Portable with Changeable Oscillators CEM TECH, CEM Corp, Nizhniy Novgorod, 2008.
9. Contemporary critical review of Western and Eastern technologies in energy-quantum-informational medicine can be found on the website: www.energy-medicine.info
10. B. Bellavite, A. Signorini, The Emerging Science of Homeopathy: Complexity, Biodynamics and exity, Biodynamics and Nanopharmacology,North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 2002; A. Krstić, Homeopathy and Health. Handbook on Self-Aid and Mutual Aid in Healing People, Mol, Belgrade, 2000, in Serbian; B. Todorović, Scientific Bases of Homeopathy: Bioinformatics and Nanopharmacology Prometej, Novi Sad, 2005, in Serbian.
11. R. Voll, Twenty years of electroacupuncture diagnosis in Germany. A progress report, Am. J Acup. 3(1) (1975) 7-17; R. Voll, Topographishe Lage der Messpunkte der Elektroakupunktur, Medizinich Literaturishe Verlagsgesellschaft MBH, Uelzen, 1976, in German.
12. A. V. Samohin, Yu. V. Gotovskiy, Electropuncture Diagnostics and Therapy after Voll, 5th ed, IMEDIS, Moscow, 2007, in Russian; M. Yu. Gotovskiy, Yu. F. Petrov, L. V. Chernecova, Bioresonant Therapy, IMEDIS, Moscow, 2008, in Russian.
13. W. Fishman, M. Grinims, Muscle Response Test, Richard Marek, New York, 1979.
14. R. J. Callahan, J. Callahan, Thought Field Therapy and Trauma: Treatment and Theory, Indian Wells, 1996; Ž. Mihajlović Slavinski, PEAT and Neutralization of Primeival Polarities, Belgrade, 2001.
15. W. Lee Rand, Reiki The Healing Touch, Vision, Southfield, 1998; E. Pearl, The Reconnection: Heal Others, Heal Yourself, Hay House, Carlsbad, 2001; V. Stibal, Theta Healing: Go Up and Seek God, Go Up and Work With God, THInK, Idaho Falls, 2006.
16. D. Chopra, Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine, Bantam, New York, 1989; M. Talbot, The Holographic Universe, Harper Collins, New York, 1991.
17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotherapy; S. Milenković, Values of Contemporary Psychotherapy, Narodna knjiga – Alfa, Belgrade, 1997, in Serbian; V. Jerotić, Individuation and (or) Deification, Ars Libri, Belgrade & National and University Library, Priština, 1998, in Serbian; C. Tart (ed), Transpersonal Psychologies, 2nd ed, Harper, San Francisco, 1992.
18. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Tibetan_medicine; S. Petrović, Tibetan Medicine, Narodna knjiga – Alfa, Belgrade, 2000, in Serbian.

Some interesting headings:
QUANTUM WILL BE MEDICINE OF TOMORROW AND WILL REVOLUTIONISE OUR LIVES!
A. Ya. Grabovschiner (Russia), J-L.Garillon (France)

MODERN VIEWS OF MECHANISMS & CLINICAL EFFECTS OF MM EM RADIATION
B. P. Grubnik (Ukraine) Abstract. Electromagnetic radiation of a millimeter range (ERHF) has versatile influence on a human body and, first of all, on processes of regulation and homeostasis maintenance. Realization of this influence is appreciably provided at the expense of subcellular, cellular mechanisms of regulation of functions and is caused by a number of features. One of the cores, its multilevel character, is: effects of influence are shown at all levels of the biological organization of an organism. In the mechanism of influence ERHF on a human body unique feature is possibility of its resonant interaction with endogenic ERHF. ERHF affects practically all known types of cages (nervous, muscular, reception, etc.) in modeling systems of any level of the organization of biological object. Mechanisms of this influence are defined by specificity of arising changes of functional parameters of a cage, its separate components caused by influence of the given kind of radiation at molecular and sub-molecular level of the organization of a cage. Possibility of updating under the influence of ERHF physics – chemical properties of a plasmatic membrane, activity of enzymes, ionic transport, permeability of cellular membranes, processes of aggregation of cages – are shown. The expressed influence of ERHF on electric activity of separate neuron is shown. Influence of Microwave Resonance Therapy (МRТ) on a sick organism promotes restoration of an aerobic way of recycling of glucose by cells. The extensive clinical and experimental material is testifying changes of the immune status of sick people and after influence of MRT the activity of immune cells is saved up. It is shown that the irradiation of blood of ulcer patients in vitro leads to restoration of the lowered metabolic activity of leukocytes, fagocytic activity of neutrofills, and monocytes. MRT normalizing impact on coagulation system is observed at diseases of cardiovascular system, in particular stenocardias. Usage of MRT at sick of hypertensive illness of I stage restores compensatory possibilities of cardiovascular system, with favorable normalizing impact on hemodynamics. MRT is effective at treatment of gastro duodenal ulcers, at neurologic patients, in complex treatment of patients with hyperplastic processes in a uterus, treatment of gynecologic diseases, in treatment orthopedic, diseases of an urological profile, at treatment of a chronic obstructive bronchitis, in treatment of oncological patients of SH-1Y stage, at sick of a cerebral atherosclerosis, in preventive maintenance and treatment of paresis, a gastro enteric path after operations, treatment of a children's cerebral paralysis. Primary effects concern the general for cages of an organism of the processes underlying ability to live – fabric breath, mechanisms of electronic carrying over. Secondary effects of display of influence of MRT on biological object are defined by hierarchy of levels of the organization peculiar for given biological object. At higher levels of the organization of metaphytes (organic system, level of a complete organism), effects of influence MRT cover the increasing range of displays. At these levels of the biological organization, the increasing role is played by normalization of broken regulation mechanisms – hormonal, nervous, immune, and restoration of the broken functions of separate tissue, bodies, systems of bodies, adaptation-compensatory organism systems. The analysis of results of the usage of MRT in clinical practice allows to conclude that efficiency of microwave resonance therapy is defined not only specifically on the concrete form of diseases, but also in depth of infringement adaptive-compensatory organism systems, convertibility of organic changes in bodies and fabrics. The extensive actual material testified to the various parties of the ERHF influence on biological objects is the basis for the further expansion of a range of searches of applied use of methods of MRT in medicine.

ON QUANTUM PHYSICS OF THE ALIVE AND QUANTUM MEDICINE
S. P. Sitko, I. Chervony (Ukraine) Abstract. Quantum Physics of the Alive is based on the definition of the Alive (in its distinction from the Dead-inanimate) as a fourth level of quantum organization of Nature (after nuclear, atomic and molecular levels). Self-consistent potential of each living object is formed in accordance with genome as a laser of mm-range wavelength. Such a notion concerning the Alive, grounded on theoretical considerations, clinical material and the direct experiments, allows us to cast a fresh glance on the fundamental problems of biology and not only on them…

CEM TECH MICROWAVE RESONANCE TECHNOLOGIES
Y. P. Potekhina, Y. A. Tkachenko (Russia)

ON-LINE DIAGNOSIS STATE OF A PATIENT IN TREATMENT BY METHODS OF QUANTUM MEDICINE
A. V. Ivanovskaya (Ukraine)

MICROWAVE RESONANCE THERAPY
Z. Jovanović-Ignjatić (Serbia)

THE ANALYSIS OF BIOLOGICAL SIGNALS AND GENETICALLY DETERMINED
FUNCTION OF AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM
B. Milovanović, V. Radivojević, S. Mutavdžin, B. Milovanović, T. Krajnović (Serbia) Abstract. It is very known fact that according to some new studies hypertension and resting heart rate are genetically determined. According to some studies heart rate variability is the constant related to type of autonomic pattern. Owing to this fact that function of autonomic nervous system is constant, the treatment of diseases could be evaluated using different groups related to type of dysfunction. This is the first but very important step in the development of general principles of personalised medicine. In order to reveal right type of autonomic disorder we used short and long term of HRV analysis with special Ansa Scan Software. A comprehensive study protocol was done including finger blood pressure variability (BPV) and heart rate variability (HRV) beat-to-beat analysis and nonlinear analysis, 24-hour Holter ECG monitoring with QT and HRV analysis, 24-hour blood pressure (BP) monitoring with systolic and diastolic BPV analysis, cardiovascular autonomic reflex tests, cold pressure test, and mental stress test. The patients were also divided into sympathetic and parasympathetic groups, depending on predominance in short term and long term spectral analysis. In the second level of treatment of patients, we used drugs which are in complementary relationship to the type of autonomic pattern.

HOMEOPATHY: ENERGY-INFORMATIONAL HOLISTIC VIEWPOINT
L. Trifunović (Serbia) Abstract. Homeopathy is a medical system founded by the German doctor and chemist Samuel Christian Hahnemann (1755 – 1843) who had profound insight into life, the human body, health and disease. Only recently modern scientific disciplines, such as quantum physics, have started to explain the discoveries to which Hahnemann came intuitively. Homeopathy, contrary to conventional western medicine, is based on the belief that humans are much more than their material physical body. Homeopathy recognizes levels of existence that are not perceivable by our five senses. The core of our being is made of energy, our vital force. It abides at the energy level, but manifests itself on three different levels. The most subtle level of its manifestation is the mental level where it manifests as thoughts, the next level is our emotional level where it manifests as emotions, and on the physical level its manifestation is material body. When the vital force is in its natural state of balance, its ideal state, it is manifested as mental, emotional and physical health. However, if our vital force is out of balance it is considered in homeopathy as disease. This disease will be expressed by our vital force as pathological symptoms on the mental, emotional and physical levels, extending the concept of disease that classical medicine upholds. For homeopathy disease is possible only at the energy level. Symptoms on the mental, emotional and physical level are only the external, visible manifestation of the disease. In homeopathy influences on the vital force that throw it out of balance are called miasms. Miasm is a word of Greek origin which means pollution, impurity, or stain. Hippocrates was the first to use word miasm to explain how diseases are spread by air, water, or other ways. If we treat a single case of pneumonia we can heal it as an acute illness without understanding of miasms. However, if it reoccurs with other illnesses of the respiratory tract, this means there is a tendency towards these diseases. Our aim is to address the tendency and we cannot heal it without the understanding of miasms. Miasms are pathological energy fields that influence the vital force and keep it out of balance. This causes a predisposition towards different kinds of diseases that occur repeatedly, or towards a chronic disease with various complications and the onset of low immunity. As miasms are energetic influences, they could be treated only by other energetic influences, which can be homeopathic remedies. The therapeutic effects of homeopathic remedies are not based on biochemical reactions as in classical medicine, but on the interaction of energies.

CHINESE CONCEPT OF FIVE PHASES (WU XING - 五行) IN THE LIGHT OF SYSTEMS SCIENCE
N. Mišić (Serbia) .... Therefore, we first tried to unify these concepts and then to bring them in connection with certain mathematical, physical and biological systems and models, with particular reference to the meridian system. This analysis enabled the comprehension of Five Phases as a hierarchical 3D model through the self-similarity symmetry, which is consistent with the observed fractal organization in living systems and with a holistic view of the human body, providing the support for Integrative Medicine.

QUANTUM-INFORMATIONAL MEDICINE AND BIORESONANCE TECHNOLOGY
R. Prelević (United Kingdom)

HARMONIZATION OF HUMAN BODY SYSTEM BY HARMONIZED EM RADIATION
WHICH EXCITED LONGITUDINAL MECHANICAL WAVES under 2m IN BIOMOLECULES
A. S. Tomić, G. Marjanović, R. Vojnić-Tunić, Dj. Koruga (Serbia) Abstract. The opto-magnetic method [1] is successful applicable to skin properties determination and description. We applied method on “bio-resonant massager”, device produced and applied to bio-medical purposes by Rudolf Vojnić-Tunić, specially adapted Tesla’s coil, working with 4 W power and impetus on frequency in range kHz. How works special camera and software of opto-magnetic device, we demonstrated on example of young man with skin problems, before and after application of Tesla’s coil massager. In these circumstances positive influence of harmonized electro-magnetic radiation in frequent band 880 Hz-125 MHz appears as source of longitudinal low energy mechanical waves in bio-molecules with under 2m, or wave length equal and shorter than human body length. Belong to holistic concept in medicine, it assume fact that human body works as system which presumption for function are harmonization of all subsystem into human body system. According to our previous theoretical investigation [2] we concluded that mechanism of influence to bio-molecules presents non-linear process known as maser effect.

MADU MAGNETOTHERAPY
D. Mandić, D. Đorđević, D. Cvetković, S. Kažić, J. Popović (Serbia)
and its therapies, in bone fractures, osteoneogenesis, rheumatoid artritis, angiogenesis, and neuroneogenesis.
Abstract. The Earth magnetism belongs to one of four natural central forces that have made significant contribution to survival and health preservation of all the life. The substitutional therapy of MADU new medical technology is based on application of two inventions acclaimed as patents and registered as medical devices. The MADU therapy is aknowledged as new health technology in 2007 by Ministry of Health, Republic of Serbia (No. 022-04-19/2006-07), and it includes the application of Trap for shell fragments (first patent) for displacement and evacuation of foreign ferrous remaining fragments, as well as MADU strip (second patent) with wide application field. The confirmed indications, based on experience in medical practice up to now, are: (i) Faster and more complete development of callus in bone fracture; (ii) Delivery of medicaments with ferromagnetic and paramagnetic properties; (iii) Non-invasive displacement and evacuation of ferrous foreign bodies; (iv) Preventive and curative with vein deformations; (v) Immobilization of thrombus for its faster rechanellization; (vi) More lavish oxygen delivery by blood into the areas of reduced micro-circulation; (vii) Reduced swelling in the area under the influence of directed deep magnetic field; (viii) Improved viscosity in the arterial and vein blood vessels; and (ix) Faster and improved regeneration of various tissues, especially cartilage. The subtle influence of permanent magnetic field increases and improves metabolic processes and thus stimulates regenerative processes. The processes of cartilage regeneration, angioneogenesis and neuroneogenesis are of great significance for the mankind. The ancient knowledge (as reflexology, acupuncture...) is very effectively used as the basis of opening gap junction channels - prainformative centers in the organisms. The knowledge accumulated throught centuries of human history is explained and scientificaly approved in 1980s. It was more thoroughly studied and presented in the PhD study about magnetic fields, including MADU (D. Djordjević, MD PhD, 2007/2008). The positive results are obtained in treating disorders of osteoarticular system (ISCD-10, M 00-M 99), as well as in treating disorders of peripheral vasscular system (ISCD-10, I 70-I 99). Both of these groups of common diseases, the most sucessfully treated, have huge social-economic and medical relevancy. The MADU therapy could be applied as additional therapy together with contemporary medical procedures. Having in mind the experience gathered through application of MADU and its effects on local and global level, indicational field is getting more and more wider while contraindications and precautions are narrowing down. Thus, this type of magnetotherapy belongs to the future.
bone fractures: Abstract. The human organism does not function solely on the basis of biological and biochemical cellular reactions, but humans are also electromagnetic beings. In cases of very slow healing, the complicated fractures were treated by MADU magnetotherapy with aim to improve the healing of the bone, as MADU field promotes and stimulate calcium ion impact in bone tissue, with very rich vascularization. The gap junction channels (GJCs) are special informational system in bones, which connect not only osteocytes but also all smooth muscle cells in blood vessels of lavishly vascularized bone tissue. The molecular mechanism of electromagnetic field (EMF) and magnetic field (MF) affect metabolism of bone cells in the course of fields’ interference with signal transduction processes, included in hormonal and transmitter, particularly, cytokine regulation of osteoblast function, especially their proliferation and differentiation. The MADU inhibition of IL-1 and TNF-α production disable multiplication of fibroblasts activated by them from a surrounding area, and thereby the replenishment of a defect. More rapid maturation of connective tissue is achieved by MADU, so that increase in osteoblasts activity and Ca2+ metabolism result in increase of minerals deposited into a bone matrix, not only at the surface, but also within a bone depth.

bone regeneration: The possibilities of regeneration of bone tissue through the use of static magnetic field (SMF) are great, especially when the SMF is oriented to North (N) magnetic pole face turned towards the skin. .... The research of the effects of SMF at various inductions of exposition of osteoblast calvary cells in culture have shown dose-dependent proliferation and growth of cells during the activation from static G1 phase to S phase, which increases synthesis of DNA and accelerates cell proliferation.

RA: MADU magnetic strips, which create magnetic deep unipolar field (shortened MADU) with penetration of 55 cm into human body. It was approved by the Ministry of Health of Serbia in 2007. The therapeutic effects include antinflammatory and analgetic effects of magnetic field, activation of enzymes (particularly mettaloenzymes), activation of K/Na pump which promotes shifting of pH value of treated cartilage towards more basic levels which in turn promotes regeneration of chondrocytes and osteocytes. Considering characteristics of magnetic water, continuous stimulation by MADU achieved long-lasting effects in patients with degenerative disease like coxarthrosis and gonarthrosis. ..... No side effects of MADU therapy have been noted. In conclusion, MADU method provides the state of renewed joint space in respect of cartilage and bone and their maintenance in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The process of reparation of the joint space with all the following benefits regarding pain and function, recommends this new non-invasive method as supplementary, with full respect of all scientific and therapeutic methods.

Angiogenesis: The MADU strip is based on MAgnetic Deep Unipolar oriented static magnetic field (SMF), using possibilities of reflexogenic therapy on humans. ... After 2.5 years the clinical examination showed that leg was vital, with normal skin temperature and the outpatient could walk. The leg was saved due to developed microcirculation, oxygenation through new-formed small blood vessels successfully providing vitality of the leg. In conclusion, the applied MADU strips with the guaranteed optimal magnetic field intensity lasting for 10 years, is providing long lasting protective activity in the area of the diseased blood vessels and poor tissue nutrition. The initiation of regenerative processes is performed due to known pathophysiology mechanisms changing acid reaction into alkaline, providing regenerative processes. This medical device is environment-friendly, the method is non-invasive, complement to modern medical procedures. No side effects are noticed.

Neuroregeneration: One or more magnets, in the form of a strip, are placed on the surface of the body on reflexogenic zones (RZ) and focused like a magnetophore on reflexogenic points (RP), with the north face turned towards the skin [North (N) pole or Negative pole (-)]. The first observations of regenerative processes in sensitive and motoric function of injured nerves were detected from 1992 to 1998 while we treated wounded people by Trap for shell fragments. It was scientifically proven that medium SMF of 1-1000 mT has influence on the various biological systems, including morphology, differentiation and/or proliferation of many types of cells. The experimental research has shown that cell migration, measured by the cell’s diffusion constant, depends on the exposition time and the kind of cells and does not depend on vertical or horizontal direction of applied SMF of 30-120 mT. In neural progenitor cells, cultivated under the SMF of 100 mT, exsist significant increase of expression of mRNA for a few types of proneural gen activators, such as Mash1, Math1 and Math3, together with decreased expression of mRNA for repressor type Hes5. The transitional increase of binding DNA nuclear transcription activation factor protein 1, formed from the members of Fos and Jun family in cultivated hyppocampal neurons of the rats, was found. The rats were under the SMF influence of 100 mT during15 min. The significant potenciation of Ca2+ influx mediated by N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors was shown, with decrease of expression microtubule-associated protein (MAP-2) neuronal marker throught the expression Ntan1 gen, which includes ubiquitin-proteasome proteolysis process, as so called N-end rule pathway in hyppocampal neurons cultivated under SMF's influence of 100 mT but without cell death. It was detected that influence of SMF causes neuro reactions, confirmed at the maturation of non-matured cells in a culture of neurons of rat's hyppocampus and achieved throught the modulation of expression specially NMDA receptor's subunits. It was proven that neurit sprouting of chicken's embrional ganglia is significantely increased in SMF of 22,5-90 mT. These discoveries give us a hope for the more efficient healing of many neurogical and psychiatric disorders and diseases.

PRAYER AND/OR PSYCHOTHERAPY
V. Jerotić (Serbia) In 21st century, there are numerous worth, less worth and worthless psychotherapeutic methods, at disposal of disordered psychical life of people. But, basically, both prayer and psychotherapy (as ways of self-knowing) are necessary for (both healthy and sick) people.

HEALTH & EXPERIENCE OF HIGHER STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS (UNIFIED FIELD)
Ž. Trišić (Serbia) Abstract. The identification of the unified field by modern physics is only the first glimpse of a new area of investigation that underlies all disciplines of knowledge, and which can be explored not only through objective science but through a new technology of consciousness (Transcendental Meditation, TM), based on capability of human mind to settle into a state of deep silence while remaining awake, and therein to experience a completely unified, simple, and unbounded state of awareness, called pure consciousness, which is quite distinct from our ordinary waking, sleeping or dreaming state of consciousness. This experience is not on the level of thinking, theoretical conjecture, or imagination, but on the level of direct experience. So, even though is a common belief that the unified field of physics is an objective reality of nature while consciousness is a subjective experience, and that the two belong therefore to different categories of existence (one is material another is mental and the two cannot be equated) – we see them as two different modes to approach same reality, unified field or pure consciousness. Each individual nervous system, when refined through practice of TM technique is an instrument through which Unified field becomes accessible for inquiry and investigation through direct experience. Thus, modern physics through its objective method of inquiry has glimpsed a unified field as underlying all of nature, source of order in nature, while by direct experiencing it via TM technique we get influence onto our physiology, which starts working in a more balanced and ordered way. So, we see that TM technique has an important practical application in the area of health. According to Ayurveda (traditional science of life and health) all sickness comes from imbalance. In terms of physiological functioning this means perfect integration and balance from the biochemical and molecular levels to the macroscopic, organismic level.

WESTERN MEDICINE & TRADITIONAL HEALING
I. Kononenko (Slovenija)

MAN AS A QUANTUM-WAVE PSYCHOSOMATIC SYSTEM
G. I. Brekhman (Israel, Russia) Abstract. The author considers the Man from a position of the theory of wave–particle duality of a matter. It has opened existence in a nature of ways of interaction and information interchange between genes, cells, persons, about which we did not suspect or knew a little. The concept of duality has allowed understanding the riches of the information contained in the man that has enabled to consider him as a psychosomatic system and to explain some features of thinking and behaviour of the people, sources of their talents and problems, and also feature of functioning in a society and relations with each other. In the certain measure the concept of duality gives an explanation of reasons of diseases, and gives interpretation to methods of treatment, which (despite of the efficiency) ascribe to alternative and do not admit by official medicine. Author describes the uterine myoma as a psychosomatic process, manifesting itself in ischemic uterus disease. He substantiated and used the holistic approach and nonstandard method of psychoelectroregulation in these patients which gave the long-term results.

BIOENERGY, BIOFIELD, AURA: ON THEIR NATURE AND PIP CAMERA MEASURING
Lj. Ristovski (Serbia) Abstract: There are a variety of doctrinal descriptions of the bioenergies and biofields in different AM systems, which are expressed in different terms and vocabularies, because their origins belong to the different culture traditions. This variety of doctrinal descriptions leads to the irreconcilable differences between the different AM systems, as well as between the majority of them and actual science. However, the supporters of some AM systems exert a trend to express the contents of theirs doctrines using the terms and vocabulary of actual science. In this way, they facilitates the beginning of a dialog with actual science, as well as the reaffirmation of many serious scientific investigations of the phenomena in alternative medicine, which are accomplished during last almost five decades on the periphery of the actual science. In the further, it will be considered the variations of AM doctrines which manifest an interest to establish a dialog with actual science by accepting the terms and vocabulary of actual science, independently on the manner by that the doctrine content is expressed. The main objective of this paper is to show that a small effort will help to achieve consensus on the terminology used in the AM doctrines with scientific terminology. This will help to terms with the same name means the same, although we cannot expect that it will obviously speed up the convergence of doctrine and scientific views about the AM phenomena. Nevertheless, this progress can be expected because the large difference is between felt and measured bioenergy, between seen and photographed. Therefore, the attention is devoted to experimental techniques that allow any type of detection or visualization of the subtle entities of alternative medicine (bienergy, biofield, aura). For reasons that will be later explained, particular attention will be devoted to the PIP (Polycontrast Interference Photography) imaging, which is the unique real time imaging technique. Certainly the most important result of the application of PIP imaging system is the visualization of the energy changes in the human aura, which may be due to bio-energetic, or any other AM therapeutic treatment. It should be noted that the PIP system provides information that enables qualitative analysis but not quantitative analysis of the bio-energetic phenomena. In addition, it is recommended as a diagnostic tool also. However this recommendation must be accepted very cautiously, as will be discussed later.

REIKI & SPIRITUALITY
M. Milenković, M. Mićović (Serbia) Abstract. Reiki is an ancient spiritual-energetic method of healing, usually considered to be Japanese, and it is applied along with methods of modern medicine in health care institutions around the world. For many years now Reiki has been considered to be No 1 method of self-help in the world. Reiki primarily helps with reduction of stress, with relaxation, and is also used for mobilizing/activating all defense mechanisms in the human body. It improves the efficiency of all bodily functions, and allows us to reach a state of harmony between the physical, mental and emotional levels of our being. The highly developed, non-standard approach to Reiki allows everyone to acquire selected techniques and use them successfully for self-help, without having to attend traditional training classes, usually required for the Reiki method. Combining of Reiki techniques with acupressure, with breathing and stretching exercises, as well as with mechanisms of the human reflexes and mental orientation, can allow everyone to find their own ways to prevent further development of various health problems, caused primarily by stress. The use of self-help to reduce stress, to relax, improve concentration and memory capacity, to improve one’s mood in general and increase the energy potential of the body, is necessary and easily applied in everyday life. Association Reiki of Serbia is founded in 2001 and has several hundreds members, actively f Serbia is founded in 2001 and has several hundreds members, actively participating in coninuously organized educations and seminars. In participating in coninuously organized educations and seminars. In 2008 Reiki was formally acknowledged by Committee for Regulation of Traditional Medicine, in Serbian Ministry of Health, as a method of improving general health of people. By establishing these regulations it was officialy enabled to introduce Reiki therapy into medical institutions in Serbia.

QUANTUM TRANSFORMATION
S. Simonovska (Austria) Abstract. Quantum Transformation is a practical application of the Two Points Method in the field of healing and life issues solving. Two Points Methods has its roots in the ancient Hawaiian spiritual technique of Huna, rediscovered independently by Dr. Richard Bartlet (Matrix Energetics) and Dr. Frank Kinslow (Quantum Entrainment), with a great contribution of Andrew Blake (QCT-Quantum Consciousness Transformation). Not only because it is easy, simple to use, and at the same time very effective, but also because of the possibility of combining it with other therapeutic and healing techniques, Two Points Method is spreading through Europe very quickly. When two distinct points on the body or aura get connected, Quantum waves are produced, initiating huge changes on all levels and in all areas of life. Quantum Waves initiation makes changes on a deepest level, altering our Matrix. The Matrix contains our deepest beliefs, in other words, fixed attitudes originated from individual consciousness and different life stages (the childhood, the prenatal period, the birth process, conception or inheritance - karma) and fixed attitudes derived from group or collective consciousness. Those subconscious beliefs are often opposed to our conscious beliefs and they are the main cause of our psychological and physical suffering, as well as many diseases. Faster transformation of subconscious beliefs can be achieved using Quantum Waves, which leads toward change of our reality. The essence of Quantum Transformation is pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is actually pure love. Quantum Transformation is a method that uses love energy for healing purposes. Quantum Transformation workshops, using quantum waves, meditation, music, movement and body work “teach us” through experience how to use the energy of love in healing and combining this method with other healing and energy based methods.

ABIKU PHENOMENON: SPIRITUAL ORIGIN AND TREATMENT OF SELF-DESTRUCTIVENESS
M. Tomšić Akengen (Slovenia) Abstract. The philosophy of Ifa with its origin in Africa, where it has been preserved to this very day by the people of Yoruba, contains the entire opus of understanding a human life, character, predestination, destiny and nature. One of the toughest challenges is how to treat (heal) someone, who is born with the energy of Abiku – born to die prematurely (born to experience premature death). Ifa considers the individual top priority, using all the knowledge and instruments it deals with making the individuals life good here and now, in this life. Everyone is born with some sort of predestination. It is not fate, because if something is fated, then the individual has no way of affecting that. But when something is predestinated, someone can realize that or not, because everyone is responsible for his own life. In life we have all that which we can call good luck: progress, longevity, health, luck… But good goes hand-in-hand with destructive energy, and if we wish to achieve the good, we have to neutralize the bad. We can classify destructive energy into four basic destructive elements: death, sickness, failure and confusion. When we consider a person who has the abiku syndrome, it means that these destructive energies are constantly stalking him and that he is under heavy influence in at least one area by some of these elements. When everything seems to go well, and suddenly it seems as if one of these energies got activated, and it gives out the impression of being out of the person’s control. Spiritually it is considered for people with this energy, that they have been heavily involved in a parallel spiritual world. It is considered that they have their own group in the parallel world, which constantly pulls the person back or make his life here unbearable, and make him wish to leave from here sooner.

ENTHEOGENIC SHAMANISM: ANTHROPOLOGY CATEGORY, TRANSPERSONAL DIMENSION OR PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC MODEL
Č. Hadži Nikolić (Serbia) Abstract. The most significant dimension of entheogenic shamanistic ritual, being an essence of therapeutic pracice in isolated groups of Amazonia, is that dimension which touches universal themes, from person’s identity to its place in cosmic scheme. This experience is described as transcending boarders of empirical reality, coming out the framework of profane existence and entering into realm of cosmic existence and meeting with most supreme principle. In psychology literature it is frequently called transpersonal experience, as being denoted a mystical experience in religious terminology. The question arises on characteristics of this experience (if it exists) in the framework of shamanistic concept, as according to many experts on shamanism it does not have this (mystical) component being exclusively oriented to practical purposes of healing. According to shamanistic practice in observed groups, these categories are not excluded mutually. On the contrary, they are complementary, with mystical or transpersonal experience in direct function of healing, if this healing is comprehended in the context of shamanistic concept of disease. As in this mystical experience a person is continuously returning back to his mystical trans-subjective roots and beginnings, a shamanistic return into myth past with myth scenes and symbols achieving significant relationship between a person and universe is completely reasonable. This transition from “here and now” into “there and then” means experience of transcending space and time limitations, i.e. coming out form narrow profane human framework and entering into realm of transpersonal experiences. In this context a shamanistic “road” which basically is searching for absolute, undoubtedly does have elements of mystical. Mystical, however, does not exclude practical goals of this road. On the contrary, mystical or let us call it transpersonal or integrative experience, is complementary in respect to these goals. In other words, this experience is in direct function of shamanistic action, in first place of healing.

RECONNECTION: EXAMPLE OF INCREASED REGENERATION OF BONE FRACTURES & MUSCLE DAMAGES
D. Nešić (Serbia)

BIOLOGICAL DECODING
A. Frauenkron-Hoffmann (Luxemburg), D. Portić (Serbia) Abstract. Sometimes in past, it has been thought that physical and psychical changes or illness is a result of damnation, or evil faith which affects us from external illness causes. Today we have a rather different view on that particular problem. With latest scientific discoveries it has been proven that sickness is a direct response on stressful situations, which in that given moment can’t be processed on mental or emotional level. We do not become ill by coincidence, illness always has a direct link with things going on in our life. If it comes to resolving the problem, we do not get ill, if not, it becomes biological stress (stress of direct life endangerment) which can be an illness generator apropos symptom on physical level. Illness or dysfunction of organism is influenced by very precise biological laws. Two-phased progression of every illness can be traced (Dr. Hamer): symphathicotony and vagothony. This knowledge serves us in apprising direct course of illness (why this illness and not any other one), as it shows a logical flow on emotional, mental and physical level. Our behavioural patterns have crucial part in shaping our way of responding on stressful situation (just that and not any other way). When in stressful situation, our brain begins searching for every kind of data, information and programs which could bring to its solution. In that moment brain chooses the best possible reaction, and influenced by experience - best behavioural pattern, having only one aim and that is to empower further existence. Our brain memorises primarily three types of data which it uses in stressful situations (Useful Biological Program): (i) all experiences and circumstances since birth to this very moment, followed by emotions and perceptions; (ii) all that we have experienced before we were born, since the moment of conception, even our moment of birth are completely integrated in our system; (iii) everything that our ancestors have experienced is also available to our brain. Decoding can be established by endeavouring toward two directions. First course is establishing and explaining crucial cause of stressful situation, therefore it is of at most importance to take precautions against objective circumstances being the trigger for genesis of a disease, but emotional feeling of the individual itself, so as which behavioural pattern will occur in certain stressful situation (different person react differently on the same kind of stress). Second course is releasing old behavioural patterns and gaining new mental pictures which awake new emotions annulling the old ones at the same time. Images from the past are always the cause of our illness. If we could manage to transform our mental images and to them related emotions, we could live healthier in future. Often just the realisation that there is a choice is enough: Stay devoted to old pattern (which in some cases can represent death) or establish new ones. We are not able to become new people, but we can learn how to control old mechanisms which made are ill in the first place!

THERMOVISUAL MONITORING OF YOGA NIDRA PRACTICE
D. Nikolovski, Z. Stević (Serbia)

SKIN CONDUCTANCE PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF NOVEL HOLISTIC TRANSPERSONAL DIAGNOSTICS AND HEALING
and
EEG PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF NOVEL HOLISTIC
TRANSPERSONAL DIAGNOSTICS AND HEALING
B. Bedričić, M. Stokić, Z. Milosavljević, D. Milovanović, D. Raković, M. Sovilj, S. Maksimović (Srbija)

CONTRIBUTION OF ANOMALOUS INTENSITIES OF ELECTROMAGNETIC AND MAGNETIC FIELDS IN ETIOPATOGENESIS OF MENTAL DISORDERS AND DISEASES
N. Trifunović, D. Jevdić, A. Jevdić, K. Jevdić (Serbia) Abstract. The aim of this paper is to consider contribution of anomalous intensities of electromagnetic and magnetic fields in etiopatogenesis of mental disorders and diseases. This research has been applying in past 20 years, with objective geophysical evaluation by proton magnetometer produced in USA and geological compass "Brunton". In this period we have examined a couple of hundreds patients with different type of mental disorders (sy anx-depressivum, depression, schizophrenia) both sex and all ages. We applied BPRS scale for sy anx-depressivum, Hamilton scale for depression, and PANSS scale for schizophrenia. Hereby we present several case studies. Results are excellent after the patients spent time in spaces with natural values of EM-M fields. During examination patients were receiving regular medicine (pharmacotherapy). Finally, we will present theoretical model for influence of geomagnetic field and cosmic radiation on the biological evolution.

CONTRIBUTION OF ANOMALOUS INCREASE OF MAGNETIC FIELD IN ETIOPATOGENESIS OF CARDIAC-VASCULAR DISEASES
N. Trifunović, D. Jevdić, A. Jevdić, K. Jevdić (Serbia)

CONTRIBUTION OF ANOMALOUS INTENSITIES OF ELECTROMAGNETIC AND MAGNETIC FIELDS IN ETIOPATOGENESIS OF MALIGNANT DISEASES
N. Trifunović (Serbia)

SIXTY: „NUMBERS ARE LETTERS BY WHICH THE UNIVERSE IS BUILT“
CLASSICAL-QUANTUM AND INFORMATION PHYSICS APPROACH TO LIFE AND MEDICINE
Dj. Koruga (Serbia) Abstract. In this paper serendipity event is presented, which highlights Galileo’s number importance: numbers are letters by which the Universe is built. In our case the simulative effect of the number sixty importance comes from contemporary science: nanotechnology of carbon materials with sixty atoms and molecular structure of clathrin in our brain. However, we found out that roots of number sixty lie hidden in thought of ancient civilization. Moreover, in some way sixty is the part of light (c=lambda x v) as ratio of spatio-temporal unity through wavelength ( in nm) and frequency (v in THz). If we use model of light, of both classical and quantum properties, as model of an existence (life) – then embryogenesis (as the primary quantum process) presents information processing which makes set up of events (with different probabilities) for a life after birth. Which one of these events will happen depends on probability of events in classical information processing during life. Classical and quantum probabilities are complements and compatible to each other. In everyday life this complex manifestation is given as our behavior based on interaction of real-imaginary and rational-irrational pairs dynamics (logic square of our fingerprint).

THE UNIVERSAL CODE AS A REALITY OF HOLISM
M. M. Rakočević (Serbia)... possible asspects of a universal code attatched to human mind, the reality of holism...

ONTOGENETIC AND PSYCHOGENETIC INSIGHT INTO THE TRADITIONAL CHAKRAS DOCTRINE
Lj. M. Ristovski (Serbia),,G. S. Davidović-Ristovski (Serbia) Abstract. As it should be expected, the doctrinal theories of traditional medicine obviously belong to the domain of metascience (metaphysics). It means that they are based on revealed truths, which are necessarily expressed by an symbolic and metaphoric language. On the other hand, scientific theories are based on perceived truths, which are expressed by the language, which necessarily excludes the metaphors and symbols. Therefore, symbolic statements, as well as revealed truth, per definitionem cannot be expressed in a rational way, i.e. metascientific content can not be fully expressed in a scientific manner. The aim of this paper is not to translate the traditional (metaphysical) Chakras doctrine into the language of science, but to point out that in that teaching exist the contents which can be scientific interpretated. Namely, Chakras teaching, could survive for so long, only because the practice findings supports it. The traditional medicine practice can not be always explained in a scientific way, but it can not be completely ignored, if they have survived for centuries and millennia, as it is case with Chakras teaching. Specifically, as it will be pointed in this paper, the scientific knowledge about the human ontogenesis and psychhogenesis, can be unambiguously associated with the empirically established findings, which are implicitly included in the Chakras teaching. In addition, based on this correspondence, it is possible to come up to the concept of a psychogenetic explanation of (so called) opening and balancing of chakras. Finally, there are serious indications that the process of opening the chakras can be closely linked to psychiatric regression analysis.

REFLEXOLOGY
D. Djordjević (Serbia), D. Mandić (Serbia) Abstract. Reflexology is a science dealing with mechanisms of origin, development and acting of every kind of reflexes on the all levels of ontophylogenesis. It is interdisciplinary branch of biology, which has its subject, branches, sub-branches, principles, conditions and mechanisms. The subject of reflexology is research on all levels of ontophylogenesis: principles of functioning, mechanisms of origin, development and acting, as well as influence of all kinds of reflexes from the simplest to the most complex. Basic fields of reflexology are: medical reflexology, dentristry (dental) reflexology, veterinary reflexology, animal (zoo) reflexology, and fitoreflexology. Basic branches of reflexology are: reflexodiagnostics, reflexotherapy, reflexoprophylaxis, and reflexoergonomics. Basic methods of reflexology are: physioreflexology, hemioreflexology, and bioreflexology. Basic principles of reflexology are: holographic or quantum-holographic [Tao (holistic) conception or conception of unique wholeness], circulation of energy [meridian’s (Jing-Luo) conception or conception of acupuncture channels (reflexogenic meridians)], ontophylogenic (Haeckel’s law), rhythmic functioning, self-regulation of the body systems, reverberation links (energetics and other influences), action-reaction, reflexogenic aferentation (conditional-unconditional reflex)... In Western medicine, reflexology is a treatment modality which employs only manual pressure to specific areas of the body, usually the feet and the hands, which are thought to correspond to internal organs, in order to generate positive health effects. However, in Eastern medicine and nowadays appearing Integrative medicine, reflexology is an application of any treatment modality on reflexogenic zones, reflexogenic points or reflexogenic meridians (e.g. digitopressure, acupressure, acupuncture, laseropuncture, magnetopuncture, magnetic hammer, moxibustion, cupping, etc.). In this holistic framework, each organism is considered as (quantum-holographic) unique wholeness whose health status is manifested by reflexogenic (acupuncture) zones and their (acupuncture) points, linked in pathes of reflexogenic (acupuncture) meridians. Reflexogenic zones are exteroceptive projections of internal organs on the skin (head, nose, ears, palms, foots), mucous membrane (endonasal, gums, tongue) and iris. Reflexogenic points are locations in which is occuring energy exchange (transformation) with external environment according to the principle of functioning of "body channels" or reflexogenic meridians. Through reflexogenic points as mirrors of the organ status or some individual function, one can regulate disturbed energetic equilibrium between some of organs and body parts, also between wholeness of organism as mikrocosmos and its environment, macrocosmos. Morphofunctional basis of reflexogenic zones, points and meridians is ontophylogenic linkeage of internal organs and all sistems in organisms with the most ancient energy-informational system, which is composed of the gap junction channels network.

THE ANALYSIS OF BIOLOGICAL SIGNALS AND GENETICALLY DETERMINED
FUNCTION OF AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM
B. Milovanović, V. Radivojević, S. Mutavdžin, B. Milovanović, T. Krajnović (Serbia)

NEW NANOTECHNOLOGIES FOR BRAIN STIMULATION AND IMAGING
G. Vitaliano (USA), F. Vitaliano (USA)

CONSCIOUSNESS-BASED HOLISTIC ORIENTED APPROACHES TO PSYCHOTHERAPY
S. Milenković (Serbia) Abstract. Discussed here is creative challenge faced by the new profession of psychotherapy in a new millenium. Creation of consciousness-based holistic spiritual/transpersonal psychotherapy without ego is that challenge. It means basically the transformation of consciousness, of the inner feeling of one’s own existence, as well as the release of the individual form all kinds of conditioning imposed upon one’s by society. It’s characterised by transformation, self-transcendence, and expanded consciousness in which treatment is targeted primarily to the spiritual/transpersonal dimension.

SCIENCE AND BODY PSYNTESIS HOLISTIC APPROACHES.
BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY AND TE-PSYNTESIS
Lj. Klisić (Serbia), A. Djordjević (Serbia) et al
Abstract. Body-Psychotherapy is a distinct branch of Psychotherapy, well within the main body of Psychotherapy, which has a holistic theoretical position. It involves a different and explicit theory of mind-body functioning which takes into account the complexity of the intersections and interactions between the body and the mind. The common underlying assumption is that the body is the whole person and there is a functional unity between mind and body. Directly or indirectly the body-psychotherapist works with the person as an essential embodiment of mental, emotional, social and spiritual life. He/she encourages both internal self-regulative processes and the accurate perception of external reality. Through his/her work, the body-psychotherapist makes it possible for alienated aspects of the person to become conscious, acknowledged and integrated parts of the self. In order to facilitate this transition from alienation to wholeness, the body-psychotherapist works with signs indicating vegetative flow in the organism, muscular hypertension and hypotension, energetic blockage, energetic integration, pulsation and stages of increasing and natural self regulative functioning. And the phenomena of psychodynamic processes of transference, counter- transference, projection, defensive regression, creative regression and various kinds of resistance. Almost one century ago Wilhelm Reich introduced work with self regulative processes and with cosmic superimposition. We are continuing his work here more than 3 decades, within TePsyntesis - Serbian Training School of Body Psychotherapy, founded by Prof. Dr. Ljiljana Klisic in 1976, in Belgrade, Serbia, ex-Yugoslavia. It has all characteristics of Body Psychotherapy schools, but TePsyntesis has also evolved from thirty years of research by Dr. Klisic into drives development and relationship between life force and consciousness, and it has trained more than 200 professionals. TePsyntesis offers also a new meta-theory of drives development: aggression and sexuality. In TePsyntesis we are studying and researching evolution of the basic human instinctual drives: (i) Instinct for self-preservation (aggression), (ii) Instinct for procreation of the species (sexuality). Only in unity of mind and body that opens up a suppressed spiritual dimension, we can approach the whole scope of evolution: (i) Evolution of primitive aggression and destruction towards mature power integrated with developed value system to non-dual power, (ii) Evolution of primitive sexuality towards Bliss and supreme Joy.

MAN AS A QUANTUM-WAVE PSYCHOSOMATIC SYSTEM
Grigori I. Brekhman. Abstract. The author considers the Man from a position of the theory of wave–particle duality of a matter. It has opened existence in a nature of ways of interaction and information interchange between genes, cells, persons, about which we did not suspect or knew a little. The concept of duality has allowed understanding the riches of the information contained in the man that has enabled to consider him as a psychosomatic system and to explain some features of thinking and behaviour of the people, sources of their talents and problems, and also feature of functioning in a society and relations with each other. In the certain measure the concept of duality gives an explanation of reasons of diseases, and gives interpretation to methods of treatment, which (despite of the efficiency) ascribe to alternative and do not admit by official medicine. Author describes the uterine myoma as a psychosomatic process, manifesting itself in ischemic uterus disease. He substantiated and used the holistic approach and nonstandard method of psychoelectroregulation in these patients which gave the long-term results.

Kea's lost thread. My inquiry.

2011-12-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

Mitchell Porters blog 'The Lost Thread, Notes from the work of Marni Sheppeard' from a deleted thread at PhysicsForums.com, is discussing Sheppeard’s work. I have some years been following her blog and her difficulties. Sometimes I have felt sorry for her, sometimes frustrated, sometimes even angry. Those feelings are mutual, I think. She is a very 'unorthodox' person with an equally unorthodox theory or hypothesis. She claims everything must be done from scratch, everything must be created again, due to errors and misinterpretations in the past. Mitchell Porter asked me to write about my view of Keas science here, because I am an amateur. He said he would comment here, not at the thread. That is the reason for this post. First the background. This is only from recorded communications, not personal. Maybe I must point it out.

I have many times tried to have her speaking, in vain. Guess I am a bit lazy. Also that my interpretations as a layman cannot be so exact.

On Galaxyzoo she said oct.1.11:
Ulla's arrogance is mind boggling. This needs to be noted, because she is misleading people about the physics. She doesn't know the first thing about mathematics, let alone physics, and she thinks she can tell me about physics just because she reads Matti's blog. Ulla, you don't understand one paragraph of any of my papers, and you shouldn't believe everything the Dudes say about women in physics. I am always, always wrong, and behind the times, and stupid, and so on and so on and so on. You let your neurotypical groupie brain cloud your judgement. If you really cared about the science, you would spend more time studying elementary physics.

Dark Matter was first studied around 80 years ago. All theoretical physicists have been thinking about it since then. Mirror dark matter is one of the oldest ideas, and it is most certainly not Matti's own. In Physics, the details matter. Airy fairy tales don't mean shit.

Oops! Whom is she talking of? Me? It is pathetic, I am shy. The kindest person on Earth? Have I the right to talk to HER, sitting in the physics heaven? This only because I asked about dark matter, and said it could not be only from neutrinos. I think I made it clear I am no expert, so I would not mislead anybody. And Matti dislike mirror-talk (technicolor). My comment leading to this outburst:
I have thought of what kind of signal light is. It is entropy. This entropy seems to come from annihilation, and some say neutrino can act as a Dirac point. Light speed is a property of space in vacuum, not a function of something that travels through it.. Light creates negentropy (noise) in form of em-waves, and takes itself the same form (oscillate as quanta), because it is the surroundings. Only in this surroundings c=1?. This follows the uncertainty too?
This em-force is just one force, but it creates the entanglement and the macroscopic tensions; microscopic tensions are made of gluons, and those make up most of our gravity. Gravity is 'long-term memory' of Universe, and hence also entanglement ("sensors")? Kea has the non-locality there? The entanglement must be there in order to have reactions.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.3357 It has long been known that photon bremsstrahlung can lift helicity suppressions, also from W and Z-bosons. it has been proposed the excess electrons and positrons are not due to conventional astrophysics process, but arise instead from dark matter annihilation or decay
http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2441,2010 flavor sensitivity

Nice to see that Kea finally has realized the dark matter scenario. But solely leptonic DM cannot be the whole truth. The whole DM-hierarchy nust be involved, because DM is also ordinary matter [over 95% of all matter is baryonic, quarks], but invisible to us. It also has 4D? And she has the prime field/world there. Why must she and Matti Pitkänen be so dam stubborn so they cannot even talk to each other. Sic!

I KNOW I am long from any "expert" on this, but still I can have questions and opinions. I have followed Keas blog in many years now, with bigger and lesser interest. She is one of few who knows what she talks about, but it is so hard to follow without math skills.

On a question I added: There are no facts in this story. This view follow the astrophysical view, and also TGD. Kea is coming to it? It is wrong to think DM would be some WIMPs or other exotic particle solely.

Graham Dungworth supported me. With many words as usual.
Ulla's conclusion is that the whole DM hierarchy is involved and Kiske valid response is whether that means that DM as ordinary matter is fact.

Many on the forum are aware of the total energy composition of the universe when expressed as approximately 4.5% normal matter, 20.5% dark matter(DM)and ~75%dark energy(DE). It matters little whether there is presently 73% DE from say WMAP. It is essentially a book keeping exercise. As we go into the future, forget reference frames, as the universe ages and remorseless expansion ensues by the time that the system doubles in size, the matter density drops as the cube of the expansion size. Thus a doubling of size leads to an eight fold reduction of matter density. The DE fraction is generated at constant density so when the universe is 8 fold greater in volume the matter fraction , normal matter and DM matter will represent ca. 3% and DE ~97% of the total energy composition. When the universe was young DE caused by the expansion of space was negligeable, as it ages the DE/matter ratio increases. After another doubling of size that is model dependent upon the Hubble flow the time factor varies; it could be ca. 40 billion years before the current universe has doubled in size. Again, because distant supernova were reported to be dimmer than predicted it would appear that the universe is now accelerating its expansion and that doubling time is decreasing.

All we know of physics concerns that 4.5% fraction of normal or ordinary matter. Stars and ourselves are constructed from it; as atoms, the elements we know of. Let's not quibble about ionised states and plasmas. All these atoms are made from more fundemental particles; protons , neutrons and electrons that include the latter's lepton cousin the neutrino. At a deeper description, the protons are built from quarks, the u and d types you are familiar with. There are a total of three copies of normal matter and these include higher energy forms of these basic building blocks. The second incorporates strange and charmed quarks and these are associated with different leptons the muon rather than the electron electron, the former is much more massive ca. 206 fold than the electron mass. Basically, you buy the whole package and the hierarchy of normal matter according to the particle physicists incorporates forty two 42 of these particles and the force particles by which they interact. This is no joke. When Doug Adams realised the significance of the numerosity of this package, you may haggle whether it's 36 or otherwise, but for him it was the forever immortalised secret of the universe; the secret of that 4.5% matter mass fraction although he never lived to know what the composition was.

The physicists have to satiate a large number of conservation laws within the SM. It is inconceivable to think of a universe constructed of say photons only; or of electrons only. At the most basic level, when a proton changes or transforms to a neutron, in standard nuclear fusion or in a supernova explosion, electric charge conservation necessitates that a positron is formed but this violates lepton conservation number so another particle must exist to conserve what a chemist would call stoichiometric balance, and that particle is the uncharged lepton or neutrino. You might quibble and say the neutrino is not a building blockand plays no role in atoms. You are taught that electrons have attributes or charges. First there is the mass charge. Electrons also have rest mass and electric charge and that they "spin", one of the two types of angular momentum. Additionally, conservation laws crop up that require they have what is called a further spin type or weak isospin. I've discussed these niceties before.
What Ulla alludes to is the whole hierarchy. Hierarchy has is a religious meaning. It is a priestly word. You have to accept the creed as a whole. One cannot pick and choose. Most physicists might object about this useage. However, they are left with one conservation law called parity that they cannot ignore. As a consequence they accept that if parity is conserveed in this universe, and it blatantly is not, then there must be areas where forms of antimatter exist- very doubtful-or that parity is conserved elsewhere in a multiverse. They would never like to admit that our universe just happens to be cack handed. It could have been left or right handed, pure chance decided the route that was taken. Whether you are religious or not swallowing the whole creed is difficult. It's impossible to avoid and yet we are discussing a 4.5% component. What about the rest? Unfortunately, this forum doesn't have the terabytes available to pursue an exhaustive discussion and neither would the whole planet were it restructured as a giant processor of information.

Ulla from a biology background hits us with a great truth. She accepts the creed. There must be other parity stuff around but where. All that other kind we know of is DM. There are many candidates for DM, the fashionable WIMPS for instance, but these don't address the parity problem but do admit different mass charges in supersymmetry extensions to the SM (Standard Model). In nature species carry around various attributes that are continually used. They don't carry useless spare baggage that would reduce their chances of survival. By the time molecular evolution evolved they all agreed to adopt the left handed chiral stuff, at least here on Earth. But that may not be the case elsewhere. Kiske then asks " Is the implication that DM is ordinary matter". The answer is yes but it may have differing mass charges and opposite parity or mirror chirality.
The preliminary Minos results was staggering news for physicists. It implied new matter of a type they never imagined and a problem that would hopefully go away.
If there are new neutrino types they would have to buy a more complicated hierarchy or creed, new baryons, new hadrons etc. After all supersymm or SUSY is long on doubling the hierarchy, many accept that and many don't; there's a reformation of creed going on. DM is nonbaryonic. That's burnt into the memory cells of most readers. If the new neutrino types exist that doesn't mean that DM is soley neutrinos, it means that there is a full hierarchy present of another or other or allo form of normal matter. An amazing coincidence of these predicted masses revels that such matter annihilations would give rise to a background radiationin the universe that is happening now and is not some relic radiation from a past that had a beginning, a creation event; the first line of the creed. All religions have a creed, several lines worth. Marni, Ulla and myself may have some differences but we agree on much as we rewrite the first lines of the beginning of a creation. We are not writing a new creed or hierarchy for matter of all types. We are addressing only that first single line where we conceive of a cold dark , stark and pallid place that never had an origin , that just existed timelessly as an ensemble of photons and neutrinos that was on the move, of a universe we know of yet to be created.

I continued:
In that way the DM could basically be only leptonic, if quarks are made from leptons. Neutrons can interact, maybe also neutrinos, I don't know. Photons can, which maybe is an indication of the quark compositeness. This is maybe the color problem of the strong force? About this we know almost nothing yet. And what we know talk against this picture. Leptons and baryons are conserved separately? This make also the conservation laws questionable.

The neutrino problem is OUTSIDE GR and SR, so Einstein may rest in piece. We have only seen a glimpse of a bigger frame (of entanglement?) as Wilczek said. First we must see if the FTL result hold. There is physics of uncertainty that say it may hold. Remember, they have thought of this in many years now, and concluded it was most honest to publish it. Very few got afraid and withdrew their names.

Also On viXra blog and on her blog we have had disputes. I asked Matti about his view on his blog.

ThePeSla said... The algebra of the sub-manifolds is in the cracks of the limits of our total standard theories and in the low dimensions, as Kea points also also, there is a Pythagorean relation- for me the 6 inside that triality triangle thus 24 is the hidden subspaces tangled or not.

Only in planes we have of course enumeration in quadratic time so to speak. These of course are in the cracks also as such early simple ideas as 24 dimensional lattices. But the reverse compliments and need for so many zeros in the assumed one dimensionality of a p-adic number as if the decimal reversed (and for some reason the composites dismissed as if primes can casually be taken or added to or subtracted from some power of 2 the even one) is an essential idea that tends to shift the ground, that is becomes a wider universe and its forces.

Matti: To me this talk of Kea about 24-D lattices, magic matrices, and Koide mass formula does not give much. I am simply unable to comprehend what is the point and big picture. In politically incorrect mood I would call it numerology;-).

I have heard about the numerology also from others, comparing to Eddington. Is her work just numerology?

I said...Well, if you don't understand Kea, how would I then? I have the same feeling, that her cosmology fails. But she uses the same numbers, the same structure as everyone else, how can then her construction need another type of Universe? Also her claim that neutrinos, that are non-interactive, make up the interactive DM (which is invisible ordinary matter in the cosmology of today) seems odd. That would mean that leptons are building stones for fermions [should be baryons] (3-quarks), and that we think is wrong. Quarks have the triality seen in her figures, though, but when she use them for neutrinos????

And why cannot she explain this in a coarse manner? I really don't understand her. She spit out harsch text, but when she meets a simple question she gets silent. Her 24-figure inside the triangle is fascinating, but then she refers to Pythagoras!!!! Is she a nut? I am astonished. Kea, if you read this, start talking.

I would rather think that neutrinos are in the non-Euclidean space (= outside GR) with a very small interaction with matter (GR). How would that interaction be seen in space with all the cosmic rays? And how do they interact with light? Orwen raid they pull out light from vacuum, but how? Annihilation is the opposite process? Can neutrinos be made interactive through a change of spin?

Matrices tells nothing at all of these circumstances. Remember that Kea mostly talk of abstract (= virtual, DM) braidings, and there is reason to suspect she travels at deep water. There is the entanglement, some kind of pressure, or heat, as environment etc. Is there any real 'structure' at all to do all those matrices with? Or are there just a quantum field as a 'soup' of numbers. Environment? So in fact she plays God. I would want to know what she thinks about this. No fairy fields, but she works in the fairy field? I have asked her many times, but as long as I cannot answer these questions her figures are just curiosa. And she wonders why nobody uses her works?

ThePeSla said... Ulla, Ulla,
I do not understand what you have against Pythagoras (and for that matter Kea's take on things). No one uses Kea's advancing work because they simply do not get it.

I answered: I have absolutely nothing against Pythagoras. He was a genious. I reacted on Keas way to refer to him as some kind of great insight. As if she was not aware of what she was doing?

No one understand her work, so why doesn't she write about her wiev. I want her 'Higgs mechanism' even if she has no fairy fields she have something instead. I want her cosmology, when she says she will make everything new, just a drawing is enough. Her matrices are exactly what you say, but you forget she works on the negative side of reality, abstract geometry (I wonder how it looks like, because I doubt it can have any matrices). Antimatter is annihilated, so those matrices must be very otherwise. The only reasonable thing she can use the matrices for is DM, but she says it is not there. She claims leptons (neutrinos) make up the 3-quarks. I have not seen any model for how she makes the bridge between leptons and quarks (the triality is not enough). She talks of l-adic braids but cannot get the unification, although Matti has done it for p-adic hadrons. I suppose you can read what I wrote.

I have absolutely nothing against Keas as person, on the contrary I wanted to help her. She reacted negatively when I tried to have her make peace with Matti, after their controversy. She should have defended her ideas, that's how this world works. You cannot sit like a child and spit out ugly words when someone asks something, even if it is just a stupid biologist.

I have quarrelled at Matti too over this stupidity, so the situation is quit. It doesn't matter if Kea says she owns something. It is her statement and future will tell. If there are two controversial scientists so near each other as Kea and Matti, it is very idiotic they cannot talk to each other because of that small controversy.

Maybe I am impatient, but I have followed her so long, and I waited she would come up with something now when the superluminal neutrinos are actual, but instead she start everything all over again. More than anything I want to give her a kick :) to get further.

Zero positive or zero negative, what is that? What exactly is zero? What is a string in no dimension? Words, words...

Orwin: Kea swims in the New Wave of category theory, which is good at the analogies the Medievals loved. But that's proper to language/Logos, not Nous, and hence the Romance gender-typing.

The New Wave take on a kind of computational proceduralism, as if to upgrade MATLAB for AI. Matti's with the new graphene hardware, in physics. But dialogue remains possible on Ulla's question of signals.

Matti : Dear Ulla, it is difficult for a layperson to see what is (or what is not) behind scientific terms and formulas.

Kea and me could not be farther from each other. Really. The only thing in common that we both have the label of crackpot but that's all.

Just look our ways of writing. I always give sequences of arguments and do analysis. Represents counter arguments and objections.

Kea gives some standard math formulas found from some source and not a slightest hint how this numerology might relate to her theory or physics in general.

I said... Ye, Matti, This is not my business in any way. I just get so frustrated when I read her small texts, where she swims on the same place year after year. When I write something to her she gets silent, and delete my comments.

And this PeSla is very successful in that too, of some reason. I must think thoroughly on why. I mean, this is your blog, and I cannot come here and chritizise your commenters. You know, my harsch tongue...

Orwin: To me the best one can expect of New Wave math is to incorporate fuzzy logic, which is better than assuming classical probabilities when approaching quantum theory. Here the philosopher to watch is Florentin Samandarache - he's like the guru of viXra. But ethnocentric, like Derrida.

Higher dimensions were known in the ancient world - Otherworld of the Celts; the higher self as 5th dimension; animal magnetism. But to piece together the evidence is very hard.

The 1/r distribution: the smaller a particle, the more it scatters: the length-scale of a Feynman diagram. So the soft microwave background is the scatter-grain of reality.

The hard part is to realize that reality acts through such appearances: special relativity, dressed charges, scattered signals. The appearance/essence distinction is not causal! Take mathematical form as an essence and you miss that!

Then I compared to Mattis theory that also has been taken for numerology.

Dear Ulla,

you have managed to monumentally misunderstand me if you think that I am some kind of numerologist. God grief! I cannot imagine anything more disgusting than random numerical considerations. Numbers predicted by TGD are the outcome of a refined conceptual models not just combinations of some magic matrices taken from sleeve without absolutely any connections to physics.

Koide mass matrix stuff is excellent example of numerology which makes me sick. It begins from an observation that a sum for square roots of charged lepton masses is near to 1/2 in suitable units. There is of course always some rational number to which it would be very near to. Only if it were exactly 1/2, the mass formula might have possibility to make some deeper meaning.

Then one feeds in magic matrices and starts to play with their sums and products. Hopeless. Hopeless because there are no physical principles involves, just random numerology getting more and more complicated.

I have developed totally different model for CKM matrices starting from physical and mathematical principles of TGD. Same applies to p-adic mass calculations. That the model predicts numbers as an outcome, does not mean it is numerology!

If some-one thinks highly of numerology, I can accept it. That someone thinks that I belong to the cast of numerologists, I cannot accept.

Orwin: To call TGD numerology is unfair: temperature has no dimension, it is a number, and rheology or fluid dynamics has several 'dimensionless ratios' as parameters (Reynolds number, etc). To make particles components of temperature is consistent thermodynamics.

Matti: Dear Ulla,

one thing I can tell that colleagues lie unashamedly when they talk about TGD, especially so if they are talking to a layman with no ability control the truth of what they are saying.

Homeopathy in many-sheeted space-time, crop circles, water memory, cold fusion, expanding earth: these are the favorite topics with which to debunk TGD. If you are a little bit analytic you indeed soon find that they *never* say anything about *contents of TGD*. What are the basic assumptions of TGD, how they criticize these. Never a single word. They use only simple emotional key words to induce negative emotions. This is how propaganda works in all dictatorships. By just looking any "criticism" of TGD you find that there is not a single word about what I am really saying: isn't this strange?

In analytic mood you might also notice they *never* mention that I just always emphasize that I am not believer or non-believer but am just asing: What if these phenomena are real, what TGD can say in this case? They just the claim that I am a fanatic believer. Again an enormous lie but represented with clear purpose.

These fellows might call themselves astro-physicists, physicists or whatever but they call themselves, but they are not scientists in the sense as I understand scientist. They are opportunistic career builders and ready to lie without hesitation if this helps them to develop their career or defend their position.

The hegemony, in particular the hegemony of finnish science, has excellent motivations for giving me a label of crackpot- a blind believer on all possible "bad science" and this what they have tried to do for all these years. Now the experimental results from LHC are flowing and it is becoming more and more obvious that I have been right all the time. Neutrino superluminality might turn out to be single experimental discovery demonstrating that TGD is the theory. No one in his right mind can anymore deny that am a top physicists and have been 34 years without human rights in a country in which most people can read. This is an incredible scandal and solely due to the enormous stupidity and arrogance of the academic power hegemony. Einstein in the patent office is nothing as compared to what these idiots have managed to do.

It is understandable that these fellows are fighting desperately to get rid of me before the bubble bursts. Revenge is also a deep motivation. They might quite well be able to prevent me from seeing the breakthrough, my health is not good. This does not however help them: the bubble will burst and the collective shame will be even deeper and these fellows will be regarded as criminals. And for full reason.

To Ulla:

this claim that TGD is numerology is probably the silliest claim that any scientists have made after the birth of Newton.

There is entire book -about 1000 pages- devoted to Physics as generalized number theory and second book to particle physics applications of p-adic physics. And then some empty head comes and claims that TGD is numerology!! God grief.

It is incredible what kind of idiots can receive monthly salary as physicists and astrophysicists.

Ye, that should be clear now . TGD is not numerology, what about Kea's M-theory?

What is numerology? Wikipedia says:

Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs. Numerology and numerological divination by systems such as isopsephy were popular among early mathematicians, such as Pythagoras, but are no longer considered part of mathematics and are regarded as pseudomathematics by modern scientists.

Today, numerology is often associated with the paranormal, alongside astrology and similar divinatory arts.

The term can also be used for those who place excess faith in numerical patterns, even if those people don't practice traditional numerology. For example, in his 1997 book Numerology: Or What Pythagoras Wrought, mathematician Underwood Dudley uses the term to discuss practitioners of the Elliott wave principle of stock market analysis.

Pythagoras and other philosophers of the time believed that because mathematical concepts were more "practical" (easier to regulate and classify) than physical ones, they had greater actuality.

Numerology is prominent throughout Sir Thomas Browne's 1658 literary Discourse The Garden of Cyrus. Throughout its pages the author attempts to demonstrate that the number five and the related Quincunx pattern can be found throughout the arts, in design, and in nature - particularly botany.

Modern numerology has various antecedents. Ruth A. Drayer's book, Numerology, The Power in Numbers (Square One Publishers) says that around the turn of the century (from 1800 to 1900 A.D.) Mrs. L. Dow Balliett combined Pythagoras' work with Biblical reference. Then on Oct 23, 1972, Balliett's student, Dr. Juno Jordan, changed Numerology further and helped it to become the system known today under the title "Pythagorean", although Pythagoras himself had nothing to do with the system.

Many alchemical theories were closely related to numerology. arabian alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan, inventor of many chemical processes still used today, framed his experiments in an elaborate numerology based on the names of substances in the Arabic language.

Scientific theories are sometimes labeled "numerology" if their primary inspiration appears to be a set of patterns rather than scientific observations. This colloquial use of the term is quite common within the scientific community and it is mostly used to dismiss a theory as questionable science.

The best known example of "numerology" in science involves the coincidental resemblance of certain large numbers that intrigued such eminent men as mathematical physicist Paul Dirac, mathematician Hermann Weyl and astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington. These numerical co-incidences refer to such quantities as the ratio of the age of the universe to the atomic unit of time, the number of electrons in the universe, and the difference in strengths between gravity and the electric force for the electron and proton. ("Is the Universe Fine Tuned for Us?", Stenger, V.J., page 3).

More about Stenger below.

The discovery of atomic triads (dealing with elements primarily in the same group or column of the periodic table) was considered a form of numerology, and yet ultimately led to the construction of the periodic table. Here the atomic weight of the lightest element and the heaviest are summed, and averaged, and the average is found to be very close to that of the intermediate weight element. This didn't work with every triplet in the same group, but worked often enough to allow later workers to create generalizations. See Döbereiner's Triads

Large number co-incidences continue to fascinate many mathematical physicists. For instance, James G. Gilson has constructed a "Quantum Theory of Gravity" based loosely on Dirac's large number hypothesis.

Wolfgang Pauli was also fascinated by the appearance of certain numbers, including 137, in physics.

Stenger's research career involved work that determined properties of gluons, quarks, strange particles, and neutrinos. Stenger was a pioneer in the emerging research focused on neutrino astronomy and very high-energy gamma rays. His final research project prior to retirement as an experimental physicist was participating in the Japan-based Super-Kamiokande underground experiment. This work demonstrated that the neutrino was massive. Masatoshi Koshiba, the leader of the project, won a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics for his efforts.

Not bad for a numerologist! But look what they say. He is an skeptic:

Stenger is now mainly known as an advocate of philosophical naturalism, skepticism, and atheism. He is a prominent critic of intelligent design and the aggressive use of the anthropic principle. He maintains that consciousness and free will, assuming that they in fact do exist, will eventually be explained in a scientific manner that invokes neither the mystical nor the supernatural. He has repeatedly criticized those who invoke the perplexities of quantum mechanics in support of the paranormal, mysticism, or supernatural phenomena, and has written several books and articles aiming to debunk contemporary pseudoscience.

Stenger is also a public speaker, including taking part in the 2008 "Origins Conference" hosted by the Skeptics Society at the California Institute of Technology alongside Nancey Murphy and Leonard Susskind.

In 1992, Uri Geller sued Stenger and Prometheus Books for $4 million, claiming defamation for questioning his "psychic powers." The suit was dismissed.

In recent years, Stenger's books and articles have been mostly written for the wider educated public. These writings explore the interfaces between physics and cosmology, and philosophy, religion, and pseudoscience.

What really is this? Numerology that gives an Nobel and the Periodic Table (octonions behind it?). Is the truth in this statement?

Scientific theories are sometimes labeled "numerology" if their primary inspiration appears to be a set of patterns rather than scientific observations. This colloquial use of the term is quite common within the scientific community and it is mostly used to dismiss a theory as questionable science.

Dimensionless ratios? What is that? Alpha, fine tuning and hbar? That is anything must be numerology? Or...

What I asked Mitchell Porter?

Thanks Mitchell.

I have tried to understand her work in many years too, despite my outsider position. It is interesting, but the cosmology? She ought to spend more time to look on the frame, when she declares that her cosmology begans from scratch. Who can even think of citing her in that situation?

I would also want to see clearer the relations leptons – fermions [baryons again]. Now they seem intermixed. Baryonygenesis?

Her fairy fields as quantum information and abstract fields are nothing else than the virtual fields behind the Higgs mechanism. Why does she deny that? Also the eventual supersymmetry would need some light?

There should maybe be more thinking from this bottom-up view, as an effort to understand the microstates, but the endless possibilities in string-theory talk against it. How is the criticality, the finiteness, solved in her theory? Exactly what form of strings does she use? F-theory? She talks of a tripartistic world, and that should be seen in her strings (interactions)? The fact that she use many triangular forms does not explain her strings? In that case they are hadrons?

The situation now is very frustrating, and I understand also for her. I have tried to have her talk about these things, but she gets silent. Also her quarrel with Matti Pitkänen (his refusal to cite her, in spite of her being helping him with the categories) ended with her silence, instead of declaring her standpoints. That makes me suspicious. He talk of her science being numerology. That I think is going too far, but explains maybe her bad success.

I will post my 'explanations' in next post. I think she deserves all support she needs to carry on. At least the same value as Witten's has her research?

If I understand anything of it.

Flower of Fire.

2011-11-11T08:52:00.000-08:00

Fire acts differently in space than on Earth. Sandra Olson, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Glenn Research Center, demonstrates just how differently in her art. This artwork is comprised of multiple overlays of three separate microgravity flame images. Each image is of flame spread over cellulose paper in a spacecraft ventilation flow in microgravity. The different colors represent different chemical reactions within the flame. The blue areas are caused by chemiluminescence (light produced by a chemical reaction.) The white, yellow and orange regions are due to glowing soot within the flame zone.

Microgravity combustion research at Glenn not only provides insights into spacecraft fire safety, but it has also been used to create award-winning art images. This image won first place in the 2011 Combustion Art Competition, held at the 7th U.S. National Combustion Meeting.

Sandra Olson created this kaleidoscopic collage of fire as an artistic side project to her research on combustion in space. The white, yellow, and orange colors reflect the increasing temperatures of soot within the flame, while blue is the glow of excited carbon and hydrogen bonds as the paper burns.

To compose the image Olson blended three video stills of burning paper freefalling in a drop tower, a tool used to simulate low-gravity conditions. Her creative approach earned her the top prize at the 2011 Combustion Art Competition at the 7th annual U.S. Combustion Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

Cool Picture. You can see the 'burning'.

Biology needs a mathematical theory. The INBIOSA project.

2011-10-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

The INBIOSA Project (www.inbiosa.eu) was launched in January 2011 with the support of the EU FP7 . The project will continue until the end of December 2011. The project investigators are Dr.Plamen L. Simeonov (JSRC, Germany) and Professor Leslie S.Smith (University of Stirling, UK) INBIOSA PP Presentation, Summary (long).

The long-term aim of the INBIOSA Project is to deliver answers to such questions as: (i) what is computation? – in biological context; (ii) how useful is a computation? – for living systems, where “usefulness” is studied from the viewpoint of the entity performing the computation; (iii) to what extent can a computation be carried out? – in an organism or an ecosystem, with the available resources (power, time, number of computing elements, etc.).

Driving principles of the INBIOSA initiative:

• focusing on non-mainstream scientific research in mathematics and computation engineering targeting a synergetic integration and exchange with natural and life science disciplines;

• enforcing multidisciplinary approaches to investigation;

• identifying research areas which are crucial for accelerated, yet balanced, transformation of the future information society towards eco-awareness.

This project aims to investigate the imperatives of mathematics and computation in a cardinal new way by comprehending the fundamental principles of emergence, development and evolution in biology. The goal will be a set of novel mathematical formalisms capable of addressing the multiple facets of an integral model and a general theory of biocomputation within an adequate frame of relevance. Its base will be the realization of a long-term fundamental research programme in mathematics, biology and computation that we call Integral Biomathics (arxive-paper). A Post-Newtonian View into the Logos of Bios (On the New Meaning, Relations and Principles of Life in Science)...focused on the phenomena of emergence, adaptive dynamics and evolution of self-assembling, self-organizing, self-maintaining and self-replicating biosynthetic systems viewed from a newly-arranged perspective and understanding of computation and communication in the living nature.

Integral Biomathics is envisioned to discover and establish new relationships and deliver new insights into the interaction and interdependence between natural and artificial (human-created) phenomena for a number of scientific fields. It is expected to invent and develop new mathematical formalisms and provide a generalized framework and ecology for research in life, physical, social and engineering sciences.

STEPPING BEYOND THE NEWTONIAN PARADIGM IN BIOLOGY:

Accelerating the Discovery of the Biological Imperatives of a Computational Model of Life

The focus of the transformative research is biology-centric. The key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to modern problems than the prevailing paradigm. That paradigm is extended from abstractions in physics. While they have some universal application, and computational advantages, their use need not be the default.A new set of abstractions from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability.

We are in need of a theory which describes the biological processes in living organisms.

The commonly acknowledged opinion is that the problem of modern-day biological science is the absence of a unified theory. Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov (JSRC, Germany), coordinator of the project, commented: “Until now an enormous amount of data has been collected in the science of life, but that data alone doesn’t make a theory. The time is ripe for the establishment of a research program in the area which will support and eventually lead to the creation of a new biological theory.”

The laws and methods of physics cannot be unconditionally applied to the biological sciences due to the inconsistency of the systems in biology, and more generally to the differences in nature of the subjects studied by these two scientific disciplines. A new type of super-mathematics, unifying and extending diverse fields of mathematics to tackle biological problems is necessary, according to the attending the conference scientists. “We need a mathematics that can describe such an ever-changing, indeterminate, yet persistent “thing” , including how it maintains its “identity” within certain boundary conditions, yet ceases to function outside of those boundaries. Such an emergent, developmental and evolutionary mathematics does not exist“, is the opinion of the scientists.

“Equations of motion for biological system may not be appropriate. We should seek rules of organisation for living systems, and also rules of organisation for neural systems“, commentedProf. Leslie S. Smith, University of Stirling, UK, co-investigator on the project and organizer of the Stirling conference. “There may be generalizations of logic which include stochasticity. Further, we should also consider generalizations of information and information theory which might be more appropriate for living systems”, he added.

In contrast to the classical science, which is based on the externalist approach (or third person descriptions) in most of its areas, we also need to adopt the internalist approach (first person descriptions) when dealing with biological problems.

“We should consider time, and also versions of central pattern generators that apply to cognitive (rather than motor) systems”, is one of the conclusions the scientists reached.

Research roadmaps in computational systems biology, autonomic computing and communications target the enrichment of knowledge and technology transfer between (analytic) life sciences and (synthetic) engineering sciences. We claim that it is impossible to make significant progress in this transdisciplinary field without a breakthrough paradigm change towards biologically driven mathematics and computation. A profoundly new understanding of the role of biology in natural and engineering sciences needs to be set out.

“We are unable at present to identify in rigorous fashion what it is about cellular processes that set them apart from synthetic devices made of silicon and steel,” stated Prof. Dennis Bray (University of Cambridge, UK), the author of “Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell”.

Enya

2011-09-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

ENYA - China Roses

Who can tell me if we have heaven,
Who can say the way it should be;
Moonlight holly, the sappho comet,
Angels tears below a tree.

You talk of the break of morning
As you view the new aurora,
Cloud in crimson, the key of heaven,
One love carved in acajou.

One told me of china roses,
One a thousand nights and one night,
Earths last picture, the end of evening:
Hue of indigo and blue.

A new moon leads me to
Woods of dreams and I follow.
A new world waits for me;
My dream, my way.

I know that if I have heaven
There is nothing to desire.
Rain and river, a world of wonder
May be paradise to me.

Topi Sorsakoski - Olet kaikki

2011-08-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

This remarcable man died of cancer in relatively young age. His voice isn't beautiful, nor his person, and still he sings like few. With such big feeling. I have met him 'Live' on a dance once. This song is so special, and I always think of a very special person when I hear it :)

A truly finnish song.

There is no Death, only a transmission. Like a phase shift. A beautiful place. Green flowering meadows.

A Priori

2011-08-19T12:05:00.000-07:00

What Did I Do Today?

Today I left some dishes dirty,
The bed got made around 3:30.
The diapers soaked a little longer,
The odor grew a little stronger.
The crumbs I spilled the day before
Are staring at me from the floor.
The fingerprints there on the wall
Will likely be there still next fall.
The dirty streaks on those windowpanes
Will still be there next time it rains.
Shame on you, you sit and say,
Just what did you do today?

I held a baby till she slept,
I held a toddler while she wept.
I played a game of hide and seek,
I squeezed a toy so it would squeak.
I pulled a wagon, sang a song,
Taught a child right from wrong.
What did I do this whole day through?
Not much that shows, I guess that's true.
Unless you think that what I've done,
Might be important to someone
With deep blue eyes and soft blonde hair,
If that is true...I've done my share.

I am very much of the same mind - lovely

Inertia - change I. Of what?

2011-08-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

In Nature, two types of spontaneous structures exist: structures at equilibrium such as crystals, and structures not at equilibrium that constantly dissipate energy such as whirlpools requiring the participation of energy flows coupled by nonlinear processes. This latter is typical for Life too. Whirlpools and Life has much in common. Ilya Prigogine talked of dissipative systems and structures and chaos, and got 1977 Nobel Prize. Most systems found in nature are not in thermodynamic equilibrium; for they are changing or can be triggered to change over time, and are continuously and discontinuously subject to flux of matter and energy to and from other systems.

The origin of life cannot be 'discovered', it has to be re-invented."

-A. Eschenmoser, Tetrahedron, 2007, 63, 12821-12844.

Why are there balance and counteraction? Life creates unstabilities, noise, change? Actions that requires an reaction. Stress and adaption. Homeostasis.

We all know that living structures are reactive, flexible, often formable, soft = NOT descreate and determined. But also that it need some fixed structures like bones, or cytosceletons. Hardness and flexibility. Is Life always enclosed in structure?

The Dynamic Process of Communication:

Observer

Unstable dynamical systems

Randomness, nonlinearity

Irreversibility

Dissipative Structures

Observer

Demonstrations of impossibility, whether in relativity, quantum mechanics, or thermodynamics, have shown that nature cannot be described "from the outside", as if by a spectator. Description is a dialogue, communication, and this communication is subject to constraints that demonstrate that we are macroscopic beings embedded in the physical world. We are evolved dissipative structures. The time symmetry is broken in the following way: the existence of irreversible processes on the microscopic level through kinetic equations violates the symmetry of the canonical equations. And dissipative structures may, in turn, break the symmetries of space-time.

This is at the heart of Einsteins problem with quantum gravity. Inertia - change. Which takes us immidiately to the second law of thermodynamics. It works differently for living and ordinary matter? Why? And has it anything to do with the first law and the E=mc2? Energy is the interesting part, not only mass? Gauge fields and matter fields counterinteract. The fluctuation-dissipation theorem, or mass compressability*, says Radoslav Bozov.
The conservation of mass is a fundamental concept of physics, as is the conservation of energy. Within some problem domain, the amount of mass remains constant; mass is neither created or destroyed. The mass of any object is simply the volume that the object occupies times the density of the object. For a fluid (liquid or gas) the density, volume, and shape of the object can all change within the domain with time and mass can move through the domain.
*in the boson case, the connection between density fluctuations and compressibility was used to study superfluidity in a two-dimensional system.

In addition to gauge fields, in nature there also are matter fields. The matter fields describe things such as electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and possibly Higgs particles. Gauge fields mediate “forces” between particles described by matter fields (and between additional particles described by the gauge fields themselves). Edward Witten 2009.

The great insight was "Do not quantize", tells us Matti Pitkänen. No supergravity for him.

What really IS the secret with Life?

Prigogine has been one of my leading stars through my Journey. 1980 he wrote From Being to Becoming: Time and complexity in Physical Sciences. He has three main theses:
(1) irreversible processes are as REAL as reversible ones.
(2) irreversible processes play a fundamental CONSTRUCTIVE role in the physical world.
(3) irreversibility is deeply rooted in dynamics.
Most of the directional processes are irreversible or hypercyclic. Very few are totally reversible,and they are not at equilibrium. He adds, "This formulation leads to a unified picture that enables us to relate many aspects of our observations of physical systems to biological ones.

"Biological order is both architectural and functional; furthermore, at the cellular and supercellular levels, it manifests itself by a series of structures and coupled functions of growing complexity and hierarchical character. This is contrary to the concept of evolution as described in the thermodynamics of isolated systems, which leads simply ... to 'disorder.' ... The unexpected new feature is that nonequilibrium may ... lead to a new type of structure, the DISSIPATIVE structures, which are essential in the understanding of coherence and organization in the nonequilibrium world in which we live."

Again structure and function, inertia and change.

Order out of Chaos, Prigogine 1984 in his intellectual odyssey from classical thermodynamics, through linear nonequilibrium thermodynamics, and finally to his holy grail of nonlinear nonequilibrium thermodynamics, and how the processes of entropy and energy scattering can lead a system open to its environment to evolve greater complexity.

Open systems evolve complexity! Seen in structure of proteins? Molecular machines? But if we look only at complexity, then we forget the open system.
The irreversibility (not invariant) in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, leading both to structure and function change. Take only the example with diffusion over a membrane.

The End of Certainty, 1997.

How is it, for instance, that basic principles of quantum mechanics-which lack any differentiation between forward and backward directions in time-can explain a world with an "arrow of time" headed unambiguously forward? And how do we escape classical physics' assertion that the world is deterministic? Prigogine explores deterministic chaos, nonequilibrium thermodynamics, and even cosmology and the origin of the universe... There is a way in which biology could be "reduced" to physics, but only if we learn to define "physics" very differently than we do today.

Prigogine's explanation of Henri Poincaré's proof that contemporary physics' belief in reversible, closed-system, deterministic modeling actually precludes the arrow of time, obviates self-organization, and prohibits the existence of life itself. In short, Prigogine shows that Poincaré proved that biology CANNOT be reduced to contemporary physics, and he even proved why (the existence of Poincaré resonances). It's an exquisitely beautiful insight.

Ironically, when the problems of biology has again and again been said to be the determinism and decoherence, seen from the light of Schrödinger and the double-slit experiment. Something is simply WRONG here, Lubos. Where is the build-up?

Points toward a revolutionary realignment of fundamental physical principles, theoretical perspectives, and even scientific methodology - a coherent major shift in the foundational paradigms of physical science. Both Einstein and Schrödinger knew that contemporary physics is inadequate to explain more complex phenomena... like biological life.

Newton's laws were once considered to be final.

Prigogine 1997, Non-linear Science and the Laws of Nature: Simple examples such as the Bernouilli shift and the anharmonic lattice are studied. It is shown that instability as well as the thermodynamic limit lead to a new formulation of laws of nature in terms of probabilities (instead of trajectories or wave functions), following the realization that large classes of systems may exhibit abrupt transitions, a multiplicity of states, coherent structures or a seemingly erratic motion characterized by unpredictability often referred to as deterministic chaos. Distance from equilibrium, and therefore the arrow of time, plays an essential role in these processes, somewhat like temperature in equilibrium physics. Time is an operator.

The 19th century has left us with a conflicting heritage. On one side, there are the 'laws of nature' such as Newton's law which relates acceleration to force. This law is time reversible and deterministic. If we know the initial condition of a dynamical system, we can predict its state at an arbitrary time, be it in the future or in the past. There is no distinction between past and future. These characteristics remain true in relativity and quantum mechanics, as the Einstein or Schrrdinger equations are also reversible and deterministic. On the other hand, the famous 'second law' of thermodynamics, associated with the increase of entropy, expresses the arrow of time.

Stuart Kauffman has a probalistic approch in his "The origin of order."

"Is the moon there when nobody looks", asked Einstein. The observer - effect and consciousness. Are there consciousness outside living matter? The Anthropic effect simply cannot be true.

What if we shift the focus from matter to waves, or probabilities, uncertainty? We start to explain our Universe in waves? Is the Universe Analog or Digital, asked FQXI in a contest last year, where I contributed. Maybe the answer is neither, but a TRINITY (particles-strings-waves) or (by replacing 1-dimensional strings with 3-dimensional light-like surfaces = self-containing = observer)? Or even a quartett? A tangent on a tangent? A quantized gauge theory with a mass gap? Maybe a superposition of many kinds (7 trees in one), so there are no definitive answer (E8?)? Also the fact that matter is only about 5% of total energy budget in Universe tells a lot. Dark matter is much more, about 20%. In which part is Life? WHAT is Life?

"One can best feel in dealing with living things how primitive physics still is," said Einstein.

If the equations of evolution are non-linear we observe, in general, bifurcations which lead to new spatio-temporal structures. The 'dissipative structures' achieved in this way are therefore the consequences of non-linearity. In this sense we may even consider life, with its essential non-equilibrium properties, as the manifestation of non-linearity. Close to equilibrium, entropy is maximum or free energy minimum. Free energy is reaction energy. To keep the reactivity negentropy must be maximized in living structures.

"Laplace's demon", cannot be true. Laplace's demon was based on the premise of reversibility and classical mechanics. Invariance? Causal or scientific determinism, if someone knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time ... killed by irreversibility (time?) and quantum world? Einsteins problem again. With a note, There has recently been proposed a limit on the computational power of the universe, i.e. the ability of Laplace's Demon to process an infinite amount of information. The limit is based on the maximum entropy of the universe, the speed of light, and the minimum amount of time taken to move information across the Planck length, and the figure was shown to be about 10¹²⁰ bits. Accordingly, anything that requires more than this amount of data cannot be computed in the amount of time that has elapsed so far in the universe. The Lambda-cosmological constant-dark energy problem.

The entire physical Universe cannot be fully understood by any single inference system that exists within it.
on Cantor, Gödel and Turing’s theorems of incompleteness and uncountable.

No hypothetical being with a “vast intellect”, such that, with full knowledge of the state of the Universe at one time, it can completely predict the future and recall the past with no uncertainty whatsoever. Do we call him the classic God? Are there a quantum God?

Wolpert’s results (acc. to Binder) are particularly compelling because they are totally independent of both the details of the laws of physics and the computational characteristics of the machines. Wolpert, D. H. Physica D 237, 1257–1281 (2008). A prescription for deriving the laws of nature was proposed by Roy Frieden 2004. Science from Fisher Information: A Unification
(Cambridge Univ. Press). Producing multiple solutions, as in M-theory-landscape?

Non-linear time? Non-linear information? Through the attractor reconstruction method, in which a time series is converted into a geometrical trajectory in higher-dimensional spaces? Kantz, H. & Schreiber, T. Nonlinear Time Series Analysis (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004).
Sounds very TGD'ish, in light-like CD-diamonds and zero energy ontology.

One can also know more than everything (superpositions of states). Quantum walk is another example (scattering?), as in photosynthesis or massively parallel computers (right brainhalf?), touching at a distance and Bells inequality, lattice with different spins where forward and backward propagating fields pick up polarization rotations in opposite senses, and may even reverse time... Quantum thermodynamics?
Undoing a quantum measurement, quantum phase transitions... (non-local PDE's) How does a bosonic system store information about the Fermi energy, show how this fractal behavior would influence the thermodynamic response functions of liquid ³He, a fermionic fluid. The results could potentially be applied to understanding quantum critical behavior in heavy-fermion metals and high-temperature superconductors.

The Yang-Mills equations are analogous to the vacuum Einstein equations Rμν = 0 (where R is the Ricci tensor). They are nonlinear hyperbolic wave equations. Most applications of partial differential equations involve domains with boundaries and periods, and use matrices (for scattering waves). Asymptotic charachter and resonance are other nonlinear equations. See Schrödinger eq. book.

Is Future Given? 2003, when Prigogine died. No fate, the future has not been determined.

He has consistently held that nature is probabilistic. Much of his motivation seems to have been in sorting out why Boltzman and Gibbs failed to satisfy the science community that their statistical physics explained the 2nd law, due to reversible classical equations and Poincare recurrences. However in order to make his probabilistic argument he may have created a loophole. He points to the Langevin equation as an irreversible equation with noise (friction) and he says Poincare should have connected nonintegrability with irreversibility and most dynamics are nonintegrable. However everyone agrees some (simple) systems are reversible (pendulums etc) so how can all of nature be stochastic? Maybe because the noise terms tend to but never go to zero?

'The rate of change of entropy with time for a nonequilibrium stochastic process is always positive = the arrow of time.'

In this case Poincare recurrence maybe a mere statistical fluctuation with no actuality. (Prigogine says it is false because he introduces new microscopic dynamics, the irreversible processes. At the website secondlaw.com the thermodynamic explanation of entropy is fundamental as it is a measure of energy diffusion, and not randomness or uncertainty, as the tool of statistical entropy would imply. In this way the 2 approaches are not contradictory; the statistical is merely a measurement tool for observers while the thermodynamic is real dynamics requiring no observers (ice melts, water crystalizes etc long before man was around). If anything this should be viewed as fundamental as it is a direct measurement of the physical movement of heat.

One should not confuse information theory and measurement techniques with real underlying dynamics. When some authors say 'entropy is not a property of a system, it is a property of our description of the system. The quantum measuremental tools are badly developed.

Prigogine has shown mathematically how irreversibility can apply at the microscopic level for nonintegral systems (in agreement with macroscopics) due to non-local persistent interactions.

Non-linearity is also fractals, hierarchy, self-assembly. Infinity. No zero, no end.

The importance of the individual's actions implies a reflection of each person on the responsibilities that each one assumes when taking or acting upon a decision. This responsibility is associated with the freedom of thought as well as a critical analysis of fashions, customs, preconceived ideas, and ideologies, externally imposed: exactly contrary to the ideas of those who wish us to be "perfect consumers" in a world dominated only by monetary wealth.

Numerous molecules self-organize themselves in living organisms: actin and tubulin into filaments, lipids and proteins into membranes. Filaments and membranes are organized in cells that themselves are self-organized in tissues then in organs, and finally form the entire organism.

Assemblies of molecules are formed and destroyed by weak interaction with binding energies (what is that energy in reality?) comparable to the thermal energy, rendering them very sensitive to the external conditions and easily adaptable to those conditions.

Such self-organization patterns are not a feature of living systems solely; they occur in many physical and chemical systems composed for instance of molecules that are amphiphylic (both hydrophylic and hydrophobic), leading the way from simple material to the construction of biomimetic and microrobotic systems.

Adaption relaxes stress. Energy is 'chrystallized', fixed. Movement diminished. Determinism and decoherence increased. Consequently coherence must be increased when the free energy is increased.

And synchrony?

"Maybe the details of the neurons are completely irrelevant. Maybe it is only a property of oscillators." says Babette K. Dellen. Neurons are composed of many elements and are typically nonlinear and, for example, have been modeled as interconnected, or "coupled", oscillators because of the way they interact with one another. Coupled oscillators can be imagined as being tethered to their nearest neighbor, thus influencing their movement. Neurons, on the other hand, may display repetitive electrical activity that can be influenced by the activity of neighboring neurons. Sebastian F. Brandt et coll. January 2006 Physical Review Letters.

The origin of life was marked by the transition from chemical reactions to self-replicating molecular entities capable of evolving by natural selection. The structure and function of many biological molecules and supramolecular assemblies are today accessible in simulated “prebiotic’’ conditions; nevertheless we are still unable to establish a link between these structures and the complex metabolisms at work in living matter.

There is no doubt that self-organization constitutes a key concept to understand collective phenomena, be it at the chemical, biological of behavioural level.

Origins of Life: Self-Organization and/or Biological Evolution? Paris 2008 Maryvonne Gérin et Marie-Christine Maurel.

Self and the collective? To be a we there must be an I first. Borders must be created to have an interference. Particles- strings- waves. Inertia and change.
To have a jump and a consciousness.

To Prigogine, irreversibility is a fundamental property of physics. Prigogine proposes that entropy production is part of an operator (operators map functions onto functions), and time is an operator. And that the time that we are all familiar with from classical mechanics is just an ensemble average of this operator with a state vector. I.e. "ordinary" time is an average over his new time operator. And that "age" is dependent of the distibution.
So what does that mean about operators..? Let's say that we wish to know the time evolution of a system. In both quantum mechanics and classical mechanics, the Hamiltonian operator determines how the system will evolve in time. The evolution that we are all familiar with is a reversible and deterministic evolution (We can say that the reversible change of a wave function that represents the quantum system corresponds to a reversible motion along a trajectory that represents the classical system.) The wave function or trajectory represents the maximum knowledge of the system.
Prigogine has incorporated reversible and irreversible parts into a new microscopic equation/description. The equation contains an operator analogous to the Hamiltonian, that is a new "time evolution operator" that now can drive the system to both equilibrium or nonequilibrium states. Entropy is produced by the even part of the new time evolution operator and he has defined an operator for that.
An example that Prigogine gives looks at the conventional and his unconventional determination of energy levels in a quantum system. In the conventional quantum mechanics, both the energy levels and the time evolution of them are determined by the same quantity: the Hamiltonian operator. Prigogine's method allows him to use two different operators: the time operator for time evolution and another operator (a "superoperator" that can act on other operators) to determine the energy levels. So in this way, instead of having the "particle" and the "interaction" (conventional view), we have the physical process that contains electrons, photons, etc. that drive the total system. This process is "real" and cannot be "transformed" away by any change of representation.
Or another way to look at it: the classical order says particles come first and the Second Law of Thermodynamics comes later, while Prigogine says that we must first introduce the Second Law before being able to define the entities.
Another one of Prigigine's main themes is that nonlinear interactions frequently lead to order (which he calls "dissipative structures") through fluctuations. A dissipative structure is order visible on a macroscale which can exchange energy with the outside world. In particular, if the system is in a far-from-equilibrium-state this can happen.

Conclusion: Scattering, quantum walk, parallell processing, hierarchy, fractality, entanglement are all related phenomena, that have big influence on the process of Life. Even thermodynamics itself may express non-locality through dispersion and scattering.

...the increase of entropy can be far more accurately described [than simply disorder] using terms such as ‘dispersal of energy,’ ‘spreading and sharing of energy,’ and ‘spatial and temporal spreading.’ In decoherence theory, a similar metaphor is used to describe the phenomena involved with quantum non-locality, superposition, and entanglement. Specifically the wavefunction of a quantum entity, such as a sub-atomic particle or photon is not seen to collapse but rather is transferred through interactions to a system and/or its environment. This suggests there may be a common basis for entropy and non-locality.

Prigogine is primarily a chemist. As I understand it, his main discovery has been the discovery of "chemical clocks." These are chemical reactions that oscillate in a very regular and precise way. Prigogine predicted that they should exist from a theoretical chemistry standpoint several decades ago. In the late 1950's, one of his research group came back from a visit with a colleague in Russia, announcing that they had a chemical reaction that did just what Prigogine predicted. The reaction is now known as the Belousov-Zhabotininskii reaction and it is the oxidation of citric acid by potassium bromate catalyzed by the ceric-cerous ion couple.

Artificial life conference, Paris.

2011-08-05T11:59:00.000-07:00

Next week it’s the European Artificial Life Conference (ECAL) 2011 in Paris.

Artificial Life is an interdisciplinary undertaking that investigates the fundamental properties of living systems through the simulation and synthesis of biological entities and processes. It also attempts to design and build artificial systems that display properties of organisms, or societies of organisms, out of abiotic or virtual parts.

ECAL, the European Conference on Artificial Life, is a biennial event that alternates with the US-based Alife conference series.

Download the complete PDF program booklet (53-page, includes all the abstracts)

I borrow this!

So what is life?

Posted by STEEN RASMUSSEN 5.8. on steennewmexico

This question, of course, has to be addressed, if you want to create life from scratch. At our FLinT center in Denmark we study and implement life-like and minimal living processes in a variety of materials and systems. In particular we seek to assemble a minimal protocell, a minimal physicochemically based cell.

First a little history:

Von Neumann, the inventor of the modern computer, realized that if life is a physical process, it should be possible to implement life in other media than biochemistry. He was one of the first to propose the possibility of implementing genuine living processes in computers, robots and other media. This perspective, while still controversial, is rapidly gaining momentum in many science and engineering communities and it is the basis for our work. Ilya Prigogine reemphasized and clarified the importance of utilizing free energy fluxes to generate order in physicochemical systems through self-organization. The metabolic processes in our protocells utilize free energy to maintain local order. Our metabolism is a thermodynamic engine that locally drives our system away from equilibrium. Manfred Eigen pointed out that autocatalysis between functional physicochemical components could be a mechanism for the emergence of early life and that autocatalysis can enhance a systems ability to maintain information. All our protocellular components are autocatalytically coupled.

Now, what is minimal physicochemical life then?

There is not a generally agreed upon definition of life within the scientific community, as there is a grey zone of interesting processes between nonliving and living matter. Our work on assembling minimal physicochemical life is based on implementing systems that meets three criteria, which most modern biological life forms satisfy.

In my opinion, and from a practical point of view, a minimal living physicochemical system needs to:

use free energy to convert resources from the environment into building blocks so that it can grow and reproduce,
have the growth and division processes at least partly controlled by inheritable information, and
allow the inheritable information to change slightly from one generation to the next, thereby permitting variation of the growth and division processes and thus allow selection and hence evolution.

How difficult can that be? Implementing these three simple criteria?

Well, I’m telling you, it’s not easy. It’s very complicated, as it takes many components to fall into place at the same time, and these components are not only of scientific nature.

For me personally, it took many years to convince any funding agency (peer review committee), that this kind of work is even possible. Secondly, we had to convince the committees that this work is worthy to spent tax payers money on: “In which sense will assembling minimal life benefit society?” Very important question, which I’ll get back to in some later blog. Only very few funding agencies give you money for basic, or curiosity driven, science.

I’ll say, getting continued funding for our activities is still, and has been, the hardest part of creating life. It’s certainly more complex than doing the science.

Secondly, due to the necessary complexities of the involved physicochemical systems, this kind of science is not a one-man activity. It takes a small village of skilled scientists from different disciplines, which gets us back to the previous point about money, as well as being able to host an exciting research environment.

Finally, and of course most importantly, it takes human wondering and amazement about why things are the way they are, as well as the courage to dream about how things could be. And it takes very good people. Without good people nothing moves. And then it takes tenacity. A dedicated effort day after day (and sometimes nights), month after month, year after year.

So don’t become a scientist unless you can’t help it. It consumes too much of you. But if you can’t help it, playing with your imagination and dreaming up new stuff, I believe is one of the most exhilarating things you can do as a human being. However, fundraising, writing grants, doing budgets, paying bills, dealing with whatever organization you are a part of, managing very smart people (herding cats), teaching, correcting exams, etc., is exhausting and can take some of the fun out of it. But that’s how it is. There are no free lunch.

My sons wedding.

2011-06-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

Such a beautiful couple. So similar. I wish them all luck. And good weather all the day...
(This is an official picture.)

And I was on time!

New eyes?

2011-06-18T02:17:00.000-07:00

I was visiting the first beauty saloon ever in my life - for my sons wedding. The result was seen mostly on my eyes, somehow bigger and darker. The eyes was quite sharp before too :) Look!

Was it worth the effort? Doubtful!

Interview with Jarmo Mäkelä, the FQXI winner.

2011-06-14T21:49:00.000-07:00

Top prize of $10,000 and FQXi Membership goes to ...

Jarmo Mäkelä from Vaasa University of Applied Sciences in Vaasa, Finland, for his essay "Is Reality Digital or Analog" recording a late-night conversation with Isaac Newton. In his essay, Jarmo reports that Newton decidedly told him "Digital, of course".

In Vasabladet today is an article about the FQXI-winner, Jarmo Mäkelä, after a hint from me.

'Physicistwinner likes blackholes' is the title. A scanned picture from the newspaper.

He works as a teacher, sinse 10 years, in math and physics at Vaasa Technical Highschool educating engineers (information and data). He says he enjoys his work. Most of the students comes from abroad, and the teaching language is english. His research is mainly theoretic, as a hobby. He looks at gravitation and blackholes. This prize has no practical influence for his future, but is seen mostly in his CV.

Jarmo is 47 years old, from Seinäjoki (about 50 km's from my work), did his thesis at Jyväskylä University. He has a wife and two kids. Interests: physical exercise, skiing, classic music and history.

Quite scare information.

A search gave these:
From wikipedia:
Jarmo Mäkelä (2010). "Notes Concerning "On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton" by E. Verlinde (arXiv:1001.0785)". arXiv:1001.3808
We point out that certain equations which, in a very recent paper written by E. Verlinde, are postulated as a starting point for a thermodynamical derivation of classical gravity, are actually consequences of a specific microscopic model of spacetime, which has been published earlier.
E.P. Verlinde. "On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton". JHEP 04, 29 (2011). doi:10.1007/JHEP04(2011)029

On arxive he has 24 publications. Alone or with collaborators, many published in journals.
On Distance and Area 1011.2052
Partition Function of Spacetime 0810.4910
A Simple Quantum-Mechanical Model of Spacetime II: Thermodynamics of Spacetime 0805.3955
- I: Microscopic Properties of Spacetime 0805.3952
Pioneer Effect: An Interesting Numerical Coincidence 0710.5460
Quantum-Mechanical Model of Spacetime gr-qc/0701128
Gravitation and Thermodynamics: The Einstein Equation of State Revisited gr-qc/0612078
Area and Entropy: A New Perspective gr-qc/0605098
Radiation of the Inner Horizon of the Reissner-Nordström Black Hole gr-qc/0508095
Accelerating Observers, Area and Entropy gr-qc/0506087
Entropy of Spacelike Two-Surfaces of Spacetime gr-qc/0406032
Spacetime Foam Model of the Schwarzschild Horizon gr-qc/0307025
Thermodynamical Properties of Horizons gr-qc/0205128
Microscopic Properties of Horizons gr-qc/0108037
Quantum-mechanical model of the Kerr-Newman black hole gr-qc/0012055
Constraints on Area Variables in Regge Calculus gr-qc/0011006
Microscopic Black Hole Pairs in Highly-Excited States gr-qc/0006070
How to interpret black hole entropy? gr-qc/9812075
Variation of Area Variables in Regge Calculus gr-qc/9801022
A Quantum Mechanical Model of the Reissner-Nordstrom Black Hole gr-qc/9708029
Black Hole Spectrum: Continuous or Discrete? gr-qc/9609001
Area spectrum of the Schwarzschild black hole gr-qc/9605058
Schroedinger Equation of the Schwarzschild Black Hole gr-qc/9602008

and...
If it pleases the court, so to speak, I too have a series of hypothesis that have to do with the vacuum energy behavior of Jarmo Makela's simply-connected quantized space-time models, but I don't go around shitting up the boards with Lubos Motl-style ex-string theorist borderline crankiness, mostly because no one asked or cares much around here about the Verlinde Hypothesis.

I guess I like him...

Demetrios Christodoulou & Richard Hamilton.

2011-06-12T08:02:00.001-07:00

Demetrios Christodoulou one of the Shaw Prize winners has one single article from 2008 on arXive, a whole book on 'The Formation of Black Holes in General Relativity', a book where a result which complements the stability result is proved. Namely, that a sufficiently strong flux of incoming gravitational waves leads to the formation of a black hole. Prologue 34 p, sensible for everyone. Read it!

The Formation of Black Holes in General Relativity, (monograph, 589 pp.), EMS Monographs in Mathematics, EMS Publishing House (ISBN 978-3-03719-068-5), 2009.

Research field: Partial di fferential equations, geometric analysis, general relativity, fluid mechanics. His publications started from1970 with black holes, which also was his theme for the thesis 1971. Investigations in Gravitational Collapse and the Physics of Black Holes. So I guess he is qualified enough. Mathematical Problems of General Relativity I, 2008, The formation of shocks in 3-dimensional fluids, The Euler equations of compressible fluid flow, 2007, Recent developments in nonlinear hyperbolic PDE, 2001 etc.

On wikipedia: well known in the field of general relativity for his proof, together with Sergiu Klainerman, of the nonlinear stability of the Minkowski spacetime of special relativity in the framework of general relativity. The extraordinarily difficult proof of the stability result is laid out in detail.

Christodoulou, Demetrios & Klainerman, Sergiu (1993). The global nonlinear stability of the Minkowski space. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08777-6.

Christodoulou, Demetrios (2000). The action principle and partial differential equations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04957-2.

Richard Hamilton's mathematical contributions are primarily in the field of differential geometry and more specifically geometric analysis. He is best known for having discovered the Ricci flow and suggesting the research program that ultimately led to the proof, by Grigori Perelman, of the Thurston geometrization conjecture and the solution of the Poincaré conjecture. Research field: Partial differential equations, differential geometry. (Peter Woit is also at the same institution. Algebraic Geometry, Mathematical Physics and Number Theory are other fields.) Woits blog. Not many words for the 1mill prize! The second Nobel?

Several stages of Ricci flow on a 2D manifold. Wikipedia. Informally, the Ricci flow tends to expand negatively curved regions of the manifold, and contract positively curved regions.

Colombia Universitys release. Analytic number theory is the study of the distribution of prime numbers. One of the most important unsolved problems in mathematics is the Riemann hypothesis about the zeros of the Riemann zeta function, which gives a square root type error term for the number of primes in a large interval. One of the greatest applications of Grothendieck's theory of schemes is Deligne's proof of the Riemann hypothesis for L-functions for varieties over finite fields (which was first formulated by Weil). Thanks to the profound insight of Langlands, now embodied in the Langlands program: there is a sweeping vision of connections between automorphic L-functions on the one hand, and motivic L-functions, on the other. This vision encompasses the Artin and Shimura-Taniyama conjectures, both of which played a key role in Wiles' proof of Fermat last theorem. The main technique of Wiles, the deformation of Galois representations, is a new direction, now quite extensively developed

Wiles' proof of his modularity lifting theorems is a perfect illustration of p-adic techniques in number theory where the basic objects are deformation of Galois representations, congruences between modular forms, and their deep connections with special values of L-functions. Another spectacular illustration of the p-adic techniques for automorphic forms attached to higher rank reductive groups is the recent proof of the Sato-Tate conjecture. Mazur's theory of deformations of Galois representations used in Wiles' proof has been inspired by the theory of p-adic families of automorphic forms developed originally by Hida. This theory has been developing for reductive groups of higher rank and has many powerful applications for the understanding of the connections between L-functions (or p-adic L-functions) and Galois representations which are at the heart of modern research in algebraic number theory and arithmetic geometry. The theory of p-adic families has also inspired some of the new developments of p-adic Hodge theory and the so-called p-adic Langlands program which establishes a conjectural connection between p-adic Galois representations of a local field of residual characteristic p and certain p-adic representations of p-adic reductive groups. These subjects where the notion of p-adic variation is involved are advancing very quickly and a substantial breakthrough is expected in the near future.

"Three-manifolds with positive Ricci curvature"

Lecture by Hamilton on Ricci flow

Joint seminars see Relative p-adic Hodge theory or THE FUNDAMENTAL CURVE OF p-ADIC HODGE THEORY

From 1996 Oswald Veblen Prize motivations.
The Ricci flow equations were introduced to geometers by Hamilton in 1982 (“Three manifolds with positive Ricci curvature”, J. Differential Geometry 17 (1982), 255–306). These equations form a very nonlinear system of differential equations (of essentially parabolic type) for the time evolution of a Riemannian metric on a smooth manifold. The equations assert simply that the time derivative of the metric is equal to minus twice the Ricci curvature tensor. (The Ricci curvature tensor is a symmetric, rank two tensor which is obtained by a natural average of the sectional curvatures.) This flow equation can be thought of as a nonlinear heat equation for the Riemannian metric. After an appropriate, time-dependent rescaling, the static solutions are simply the Einstein metrics. In introducing the Ricci flow equations, Hamilton proved that compact, three-dimensional manifolds with positive definite Ricci curvature are diffeomorphic to spherical space forms. (These are quotients of the three-dimensional sphere by free, finite
group actions.)
... understand the nature of the singularities which arise under the flow. (Hamilton proved that singularities do not arise in three dimensions when the Ricci curvature starts out positive.)
Hamilton has come to understand the geometric constraints on the singularities which arise under the Ricci flow on a compact, threedimensional Riemannian manifold and under a related flow equation (for the “isotropic curvature tensor”) on a compact, four-dimensional manifold. This understanding has allowed him, in many cases, to classify all possible singularities of the flow. In the four-dimensional case, Hamilton was recently able to give a topological characterization of the possible singularities which arise from the isotropic curvature tensor flow if the starting metric has positive isotropic curvature tensor. The conclusion is as follows: If a singularity arises, then it can be described as a lengthening neck in the manifold whose cross-section is an embedded spherical space form with injective fundamental group. Hamilton deduced from this fact that simply connected manifolds with positive isotropic curvature are diffeomorphic to the four-dimensional sphere.
For the compact 3-manifold case, Hamilton, in a recent paper, analyzed the development of singularities in the Ricci flow by studying the evolution of stable, closed geodesics and stable, minimal surfaces under their own, compatible, geometric flows. This analysis of the flows of stable geodesics and minimal surfaces leads to a characterization of the developing singularities in terms of Ricci soliton solutions to the flow equations along degenerating, geometric subsets of the original manifold. (A Ricci soliton is a solution whose motion in time is generated by a 1-parameter group of diffeomorphisms of the underlying manifold.)
etc.
He shared the prize with Gang Tian: The basic Kähler-Einstein problem is to find necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a Kähler metric on a given complex manifold whose Ricci curvature is a constant multiple of the metric itself. The sign of the constant is determined by the degree of the manifold’s first Chern class. The case where the sign is negative was solved independently by Aubin and Yau, while the sign zero case (where the first Chern class vanishes) was solved by Yau in his celebrated solution to the Calabi Conjecture.

This is still today very actual.

From the Columbia University research pages:
Topology is concerned with the intrinsic properties of shapes of spaces. One class of spaces which plays a central role in mathematics, and whose topology is extensively studied, are the n dimensional manifolds. These are spaces which locally look like Euclidean n-dimensional space.

Historically, topology has been a nexus point where algebraic geometry, differential geometry and partial differential equations meet and influence each other, influence topology, and are influencedby topology. More recently, topology and differential geometry have provided the language in which to formulate much of modern theoretical high energy physics. This interaction has brought topology, and mathematics more generally, a whole host of new questions and ideas. Because of its central place in a broad spectrum of mathematics there has always been a great deal of interaction between work in topology and work in these neighboring disciplines.

Ironically, in topology, the case of manifolds of dimensions 3 and 4, the physical dimensions in which we live, has eluded undestanding for the longest time. The case of manifolds of dimension n=1 is straightforward, and the case where n=2 was understood thoroughly in the 19^th century. Moreover, intense activity in the 1960's (including the pioneering work of Browder, Milnor, Novikov, and Smale) expresses the topology of manifolds of dimension n>4 in terms of an elaborate but purely algebraic description.

The study of manifolds of dimension n=3 and 4 is quite different from the higher-dimensional cases; and, though both cases n=3 and 4 are quite different in their overall character, both are generally referred to as low-dimensional topology.

Low-dimensional topology is currently a very active part of mathematics, benefiting greatly from its interactions with the fields of partial differential equations, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, modern physics, representation theory, number theory, and algebra.

The case of manifolds of dimension n=4 remains the most elusive. In view of the foundational results of Freedman, understanding manifolds up to their topological equivalence is a theory which is similar in character to the higher-dimensional manifold theory. However, the theory of differentiable four-manifolds is quite different. The subject was fundamentally transformed by the pioneering work of Simon Donaldson, who was studying moduli spaces of solutions to certain partial differential equations which came from mathematical physics. Studying algebro-topological properties of these moduli spaces, Donaldson came up with very interesting smooth invariants for four-manifolds which demonstrated the unique and elusive character of smooth four-manifold topology. In the case where the underlying manifold is Kähler, these moduli spaces also admit an interpretation in terms of stable bundles, and hence shed light on the differential topology of smooth algebraic surfaces. Since Donaldson's work, the physicists Seiberg and Witten introduced another smooth invariant of four-manifolds. Since then, the study of four-manifolds and their invariants has undergone several further exciting developments, tying them deeply with ideas from symplectic geometry and pseudo-holomorphic curves, and hence forming further bridges with algebraic and symplectic geometry, but also connecting them more closely with knot theory and three-manifold topology.

Geometry and analysis are vast fields, with myriad facets reflected differently in the leading mathematics departments worldwide. At Columbia, they are closely intertwined, with partial differential equations as the common unifying thread, and fundamental questions from several complex variables, algebraic geometry, topology, theoretical physics, probability, and applied mathematics as guiding goals.

The theory of partial differential equations, PDE, at Columbia is practically indistinguishable from its analytic, geometric, or physical contexts: the d-bar-equation from several complex variables and complex geometry, real and complex Monge-Ampère equations from differential geometry and applied mathematics, Schrodinger and Landau-Ginzburg equations from mathematical physics, and especially the powerful theory of geometric evolution equations from topology, algebraic geometry, general relativity, and gauge theories of elementary particle physics. Of particular interest are manifestations of non-linearity and curvature, long-time behavior and inherently non-perturbative aspects, formation of singularities, generalized and viscosity solutions, and global obstructions to the existence and regularity of solutions. Although real and complex differential geometry can be quite different in orientation - the latter having closer ties with algebraic geometry and number theory - both are strongly represented at Columbia.

Other less analytic aspects of the theory of partial differential equations also thrive at Columbia. Of particular importance is the theory of solitons and integrable models, with their hidden symmetries and deep geometric structures, and stochastic differential equations, with the ever growing manifestations of random phenomena.

From its PDE and differential geometry core, the group branches out for strong interactions with other groups in the department and the university, notably the groups in algebraic geometry, topology, number theory, string theory, and applied mathematics.

In arXive is so many articles, but look at this one from 2009!

arXiv:0905.4215 [ps, pdf, other]

Quaternionic Soliton Equations from Hamiltonian Curve Flows in HP^n

Stephen C. Anco, Esmaeel Asadi

The molecular mechanism of innate immunity.

2011-06-11T10:18:00.000-07:00

The Shaw Prize Foundation (the Asia's Nobel Prize) announced that Bruce A. Beutler, chair of the Department of Genetics at The Scripps Research Institute, has been awarded a 2011 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine, for “discovery of the molecular mechanism of innate immunity, the first line of defense against pathogens.” Beutler shares the $1 million prize with Jules A. Hoffmann of the University of Strasbourg (France), and Ruslan M. Medzhitov, the David W. Wallace Professor of Immunobiology at Yale University.

Beutler determined how innate immune system cells detect a potentially invasive microorganism present in the body. The same system that provides awareness of infection may sometimes drive inflammatory or autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus. Beutler has spearheaded the use of a technique called "forward genetics" to study genes used by the mammalian innate immune system to clear pathogens from the body.

The Genetics Department has assembled a highly interactive group of investigators with expertise in the theory and practice of forward genetics: the creation of phenovariance, its detection by phenotypic screening, and its solution by positional cloning or other methods.

While many biologists begin with hypotheses about how a particular biological phenomenon operates, geneticists begin instead with a phenotype: an altered form of the phenomenon in question. Our principal interest is mammalian immune function. If we wish to understand why the mouse immune system responds to a particular molecule, we find an exceptional mouse in which it doesn’t; if we wish to understand why most mice don’t have inflammatory disease, we find an exceptional mouse that does. When a phenotype is caused by a single gene mutation, it is generally possible to find the mutation. Then we have gained fundamental insight into the phenomenon itself.

Using a genetic approach, we established some years ago that the Toll-like receptors (TLRs) serve as the key sensors used by the mammals to perceive infection. This conclusion rested upon the positional cloning of a mutation (Lps^d) that prevented mice from sensing bacterial lipopolysaccharide [Poltorak et al., Science 282:2085-2088 (1998)]. Since that time, we have established many of the essential proteins active in TLR signal transduction, but many others remain to be found.

We use random chemical mutagenesis with N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) to produce many thousands of mice with germline mutations that affect every aspect of normal biological function. We then screen the mice to detect phenotypic change in the innate immune response. For example, the ability of macrophages to sense molecules of microbial origin (for example, lipopolysaccharide, bacterial lipopeptides, double-stranded RNA, and unmethylated DNA) is measured in vitro. The ability to cope with specific pathogens (especially mouse cytomegalovirus) is measured in vivo. Mice with inflammatory colitis, or strong resistance to specific microbes, or an abnormal complement of immune cells are identified as well. When strong deviation from normal function is detected, transmissibility of the phenotype is examined. If the phenotype is transmissible (i.e., if a bona fide mutation exists), meiotic mapping is performed to confine the mutation to a particular genomic interval. The mutation is then sought among candidate genes within the interval. To date, 274 phenotypes of all kinds have been detected in our laboratory by screening random germline mutant mice, and 140 of these mutations have immunologic effects. 170 mutations have been mapped to chromosomes, and in 145 cases, the molecular identity of the defect has been established. We now know that hundreds of genes serve the innate immune responses to microbial infections, making a life-or-death difference to animals infected with a single defined pathogen. And we have made inroads into the principal pathways of innate immune response.

Along the way, we have found many mutations that have shed light on other biological phenomena: hearing, sight, iron absorption, and development. All of these are regarded with interest, and some have started entirely new lines of biological inquiry.

Research presentation.
Among the largest issues in immunology is the question of self/non-self discrimination. How do we "know" when we have an infection? What are the receptors that alert us? For more than a century, and in fact, since microbes were recognized as the cause of infections, it has been clear that mammals are genetically programmed to recognize them.
Because the innate immune system must act promptly to contain an infection, mammals respond violently to purified molecules of microbial origin such as endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide; LPS). And it has long been known that sensing LPS is required for a mouse to overcome a Gram-negative infection (1;2). It has also been clear that cytokines, produced by mononuclear phagocytes in response to LPS, orchestrate the innate response and can be highly toxic when produced in large amounts (3-5). But the nature of the LPS receptor, which ignites the entire process, was long elusive.
It is now believed that each of the 12 mouse TLRs and 10 human TLRs dectect a limited number of the signature molecules that herald infection (LPS, lipopeptides, flagellin, unmethylated DNA, dsRNA, and ssRNA begin the best known examples). They may also detect molecular ligands of host origin under some circumstances, and may participate in sterile inflammation (observed in autoimmune diseases). The TLRs are the gatekeepers of the most powerful inflammatory responses known, and as such, are probably important in a wide range of diseases. And without TLR signaling, a state of severe immunocompromise exists (8).
The forward genetic approach entails the induction of thousands of random germline point mutations on a defined genetic background (C57BL/6) using N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU), the phenotypic screening of many thousands of mice for specific defects of immunity, and the positional cloning of those transmissible mutations that are detected. This classical genetic method does not depend upon hypotheses, nor upon assumptions about how innate immunity "should" work. Hence, it is unbiased, and errors of interpretation are extremely rare.

Over time, the effects of hundreds of millions of point mutations that change coding sense have been probed, and approximately 70% of all genes have so far been mutated to a state of detectable phenovariance. In terms of throughput, the ENU mutagenesis effort now underway in the Beutler laboratory is the largest in the world, and presently the only one primarily devoted to the decipherment of innate immunity.

In the Beutler lab, genetic screens are presently being applied to study four important topics in immunobiology. 1. Signaling pathways utilized by the TLRs and other innate immune sensors are kept under surveillance in screens designed to detect mutations that impair the detection of microbes. In the TLR signaling screen, signaling from seven TLRs is monitored by measuring tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α production by peritoneal macrophages from ENU-mutagenized mice ex vivo. This screen has led to the decipherment of pathways for microbe sensing, identifying proteins that could not be "guessed" to participate in signaling (8-10). In addition, the study of several mutants identified in the screen has revealed subtleties in the nature of signaling from several TLRs (9;11;12). For example, the pococurante mutation of MyD88 demonstrated that signaling from TLR2 is inherently different from signaling through the other TLRs, requiring only one of two known sites of receptor-adapter interaction (Figure 1) (11). The Double-stranded DNA Macrophage Screen, to identify components involved in sensing cytoplasmic double-stranded DNA (dsDNA), and the NALP3 Inflammasome Screen, to identify components involved in sensing “danger signals,” are also being carried out in macrophages ex vivo. An in vivo screen for response to injected CpG oligodeoxynucleotides has recently been initiated.

2. By infecting mice with authentic pathogens using small inocula that are normally eliminated or contained by mice, mutations that impair host defense may be detected. Screens for susceptibility to mouse cytomegalovirus infection (MCMV Susceptibility and Resistance Screen), and for clearance of lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV Clearance Screen) in vivo are currently underway. These screens rely on the highly reproducible behavior of mice challenged by infection, which assures that phenovariants may be easily discerned (Figure 2). Some of the identified mutations have also come as great surprises (13). For example, mayday mice die between 24 and 72 hours after infection with 5 x 10⁴ PFU of MCMV, and were found to carry a mutation in the gene encoding an inwardly-rectifying potassium (K+) channel subunit, Kir6.1 (Figure 2) (14). Screens for control of MCMV, adenovirus, influenza, and Rift Valley Fever Virus are being performed in macrophages ex vivo (Ex Vivo Macrophage Screen for Control of Viral Infection).

3. ENU mutations can also render mice highly resistant to infection by specific pathogens, or result in autoimmune and inflammatory disease. The MCMV Susceptibility and Resistance Screen and Influenza Resistance Screen may identify mutations that ultimately point to targets for intervention during infection. Such mutations disclose the existence of a "latent innate immune system," in that not all mechanisms for host resistance have been exploited. Rather, the genome has much untapped potential, and innate immunity is a work in progress.

The DSS-induced Colitis Screen is designed to discover mutations resulting in susceptibility to chemically-induced colitis, which is thought to arise from excessive and sustained inflammatory host immune responses against commensal intestinal microbes. The screen monitors weight loss, rather than mortality in the case of MCMV or influenza, as an indication of colitis (Figure 3), and for this reason, sensitizing mutations are easily retrieved. Mutations that inappropriately activate immune responses to normal intestinal flora may be revealed by looking for exceptions to the norm in DSS sensitivity. Because of their potential to activate both innate and adaptive immune systems, mutations identified in each of these screens may also reveal molecules that contribute to autoimmune disease.

Figure 3a. Screening of G3 mice for susceptibility to DSS-induced colitis. 1% DSS was administered in the drinking water and body weight was determined daily. C57BL/6 mice receiving 1% DSS (black, n=20) or 0% DSS (gray, n=10) served as controls. Putative mutants are circled.

Using genetics to understand the molecular mechanisms of intestinal bowel disease (IBD). Colitis can be induced by the chemical dextran sodium sulphate (DSS), which is toxic to intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) and compromises the mucosal barrier that usually protects the body from intestinal microflora. Detection of intestinal bacteria by Toll-like receptors (TLRs) present in IECs and immune cells in the lamina propria of the intestine results in activation of the immune system, production of inflammatory cytokines, and corrective responses. By screening ENU-induced mouse mutations (red text) with the DSS-induced Colitis Screen, we have identified a number of components that are important in protecting against IBD. These include TLR signaling, epithelial growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling, aquaporin 3 (Aqp3), the response to unfolded proteins causing endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, and numerous factors involved in vesicle transport and secretion, which are required to release cytotoxic molecules necessary to kill invasive pathogens.

4. The nature of the innate:adaptive immune connection is being probed. Although the innate immune response clearly contributes to the development of an adaptive immune response, the mechanism by which this occurs remains unclear. Together with our colleagues in the Nemazee lab, we have recently shown that TLR signaling is not required for effective antibody production following immunization (15), nor for strong CTL responses (16). Focusing on CTL and NK responses (In Vivo NK Cell and CD8+ T Cell Cytotoxicity Screen), we have identified a number of mutations that impair either or both, consistent with the conclusion that a large number of genes have non-redundant function in supporting cytotoxic lymphoid immunity.

In addition, the functions of many genes are illuminated by the study of mice with visible phenotypes induced by random germline mutagenesis. In these mice, mutations may affect development, morphology, behavior, or even immune function, and are positionally cloned with interest. In this manner, the laboratory pursues a broad range of biological topics. Recently, mutations in TMPRSS6 and SHP1 were found to cause body iron deficiency due to impaired iron uptake (17), and autoimmune and inflammatory disease (18), respectively.

To date, 380 transmissible mutations that cause discernable phenotypes have been set aside for positional cloning in the Beutler laboratory; 238 mutations have been mapped to chromosomes, and in 217 instances, molecular identification of the causative mutation has been made. These mutations fall within 146 genes. 264 of the mutations studied affect immunity, and about half of the mutations affecting immunity that are cloned prove to be novel in the sense that no such phenotype had been predicted by knockout mutations, or knockouts had not been created. Only about 50% recessive saturation of the genome has been achieved to date in any given screen; therefore, it is expected that many key discoveries of function lie in waiting.

The long-range goal of the laboratory is to identify the key genes required for resistance to infection (the mammalian "resistome") and determine how they interact with one another. But as genetics is a form of exploration in which very surprising phenotypes can and do arise, many different lines of inquiry are pursued. In this way the lab has solved basic questions in many different fields. Please visit our Mutagenetix web site to view the expanding list of mutations that we have produced and solved.

Beutlers Publications

Jules Hoffman and his publications, often free.

Discovery of insect-innate immune system and Toll receptor

Innate immunity is an essential host-defense system, which participates in the elimination of microbes from the body. The molecular mechanism of the innate immune system, especially the way of recognition of microbes, had been uncovered for a long time. Dr. Jules A. Hoffmann and his colleagues discovered that Drosophila Toll gene plays essential roles in innate immunity by using genetic approaches. Drosophila Toll functions as a sensor for microbes and activates intracellular signaling pathways, thereby inducing anti-microbial peptides. Their discovery is a breakthrough for the investigation of innate immune system of mammals, and leads discovery of mammalian Toll like receptor and role of their anti-microbial functions. Their findings are also contributes to the understanding of human immune systems and used for the development of adjuvant for vaccines and new anti-viral agents.

The evolutionary perspective. 1,

“The Antimicrobial Defence of Drosophila: a paradigm of innate immunity”

Today, immunologists consider the innate arm of immunity to be at least as equally important as the adaptive for the overall host defence. The innate immunity comprises a heritable, multifaceted and highly conserved defence system which its molecular basis only now has started to be elucidated. The fundamental questions on how the microbes interact with the host during the first minutes to hours following inoculation, what genes are induced and what molecular effectors are expressed are investigated extensively both in insects and in mammals.

Addressing these issues in the antimicrobial defence of Drosophila, a highly efficient innate defence system, has provided great insight and possibilities in immunology research. The results accumulated so far converge to a theatre where two major pathways act as the major actors of these mechanisms. The first is the Spatzle-Toll cascade, triggered by infection with fungi or gram-positive bacteria, while the second is the Imd (Immune deficiency) cascade, triggered by Gram-negative bacterial invasion. These pathways signal to NF-kB response elements, orchestrating the expression of several hundreds of immune-response genes. As to which protein family serves the infection discrimination function during the microbe invasion, several classes of the Peptidoglycan Recognition Proteins (PGRP) seem to be the possible culprit.

Although the knowledge about the innate immunity emerging from the Drosophila paradigm is still very elementary, several lines of investigation imply that the aforementioned complex signalling cascades are builded and act in a similar fashion in mammals also; every element of the Toll and Imd paths are represented in mammals by the TLR4 and TNF cascades respectively.

Ruslan M. Medzhitov, Yale bulletin
Medzhitov has made groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of innate immunity, which provides immediate defense against infection. His studies helped elucidate the critical role of toll-like receptors (TLRs) in sensing microbial infections, mechanisms of TLR signaling, and activation of the inflammatory and immune response.

Arming the Immune System talk. "We don't know how to make vaccines yet".
Toll like receptor and IL-1 receptor signalling, also capsases.
"Toll like receptors and innate immunity". R. Medzhitov. Nature Reviews
Immunology 1, 135, 2001.
Minireview 1997: Innate Immunity: The Virtues of a Nonclonal System of Recognition. Ancient Host Defense Pathway etc. with Il-1,6,8. Toll/NFkB pathway is conserved between insects and mammals and activates nonspecific defense mechanisms in both cases, while in mammals Toll also induces signals required for the activation of the adaptive immune response.
INNATE IMMUNE RECOGNITION, 2002

This man was a bit more interesting.

From Howard Hughes Medical Institute:
Medzhitov’s interest in immunology was ignited in the early 1990s - a bleak time for science in Russia. Medzhitov witnessed this disintegration first-hand. Scientific resources drained away, until just a single battered copy of the weekly journals made the rounds at Moscow University. As a graduate student there, Medzhitov yearned to keep up with the latest advances, and his
weekly hour with Science and Nature wasn't enough. So he headed to the Academy of Natural Sciences, which was then engaged in its own detente with the university. For various bureaucratic reasons, university students weren't allowed access to the library. “So I had to go and flirt with the librarians—there were several of them—and eventually they all knew me and
let me in secretly and told me not to tell anyone,” says Medzhitov.
There, in the stacks, the young biology student stumbled on a copy of Cold Spring Harbor Symposia. In it was the paper that launched his career. Written by the late Yale immunologist Charles Janeway (an HHMI investigator), the article sketched a new theory for how the immune system recognizes and responds to pathogens. Little was known then about the so-called innate immune system and how it identifies and reacts to invaders. Janeway’s ideas
ignited Medzhitov, sending him to his university’s sole e-mail terminal. “I was able to send messages once a week,” says Medzhitov. “And my first message was to Charlie.” Medzhitov asked the professor for more details about his ideas. To Medzhitov’s delight, Janeway responded, and the pair exchanged several more messages.
“Charlie's paper was the only paper that made sense of a lot of things,” says Medzhitov. “That was the point I first thought about being a researcher in immunology. As an undergraduate student, I never had a course on immunology.”
With a career path now in mind, Medzhitov landed a fellowship at the University of California, San Diego. There, working with protein evolution pioneer Russell Doolittle, Medzhitov contacted local immunologist Richard Dutton, who knew Janeway and recommended Medzhitov for a postdoctoral position in Janeway’s lab. Janeway said yes. “I felt very lucky,” says
Medzhitov.
When he arrived at Yale—after a detour to Moscow to defend his thesis and sweat out a government coup and six months of uncertainty—Medzhitov felt overwhelmed. “Janeway’s lab was very famous, and I imagine competition to get in was very high. And I was coming from just a few e-mail exchanges and a recommendation. My challenge was, not only did I not speak English well, I also had never done any experiments. In Russia, there was no money to do anything. All I could do was sit in the library. So I arrived without any experience, basically zero. I had to learn as quickly as I could.”
It turns out that lack of experience helped Medzhitov in another way. Janeway’s theory of how innate immunity acted, by recognizing bits of invading organisms, was “extremely speculative.” And that meant it was risky to work on. But, being “oblivious to concerns about career,” Medzhitov jumped in on the project. “I was just happy to be in a place where I could do science,” he says.
In 1996, after just a few years working together, Janeway and Medzhitov made a breakthrough. They discovered receptors that alerted the second arm of the immune system, the more familiar T cells and B cells that attack pathogens. Studying these proteins, dubbed Toll-like receptors, quickly became one of the hottest areas in biology. “That was an extremely exciting time,” says Medzhitov. “We didn't realize how much would come out of it eventually, that it would become such a huge area of research.”
In the years since then, Medzhitov has piled one discovery after another upon the first, dramatically expanding our understanding of the key roles Toll-like receptors play in infection control, chronic inflammation, and even the growth of tumors. At the same time, he's branched off in a dozen directions:
One example of many, Medzhitov is learning how commensal bacteria—which live in our guts and help us digest food—also help protect our intestines from injury.
Medzhitov now thinks that Toll-like receptors and related proteins may trigger the chronic inflammation that leads to coronary artery disease, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes—some of our biggest killers. “I like a lot of areas of biology and it's hard for me to focus on only one,” he says. Now, with plenty of journals to read and experiments to conduct, he doesn't have to.

Research Summary

Research in this laboratory focuses on many aspects of innate immunity and includes the following areas:

Molecular mechanisms of innate immune recognition: Identification and analysis of receptors involved in innate immune recognition (Pattern Recognition Receptors) and signaling pathways activated by these receptors. Of particular interest is the recently identifiedfamily of Toll-like receptors, which plays an essential role in innate immune recognition in both mammals and insects.

Control of adaptive immune responses by innate immune recognition. Signals induced upon innate immune recognition (co-stimulatory molecules, cytokines and chemokines) are necessary both for the initiation of adaptive immune responses and the control of effector functions. We are interested in molecular mechanisms that translate the signals recognized by Pattern Recognition Receptors into signals that control the activation of naive lymphocytes and their differentiation into effector cells.

Mechanisms of autoimmunity and allergy. Inflammation is a normal component of the host response to infection. However, excessive inflammation, or inflammation in the absence of infection, may lead to a variety of pathological states, including autoimmunity and allergy. We are studying the cellular and molecular basis of inflammatory disorders that are caused by the dysfunctions of the innate immune system.

Extensive Research Description

Innate immune recognition

The innate immune system relies on several distinct strategies of recognition, including pattern recognition and missing self recognition. We are interested in defining cellular and molecular mechanisms of innate immune sensing and signaling. There are several different classes of receptors involved in innate immune recognition. We are interested in the general design of the recognition and signaling modules of the innate immune system, their functional relationships, their roles in host defense and in control of adaptive immunity, and their contributions to immunopathology.

Host-Pathogen interactions

The disease state caused by microbial infection is a result of either microbial virulence or immunopathology (the host response to infection), or in some cases both. Thus immune sensing and responsiveness to infection are adjusted during evolution to achieve an optimal balance to maximize protection from infection, and to minimize the pathology caused by an overzealous immune response. This balance can presumably vary depending on infection. We are interested in studying the mechanisms (both hard-wired and adaptive) that allow for an optimal trade-off between these two conflicting goals. We are interested in understanding the role of virulence in host-pathogen interactions and the effect of microbial virulence on innate and adaptive immunity. We are also studying the affect of infection on the immune system and how the immune system handles co-infections.

Inflammation

Inflammation is a fundamental physiological process that underlies a multitude of normal and pathological conditions. We are studying both the basic biology of inflammation and the regulatory mechanisms that control initiation, quality and intensity of inflammatory responses. In particular, we are studying the links between inflammation and metabolism, inflammation and aging, and inflammation and cancer.

Control of adaptive immunity

Innate immune recognition plays a critical role in the control of adaptive immune responses. Multiple mechanisms underlie the connections between innate and adaptive immune systems, and most of them are poorly understood. We are studying basic mechanisms that couple innate immune recognition with activation and differentiation of adaptive immune responses. We are also studying the links between innate immune system and peripheral tolerance.

Cell biology of signal transduction

Most of what we know about cell signaling is based on biochemical and genetic studies. While these approaches provide essential information about the composition of signaling pathways, much less progress has been made in understanding the functional organization of signaling pathways, especially in the context of basic cell biological processes, such as protein sorting and vesicular trafficking. We are interested in basic principles that govern the cell biology of signaling transduction pathways.

Control of gene expression

Stimulation of macrophages through TLRs leads to changes in the expression (induction and suppression) of hundreds of genes. These changes are effected through a diversity of mechanisms. Gene regulation occurs at multiple levels (activation of trasnscription factors, chromatin remodeling and histone modifications) and has both signal-specific and gene-specific components. Different subsets of TLR-inducible genes are subject to differential regulatory influences, which are dependent on the function of the products they encode. We are interested in the basic principles of inducible gene expression, which are currently poorly characterized.

Cancer biology

We are studying the mechanisms whereby cancer cells can sense their 'oncogenic state' and communicate it to other cells of the host. We are also studying the role of inflammation and tissue repair in tumor progression.

Announcement at Science
All plants and animals have a built-in resistance to pathogens called innate immunity that is more basic and general than the better-known adaptive immunity that responds to specific infections or vaccines. Innate immunity is the first line of defense against pathogens in all plants and animals. Jules Hoffmann of the University of Strasbourg in France first identified a key molecule, called Toll, involved in the innate immune response in fruit flies. Ruslan Medzhitov of Yale University then found homologous molecules, Toll-like receptors, in humans. Bruce Beutler of the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, completed the puzzle by showing how the Toll-like receptors activate the innate immune system.

There are also others involved, of course.

Verlinde's gravity at Cern.

2011-06-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

Also Verlinde has hold a talk at Cern in 28.4.11.
28 AprProf. Erik Verlinde, "On the Origin of Gravity, Dark Energy and Matter."

Insights from black hole physics and developments in string theory strongly indicate that the gravity is derived from an underlying microscopic description in which it has no a priori meaning. Starting from first principles we argue that inertia and gravity are caused by the fact that phase space volume (or entropy) associated with the underlying microscopic system is influenced by the positions of material objects. Application of these ideas to cosmology leads to surprising new insights into the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

So, he talks of Phase space now... We use concepts and observe phenomena at a macroscopic scale, which are derived from a microscopic scale where they have no a priori meaning. Gravity arises because the amount of phase space (information) available for these degrees of freedom is influenced by the location of matter in space and time.

The talk is here. Video here.

The Origin of Life discussed at Cern.

2011-06-11T07:29:00.000-07:00

Biology as a foundation for theoretical physics has taken a step forward.

CERN Colloquium

"The current status of work on the origin of life" by Stuart Kauffman (FRSC, U Vermont, Santa Fe Institute, Tampere U. Technology) Thursday 19 May 2011 from 16:30 to 17:30 (Europe/Zurich) at CERN

A miniconference, but still a step in the right direction. “The aim of this research group is to create theory and experiments to produce at least one, or several, candidate evolving protocells in the next decade.”

While physicists at CERN currently study the origin of the universe and the origin of matter, in the future they may be asked to help crack the origin of life too. On May 20, a small group of chemists and biologists gathered at CERN for a brainstorming workshop discussing ideas about the origin of life, and to hear from CERN experts about how to organize a scientific community from disparate research groups and how to access powerful computational resources.

“There is a serious risk that the answer to the question ‘How on Earth has life appeared on Earth?’ will mainly remain in the realm of philosophy for the years to come unless we can take definitive scientific approaches,” said Stuart Kauffman, an American molecular biologist and complexity theorist who co-organized the workshop with Markus Nordberg, resources coordinator at ATLAS, one of the largest experiments at CERN.

Kauffman and his colleagues believe that the crucial step towards life was the formation of autocatalytic sets. An autocatalytic set is a group of molecules which undergo chemical reactions in which some of the molecules catalyze - that is, significantly increase the rate at which the reaction takes place - other reactions in the set. Importantly, though, all molecules mutually catalyze each other’s creation, meaning that autocatalytic sets are ‘self-sustaining’. It’s thought that molecular reproduction and protocells then emerge from such a system.

The text in Cern: called together by Ignatios Antoniadis/PH-TH & Markus Nordberg/PH-ADO.

Work on the Origin of Life is poised to converge onto a fourth phase and, many of us hope, success.

The first phase concerned prebiotic synthesis of the small molecules, amino acids, nucleotides, lipids and others, essential for life and spanned some forty years.

The second overlapping phase was inspired by the symmetric of the DNA or RNA double helix, presumed that life must necessarily be based on some form of template replication of one strand by ligation of free nucleotides to create the second strand, melting of the two strands and cycling again. Spearheaded by L. Orgel, but with many others, this effort has, to date, failed.

The third phase begins with the discovery that RNA molecules can act as enzymes, and posited the RNA world, in which RNA molecules dominated. This has led to slightly successful efforts to evolve an RNA sequence able to template replicate itself. Current success is an evolved ribozyme able to do so for 14 nucleotides.

The forth phase is converging around four ideas: 1) liposomes, hollow bilipid spheres obtainable from lipids in water, can grow and divide. We now widely hope that these can serve as “containers” bounding proto-cells. 2) Sources of free energy, from pyrophosphate to proton pumps. 3) A minimal metabolism in a “messy” systems chemistry which supplies the small amino acids, nucleotides and lipids for proto -life. 4) Collectively autocatalytic sets of polymers, peptides, RNA, or other, which achieve molecular reproduction in dividing liposome containers, hence also open ended evolution. At present, a 9 peptide collectively autocatalytic set has been constructend, achieving catalytic closure, and demonstrated beyond doubt that the DNA or RNA double helix is not needed for molecular reproduction. In addition a two membered DNA autocatalytic set has been constructed and two two membered RNA ribozyme autocatalytic sets have been selected from a large RNA library.

The author, in 1971 and 1986 proposed a theory in which the emergence of collectively autocatalytic sets is a first order phase transition as the diversity of polymers that are also candidates to catalyse the reactions they undergo, increases in diversity. Recent theorems have improved upon this initial model, simulations have shown that small collectively autocatalytic sets can emerge in this process and grow together, and also that, in the presence of inhibition of catalysis and if contained in duplicating containers, can indeed serve as plausible protocells able to evolve indefinitely.

The author has gathered some 17 scientists from around the world to collaborate and compete with one another, CERN/LHC experiments style, in a generative scientific environment.
http://indico.cern.ch/event/137302

Kauffmans talk (bad quality, webcam only):
"The current status of work on the origin of life"

“For a long time, it has been debated how likely it is that such autocatalytic sets exist in arbitrary chemical reaction systems,” said Wim Hordijk, a computational and bioinformatics specialist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

“If I randomly throw a bunch of molecules together, and let them react according to the possible reactions between them, can I expect to see one or more of these autocatalytic sets? Some researchers believe they are very likely to occur. Others believe that it is almost impossible that they appear in a random chemistry – similar, they sometimes argue, to the question of what the probability is that a whirlwind blowing through a scrap yard will put together a Boeing 747,” Hordijk said.

Analyzing autocatalytic sets

Until now, little mathematical analysis has been done on this question. But recently, Hordijk developed computer models to explore possibilities and scenarios for autocatalytic sets, in the hope that it could help others figure out how to set up laboratory experiments that would otherwise be too expensive and time-consuming without this prior knowledge.

“So far we have used our own personal computers or relatively small computer cluster to run our simulations on. However, we have already run into limitations in terms of available computing power,” Hordijk said.

Hordijk and his colleague Mike Steel have developed a model of a chemical reaction system where the probability of an arbitrary molecule being a catalyst for an arbitrary reaction was two in a million, a probability that is “chemically plausible” he said. Running this model on the LHC computing grid, he found that, with this level of catalysis, a set of about 65,000 different molecule types or more will have a high probability of forming an autocatalytic set. This is actually reasonable for a chemist in a laboratory to test, he said.

“We are hoping to use the computing grid to perform [future] simulations and analyses, which would enable us to go much further and deeper than we have been able to do so far. We have already done some small test runs just to make sure our software runs on the LHC grid [facilitated by the ATLAS experiment], which seems to be the case,” Hordijk happily reported.

Other areas being explored include self-reproducing RNA, ‘metabolism first’ theories and self-reproducing liposomes - small vesicles formed when lipid molecules, like fats and oils, align to make a membrane. Almost all the theoretical work is underpinned by complex models that would need large-scale computing power.

There are several options for computing power available out there, Bob Jones, project director of CERN’s openlab told the group, including other grid infrastructures, supercomputers, clouds and volunteer computing.

“New science can arise in unexpected ways”

"Our group of seven origin of life workers, representing an initial group of 22 of the top researchers in the field, were truly thrilled by our CERN meeting,” said Kauffman. “If CERN wishes it, we hope to become a small part of the CERN world, for the origin of life is itself a problem in physics. New science can arise in unexpected ways."

First, however, the Origin of Life group needs to make a formal proposal for such a project, and CERN must agree formally to support the work. “We hope this occurs. Such approval will help drive an international effort in origin of life research,” Kauffman said.

So, no results from here in several years.

Antimatter asymmetry?

2011-05-30T00:12:00.000-07:00

From Fermilab Today. CMS scientists recently measured the ratio of W+ to W¯ production in proton collisions at the LHC.

It is often said that a proton is made of three quarks: two of the same type, called up quarks, and one of a different type called a down quark. But that's not the whole story. In the space between these three stable quarks there is a boiling soup of quark–antiquark pairs. That is, a quark and an antimatter quark spontaneously come into existence, drift a while, and then recombine, destroying one another. This happens all the time— in every proton in every atom of every cell of our bodies, and in all of the matter in the universe.

When two protons collide in the LHC, most of the individual quarks miss each other. Often only one quark or antiquark from each proton collides directly. When an up quark collides with an anti-down quark, the two can combine to form a W⁺ boson; similarly, a down quark and an anti-up quark can combine to form a W¯ boson. In both cases, an antiquark is involved. Thus, each of the millions of W bosons produced at the LHC must come from at least one of these transient particles, caught before it had a chance to sink back into the soup.

CMS scientists recently measured the ratio of W⁺ to W¯ production in proton collisions at the LHC. The number of W⁺ bosons exceeds the number of W¯ bosons by about 40 percent, partly because each proton has two stable up-quarks for every stable down-quark. However, the exact ratio also depends on the density of the quark-antiquark soup.

My comment: This express asymmetry in favor of antimatter? Note the different quarks have different mass and hierarchy. Kea today: the remaining mystery is why the scales have the ratios that they do, namely roughly 2 and 36 for the down/lepton and up/lepton scales resp. Here with quarks we talked of protons, fermions. Has they also an hierarchy? l-adic /p-adic?

Counting W⁺ and W¯ bosons yields new insight into the dynamic structure of protons, which is too complicated to compute from first principles with current techniques. It also informs predictions of new physics: The rate at which hypothetical particles would be produced depends on the density of quark-antiquark pairs, for the same reason that W bosons do. It is important to know the thickness of this soup when imagining what else might spring from it.

— Jim Pivarski

Interpretation about Copenhagen interpretation.

2011-05-28T05:09:00.000-07:00

Lubos has turned his coat? He looks at the Copenhagen Interpretation, and describes the "Lumo interpretation". This time he finds the same solution as Matti has found long ago. Light-like CD cones. Personal ones. And he looks at paranormal phenomena. Amazing!

I cannot hold back a small comment:
Lubos just realized the fact that selves has their own lightcones of reality and perceptions. So consciousness is different too, and the observer-effect. The collapse gives the information and is a result of the measurement. Information is not material, not bound to material patterns etc. So what is it?

The contenta is that he discovered the Zero Energy Ontology :) Maybe also the p-adic algebra :) Isn't that ironic?

Looks like he finally has began to THINK. I am sure he is good in the thinking process.

If he only stopped insulting people.
Ulla.

But I was wrong.
Lubos did not start thinking.
But I am of course no physicist, remember that Lubos. I have only studied this for some years.

Earlier he looked at the absent dark matter. Ironically TGD has been accused exactly because Matti talks of dark matter much. But what does the dark matter mean? Has it to be exotic? I guess no. So both are right? In fact, Kea also talks of the absense of dark matter. She can explain what it is.

Something Lubos has to do to save his face!

Has he become a real crackpot? He talks himself much of insane crackpots. I hate that word. It has done so much harm. So many carriers spoiled. For what? A fantasy? There is no M-theory, and maybe Lubos has been forced to realize that at last. So he goes back to see where it went wrong.

I am sorry, but this is creating more fuzziness than it solves. Lubos has much left to learn, and he must leave his stubborn belief and start look at realities and experiments in biology, condensed matter and quantum computer theory. I see not much progress in this, just the same old story.

To his text:
Pretty much everyone misunderstands the basic points of the Copenhagen interpretation, Lubos claim. I believe him.

There was no fundamental disagreement about the meaning of quantum mechanics among those people. Obviously, many other people such as Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, or Louis de Broglie didn't ever accept the Copenhagen interpretation but they didn't have any alternative.

Lots of fringe stuff, garbage, and crackpottery was later written by various people who weren't really part of the Copenhagen school of thought but who found it convenient to abuse the famous brand. That's why one can also hear that the Copenhagen school may (or even must) interpret the wave function as a real wave that collapses much like a skyscraper when it's hit by an aircraft on 9/11.

But nothing like that has ever been a part of the Copenhagen school of thought. If you open any complete enough description of the Copenhagen interpretation or if you look at Bohr's or Heisenberg's own texts, you will invariably see something like the following six principles:

A system is completely described by a wave function ψ, representing an observer's subjective knowledge of the system. (Heisenberg)
The description of nature is essentially probabilistic, with the probability of an event related to the square of the amplitude of the wave function related to it. (The Born rule, after Max Born)
It is not possible to know the value of all the properties of the system at the same time; those properties that are not known with precision must be described by probabilities. (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle)
Matter exhibits a wave–particle duality. An experiment can show the particle-like properties of matter, or the wave-like properties; in some experiments both of these complementary viewpoints must be invoked to explain the results, according to the complementarity principle of Niels Bohr.
Measuring devices are essentially classical devices, and measure only classical properties such as position and momentum.
The quantum mechanical description of large systems will closely approximate the classical description. (The correspondence principle of Bohr and Heisenberg)
Note that the very first point says that the wave function is a collection of numbers describing subjective knowledge. That doesn't mean that in practice, everything will be always subjective - or whatever the spiritual people have attributed to quantum mechanics. Of course that constant interactions between parts of the world - and different people - pretty much guarantee that they have to agree about many "objective properties". But as a matter of principle, this rule is important for quantum mechanics and Werner Heisenberg has never left any doubts that this is how one had to interpret it.

Heisenberg would often describe his interpretation of the wave function using a story about a guy who fled the city and we don't know where he is but when they tell us at the airport they saw him 10 minutes ago, our wave function describing his position immediately collapses to a smaller volume, and so on. This "collapse" may occur faster than light because no real object is "collapsing": it's just a state of our knowledge in our brain.

In practice, everyone can use pretty much the same wave function. But in principle, the wave function is subjective. .. . So A and B will have different wave functions during much of the experiment. It's consistent for B to imagine that A had seen a well-defined property of S before it was measured by B - but B won't increase his knowledge in any way by this assumption, so it is useless. If he applied this "collapsed" assumption to purely coherent quantum systems, he would obtain totally wrong predictions. So the wave function is surely subjective if one wants to obtain a universal description of the world.

This is the problem between SR and GR, the quantum gravity. How can a subjective Universe become part in an objective Universe? A collection of probability amplitudes combined differently, says Lubos, before the squared 'absolute values' of the combinations are interpreted as probabilities. This is the essence. A superposition can remain as a probability amplitude if they are not measured, squared, laid on-shell. The Schrödinger cat can be both living and dead at the same time. The cat can have the superpositions in the entangled quantum wavestate and some probabilities can be measured by him or someone else that is also entangled. This has been shownin quantum computer science. It is possible to know 'more than everything'. Then Lubos continues:

All probabilities of physically meaningful events may be calculated in this way - as the squared absolute value of some linear combination of the probability amplitudes.

This is false. All probabilities cannot be squared, only those that become 'subjective' in 'reality'. The rest continues unmeasured.

The notion of an objective collapse was introduced by John von Neumann in 1932 and he was clearly not a part of the Copenhagen school of thought, says Lubos. So no objective measurement is possible. The measurement is always subjective, and everything that happens with the wave function has to be subjective as well.

The laws of physics predict that with the state above, there is a 36% probability that we will measure the cat to be alive and 64% probability that it is dead. Just to be sure, there is a 0% probability that there will be both an alive cat and a dead cat.

Confusions between probability amplitudes and actual measurements, says Lubos, makes people say the cat is both living and dead. Well, in a way he is right, and at the same time it is like an scientist measuring utterly complex things summaristically. The state of being, ontology, both life and death is something we don't know what it is. If we take something more simple like color? Does it change the outcome? But color is an incoming qualia and also impossible today to say exactly what it is. Bodylength vary with as much as 7 cm depending on position and momentum. Weight vary much more. Is there anything that is stable? Maybe a chrystal? But then there are very few probability amplitudes.... Not even ordinary matter is stable.
So the measurement must be done for the momentum and position, in this time alone. Next time the situation vary. So the outcome is influenced by something else too? An oscillation coming from ?

Only one of the options with the nonzero entries, "dead" or "alive", will occur, and the probabilities are 64% and 36%, respectively.

How can those probabilities be measured? They are only probability amplitudes. The outcome may be a Bell curve? But in what form? Today we simply cannot answer. This must be made by assumptions only.

There is no possible answer of the form "half-dead, half-alive"

I think many cats can be half-dead. Old ones that barely function, new ones that not yet are developed. When is a cat 'almost dead' or dead. For people there are a big debate about this. What is 100% alive? 100% health? This is a bad joke.

The Hamiltonian evolves the density matrix and dictates which states are "observable" in the classical sense. It's very clear that once we learn that the cat is alive, even though the chance was just 36%, the number 64% has to be replaced by 0% while 36% jumps to 100%.

Ooops! What is this? Ad hoc! The 'collapse'! Why not try superposition of states? No collapse happen. The cat can be even 98% dead :)

It makes no sense to claim that it's "predetermined" that the cat would be seen as alive. The free-will theorem, among other, morally equivalent results, shows that the actual decision whether the cat is seen alive or dead has to be made at the very point of the spacetime where the event (measurement) takes place; it can't be a functional of the data (any data) in the past light cone.

This is the problem of the quantum jump, discussed by Matti. Is the jump always straight forward, then there is no change, no probability amplitude. What can invoke on the desition? Certainly the history very much, the habit, attitudes, old thinking. "It has always been like this". This was realized by Einstein. In his black hole thinking it was the environment (gravity?) that 'collapsed' the Minkowskian light cone. Free will must be thought as a desition to jump somewhere not computated in advance? What can do that? A surplus of energy? This question cannot be reduced to this 'measurement' here and now. In a comment Lubos say: the random aspect of any event that is predicted with a different probability than certainty - different from 0% and different from 100% - is decided at the very point of the spacetime where this event or measurement takes place.

If you have a perfect memory, then quantum mechanics predicts that you will remember all your past observations accurately with probability 100%. Because it's 100%, no "random generator" is needed.

The claim I am making - and Conway and Kochen are making - doesn't mean that the present has no relationship to the past. It says that the information that is produced by random outcomes now - and recall that the information is given by

-sum p_i ln(p_i)

so it vanishes if all p_i are equal to 0 or 1 - doesn't have any relationship to the past. It is literally random and decided right now, not as a function of any "hidden variables" that were inherited from the past. This is proved by the free-will theorem. However, the *probabilities* that one gets one thing or another *are* of course calculated from the knowledge about the state in the past, from the initial wave function if you wish. If all the probabilities are 0% or 100%, then the measurement produces no information because it's guaranteed in advance, so the question where this (empty) information came from is vacuous. Well, I am not convinced. A computation is a measurement.

Even more importantly, people often say that "rho = rho1 + rho2" decomposition of the density matrix means that there are "two worlds", one that is described by "rho1" AND one that is described by "rho2". (Similarly for "psi", but for "rho", the comments are more clear.) But this is a complete misunderstanding of what the density matrix and addition means. The density matrix is an operator encoding probabilities - its eigenvalues are predicted probabilities. And we're just adding probabilities, not potatoes.

And he continues on the theme. No, I can't agree. Superposition of states do not have to collapse. There can be and there are two worlds. Or three worlds, one of the 'subject' (observer) one of the 'object' (cat) and one of the probabilities (quantum world). Exactly WHAT is manifesting itself, and why? Note that the quantum world is not interactive with the cat, usually, only through windows. And to measure one character momentarily doesn't mean the whole entangled cat vanish, nor the probabilities vanish, only that the subject gain massless information. This is just rubbish. Look: "It is not possible to know the value of all the properties of the system at the same time; those properties that are not known with precision must be described by probabilities. (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle)" The Universe is digital.

The "Lumo interpretation" clearly:

you describe the system by a density matrix evolving according to the right equation and it is always legitimate to imagine that the world collapsed to an eigenstate of the density matrix and the probabilities of different eigenstates are given by the corresponding eigenvalues of the density matrix. Incidentally, this also works for pure states for which "rho = psi.psi". In that case, "psi" is the only eigenstate of "rho" with the eigenvalue of "1", so you may collapse into "psi" with 100% probability which leaves "rho" completely unchanged. ;-) The only illegitimate thing to imagine is that the world has collapsed into a state which is not an eigenstate of "rho".

Uncertainty principle.
It means that generic pairs of properties,- but pairs of projection operators describing various Yes/No properties of a system - can't have well-defined values at the same moment. Pairs are usually oscillating, as instance solitons. Only (magnetic) monopoles can be 'singular'. What about the possible Higgs boson? Can it be a monopole?

Especially John von Neumann, before he began to say silly things, liked to emphasize that the nonzero commutators and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is the actual main difference between classical physics and quantum physics. If the commutators were zero, the evolution of the density matrix would be equivalent to the evolution of the classical probabilistic distribution on the phase space.

What is this! A measurement without observer? A dead Universe?

Because the projection operators P and Q corresponding to two Yes/No questions about a physical system typically don't commute with one another...

A non-commutative digital Universe? Made of pairs Yes/No properties? But there must be some correlation? Some entanglement, both cannot be Yes. And two questions can also be dependent on each other. Ok, typically...

This main principle is the main "underlying reason" why the GHZM experiment or Hardy's experiment produce results that are totally incompatible with the classical or pre-classical reasoning. The classical reasoning is wrong, the quantum reasoning is right - and the nonzero commutators in the real world are the main reason why the classical reasoning can't agree with the observations.

Complementarity principle.

Bohr's favorite principle shows that the systems exhibit both particle-like and wave-like properties, but the more clearly you can observe the latter, the more obscure has to be the latter, and vice versa.

Shows no collapse! The wave-like patterns can be described as invisible fields? I remember Lubos disliked the work of the Zeilinger-group in Wien. They have clearly shown the duality and that both can coexist in an oscillation; expanding-compressing space/time.

The measurement devices follow the rules of classical physics. This is another source of misunderstandings, says Lubos. The apparatus behaves as a classical object. So in particular, you may assume that these classical objects - especially your brain, but you don't have to go up to your brain - won't ever evolve into unnatural superpositions of macroscopically distinct states. This was a point in which the Copenhagen interpretation was incomplete. They didn't quite understood decoherence, he claims.

Decoherence shows that the states of macroscopic (or otherwise classical-like) objects whose probabilities are well-defined [does he mean squared, on-shell?] are exactly those that we could identify with the "classical states" - they're eigenstates of the density matrix. The corresponding eigenvalues - diagonal entries of the density matrix in the right basis - are the predicted probabilities.

How can probabilities be well-defined? By the non-existent collapse? No!

However, they were saying that there is such a boundary at which the quantum subtleties may be forgotten for certain purposes and they were damn right. There is such a (fuzzy) boundary and we may calculate it with the decoherence calculus today. The loss of the information about the relative phase of the probability amplitudes between several basis vectors is the only new "thing" that occurs near the boundary.

The boundary is always fuzzy because decoherence is self-evidently a continuous process in which the off-diagonal elements quickly (at a certain time scale) but gradually drop to zero. (in comments)

This is only speculations. On the contrary the fuzziness problem of boundaries points to QM-effects (as instance quantum tunneling, sum over paths).

when the history contains a large collection of decohered outcomes, all observers may ultimately reconstruct the same macroscopic past. It's just the "intermediate state of affairs" before the individual events that are "fuzzy" - in Feynman's approach, one has to sum over all histories how to get from A to B so everything that happens between A and B are just "intermediate results" that don't have any objective properties.

But if the intermediate states gets inputs from outside? Information loss or gain? Look at photosynthesis! There are much happening in the intermediate states. How lock them into a black box? Topology/memory? Entropy?
A commenter, Illuminated:Nature is inherently quantum. But human language and thoughts have a classical structure despite the fact that they emerge from an underlying quantum substrate. So, to describe nature using language, equations and thoughts forces us to come up with a classical description of something which is inherently quantum. From a classical point of view, we have to treat the quantum nature as some black box oracle which takes in classical inputs and spits out classical outputs. If we insist upon coming up with a classical model of something which is inherently quantum, that is like constructing mechanical models of the electromagnetic aether. This leaves us with extremely inefficient classical auxiliary constructs like wave functions or density matrices which are exponentially long vectors, or a functional integral over some extremely large functional space of paths. Asking about the actual value of a particular wave function component, or the nature of the functional space of all paths is like asking about the cogs and gears making up the electromagnetic aether.
If we wish to calculate, until the day practical quantum computer simulations become available, we have to resort to classical equations. That's why we have to resort to wave functions, density matrices and path integrals. But otherwise, we should treat nature as a black box oracle. What do you do with black boxes? You only consider the inputs and outputs.

What the "subjective" nature of wave function means that wave function is really a gadget that collects all the information about the system that may be known to an observer, and that may be used to predict the future. The only subjective thing about it is that at different points of space and time, i.e. at locations of different observers, different things about the past are known and used as the input - initial wave function - while the rest is to be calculated probabilistically.

Predict is to computate probable outcome and project them into the future. Usually we use information in climps, analogies. So there are much implicit information in our predictions. Note the personal light-like CD a la TGD.
In a comment: When you say that the state is "psi", it means that "psi" is what you get by time evolution from all the most recent past data that you could have measured or otherwise learned.

Another observer CD who studies you may, however, use a different state vector such as 0.6 psi1 + 0.8 psi2 where psi1 is the state in which you hold a particle apparently in state psi1 and say that it's in state psi1, and another state where you hold a particle in state psi2 and prepare to do the calculation based on this assumption that it's in state psi2.

The observer CD may only decide that psi1 is correct and psi2 is wrong *after* he actually measures the combined system of you and the particle. Before he actually gets this knowledge, he will be using a different function than you. The wave function that a given observer is using depends on what he already knows about the outcomes that have taken place. This is the sense in which it's subjective.

Brain gets its information in state reduction process, or decoherence. 40Hz state reveals the much work done, suddenly 'collapsed' into 7Hz when the information is gained/selected. But much information (as probabilities) are rejected at the same time. This could also be compared to a 'sum over paths' ? Thanks for this. But this 'observer' CD is from TGD.

For more about the links between decoherence and the second law, see e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9402006

In comments: Even a geometrically small brain composed out of a small number of atoms will be able to "perceive" almost perfectly decohered outcomes - one may increase the amount of decoherence by extending the period of time in which the decoherence is taking place. However, again, if the system is small and the time is short so that the decoherence is very far from perfect, the objects shouldn't be imagined to observe sharp outcomes of any measurements. Such objects have to be treated as coherent quantum objects that don't perceive anything and that always have a chance to "forget" what they already learned.

In some sense, it's analogous to virtual particles. Virtual particles may momentarily violate inequalities for the energy, or tunnel through a barrier, and so on, as long as dE.dt doesn't exceed hbar, the mandatory uncertainty limit. Similarly, objects that are too small and don't perfectly decohere may "perceive" some outcome, but their perception may be undone in the future. This is the quantum realm. Sharp perceptions of outcomes that hold and that can't be revised only occur in the classical limit where the decoherence is perfect and completed. In the real world, it's never quite perfect, but because rho(A1,A2) goes like exp(-exp(t)), one gets very quickly extremely close to the ideal limit.

I think of dreaming state contra waked state. Lubos: All the imperfectly decohered perceptions could be subject to revisions - some of them would be illusions. - if you were just a generic microscopic system that has no chance to have macroscopic perceptions, the observer would have to describe you properly in the QM framework using a wave function that never collapses. This is the superorganisms, the bacterias as whole cells, not genomes. Or cells in the body, mitochondrias? What determines the quantum:classic measurements? Not size alone! Also the complexity, networks, expansion- compression. Rigidity:flexibility? Einstein talked of the inertia.
Lea Luke: Concerning the abstract "non-reality" of the complex vector spaces (Hilbert spaces?) themselves: I read that they are real in the sense that they carry momentum and energy even when no particles are there. Lubos answer: it has a relation to classical logic - rules for adding and multiplying probabilities in classical physics. Whenever the questions whose probability we calculate by QM are correctly formulated, the probabilities follow all the classical laws. P(A or B) is equal to P(A)+P(B)-P(A and B), P(U and V) = P(U) P(V) if U,V are independent, and so on, and so on. But the new thing is that in quantum mechanics, probabilities themselves are "composite", they're of the form

P(A) = sum (psi_c psi*_d A_cd)

where A_cd is the matrix representing the projection operator associated with property A. Note that the probability P is schematically "psi squared" - it's made of something more fundamental, something that is complex and may interfere.

The other, often emphasized, difference is that in quantum mechanics, you may *only* talk about the classical probabilities of properties that have already decohered from their alternatives. There is no probability of "intermediate" properties of a system prior to the measurement that would obey the classical laws - there are only wave functions, the more fundamental complex probability amplitudes, and these amplitudes are being added - before they're squared at the moment of the measurement.

Oh, my dear God. Would this psi squared be BETTER than p-adics and primes? These guys REFUSE to discuss with Matti??? I cannot believe my eyes. WHAT are they doing?

Correspondence principle

Both Bohr and Heisenberg also emphasized the correspondence principle, e.g. that the quantum equations reduce to the classical ones in the appropriate limit. If you study e.g. the evolution of the expectation value of "x" and "p", they will evolve according to the classical equations. It's the Ehrenfest theorem.

As discussed in the previous point, it is not enough to show that the world of classical perceptions will occur in the limit as well: we also need to know that the right "basis" will become relevant in the classical limit. Nevertheless, with the extra additions that had been demonstrated in recent decades, I mean decoherence, we know that it is true that the classical perception and choice of states does occur in the appropriate classical limit.

The holographic principle? Quantum world manifest on a surface (2-D, that is spacetime sheets)? What are the rules? This seems nonsense to me. Sorry Lubos.

This boundary doesn't mean that quantum mechanical laws ever break down. They never break down. What's true is that for large enough systems, one may use - and should use - the approximate classical scheme (the word "approximate" sounds too scary but in reality, these approximations are super excellent for all practical and even most of the impractical purposes) of asking questions because one may show that it becomes legitimate.

Comment by pbfred: Einstein forgot about the disadvantages of a principle theory and developed General Relativity which, if not a principle theory, builds on the principles of special relativity which cannot be visualized. This set the stage for Quantum Mechanics which itself is nonvisualizable and base on a good many principles . The biggest one is the Uncertainty Principle. Another is the principle of Wave-Particle Duality. The Pauli Exclusion Principle is just an algorithm that for some reason seems to work. Pauli admits in 1945 that he could find no reason as to why it worked. Of course, this applies to the Uncertainity Principle for it just happens to work--but why does it work?

In the comments from Lubos, a comment about Einstein worshiping:
Einstein has done great things. When I was a high school student, I read his Mein Weltbild obsessively and about 5 times. He was my God. And I did fundamentalistically believe that realism had to be correct up to some point, too. Then I tried to explain the simple patterns in atomic physics etc. and I had to be stealing pieces of quantum mechanics to explain it in my "would-be" realist framework. Of course, at the end, I had to rediscover/steal all of quantum mechanics.

When I just went through all the evidence and the critical properties and experiments, it became manifest that despite the "intuitive naturalness" of Einstein's expectations, he was just wrong. Physics is not about uncritical worshiping of cults. Of course, as time continued, it became clear to me that Einstein was fundamentally wrong about many things. It's not just quantum mechanics. It was his expectation that the strong force and the weak force (nuclear forces) would ultimately go away and become non-fundamental, and so on.

Of course when I was 15, but no longer at 16, I shared those beliefs. But these beliefs are just wrong. Despite his unusual and revolutionary contributions in a certain era, Einstein just wasn't able to stay in the "actual" top of physics after the mid 1920s, despite the fact that he of course remained the most popular and appreciated guy with the media. But science has made lots of progress after 1916 when GR was being completed. In my view, the quantum revolution was more profound than the relativistic one. It wasn't done by one person only - like Einstein's relativity - but the total importance was bigger. One must separate personal appraisals and emotions from science. It's just true that Einstein, despite his giant contributions and likability, wasn't at the top of the physics research since the 1920s. The idea that revolutionaries lose some flexibility to understand important new developments is much more universal. Think about Dirac vs renormalization, Feynman vs strings, and many many other examples.

If someone can't accept such things given the evidence, he's doing cult worshiping and not science. Science doesn't have its infallible prophets. It just doesn't work in this way. So I find the very focus in your comment on exciting emotions about Einstein something that shouldn't be done if we are supposed to talk about science. It's emotional harrassment, not science. Einstein was wrong whether it sounds popular or not.

Brian: " reading this blog is sort of like a physics PhD's version of right-wing talk radio." Ye, why should we? Lubos will never change.

All in the mind.

2011-05-23T03:54:00.000-07:00

BBC has a new serie of programs called All in the mind. Exploring the limits and potential of the mind. Link to ‘Medical Matters’ page where you can get the podcast.

2 Nov 10, Battlefield Mental Health, antidepressants and morality and Community Treatment Orders. Download.
The first program; War and ethics. The ethics of forcing psychiatric patients to take treatment in the community and whether antidepressants change our moral decision-making; military mental health, ‘community treatment orders’ or CTOs; the antidepressant research, that has found the SSRIs alter how people respond to moral dillemas like the ‘trolley problem‘, is also an intriguing look into the neurochemistry of ethical choice.
9 Nov 10, Brain injury in young offenders, an unusual case of memory loss, plus how to stop worrying. Download.
16 Nov 10, Forensic science and psychology; Testosterone and City traders; Suicide terrorism. Download.
23 Nov 10, how the senses effect memory, food and design. Download.
30 Nov 10, John O'Donoghue, Digital memories and the Work Capability Assessment. Download.
7 Dec 10, Mapping the brain, online psychological support for cancer. Download.
14 Dec 10, how social networking is changing adoption. Download.
21 Dec 2010, The 1:4 statistic; Falklands Diary & Ancestors and Intelligence. Download.

and on TV.
19 Apr 11: Anorexia and autism
26 Apr 11: Psychopathic brain
03 May 11: Personal space & claustrophobia
10 May 11: Ostracism

and
17.5.2011. Metin Basoglu,Ted Kaptchuk, and Irene Tracey.

Thousands of people across the world who survive devastating earthquakes are living with the trauma of the disaster compounded by the experiences of aftershocks. Claudia Hammond talks to Metin Basoglu, a psychiatrist who has developed a method of mass psychological treatment for survivors of disasters like these, based on his research with over 10,000 people who lived through the Turkish earthquake of 1999. Could a single session of this kind of therapy really make a difference?

How strong is the placebo effect? Can sugar pills make you feel better even when you know that's exactly what they are? Claudia talks to Ted Kaptchuk from Harvard University about his findings that for people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, knowingly taking a placebo pill twice a day improved their symptoms. But is it the placebo or the ritual that surrounds taking it?

Professor Irene Tracey, pain researcher at Oxford University, says the power of placebo is all about manipulating expectation of the person taking it. She believes this research still required deception. Her research on pain and the brain had led her to suggest that rather than using placebo, changing people's expectations of active drugs could be medically beneficial.

Also - why to read someone else's emotion your own face needs to minutely mimic their facial expressions. When the brain gets feedback from the face it gets information on what that person is feeling. And why Botox, which paralyses those muscles reduces the ability to understand emotion.

The castle is crushing down?

2011-05-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

Nimas 'new' talk (from 2.5.) with many new ideas. "You can identify everything in 3-D space" and he says infinities are important.
Spacetime, Quantum Mechanics and Scattering Amplitudes

sun 22.5. Matti has written a new chap. Motives and Infinite Primes.
Infinite primes, integers, and rationals form a hierarchy completely analogous to a hierarchy of second quantization for a super-symmetric arithmetic quantum field theory.

May 16, 2011: The Kinematic Algebra From the Self-Dual Sector.
Ricardo Monteiro and Donal O'Connell, arXiv:1105.2565

KITP Informal Discussion, So I must look what it could be.

We identify a di ffeomorphism Lie algebra in the self-dual sector of Yang-Mills theory, and show that it determines the kinematic numerators of tree-level MHV amplitudes in the full theory. These amplitudes can be computed o ff-shell from Feynman diagrams with only cubic vertices, which are dressed with the structure constants of both the Yang-Mills colour algebra and the diffeomorphism algebra. Therefore, the latter algebra is the dual of the colour algebra, in the sense suggested by the work of Bern, Carrasco and Johansson. We further study perturbative gravity, both in the self-dual and in the MHV sectors, nding that the kinematic numerators of the theory are the BCJ squares of the Yang-Mills numerators.

Introduction: A deeper study reveals concrete relationships between gauge and gravity scattering amplitudes. Early in the first heyday of string theory, Kawai, Lewellen and Tye (KLT) derived a relation, valid in any number of dimensions, expressing any closed string tree amplitude in terms of a sum of products of two open string tree amplitudes [1]. Taking the field theory limit of the string amplitudes, these KLT relations imply in particular that any graviton scattering amplitude can be expressed in terms of a sum of products of colour ordered gluon scattering amplitudes.

A more insightful \squaring" relationship between gauge theory and gravity amplitudes was conjectured recently by Bern, Carrasco and Johansson (BCJ) [2], and then proven by Bjerrum-Bohr, Damgaard, and Vanhove [3] and by Stieberger [4]. These authors have shown that scattering amplitudes in gravity can be obtained from Yang-Mills scattering amplitudes, expressed in a suitable form, by a remarkably simple squaring procedure.

[1] H. Kawai, D. C. Lewellen, S. H. H. Tye, Nucl. Phys. B269, 1 (1986).
[2] Z. Bern, J. J. M. Carrasco, H. Johansson, Phys. Rev. D78 (2008) 085011. [arXiv:0805.3993 [hep-ph]].
[3] N. E. J. Bjerrum-Bohr, P. H. Damgaard, P. Vanhove, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 161602 (2009). [arXiv:0907.1425 [hep-th]].
[4] S. Stieberger, [arXiv:0907.2211 [hep-th]].
[5] T. Sondergaard, Nucl. Phys. B821, 417-430 (2009). [arXiv:0903.5453 [hep-th]].
[6] N. E. J. Bjerrum-Bohr, P. H. Damgaard, T. Sondergaard and P. Vanhove, JHEP 1006, 003 (2010) [arXiv:1003.2403 [hep-th]].

KITP talks, many of them.

"Cubic Feynman diagrams appear quite naturally in the self-dual sectors." Fits nicely with Wilzcek too. In fact TGD has also these.
"On the gravitational side, we have seen how to compute MHV amplitudes from cubic diagrams in light-cone gauge" they say, up to a mild assumption about the behaviour of the higher terms in the gravitational light-cone Lagrangian. The fact that the BCJ relations hold (at least on-shell) for all graviton amplitudes suggests that there is some cubic theory which can be used to compute these amplitudes."

They don't say quaternion?

They talk of "the self-dual Yang-Mills (SDYM) equations in Minkowski spacetime". Is that ZEO?

Seems the fantastic castle is crushing down? All the many different dimensions were simply illusions?

Why not look at TGD? What is so disgusting with it?

Death and the Loosening of Consciousness.

2011-05-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

Toward a Science of Consciousness. Brain • Mind • Reality
May 3-7, 2011 Stockholm, Sweden. The eighteenth annual international, interdisciplinary conference on the fundamental question of how the brain produces conscious experience.
Keynote Speaker, Sir Roger Penrose, and featured speakers Luc Montagnier and Deepak Chopra and their staff. In the comment panel Leonard Mlodinow and Stuart Hamerhoff etc.
Penrose:

A profound puzzle of quantum mechanics is that the discontinuous and probabilistic procedure adopted for measurement is in blatant contradiction with the continuous and deterministic unitary evolution of the Schrödinger equation. An inanimate measuring device, being made from quantum particles, ought to follow the unitary laws, so many physicists take the view that consciousness is ultimately needed for measurement. I here express the almost opposite view that the unitary law must be violated for massive enough systems, and that it is consciousness itself that depends upon this violation, requiring new physics and exotic biological structures for its manifestation. The issue of what kind of universe history could provide laws fine-tuned enough for consciousness to arise will also be raised.

Interesting speakers:
Johnjoe McFadden, Surrey – The Cemi Field Theory: Gestalt Information and the Meaning of Meaning
Tarja Kallio-Tamminen, Helsinki – Quantum Physics and Eastern Philosophy
Paavo Pylkkanen, Helsinki – Bohmian View of Consciousness and Reality
Luc Montagnier, Nobel Laureate, Paris – DNA, Waves and Water
Giuseppe Vitiello, Salerno – DNA: On the Wave of Coherence
Jack Tuszynski, University of Alberta – Information Processing Within Dendritic Cytoskeleton
Anirban Bandyopadhyay, Direct Experimental Evidence for the Quantum States in
Microtubules and Topological Invariance
Germund Hesslow, Lund – The Inner World As Simulated Interaction With The Environment
Stuart Hameroff, UMC Arizona – Meyer-Overton Meets Quantum Physics

There was also the End-of-Life Brain Activity
Lakhmir S. Chawla, GWU – Surges of Electroencephalogram Activity at the Time of Death.
Peter Fenwick, London – Death and the Loosening of Consciousness, whom I'll quote here.

There is a growing awareness of the importance of end of life experiences. These comprise transcendental and spiritual features which support the dying through the last days of life, and paranormal phenomena around the time of death which are comforting for the bereaved. Our data base consists of retrospective and prospective studies of a population of carers in hospices and a nursing home in the UK, and a retrospective study of carers in Holland. Added to this are over 1500 accounts from a largely English sample of the general public in response to media discussions. The dying process as described by these people will be discussed. The dying process may start one to two years before death with a premonition about one’s own death. In the weeks before death there may be ‘visits’ by apparitions of dead relatives who indicate that they will soon return to accompany the dying person on their journey through death. As the process continues, some indication may be given by these visitors of the likely time they will return. Next, some people report that they transit between this reality and another reality consisting of love, light and compassion. At the time of death, light surrounding the body and shapes leaving the body are reported. Deathbed coincidences occur, when some kind of contact is made between the dying person and someone at a distance to whom they are emotionally close. This ‘connectedness’ seems to extend both to animals, which become distressed, and even to mechanisms such as clocks which are often reported to stop at the time of death. One hypothesis is that the process of death seems to be related to the stages of loosening of consciousness.
274 Death and the Loosening of Consciousness Peter Fenwick (Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, Southampton Univ., London, United Kingdom) PL14

Free Will/Libet, Synesthesia, was also discussed.
Berit Brogaard/ Jason Padgett, The superhuman mind: From synesthesia to savant syndrome/
Geometric Synesthesia
Heather A. Berlin, Implicit self-esteem in borderline personality and depersonalization disorder
Matti Bergstrom, The statistical dispersion of particles in quantum physics is an error

There was also discusses healing, embodiement, telepathy and Eastern view.
Language and memory too.

Art and film helps to sell living technology and synthetic biology.

2011-05-16T09:29:00.000-07:00

Synthetic biology presents one of the most dynamic fields of biotech research. As synthetic biology develops into an applied technology, it is important that scientists, stakeholders and the public communicate in an interactive way. Look at this picture how diverse areas it is.The Science, Art and Film Festival Bio:Fiction in 13-14 May 2011 at the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, Austria, offered a new approach to communicating and discussing synthetic biology. It brought together a public audience with scientists, social scientists, filmmakers and artists. The main objective of the festival was to provide information and dialogue about synthetic biology in an attractive and interdisciplinary manner.

They mean to emballage the concept in a pleasant manner so it can be easily selled to politicians. Do you buy it?

The Science, Art and Film Festival relies on three main pillars:

Film festival: Bio:Fiction will include the world's first synthetic biology film festival. Our call for film submissions in 2010 triggered submission of 130 short films, of which 45 were pre-selected as being relevant to synthetic biology.
Bio-art exhibition 'Synth-ethics': The Festival marks also the start of the art exhibition 'Synth-ethics' in the Museum, which presents biotech art objects related to synthetic biology.
Science talks and panel discussions: The program is designed to attract scientists, social scientists, students, the media and the general public to allow for an interdisciplinary program and exchange of ideas.

What is synthetic biology?
This is how it is presented:

Synthetic biology is a new area of biological research that combines science and engineering. Synthetic biology emcompasses a variety of different approaches, methodologies and disciplines, with the aim to design and construction of new biological functions and systems not found in nature. Synthetic biology is based on genetic engineering but goes much further. In genetic engineering the goal was to manipulate an organism’s genes, usually by transferring one gene from a donor to a host organisms. Synthetic biology, on the other hand, aims at creating whole new biological functions, systems and eventually organisms.

1. Engineering DNA-based biological circuits, including standard biological parts:

Instead of just transfering one gene, a whole system is built in an organisms (e.g. an oscillator, an on-off switch, a more complicated multi-step chemical synthesis of a useful biomolecule, biocomputer).

2. Defining a minimal genome/minimal life (top-down):

Taking a bacteria that already has a very small genome (i.e. number of base pairs) and reduce it even further until the organisms cannot survive any longer. That way we can define and understand the smallest possible genome that still sustains life. This minimal life will also forma „chassis“ for hosting the biocircuits described above.

3. Constructing synthetic cells or protocells from scratch or bottom-up:

In an attempt to prove Pasteur’s “law of biogenesis” (Omne vivum ex vivo, Latin for, “all life [is] from life”) incomplete, scientists are now trying to produce synthetic cellular life form from simple chemical ingredients.

4. Creating orthogonal biological systems based on a biochemistry not found in nature:

All forms of life on earth use the famous DNA molecule. Now scientists are constructing different molecules with similar functions (e.g. the XNA, Xenonucleicacid) to construct living systems that have never existed before, as a way to avoid interference with naturally evolved DNA while doing biotechnology.

5. The chemical synthesis of DNA

So far DNA could only be created by life itself, but now special DNA synthesis machines can actually “print” DNA the way we want it. Scientist can e.g. download the genetic code of a virus (and eventually bacteria) and construct its DNA with this machine.

By applying the toolbox of engineering disciplines to biology, a whole set of potential applications become possible. Some of the potential benefits of synthetic biology, such as the development of low-cost drugs or the production of chemicals and energy by engineered bacteria are enormous. There are, however, also potential and perceived risks due to deliberate or accidental damage, as well as ethical questions. In order to ensure a vital and successful development of this new scientific field – in addition to describe the potential benefits – it is absolutely necessary to gather information also about the risks and to devise possible biosafety strategies to minimize them.

Adam and Eve and the Origin of Life? Is this art? The dance of Life?

And a whole list of links...

About synthetic biology

Synthetic Biology on Wikipedia

Synbiosafe Experts Interviews

Synbioproject

Synbiosafe Documentary Film

Scientific projects about synthetic biology

iGEM: International SynBio student olympics

Synbio community website

Societal aspects of synthetic biology

Scientific reports about societal issues

safety and security risks

ethical questions

Early social reflections on the emerging field of synthetic biology

access and benefit sharing

patents

open source

biohackers, more biohackers

towards the creation of artificial life,

new forms of life, more of it,

xenobiology

many other things we can hardly imagine today

species transformers,

flesh eating hybrid robots

We should start talking ethics immidiately. Are human consciousness really ready for this? There should happen a giant jump for a better world, but we are even incapable of solving our big problems, as climate change, food-and water supply, minerals, sustainablity, problems with the monetary systems etc. The main problem for them all is lack of ethics.

Do we really think we should handle this one better? Are we dreaming? Or must there be a great extinction more?

The main problem are our illusions of personal body, and everything it needs. We laugh at the Egyptian Kings that had all supplies they would ever need with them in their graves. We are not at all better. Our illusionary body needs so much.

Still it is made from the environment that we destroy. So, in fact, we destroy ourselves.

And this new technology is linked to 'The New World Order', Illuminati. Is that a serious threat?

Concerns about violating nature are sometimes connected to the worry that creating synthetic cells would be playing God.

Are we godlike enough to pursue synthetic biology and protocell science? Some say "Yes", some say "No". Either way, the pragmatic worry about playing God is serious and deserves the full attention of all of us, even atheists.

The Standard Model, -/+.

2011-04-28T02:55:00.000-07:00

Wilzcek ina talk at the awards session, EPS-HEPP meeting, Krakow, July 2009. I was looking at his Higgs mechanism, and aimed at comparing it to Mattis, when I found this very clear resume'.

What are the shortcomings of the standard model?

In the standard model as it comes, the pattern of groups, representations, and (especially) hypercharges is a patchwork.

In the standard model as it comes a great discovery of recent years the existence of small non-zero neutrino masses, appears gratuitous. One can accommodate those masses using non-renormalizable, mass dimension 5 operators, but even then the fact that masses of neutrinos are far far smaller than masses of their charged lepton cousins lacks context.

In the standard model as it comes there is no evident link between the standard model and the remaining major force of Nature, i.e. gravity. - That is, GR is not here? (my comment)

In the standard model as it comes there is no evident accounting for the bulk of the mass in the universe, i.e. the dark matter and dark energy.

In the standard model as it comes there is no explanation for the empirical smallness of the P and T violating angle (phi) term.

Masses and mixing angles among quarks and leptons are not constrained by any deep principles, and this sector of the standard model brings in a plethora of unworthy “fundamental” constants.

The triplication of families is gratuitous. -The fourth generation?

What are the great lessons of the standard model?

The gauge principle translates mathematical symmetry into physical law.

The observed interaction symmetries and fermion representations fit into a larger, unifying symmetry and unifying representation very economically.

Gauge symmetry can be spontaneously broken.

Coupling constants evolve with distance, or energy.

Beyond the Standard Litany: LOSP and Higgs Portal: Lattice Lattice Gauge Theory (March
2010) PoS EPS-Hep 2009, hep-ph1003.4672

Photons are superconducting.

2011-04-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

Think of the Cosmos as a superconductor, say frank Wilczek. And he wants to see more chemistry and biology linked to physics. There can be lots of benefits in looking at things from different perspectives. The video, about 10 min. From Physics Buzz.

"we have come to suspect that the entity we call empty space is an
exotic kind of superconductor ... (quark/antiquark)QQ* "

A color superconducting phase is a state in which the quarks near the Fermi surface become correlated in Cooper pairs, which condense. In phenomenological terms, a color superconducting phase breaks some of the symmetries of the underlying theory, and has a very different spectrum of excitations and very different transport properties from the normal phase.
It is very hard to predict which pairing patterns will be favored in nature. In principle this question could be decided by a QCD calculation, since QCD is the theory that fully describes the strong interaction. In the limit of infinite density, where the strong interaction becomes weak because of asymptotic freedom, controlled calculations can be performed, and it is known that the favored phase in three-flavor quark matter is the color-flavor-locked phase. But at the densities that exist in nature these calculations are unreliable, and the only known alternative is the brute-force computational approach of lattice QCD, which unfortunately has a technical difficulty (the "sign problem") that renders it useless for calculations at high quark density and low temperature.

Quantum Chromodynamics suggests that most of what we call "matter" is not all that material, because a body is made of elementary "particles" that are almost mass-less (for example, the proton is made of two quarks, whose combined masses are about 1% of the mass of the proton, and of gluons, which are mass-less).

Nature wants a quark and an anti-quark to be as near as possible to minimize the energy required (the strong/color force increases with distance) but pinpointing an anti-quark's position next to its quark would require an infinite amount of energy (as per Heisenberg's uncertainty principle); and viceversa (the energy is minimal when the two particles are let loose in the universe, but then the strong force between them would become infinite). The compromise between these two extremes is the mass of the proton.

The laws by which the states of physical systems alter are independent of the alternative, to which of two systems of coordinates, in uniform motion of parallel translation relatively to each other, these alterations of state are referred (principle of relativity).

If a body gives off the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass diminishes by L/c². The fact that the energy withdrawn from the body becomes energy of radiation evidently makes no difference, so that we are led to the more general conclusion that

The mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content; if the energy changes by L, the mass changes in the same sense by L/9 × 10²⁰, the energy being measured in ergs, and the mass in grammes.

It is not impossible that with bodies whose energy-content is variable to a high degree (e.g. with radium salts) the theory may be successfully put to the test.

If the theory corresponds to the facts, radiation conveys inertia between the emitting and absorbing bodies.

Einstein, footnote 2005.

Noting that photons become heavy inside (electric) superconductors (or, better, that an observer inside a superconductor would perceive a photon as a massive particle), Wilczek derives the analogy that we live inside a (non-electric) superconductor into which particles (and then objects) acquire mass. That "superconductor" is made of the Higgs condensate, which is made from the Higgs particle. The rest of the review of 'The Lightness of Being', here.

The product structure SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1), the reducibility of the fermion representation (that is, the fact that the symmetry does not make connections linking all the fermions), and the peculiar values of the quantum number hypercharge assigned to the known particles all suggest a larger symmetry. The devil is in the details and it is not at all automatic that the observed, complex pattern of matter will fit neatly into a simple mathematical structure.

From 'The search of symmetry lost'.

Superconductivity, short.
When the pixel is hit by a photon, it disrupts Cooper pairs, releasing free electrons - referred to as "quasiparticles" in this context - which can pass through the insulating junction and are immediately swept out as a measurable current.

The superconducting photon sensors have been used in radiation counters whose spectroscopic capabilities allow them to identify particular controlled radioactive materials and not be confounded by background radiation. Arrays are also useful in astronomy, particularly in the millimeter and submillimeter regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. A wide range of other applications is also being investigated.

Reading The Lightness of Being by Frank Wilczek

I borrow and quote this lovely review, posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2011

An electron is a physical condensation of the electromagnetic field that permeates all of spacetime. Thus every electron has the same source. The electron is like the morning dew, appearing from and returning to “the thin air.”

–

Photons are not massless in a superconductor. They are heavy. Electromagnetic radiation does not penetrate superconductors. If the universe were a type of superconductor it could explain mass very well.. Mass could be the result of the type of superconductor we call empty space. This superconductor would require a new kind of particle… The Higgs condensate. Normal supereconductors conduct electrons. This new superconductor would conduct Higgs particles.

Put it this way: if we lived in a Higgs Superconductor we would have trouble finding the Higgs particle that causes Mass.

–

Dark energy is the discovery that space has an intrinsic density. The grid, the field, weighs. There is a constant pressure everywhere in space and for all time. This pressure is caused by the density of the grid, or field (the ether?). It is the weight of the universe.

–

Could the universe be a like a virtual photon that has condensed out of some more fundamental material? The explosiion that we call virtual particle creation, or quark-antiquark creation, might well be described as a “small bang.” Could the big bang be a small bang of some greater world’s particles?

–

Its from bits. In each 10^-24 seconds a proton computes data equivalent to what our fastest supercomputers compute in months. That is, if you took a supercomputer that could do a million million, or trillion (10^12) floating point operations (flops) per second for several months, this would approximate how much the proton calculates in each second. The quantum computer could, an analogue of the proton, could calculate in mere seconds what supercomputers could never finish within the lifetime of the universe.

We have already made the simplest of these quantum computers.

Know this: no one alive can possibly dream of the changes that such a computer would bring to the world.

–

In physics, a grad student is he who knows everything about nothing and a professor is he who knows nothing about everything. That is to say, grad students study equations; professors understand them. If, after solving the equation you are surprised at the result, then you are far away from any understanding. Now, with regards to current science, which equations are still surprising us? Well, the solution of the equations that tell us what mass is, they output mass from an input of non-mass. It seems we get something from nothing. The search for the Higgs particle is a search to understand why this is. It is a quest to understand mass and inertia, the most fundamental property we are aware of in the universe.

This is to acknowledge that here we have reached the very bottom of what is explainable in the universe, for everything is explained in terms of something else but we still have no deeper explanation of mass and inertia; we simply observe their effects. To this day, their explanation – their cause – remains a complete and total mystery, surpassed only perhaps by the mystery of the nature of God.

–

Mass is the sound of space vibrating. Our fingers can hear this vibration and send the data to our brain, which creates a map of this data. This map, we call mass. We have other maps made through sight, sound, taste, smell. Each of these senses feel certain vibrations of the universe and send the data to our brain. These maps converge in the mind to create what we call reality.

–

When you have an apparent contradiction, this means appearances are wrong. The question then becomes, why? This is the lesson of all paradox. We are faced with discovering some flaw in appearances.

–

Supersymmetry:

–

Spin in quantum terms can be thought of as layers of dimensions such that as a particle moves from one layer, one dimension, to another, it changes spin. This at first looked like different particles. They had different masses. But supersymmetry sees these particles of different spin and different mass as the same particle as it moves from one quantum dimension to another.

–

According to physics, gravity is fundamental. It can’t be explained in terms of anything simpler. It is what it is. It could be that the explanation of gravity is due to a phenomema beyond the perimeter of our universe.

–

Mass is derived from the energy of quarks and gluons, moving at the speed of light, huddling together to shield one another from the force of the grid from which they precipitated.

References:
http://ishangobones.com/?p=1058
Publications of Frank Wilczek
K. Rajagopal and F. Wilczek, "The condensed matter physics of QCD", arXiv.org:hep-ph/0011333
F. Wilczek, 2008: The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces. Google Books.
F. Wilczek, 2005: In search of symmetry lost, Nature 433.
Einstein, A. Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content? [english translation] Ann. Phys. 18, 639–641 (1905) and some of its citations.

Easter witches.

2011-04-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Sweet Easter witches visited us, as the tradition is here. They want chocolate eggs and sweeties. This one is particularly dear to me :)

Then later at evening is the giant fires, aimed at scaring away all withes and trolls. In ancient times they could steal babies even, so they are not nice although they look so. Today I have heard no such stories, only small jokes and a bit less nice things, as destryed post boxes, but nothing serious anymore. Also the thunders and fireworks are forbidden nowadays. So Easter has been tamed quite a bit.

BTW her clothes was one of my first sewing projects - when I was a kid :) I had to sew by hand. So long ago.

Complexity and evolution.

2011-04-20T11:22:00.001-07:00

To evaluate the evolution of complexity in biological evolution, complexity needs to be both rigorously defined and measurable. A information-theoretic definition identifies genomic complexity with the amount of information a sequence stores also about its environment [= epigenetics, introns, histons withtaken?]. The simulated evolution of genomic complexity in populations of digital organisms is investigated and the evolutionary transitions that increase complexity is monitored in detail . Because natural selection forces genomes to behave as a natural “Maxwell Demon”, within a fixed environment genomic complexity is forced to increase (Adami et al. Evolution of biological complexity). Demon "show that the Second Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty." The hypothetical demon opens the door to allow only the "hot" molecules of gas to flow through to a favored side of the chamber, causing that side to gradually heat up while the other side cools down.

This means that Life always fight against (dissipative structures?) the natural selection, and that there are also another, bigger force (basic energy state = coherence?, thermodynamics?) creating evolution? The environment is always part of evolution, and the individual is only a small part. In fact, the individ IS made of environment (Nature and Nurture with Hebbian plasticity, IQ, personality, cloning), only with a dissipative time-lag there also. A dissipative structure is characterized by the spontaneous appearance of symmetry breaking (anisotropy) and the formation of complex, sometimes chaotic, structures where interacting particles exhibit long range correlations. Evolution happen also without living structures, but they may work as enzymes and boost evolution through their dissipative structures. Thus complexity is forced to grow? Topology and fractality ties the structures togeteher? See Harris and Pinker.

The concept of junk DNA (introns) and the recognition that genome size was not a reliable indicator of the number of genes. That, plus the growing collection of genome size data, soon called into question the simplistic diagrams like the one shown here from an article by John Mattick in Scientific American. (There are many things wrong with the diagram. See What's wrong with this figure? at Genomicron). From Sandwalk.

Genetic diversity in nature, i.e., molecular genetic hereditary differences within and between populations and species, is the basis of evolutionary change said Darwin, 1859. What is 'genetic diversity'?

Nevertheless, despite its cardinal role in evolution and domestication, the origin, nature, dynamics, function, significance, and maintenance of genetic diversity in nature remains controversial. Likewise, questions concerning which evolutionary processes influence natural genetic variation for phenotypic, quantitative-trait (QTL) variation or what the genetic basis of ecologically important morphological variation such as diverse color patterns of mammals emerged. Controversies included allozyme and DNA markers, and currently include the basic units of genetic diversity, i.e., single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and copy number variation (CNV), which are both abundant in nature and largely enigmatic as to their functional significance. The basic pending problems are how much of molecular diversity in nature, at both the coding and noncoding genomic regions, is adaptive and how much of the mutations occurring in natural populations are nonrandom (adaptive, directed) rather than random, neutral, nearly neutral, non-adaptive or deleterious. Scholarpedia

Newtonian view.
Charles Darwin's ideas about evolution were first announced in public - to a meeting of the Linnean Society in London. Oddly, almost nobody noticed! It might not have helped that the joint paper (with Alfred Russell Wallace) was given the ripping title 'On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection'.

To see evolution only as natural selection is wrong and simplistic? This was realized already by Wallace, in his concern about social communities. Alfred Russel Wallace, thought that humans shared a common ancestor with apes, but higher mental faculties could not have evolved through a purely material process. He was much concerned of domestic animals loss of consciousness. Also Darwin had this aspect in his theory, rejecting the crude, direct application of natural selection to social policies, but it has widely been ignored and transformed. In The Descent Of Man he insisted that humans are a deeply social species whose values cannot be derived from selfish calculation. Yet, as a man of his age, he still shared Spencer's obsessive belief in the creative force of competition. He ruled that natural selection was indeed the main cause of evolutionary changes. Sexual reproduction alone, and care for the offspring, talks against natural selection. See the 6 Darwin lectures. Darwin was sure, however, that natural selection could not be the sole cause. Ironically today, Darwinism is much associated to social science, often with great success. What does it tells about our communities? Degenerated human race?

The Darwinian vision of adaptive evolution may include adaptive nonrandom mutations as Darwin himself emphasized when discussing directed variation in addition to natural selection (chapter IV of the 6^th edition of The Origin of Species): "there can also be little doubt that the tendency to vary in the same manner has often been so strong that all the individuals of the same species have been similarly modified without the aid of any form of selection". As Templeton (2009) emphasized, "we are just beginning to embrace again Darwin's broad vision that adaptive evolution involves more than natural selection or random variation... the 21^st century will undoubtedly witness a more comprehensive synthesis based on Darwin's enduring legacy".Scholarpedia.

This brings in mind the morphogenic fields of habit, a la Sheldrake. A sort of memory field. Very difficult to proove. Evolution is also said to happen in steps, sometimes very fast, sometimes very slow. The memory field would enhance the learning capacity (of animals), as some kind of 'knowledge for free'. There are a 'critical mass' needed to enhance a change.

Lamarckism, transmutationism and orthogenesis were all non-Darwinian theories.
Lamarck had a model of ‘ladder of complexity’; evolution struggle to increased complexity. He used alchemy as scientific method, and because of that he has been ridiculed, but alchemy has certain traits in common with quantum physics, and it deserves a thorough examination. After all we don’t yet exactly know even what an atom is. Also a 'ladder of evolution' has been used earlier.

In fact, Lamarcks view is more exact? Genotype and phenotype are not correlating. And both depends on heredicity. The important one is the phenotype?

Assumption: All living organisms alive today have descended from a common ancestor (or ancestral gene pool). This is the same statement as to find a theory of everything. It is inherent in the statement that there happen a developement or change. Is it random or not? Biological systems are entropically open - and the thermodynamic force is directed?

Canalization as an evolutionary force in biological systems? It is a useful exercise to think about where biological complexity comes from as a way to facilitate the selection of data mining methods.

A common challenge of identifying meaningful patterns in high-dimensional biological data is the complexity of the relationship between genotype and phenotype. Complexity arises as a result of many environmental, genetic, genomic, metabolic and proteomic factors interacting in a nonlinear manner through time and space to influence variability in biological traits and processes. The assumptions about this complexity greatly influences the analytical methods we choose for data mining and, in turn, our results and inferences. For example, linear discriminant analysis assumes a linear additive relationship among the variables or attributes while support vector machine or neural network can model nonlinear relationships.

Tools for non-local, non-linear, quantal effects are very few. Maybe vectors (bosonic forces)? This is not a Newtonian, reductionistic, view anymore, but quantum physical.

This observation that complex organisms can be produced from simpler ones has led to the common misperception of evolution being progressive and having a direction that leads towards what are viewed as "higher organisms". Nowadays, this idea of "progression" in evolution is regarded as misleading, with natural selection having no intrinsic direction and organisms selected for either increased or decreased complexity in response to local environmental conditions. Although there has been an increase in the maximum level of complexity over the history of life, there has always been a large majority of small and simple organisms and the most common level of complexity (the mode) has remained constant. (The mode of a discrete probability distribution is the value x at which its probability mass function takes its maximum value. In other words, it is the value that is most likely to be sampled.) Wikipedia

You see, "in response to environment" is the important factor, that is environment is determining, not individs. A poorer environment automatically gets poorer individuals. But does this modal value tell anything essential about evolution? Nor diversity? Only about silent assumptions?

The growth of complexity may be driven by the co-evolution between an organism and the ecosystem of predators, prey and parasites to which it tries to stay adapted: as any of these become more complex in order to cope better with the diversity of threats offered by the ecosystem formed by the others, the others too will have to adapt by becoming more complex, thus triggering an on-going evolutionary arms race towards more complexity. This trend may be reinforced by the fact that ecosystems themselves tend to become more complex over time, as species diversity increases, together with the linkages or dependencies between species.
If evolution possessed an active trend toward complexity, then we would expect to see an increase over time in the most common value (the mode) of complexity among organisms, as shown to the right. Indeed, some computer models have suggested that the generation of complex organisms is an inescapable feature of evolution. This is sometimes referred to as evolutionary self-organization. Self-organization is the spontaneous internal organization of a system. This process is accompanied by an increase in systemic complexity, resulting in an emergent property that is distinctly different from any of the constituent parts.
However, the idea of increasing production of complexity in evolution can also be explained through a passive process. This involves an increase in variance but the mode does not change. Thus, the maximum level of complexity increases over time, but only as an indirect product. Wikipedia

Does it really matter for the result if the process is direct or indirect? After all the phenotype is about epigenetic/environmental regulation of the genotype. Non-coding RNA is mostly about introns. See list of RNAs, histone code. Horisontal gene transfer ignores the individual genome at least for bacterias and unicellular organisms (that also acts as superorganisms). In fact, evolution has always been linked to changes in environment. No change, no need for evolution. Evolution is about neutralization of stress, thermodynamics, to find the basic, lowest energy level in equilibrium; homeostasis? Selection overrules gene flow. I would NOT trust Wikipedia. Evolution has also traits of quantum mechanics, that overrule the individ, as horisontal gene transfer, synchronized behaviours (EEG-waves) etc. Biological selection can also occur at multiple levels simultaneously, like some 'sum over histories' in quantum tunneling or to find/computate the path, or in synchrony? This is called superorganisms. See also Human microbiome project, collective intelligence.

Evolution is also the successive alterations that led from the earliest proto-organism to more complex organisms. These simple organisms should then also grow their diversity (sum of paths)? It has many times been shown that micro-organisms behave (as phenotype) as superorganisms.

Current tree of life showing horizontal gene transfers. The prevalence and importance of HGT in the evolution of multicellular eukaryotes remain unclear. Wikipedia.

The quantum physical non-linear entanglement is the first level of coherence, or the basic homeostasis?

Scaling and thermodynamics.
TGD in Scaling Law and Evolution:

Cultural evolution could perhaps be seen as evolution of memes with memetic code playing the role of genetic code. There are good reasons to believe that the intronic portion of DNA codes for memes represented dynamically as field patterns associated with massless extremals.

(MEs = bosons, candidates for correlates of dark photons at various levels of dark matter hierarchy = the quantum aspect = first level of coherence). See also Macroscopic Quantum Coherence and Quantum Metabolism as Di fferent Sides of the Same Coin.
Thermodynamics is important for TGD, but there is also a condition when the second law doesn't hold. Negentropy Maximization Principle states that "

The sequence of quantum jumps is expected to lead to a 4-D counterpart of thermodynamical ensemble and thermodynamics results when one labels the states by the quantum numbers assignable to their positive energy part. Entropy is assigned with entire 4-D CD rather than to its 3-dimensional time=constant snapshots." The hierarchy of CDs forces to introduce a fractal version of the second law taking into account the p-adic length scale hypothesis and dark matter hierarchy. Second law should always be applied only at a given level of p-adic and dark matter hierarchy and one must always take into account two time scales involved, one subjective CD and one objective, = the system, and only if the system is bigger the second law holds.

Maxwell Demon is at work?

This means that second law could be broken in the geometric time scale (= system) considered, but not for personal CDs. In the case of subjective time the negentropic situation could continue forever unless the CD disappears in some quantum jump :) The huge value of gravitational Planck constant associated with space-time sheets mediating gravitational interaction and making possible perturbative quantum treatment of gravitational interaction would indeed suggest the breaking of second law in cosmological time scales. Modi fication of thermodynamics to take into account negentropic entanglement.

This is combined with broken Lorentz symmetry (?) and gravitational vawes?

"Quantum interference of large organic molecules" pretty well says it all. A group in Austria, headed by Markus Arndt, with Stefan Gerlich as the lead author, has demonstrated interference effects using large organic molecules. When they pass a beam of these molecules through an interferometer, they behave exactly like waves, producing an interference pattern analogous to the bright and dark spots you get by sending light into a diffraction grating. The ultimate goal of this is to try to push the quantum-classical boundary as far as possible. Macroscopic bodies show no signs of wave-like behavior. Microscopic objects like electrons, atoms, and now molecules, on the other hand, clearly show wave behavior.

BBC News has a piece about the continued work of the ILL to make neutrons show quantum effects in the gravity of Earth.

Astrobiology, UCLA, stepwise evolution:

Progress in the evolution of life on Earth is measured by an increase in biological diversity (biodiversity), by an increase in morphological disparity, and by progress towards increasing complexity. This are presumably general principals which apply to any living system and so studies of the processes that result in these advances should have universal application. Of the three metrics for evolutionary progress, complexity is the most difficult to define, measure, and understand. In this section, biologists and paleontologists attempt to grapple with this difficult issue by focusing on two outstanding biological events: The origin of eukaryotes and the radiation of animals during the "Cambrian Explosion".

See also Earth's Early Environment and Life. and Professor Rainey's picture of life's evolution from the perspective of major evolutionary transitions, including that from solitary organisms to societies.

Hawking and Mlodinow, The Grand Design, Phys.World, 2010: A second premise that the reader is expected to accept as The Grand Design moves along is that we can, and should, apply quantum physics to the macroscopic world. To support this premise, Hawking and Mlodinow cite Feynman's probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is based on his "sum over histories" of particles. Basic to this interpretation is the idea that a particle can take every possible path connecting two points. Extrapolating hugely, the authors then apply Feynman's formulation of quantum mechanics to the whole universe: they announce that the universe does not have a single history, but every possible history, each one with its own probability.

Note also the periods of great extinction of animals. We are in such a period now. A clear quantum state?

Rates of change are increasingly fast and nonlinear with sudden phase shifts to novel alternative community states. We can only guess at the kinds of organisms that will benefit from this mayhem that is radically altering the selective seascape far beyond the consequences of fishing or warming alone. The prospects are especially bleak for animals and plants compared with metabolically flexible microbes and algae.

First the individual or populational level, after that the quantum aspect of evolution.

The individ and population.
Bits of information collected in qubits or selves? Reductionism.
Qubits and information are classical concepts. We don't know yet what is its quantal counterpart, other than it is non-local. It can be random, but more probable is entangled (one 'bit' of 'holism').

In order to have the evolution working there must be some ‘bits of information’ entangled into a (topological and fractal?) Self. Otherwise the evolution has no tool to work with. The self has to be saved and protected with boundaries; membranes, shells, competition, war and selfishness. Self and Ego and Personality express a tool in different degrees of stability. Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene

This stability is the secondary or tertiary coherence or entanglement, seen as synchronized patterns, discreate information? If homeostasy is the first, lowest, most basic, energy level in temporal equilibrium, then there are secondary, tertiary etc. energy levels in temporal equilibrium too, - called allostasy? Also seen in the protein folding? What is natural selection if not a strive for energetic equilibrium? Also malfunctions, as disease, can be such a tool; built-in stress, or created stress in order to lower the total energy need? Structure is a result of these energy levels of maximal function. To find these levels is then the most basic task for determining evolution. What can structure tell us about the energy levels? They are revealed through maximal function, or use of energy.

Is competitive evolution the only possible context for explaining the biological facts? The trouble with metaphors is that they don't just mirror scientific beliefs, they also shape them, it expresses, advertises and strengthens our preferred interpretations and carries unconscious bias. Competition cannot be the ultimate human reality, because of the social aspects. Does evolution strive towards socialism?

Unresolved conflicts between communal and separatist views of human nature, in the western world from our history, is the reason for its enormous influence on the thoughts still today. The world picture shifted from a feudal, communal pattern towards the more individualistic, pluralistic model we officially follow today. Ideals of personal allegiance, heroic warfare and the divine right of kings began to yield to civilian visions based on democracy, technology and commerce. The cooperative and communion idea is badly non-supported today. The individualistic, atomistic (Newtonian), classical physical and reductionistic view has largely been seen as the only scientific way. The Universe is seen as a giant clock, and biology as a machine with molecular motors. The selfish metaphor: Conceits of evolution.

Evolution as a metaphor.
History: Evolution has been the most glaring example of the thoughtless use of metaphor over the past 30 years, with the selfish/war metaphors dominating and defining the landscape so completely it becomes hard to admit there are other ways of conceiving it. Descartes went beyond faith (the Bible) in attempting to rationally explain the world and our place in it. It was revolutionary, and allowed a scientific wiev, only if the soul was left to the church. The soul- and mindless science was born. Today the soul is still almost completely ignored.

Very different kinds of metaphors and images have been used. Rousseau, Voltaire and Locke devised a kind of social atomism (Social atomism and the old world order - in the eighteenth century it was the basis for two violent revolutions and a good deal of social unrest.). One's value would no longer be determined by one's place in the social order, which is to say by heredity, nor was it to be determined by divine right. It was, henceforth, to be a matter of one's intrinsic worth as a human being and a citizen working together in voluntary association with others for the common good. American society inherited and encoded in its founding documents the principles of equality and individualism, transforming them into a new tradition with its own hierarchy of values and preferences. Philosophical theories can and often have played an influential role in social change, as cultural evolution. By critically examining the genealogy of the dominant philosophical concepts of the self and its relation to social and cultural forms, we can come to a clearer understanding of what shapes contemporary thinking about our own self-identities and our role in the struggle for a just and ethical society.

Thomas Hobbes's claim (with the analytic tools of the geometrician) that the natural state of humans was "a war of all against all" (put forward in a bid to stop people supporting misguided governments) accidentally launched a wider revolt against the notion of citizenship. "All human beings have a natural right to self-preservation, and adding an additional premise regarding human psychology, that all human beings are motivated by a kind of enlightened self-interest, Hobbes concluded that the only rational way to live reasonably peaceful and productive lives would be for individuals, who are equally capable of inflicting harm on one another, to agree to refrain from interfering in one another's lives. But upholding this agreement would entail a compromise, that is, an exchange of one's total independence and a relinquishing of one's rights for a greater measure of security and dependence on another-the duly appointed sovereign-who was granted absolute authority over society provided he fulfilled his duty to keep the peace." The slogan made it possible to argue later that there is no such thing as society, that we owe one another nothing. (Moral atomism was a follower. "Ethical atomism combined with Hobbes' and Locke's social atomism supplies some of the most important and characteristic features of American political theory, and the imprint of these ideas is evident and fixed in the Constitution.") This thought also inspired campaigns for admirable things like easier divorce and universal suffrage and it is still strong today, even though physicists themselves no longer see their particles as radically disconnected, and economics arguing that free competition always serves the general good. Its champions could thus believe they were being scientific while still acting as good citizens. And its emphasis on conflict reassured them they were still heroes, that bourgeois life had not corrupted their machismo. So atomistic thinking, originally drawn from physics, acquired a social meaning in economics and was then returned to science as ideas of competition began to dominate 19th-century biology. The resulting jumble of atomistic ontology, market economics and warlike noises came together fully in the theories of 19th-century "social Darwinists" like Herbert Spencer.

In How The Leopard Changed Its Spots, The Evolution of Complexity 1997, biologist and complexity theorist Brian Goodwin suggested the kind of correction needed, remarking mildly that humans are "every bit as co-operative as we are competitive; as altruistic as we are selfish... These are not romantic yearnings and Utopian ideals, they arise from a rethinking of our nature that is emerging from the sciences of complexity". He represents the structuralist approach, which resonates with D'Arcy Thompson's idea that evolutionary variation is constrained by structural laws; not all forms are possible. These ideas are now connected with new principles of dynamic emergence from complex systems, as developed within the sciences of complexity. Goodwin is strongly opposed to the reductionist view of the ultra-Darwinians, and much more comfortable with the complexity ideas of Stuart Kauffman and with Francisco Varela's holistic approach to biology. A dialog here. Even Dawkins pointed out on his The Selfish Gene, that genes are actually cooperative rather than egoistic.

D'Arcy Thompson pointed this out in On Growth And Form in 1917, noting the striking natural tendencies which contribute to evolution - the subtle, natural patterns such as Fibonacci spirals that shape all manner of organic forms, and the logic underlying patterns such as the arrangement of a creature's limbs. Biologists such as Brian Goodwin, Steven Rose and Simon Conway Morris have developed his work, showing how natural selection is supplemented by a kind of self-organisation within each species, which has its own logic. The selfish metaphor: Conceits of evolution.

Competition and descreatness requires entanglement and systems.
Entities complex enough to compete cannot exist at all without much internal cooperation. (There cannot even be ordinary matter without entanglement (Vedral). Entanglement is the degree of correlation between observables pertaining to different modes that exceed any correlation allowed by the laws of classical physics. Systems can be entangled in their external degrees of freedom (positions and momenta), or internal degrees of freedom, as resonances, B-E condensates, superconductivity... The type of entanglement also gives the implementation of various gates, interpreted as hierarchies, cut-offs or boundaries. Lasers and B–E condensates are macroscopic effects of boson statistics, and requires highly specialized environments (as in membranes, nerves, see Heimburg). Carbon, protons, photons can be composite bosons, and electrons as composite fermions give the essential bricks of life. ). To create cells, organelles must combine; to create armies, soldiers must organise.

But there are also entanglement outside space or time, the EPR-paradox, shown many times, as instance by Tiller.

What is this entanglement, new organisation, self-assembly, if not information? What is the roots of the information? What is the construction, or logic?

The work of evolution can be seen as intelligent and constructive, not as a gamble driven randomly by the forces of competition. And if non-competitive imagery is needed, Denis Noble found that there was not a single oscillator which controlled heartbeat, but rather this was an emergent property of the feedback loops in the various channels. In The Music Of Life 2006 he points out how natural development, not being a car, needs no single "driver" to direct it. Symphonies are not caused only by a single dominant instrument nor, indeed, solely by their composer. And developing organisms do not even need a composer: they grow, as wholes, out of vast and ancient systems which are themselves parts of nature. He has also earlier written The Logics of Life and The Ethics of Life. He is one of the pioneers of Systems Biology and now in Computational Physiology. He played a major role in launching the Physiome Project, an international project to use computer simulations to create the quantitative physiological models necessary to interpret the genome. He is critical of the ideas of genetic determinism and genetic reductionism. Gene ontology will fail without higher-level insight. The theory of biological relativity: there is no privileged level of causality, and the Self is no object. There are no programs in the brain nor any other places, a genuine ‘theory of biology’ does not yet exist. See Genes and causation, How Central Is the Genome?, All systems go , The Music of Life - A view on nature and nurture, Molecules to Organisms: What directs the music of life and his homepage.

He contrasts Dawkins's famous statement in The Selfish Gene ("Now they [genes] swarm ... safe inside gigantic lumbering robots ... they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence") with his own view: "Now they [genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence". He further suggests that there is no empirical difference between these statements, and claims that they differ in "metaphor" and "sociological or polemical viewpoint" from The Music of Life.

The old metaphors of evolution need to give way to new ones founded on integrative thinking - reasoning based on systems thinking.

Matti says too that biology is a Big Anomaly :)

The Well. What is complexity?
Darwinian evolution is a simple yet powerful process that requires a population of reproducing organisms in which each offspring has the potential for a heritable variation. This creates the p-q variational/oscillational well (with dark matter?). Population is no individual, and potentials are no realizations. These both follow a distribution curve, be it Gaussian or something else. What does the mode tell us? What can be a better measurement? Variability, diversity? That is an increase in potentials, or degrees of freedom?

Defining complexity as “that which increases when self-organizing systems organize themselves”, is an increase of "qubits", entangled bits of freedom. Complex complexity? Of course, in order to address this issue, complexity needs to be both defined and measurable.

Structural and functional complexity by examining genomic complexity.
1. complexity is mirrored in functional complexity and vice versa?
- ambiguous definition of complexity
- the obvious difficulty of matching genes with function
2. defined in a consistent information-theoretic manner (the “physical” complexity), which appears to encompass intuitive notions of complexity used in the analysis of genomic structure and organization.
3. evolution can be observed in an artificial medium, universal aspects of the evolutionary process in a computational world, symbolic sequences subject to evolution are computer programs that have the ability to self-replicate. See also experiments with RNAs.
4. superpositions and entanglements create situations of "to know more than everything" in informational energies, creating a "negative negentropy" of enlarged or enlightened consciousness/information, the ahaa-experience.
5. Noise and inhibition are very important constraints, creating synchrony, or secondary equilibrium stable levels.

In populations of such sequences that adapt to their world (inside of a computer’s memory), noisy self-replication coupled with finite resources and an information-rich environment leads to a growth in sequence length as the digital organisms incorporate more and more information about their environment into their genome [= epigenetic factors grow?]. These populations allow us to observe the growth of physical complexity explicitly, and also to distinguish distinct evolutionary pressures acting on the genome and analyze them in a mathematical framework. Evolution of biological complexity

Here we must remember that genomes are 2-D constructions, RNAs and proteins are 3-D, functions are 4-D (time also included). Time is seen only in function, sequencies, as a result of energy differencies and polarizations (bosons). Time is the 'dance'-metaphor.

We can measure energy differencies as entropy, but living systems are open. Can entropy be measured in structure, as complexity or decoherence? That is the degree of stress-relax?

C-value paradox in genomes.
Back in the olden days, when everyone was sure that humans were at the top of the complexity tree, the lack of correlation between genome size and complexity was called the C-value paradox where "C" stands for the haploid genome size.

The C value paradox takes its name from our inability to account for the content of the genome in terms of known function. One puzzling feature is the existence of huge variations in C values between species whose apparent complexity does not vary correspondingly. An extraordinary range of C values is found in amphibians where the smallest genomes are just below 10⁹bp while the largest are almost 10¹¹. It is hard to believe that this could reflect a 100-fold variation in the number of genes needed to specify different amphibians. Benjamin Lewin, Genes II (1983)

There are so many examples of very similar species that have huge differences in the size of their genome. Onions, are another example—they are the reason why Ryan Gregory made up the Onion Test. The onion test is a simple reality check for anyone who thinks they have come up with a universal function for non-coding DNA. Whatever your proposed function, ask yourself this question: Can I explain why an onion needs about five times more non-coding DNA for this function than a human?

If an organism’s complexity is a reflection of the physical complexity of its genome (assumed here) the latter is of prime importance in evolutionary theory. Physical complexity, roughly speaking, reflects the number of base pairs in a sequence that are functional. As is well known, equating genomic complexity with genome length in base pairs gives rise to a conundrum (known as the C-value paradox) because large variations in genomic complexity (in particular in eukaryotes) seem to bear little relation to the differences in organismic complexity. The C-value paradox is partly resolved by recognizing that not all of DNA is functional (non-coding DNA); that there is a neutral fraction that can vary from species to species. Human DNA is made mostly of ancient viruses, as instance, as an immunological response, just as non-coding RNAs are a primitive immune system. Humans, Arabidopsis, and nematodes all have about the same number of genes.

The C-value enigma, unlike the older C-value paradox, is explicitly defined as a series of independent but equally important component questions, including:

What types of non-coding DNA are found in different eukaryotic genomes, and in what proportions?
From where does this non-coding DNA come, and how is it spread and/or lost from genomes over time?
What effects, or perhaps even functions, does this non-coding DNA have for chromosomes, nuclei, cells, and organisms?
Why do some species exhibit remarkably streamlined chromosomes, while others possess massive amounts of non-coding DNA?

Now we have a G-value paradox, where "G" is the number of genes. The only way out of this box—without abandoning your assumption about humans being the most complex animals—is to make up some stories about the function of so-called junk DNA. Maybe humans really aren't all that much more complex, in terms of number of genes, than wall cress. Maybe they should have the same number of genes. Maybe the other differences in genome size really are due to variable amounts of non-functional junk DNA.

It is likely that a significant increase in this non-neutral fraction could be observed throughout at least the early course of evolution. For the later period, in particular the later Phanerozoic Era, it is unlikely that the growth in complexity of genomes is due solely to innovations in which genes with novel functions arise de novo. Indeed, most of the enzyme activity classes in mammals, for example, are already present in prokaryotes. Rather, gene duplication events leading to repetitive DNA and subsequent diversification as well as the evolution of gene regulation patterns appears to be a more likely scenario for this stage. Still, we believe that the Maxwell Demon mechanism described below is at work during all phases of evolution and provides the driving force toward ever increasing complexity in the natural world. Evolution of biological complexity

A modification of the second law?

The notion of information.
The difficulty with defining complexity is because there is no single measure that can capture all structural characteristics. The different meanings of complexity and their measures restrict eventual usefulness, which so far seems mainly descriptive. Maybe decoherence is a better term?

Perhaps a key aspect of information theory is that information cannot exist in a vacuum, that is, information is physical. This statement implies that information must have an instantiation (be it ink on paper, bits in a computer’s memory, or even the neurons in a brain). Furthermore, it also implies that information must be about something. Information is about entropy. How is entropy in quantum world? Quantum gravity or anti-gravity?

Then there are the problem of meaning.

In the one end complexity has a funky relationship with information and descriptions. Kolmogorov complexity (algorithmic information) is a measure of the resources needed to specify an object. Used also in fractals. A random string takes the most information to specify. Kolmogorov's complexity K(x) of a bitstring x is the length of the shortest program that computes x and halts. Jurgen Schmidhuber's homepage. Poland:

Schmidhuber proposed a new concept of generalized algorithmic complexity. It allows for the description of both finite and infinite sequences. The resulting distributions are true probabilities rather than semimeasures.He prove a strong coding theorem (without logarithmic correction terms), which was left as an open problem. To this purpose, we introduce a more natural definition of generalized complexity.

That sounds very much like relativity.

Another measure with descriptive power for biological systems is mutual information, which is linked to Shannon information (requires entanglement?) used among others by TGD. It is claimed to have been used to characterize RNA secondary structure, but in any case mutual information can be used to define neural complexity. This complexity is lowest for regular or random systems of elements, but highest for networks with order on all scales such as brains (relationships, wells).

The correspondence between algorithmic constructions and physics is interesting. Computer scientist Scott Aaronson has a lot to say here. The impression is that he claims that physical processes are algorithmic at their base (even if that is quantum algorithmic). He is a founder of the Complexity Zoo, which catalogs all classes of computational complexity. Also the limits of computability he has thought of, together with quantum computation. Everything cannot be computated.

Aaronson: There were two occasions when researchers stepped back, identified some property of almost all the techniques that had been tried up to that point, then proved that no technique with that property could possibly work. These “meta-discoveries” constitute an important part of what we understand about the P versus NP problem. The first meta-discovery was relativization, any solution to the P versus NP problem will require non-relativizing
techniques: techniques that exploit properties of computation that are specific to the real world. The second meta-discovery was natural proofs. A new technique called arithmetization to circumvent the problems. The idea was that, instead of treating a Boolean formula ' as just a black box mapping inputs to outputs, one can take advantage of the structure of ', by “promoting” its AND, OR, or NOT gates to arithmetic operations over some larger field F. We now have circuit lower bounds that evade both barriers, by cleverly combining arithmetization (which is non-relativizing) with diagonalization (which is non-naturalizing). Is there a third barrier, beyond relativization and natural proofs, to which even the most recent results are subject? It is, a third barrier to solving P versus NP and the other central problems of complexity theory. Algebrization (short for “algebraic relativization”) Notice that algebrization is defined differently for inclusions and separations; and that in both cases, only one complexity class gets the algebraic oracle e A, while the other gets the Boolean version A. These subtle asymmetries are essential for this new notion to capture what we want. Arithmetization is one of the most powerful ideas in complexity theory, but simply fails to “open the black box wide enough.

The major focus in studying genetic diversity in nature should be on population functional ecological genomics across life coupled with proteomics, metabolomics, and phenomics. A major future perspective should try to analyze the effects of stresses not only through individual genes but through genomic-biochemical networks related to individual and collective environmental stresses (solar radiation, temperature, global warming, drought, mineral and photosynthetic deprivations, biotic stresses, etc). Epigenomics should be coupled with genomics, including DNA methylation, histone modification, and the regulatory effects of small RNA, and noncoding repeat elements, including transposon and retrotransposon dynamics in both adaptation and speciation to evaluate genome-wide adaptive divergence. Comparisons should be made between local, regional, and global "genetic laboratories" and the study of genomic diversity and divergence across life. The next-generation technologies will open dramatic new horizons for the study of genetic diversity in nature, unraveling its nature and dynamics at micro- and macroscales. These future studies will highlight theoretical mysteries of evolutionary biology as to the genetic diversity in nature and the evolutionary driving forces shaping its fate in adaptation and speciation.

References.
S. Aaronson and A. Wigderson. 2008: Algebrization: A New Barrier in Complexity Theory [PS] [PDF], ACM Transactions on Computing Theory 1(1), 2009. Conference version [PS] [PDF] in Proceedings of ACM STOC'2008, pp. 731-740.

Adami C, Ofria C, Collier TC 2000: "Evolution of biological complexity". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 97 (9): 4463–8. doi:10.1073/pnas.97.9.4463. PMC 18257. PMID 10781045

Adami C 2002: "What is complexity?". Bioessays 24 (12): 1085–94. doi:10.1002/bies.10192. PMID 12447974

Darwin, Charles 1859: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (Full image view 1st ed.), London: John Murray, pp. 502, retrieved 2011-03-01

- The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online

Davnah Urbach & Jason Moore, 2011: Data mining and the evolution of biological complexity. BioData Mining 2011, 4:7. doi:10.1186/1756-0381-4-7

Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene.

- Complexity Explained: 13. Evolution of Biological Complexity

Gerlich, S., Eibenberger, S., Tomandl, M., Nimmrichter, S., Hornberger, K., Fagan, P., Tüxen, J., Mayor, M., & Arndt, M. 2011: Quantum interference of large organic molecules. Nature Communications, 2 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1263

Hahn, M.W. and Wray, G.A. 2002: The g-value paradox. Evol. Dev. 4:73-75.

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow 2010: The Grand Design. Bantam Press

Dr. Eviatar Nevo, & Avigdor Beiles, 2010: Genetic variation in Nature. Scholarpedia. Modified and approved on 10 November 2010. Extensive.

Mary Midgley, 2011: The selfish metaphor: Conceits of evolution. New Scientist.

Mattick, J.S. 2004: The hidden genetic program of complex organisms. Sci Am. 291:60-67.

Dennis Noble 2006: The Music of Life, ISBN 0-19-929573-5

Matti Pitkänen, 2010: Macroscopic Quantum Coherence and Quantum Metabolism as Di fferent Sides of the Same Coin.
- 2011 General theory of qualia, Homeopathy in many-sheeted space-time. and Negentropy Maximization Principle.

Jan Poland 2004: A Coding Theorem for Enumerable Output Machines. IDSIA-05-04. http://www.idsia.ch/»jan

http://scholar.google.fi/scholar?cites=17473276152719269686&as_sdt=5&sciodt=0&hl=sv

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28information_theory%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity

John Hagelin, Ph.D on Consciousness

2011-04-20T07:51:00.000-07:00

John Hagelin, Ph.D ON Consciousness & Superstring Unified Field Theory, How is knowledge lost and The Observer. His homepage. Video library. On YouTube, Discovery of The Unified Field .

He is an American particle physicist, three-time candidate of the Natural Law Party for President of the United States (1992, 1996, and 2000), and the director of the Transcendental Meditation movement for the US.
In 1970, while at Taft, he was involved in a motorcycle crash that led to hospitalization and a full body cast. During this time, one of his teachers introduced him to quantum mechanics, and he also learned the Transcendental Meditation technique, both of which had major impacts on his life.

His work on the "flipped SU(5), heterotic superstring theory" is considered one of the more successful unified field theories or "theories of everything" and was highlighted in a cover story in Discover magazine.

"Weak symmetry breaking by radiative corrections in broken supergravity" 1983
"Supersymmetric relics from the big bang" 1984

In 1987 and 1989, Hagelin published two papers in the Maharishi University of Management's Journal of Modern Science and Vedic Science on the relationship between physics and consciousness. These papers discuss the Vedic understanding of consciousness as a field and compares it with theories of the unified field derived by modern physics. Hagelin argues that these two fields have almost identical properties and quantitative structure, and he presents other theoretical and empirical arguments that the two fields are actually one and the same — specifically, that the experience of unity at the basis of the mind achieved during the meditative state is the subjective experience of the very same fundamental unity of existence revealed by unified field theories.

As evidence for this explanation, Hagelin points to the body of research supporting the positive effects created by Transcendental Meditation and the more advanced TM-Sidhi program (which includes a practice called "Yogic Flying") which are said to have measurable effects on social trend parameters. This phenomenon is called the "Maharishi Effect". Hagelin cites numerous studies of such effects.

- it seems the first 2 seconds of video 2 with the words 'and effort' got cut out somehow... here is the full sentence that he is speaking at the end of video 1 and into video 2. "(video 1) try and reproduce that experience, you'll never succeed because trying involves effort (video 2) and effort keeps the awareness active and the comprehension from expanding."

Interesting guy. Compare to TGD, a living Universe :) E8 is maybe not so far from TGD, especially if E8 is 'flipped'.

Quantum Computing Since Democritus

2011-04-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

Quantum Computing Since Democritus is a serie of lectures by Scott Aaronson, University of Waterloo, Fall 2006. Much appreciated.

Aaronson homepage. Scott's research interests center around fundamental limits on what can efficiently be computed in the physical world. Member of the Theory of Computation and Complexity Theory groups.

This course tries to connect quantum computing to the wider intellectual world. We'll start out with various scientific, mathematical, or philosophical problems that predate quantum computing: for example, the measurement problem, P versus NP, the existence of secure cryptography, the Humean problem of induction, or the possibility of closed timelike curves. We'll then examine in what ways, if any, quantum computing affects how we should think about the problem. To keep things grounded, each session will end with a concrete puzzle that students will be expected to have thought about (if not solved) by the next session. The class format will strongly encourage participation, discussion, and debate.

It weaves together seemingly disparate topics into a cohesive whole, including quantum mechanics, complexity, free will, time travel, the anthropic principle and many others.

Lecture Notes expected to be published as a book by Cambridge University Press.

Lecture 1 (9/12): Atoms and the Void
Lecture 2 (9/14): Sets
Lecture 3 (9/19): Gödel, Turing, and Friends
Lecture 4 (9/21): Minds and Machines
Lecture 5 (9/26): Paleocomplexity
Lecture 6 (9/28): P, NP, and Friends
Lecture 7 (10/3): Randomness
Lecture 8 (10/5): Crypto
Lecture 9 (10/19): Quantum
Lecture 10 (10/24): Quantum Computing
Lecture 10.5 (10/24): Penrose
Lecture 11 (10/26): Decoherence and Hidden Variables
Lecture 12 (10/31): Proof
Lecture 13 (11/2): How Big Are Quantum States?
Lecture 14 (11/7): Skepticism of Quantum Computing
Lecture 15 (11/9): Learning
Lecture 16 (11/14): Interactive Proofs
Lecture 17 (11/16): Fun With The Anthropic Principle
Lecture 18 (11/21): Free Will
Lecture 19 (11/23): Time Travel
Lecture 20 (11/28): Cosmology and Complexity
Lecture 21 (11/30): Ask Me Anything

Suggested Readings

Democritus (from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
David Deutsch, Quantum theory as a universal physical theory (unfortunately, can only be accessed from within the university). Pages 32-37 describe the notorious thought experiment. See also Chapter 1 of Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse by Julian Brown
Alan Turing, On Computable Numbers
Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind (our "textbook")
Sanjeev Arora and Boaz Barak, Complexity Theory: A Modern Approach (free draft available on the web)
Lucien Hardy, Quantum theory from five simple axioms

See also:
S. Aaronson. Quantum Computing and Hidden Variables [PS] [PDF], Physical Review A 71:032325, March 2005. quant-ph/0408035 and quant-ph/0408119.

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Other works here.