26,946 research outputs found
Information Processing, Computation and Cognition
Computation and information processing are among the most fundamental notions in cognitive science. They are also among the most imprecisely discussed. Many cognitive scientists take it for granted that cognition involves computation, information processing, or both – although others disagree vehemently. Yet different cognitive scientists use ‘computation’ and ‘information processing’ to mean different things, sometimes without realizing that they do. In addition, computation and information processing are surrounded by several myths; first and foremost, that they are the same thing. In this paper, we address this unsatisfactory state of affairs by presenting a general and theory-neutral account of computation and information processing. We also apply our framework by analyzing the relations between computation and information processing on one hand and classicism and connectionism/computational neuroscience on the other. We defend the relevance to cognitive science of both computation, at least in a generic sense, and information processing, in three important senses of the term. Our account advances several foundational debates in cognitive science by untangling some of their conceptual knots in a theory-neutral way. By leveling the playing field, we pave the way for the future resolution of the debates’ empirical aspects
Genetic, epigenetic and exogenetic information
We describe an approach to measuring biological information where ‘information’ is
understood in the sense found in Francis Crick’s foundational contributions to
molecular biology. Genes contain information in this sense, but so do epigenetic factors, as many biologists have recognized. The term ‘epigenetic’ is ambiguous, and we
introduce a distinction between epigenetic and exogenetic inheritance to clarify one
aspect of this ambiguity. These three heredity systems play complementary roles in
supplying information for development.
We then consider the evolutionary significance of the three inheritance systems. Whilst
the genetic inheritance system was the key innovation in the evolution of heredity, in
modern organisms the three systems each play important and complementary roles in
heredity and evolution.
Our focus in the earlier part of the paper is on ‘proximate biology’, where information
is a substantial causal factor that causes organisms to develop and causes offspring to
resemble their parents. But much philosophical work has focused on information in
‘ultimate biology’. Ultimate information is a way of talking about the evolutionary
design of the mechanisms of development and inheritance. We conclude by clarifying
the relationship between the two. Ultimate information is not a causal factor that acts
in development or heredity, but it can help to explain the evolution of proximate
information, which is
OpenCFU, a New Free and Open-Source Software to Count Cell Colonies and Other Circular Objects
Counting circular objects such as cell colonies is an important source of
information for biologists. Although this task is often time-consuming and
subjective, it is still predominantly performed manually. The aim of the
present work is to provide a new tool to enumerate circular objects from
digital pictures and video streams. Here, I demonstrate that the created
program, OpenCFU, is very robust, accurate and fast. In addition, it provides
control over the processing parameters and is implemented in an in- tuitive and
modern interface. OpenCFU is a cross-platform and open-source software freely
available at http://opencfu.sourceforge.net
Characterizing Self-Developing Biological Neural Networks: A First Step Towards their Application To Computing Systems
Carbon nanotubes are often seen as the only alternative technology to silicon
transistors. While they are the most likely short-term one, other longer-term
alternatives should be studied as well. While contemplating biological neurons
as an alternative component may seem preposterous at first sight, significant
recent progress in CMOS-neuron interface suggests this direction may not be
unrealistic; moreover, biological neurons are known to self-assemble into very
large networks capable of complex information processing tasks, something that
has yet to be achieved with other emerging technologies. The first step to
designing computing systems on top of biological neurons is to build an
abstract model of self-assembled biological neural networks, much like computer
architects manipulate abstract models of transistors and circuits. In this
article, we propose a first model of the structure of biological neural
networks. We provide empirical evidence that this model matches the biological
neural networks found in living organisms, and exhibits the small-world graph
structure properties commonly found in many large and self-organized systems,
including biological neural networks. More importantly, we extract the simple
local rules and characteristics governing the growth of such networks, enabling
the development of potentially large but realistic biological neural networks,
as would be needed for complex information processing/computing tasks. Based on
this model, future work will be targeted to understanding the evolution and
learning properties of such networks, and how they can be used to build
computing systems
Semantic distillation: a method for clustering objects by their contextual specificity
Techniques for data-mining, latent semantic analysis, contextual search of
databases, etc. have long ago been developed by computer scientists working on
information retrieval (IR). Experimental scientists, from all disciplines,
having to analyse large collections of raw experimental data (astronomical,
physical, biological, etc.) have developed powerful methods for their
statistical analysis and for clustering, categorising, and classifying objects.
Finally, physicists have developed a theory of quantum measurement, unifying
the logical, algebraic, and probabilistic aspects of queries into a single
formalism. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first to show that when
formulated at an abstract level, problems from IR, from statistical data
analysis, and from physical measurement theories are very similar and hence can
profitably be cross-fertilised, and, secondly, to propose a novel method of
fuzzy hierarchical clustering, termed \textit{semantic distillation} --
strongly inspired from the theory of quantum measurement --, we developed to
analyse raw data coming from various types of experiments on DNA arrays. We
illustrate the method by analysing DNA arrays experiments and clustering the
genes of the array according to their specificity.Comment: Accepted for publication in Studies in Computational Intelligence,
Springer-Verla
Information visualization for DNA microarray data analysis: A critical review
Graphical representation may provide effective means of making sense of the complexity and sheer volume of data produced by DNA microarray experiments that monitor the expression patterns of thousands of genes simultaneously. The ability to use ldquoabstractrdquo graphical representation to draw attention to areas of interest, and more in-depth visualizations to answer focused questions, would enable biologists to move from a large amount of data to particular records they are interested in, and therefore, gain deeper insights in understanding the microarray experiment results. This paper starts by providing some background knowledge of microarray experiments, and then, explains how graphical representation can be applied in general to this problem domain, followed by exploring the role of visualization in gene expression data analysis. Having set the problem scene, the paper then examines various multivariate data visualization techniques that have been applied to microarray data analysis. These techniques are critically reviewed so that the strengths and weaknesses of each technique can be tabulated. Finally, several key problem areas as well as possible solutions to them are discussed as being a source for future work
Synthetic biology: advancing biological frontiers by building synthetic systems
Advances in synthetic biology are contributing
to diverse research areas, from basic biology to
biomanufacturing and disease therapy. We discuss the
theoretical foundation, applications, and potential of
this emerging field
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