Second law, entropy production, and reversibility in thermodynamics of information

We present a pedagogical review of the fundamental concepts in thermodynamics of information, by focusing on the second law of thermodynamics and the entropy production. Especially, we discuss the relationship among thermodynamic reversibility, logical reversibility, and heat emission in the context of the Landauer principle and clarify that these three concepts are fundamentally distinct to each other. We also discuss thermodynamics of measurement and feedback control by Maxwell's demon. We clarify that the demon and the second law are indeed consistent in the measurement and the feedback processes individually, by including the mutual information to the entropy production.Comment: 43 pages, 10 figures. As a chapter of: G. Snider et al. (eds.), "Energy Limits in Computation: A Review of Landauer's Principle, Theory and Experiments

The rise of linear borders in world politics

This article argues that the dominance of precise, linear borders as an ideal in the demarcation of territory is an outcome of a relatively recent and ongoing historical process, and that this process has had important effects on international politics since circa 1900. Existing accounts of the origins of territorial sovereignty are in wide disagreement largely because they fail to specify the relationship between territory and borders, often conflating the two concepts. I outline a history of the linearization of borders which is separate from that of territorial sovereignty, having a very different timeline and featuring different actors, and offer an explanation for the dominance of this universalizing system of managing and demarcating space, based on the concept of rationalization. Finally I describe two broad ways in which linearizing borders has affected international politics, by making space divisible in new ways, and underpinning hierarchies by altering the distribution of geographical knowledge resources

Brain noradrenaline depletion prevents ECS-induced enhancement of serotonin- and dopamine-mediated behaviour

When rats are given a series of electroconvulsive shocks (ECSs) over several days, they display enhanced behavioural responses to both serotonin- and dopamine-receptor agonists. Because these changes are seen when the ECS is given in ways closely mimicking the clinical administration of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), it has been suggested that the changes in postsynaptic monoamine function may be involved in the antidepressant mechanisms of ECT. Ligand-binding studies have excluded the possibility that ECS alters the characteristics of either the serotonin or dopamine receptor; ECS may therefore be acting on neuronal systems which modulate monoamine neurotransmission. As repeated ECS has recently been reported to decrease both noradrenaline (NA)-sensitive adenylate cyclase and beta-adrenoreceptor binding, we have examined here whether changes in NA function are related to the effects of ECS on the serotonin- and dopamine-mediated behaviours. We demonstrate that although selective depletion of NA does not alter the drug-induced serotonin- and dopamine-mediated responses, it abolishes the ECS-induced enhancement of these behaviours.</p