34,943 research outputs found
A biosemiotic conversation: Between physics and semiotics
In this dialogue, we discuss the contrast between inexorable physical laws and the semiotic freedom of life. We agree that material and symbolic structures require complementary descriptions, as do the many hierarchical levels of their organizations. We try to clarify our concepts of laws, constraints, rules, symbols, memory, interpreters, and semiotic control. We briefly describe our different personal backgrounds that led us to a biosemiotic approach, and we speculate on the future directions of biosemiotics
Recommended from our members
Non-invasive investigations of a wall painting using optical coherence tomography and hyperspectral imaging
Multispectral and hyperspectral imaging are efficient methods of measuring spectral reflectance at high spatial resolution. This non-invasive technique has been applied to the imaging of paintings over the last 20 years. PRISMS (Portable Remote Imaging System for Multispectral Scanning) was designed specifically for imaging wall paintings. Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a low coherence interferometric technique capable of fast non-invasive imaging of subsurface microstructure. This paper shows the first application of in situ OCT imaging of a wall painting. The combination of PRISMS and OCT gives information on the varnish and paint layer structure, pigment identification, the state of degradation of the paint and varnish layers and informing curators on the painting schemes and techniques
Skeletal stressing method and apparatus Patent
Method and apparatus for applying compressional forces to skeletal structure of subject to simulate force during ambulatory condition
Neural scaling laws for an uncertain world
Autonomous neural systems must efficiently process information in a wide
range of novel environments, which may have very different statistical
properties. We consider the problem of how to optimally distribute receptors
along a one-dimensional continuum consistent with the following design
principles. First, neural representations of the world should obey a neural
uncertainty principle---making as few assumptions as possible about the
statistical structure of the world. Second, neural representations should
convey, as much as possible, equivalent information about environments with
different statistics. The results of these arguments resemble the structure of
the visual system and provide a natural explanation of the behavioral
Weber-Fechner law, a foundational result in psychology. Because the derivation
is extremely general, this suggests that similar scaling relationships should
be observed not only in sensory continua, but also in neural representations of
``cognitive' one-dimensional quantities such as time or numerosity
- …