Molecular Information Theory
The Work of Dr. Tom Schneider from the NCIFCRF deserves it's own special section. While Shannon Entropy has been applied in InfoTech and communications for decades, it is relatively unknown amongst today's medical researchers. This field, known as "Molecular Information Theory" is not only key to the next generation of medicine, it is very important to the field of nano-engineering and molecular machines.
- An important warning on the distinction between Thermodynamic Entropy and Shannon Entopy.
- A good primer for biologists unfamiliar with Claude Shannon's Information Theory.
- A good start for computer science people is this article on Claude Shannon and Biology. pdf full cite
- This advanced article discusses molecular machines in depth using Molecular Info Theory. pdf full cite
- Complete tour of Molecular Information Theory with above articles and more.
- Dr. Schneider's comprehensive home page is found here.
Systems Theory
Systems Theory has deep history in computer science and its application has been around for decades with such technologies as Object Oriented Programming and Dsitributed Computing. There has been work going on to apply this mature science to medicine. Indeed, the health care crisis will not be resolved until reductionism is replaced with this new (to biology and medicine) paradigm. Many InfoTech people have a difficult time accepting that Systems Theory is largely new to medicine. So, really, let me underscore the point to be prefectly clear. This paradigm is largely obscure to practicing physicians and pharmaceutical researchers. Really.
- Self-organization, Emergence and the Architecture of Complexity
This article is pretty deep, but comprehensible for anyone that has ever designed or programmed an object oriented system. A good bit of math is discussed, but no Greek letters. It does an excellent job of explaining how system becomes emergent. The full cite is below. I highly recommend it to both InfoTech people and open minded Molecular Biologists looking for a deep conceptual explanation of Systems Theory.
Heylighen F. (1989): "Self-Organization, Emergence and the Architecture of Complexity", in:
Proceedings of the 1st European Conference on System Science, (AFCET, Paris), p. 23-32.
Emergence Versus Self-Organisation:
Different Concepts but Promising When Combined
Tom De Wolf and Tom Holvoet
Department of Computer Science, Kuleuven,
Celestijnenlaan 200A, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
{Tom.DeWolf, Tom.Holvoet}@cs.kuleuven.ac.be
This article makes some extremely important points about the history of complexity science and the meanings of key terms. These definitions are important indeed to keep straight.- Here is a link to Tom De Wolf's full bibliography of very useful work.
