Papers by Annette Grathoff
Proceedings
As Wiener asserted, information is information, not matter, not energy. Physical aspects of infor... more As Wiener asserted, information is information, not matter, not energy. Physical aspects of information are deeply grounded in energy transformation processes. Adopting an evolutionary perspective, it is demonstrated that there are two complementary informative influences on energy transformation. To do this, we use a simple model of an idealized monochord instrument. This allows modeling information contained in the kinetics of the oscillating string as both (a) generated by the structure of the instrument, and (b) generating non-arbitrary motion structures in sensible receiving configurations that are similar in scale, geometry, and material properties.
Concurrent systems and time synchronization
International Journal of General Systems
Proceedings
How can things become stable? This is a difficult question to answer, but we should nevertheless ... more How can things become stable? This is a difficult question to answer, but we should nevertheless try, because of the answer's importance for life, for us. Admittedly the question sounds too broad to try to find an answer, but largely this is because we tried to find a universal answer, a universal answer instead of an evolutionary one. The large advantage of the evolutionary view is that reductionism is "only" needed to find the possible base for a phenomenon which is analyzed and which could as well be a relatively modern phenomenon, and afterwards from this base ideas can be developed further; relatively modern refers to modern estimated from the duration the phenomenon influences developmental and evolutionary processes compared to the total duration of the evolutionary process on Earth. A possible base to describe phenomena is to analyze motion (processes), acceleration of motion (including positive as well as negative acceleration) and (changing) distribution functions which seem to be essentially involved in the phenomenon's appearance. This still sounds challenging, but science has a long and successful tradition of describing and investigating motion and matter, namely: physics. Momentum changes and distribution functions (static as well as dynamic) are its topic. By the way: physics in the last decades started to find descriptions for non-linear and non-conservative processes of motion and stabilities emerging out of deterministic "chaos", too. But this was just to mention future potential for understanding, since in the following we will focus on maintenance of stability in systems which already gained it. When a physical base for phenomena which involve motion, changes of motion and distribution functions, has been found, automatically the question of stability is important. Physical models allow comparing parameters in the form of initial conditions regarding their capacity to model an observable phenomenon. A phenomenon like that can be observed as a material object respectively a material structure characterizing an object or as a type of motion, respectively a process, the character of which can be captured with a mathematical formula. In both cases stability is essential, otherwise observability was not warranted. Developing this approach further, an evolutionary view means that to understand stability and stabilizing effects we have to focus on processes which enable and maintain motion structures and configurations, which allow them to gain stability. Starting from this, we have to rely on a more general interpretation of selection. It is proposed construing the one-line evolution definition of Darwin, namely "descent with modification" [1] together with Mayr's "(...) differential perpetuation of genotypes" [2]-definition for selective processes: An evolutionary view on systems focuses on the differential perpetuation of stable states and stability of states. The more per se stable elements an object comprises, the more probable it becomes that an object's associated elements gain a function for the object, especially regarding its long-term stability.
Proceedings
When viewing differences that make differences from an evolutionary perspective, information is n... more When viewing differences that make differences from an evolutionary perspective, information is not just communication. When one has won the fight with the many different definitions of entropy and finally understood that what corresponds to information of communication theory is best viewed as a tendency for equilibrium distribution functions in matter, one knows only a half. Knowing that Shannon's formula relates a distribution function between set elements to the amount of decision-events necessary helps, but questions remain. What influences this amount? If the set evolved, how could decision-events not follow the tendency to equalize obeying the maximization of statistical entropy? How could relations stabilize? The set's information is a non-equilibrium distribution's cause. In physics, if some properties which deviate from equilibrium depend on spatial configuration, such properties are said to be in a field; and they represent a potential energy if they provoke forces in interactions. Stonier thought that the cause of non-equilibrium distribution functions in stable configurations and material structures is only one kind of informing influence; and that it is inherent in the structure. He called it structural information and discerned it from what he called kinetic information. This is the other cause of non-equilibrium distributions and it names the externally introduced information which leads to a non-stable situation triggering work to be done. This is what makes Stonier's definition of information difficult to grasp: Energy which is physically potential energy, as it is stable inside a certain configuration, is stable because of structural information; and it is converted over several steps of non-stable states back into energy which can't do any work. The state stabilized by structural information became in-stable because kinetic information was added. This sounds unfamiliar. But one has to consider the context before contradicting. Stonier chose the example of a steam engine for the process described above [1]. In this context, the idea that information is needed to directedly destabilize makes more sense: The machine has a characteristic structure which exists due to a stable configuration which can be trailed until one arrives at the atom and molecule relationships inside its crystal lattice micro structure. The structural information of the machine enables it to provoke an instable situation which will produce work; i.e., it enables it to introduce kinetic information into the gas-boiler-piston-part of its structure. Not all of its structural information is needed to introduce the kinetic information needed to provoke the non-equilibrium situation for work production. Some of the structural information serves other functionalities like holding the gas inside the system or other forms of self-maintenance. On the one hand this distinction Stonier made sounds quite plausible. Information changes organization and thermodynamic improbability affords information. Provoking a non-equilibrium situation which leads to the production of work-which is an organized process in Stonier's terms-therefore demands for information. What provokes the change to non-equilibrium in the steam engine is
Veränderungen in der Zusammensetzung von Bakterioplankton-Gemeinschaften durch Inkubation mit den Süßwasser Makrophyten Iris pseudacorus und Mentha aquatica
... Dissertation von Annette Grathoff geboren am 24.04.1980 in Nürnberg ... Produktion giftiger S... more ... Dissertation von Annette Grathoff geboren am 24.04.1980 in Nürnberg ... Produktion giftiger Stoffwechselprodukte durch Gärung entgegenwirken. b) dass Helophyten durch Exsudation (Cardenas, 1975; Moormann 2001) eine Reihe organischer Stoffe über die Wurzeln abgeben. ...
Helgoland Marine Research
This paper provides Wrst information on organlike bacterial aggregates in the tentacles of the se... more This paper provides Wrst information on organlike bacterial aggregates in the tentacles of the sea anemone Metridium senile. The specimens were collected from waters near Helgoland (German Bight, North Sea) and the Orkney Islands. Tentacles were prepared for morphological inspection by light and scanning electron microscopy as well as for the phylogenetic analysis of endocytic bacteria. Bacterial aggregates are located in caverns of the tentacles' epidermis. The aggregates are enwrapped in thin envelopes, which contain coccoid and/or rod-shaped tightly packed bacteria of diVerent division states. Most of the bacterial cells are connected by Wne Wlamentous structures. The phylogenetic determination is based on the sequence data of the 16S rDNA derived from tentacle material. Sequence analysis revealed three diVerent subgroups of intratentacular proteobacteria. The dominant band, detected in all of the samples tested, showed a close relationship (98%) to a gram-negative Endozoicimonas elysicola. Two bands, only detected in tentacles of M. senile from Helgoland were assigned to Pseudomonas saccherophilia (99%), a knallgas bacterium, and to Ralstonia pickettii (100%). The bacteria represent a speciWc bacterial community. Their DGGE pro-Wles do not correspond to the proWles of the planktonic bacteria generated from seawater close to the habitats of the anemones. The allocation of DNA sequences to the diVerent morphotypes, their isolation, culturing and the elucidation of the physiological functions of intratentacular bacteria are in progress.
After roughly 35 years of development in the theories of self-organization and related variants (... more After roughly 35 years of development in the theories of self-organization and related variants (chaos, self-organized criticality, and so forth), it is somewhat of a surprise that physics proper has not yet sufficiently found its entry into the ongoing quest for a precise concept of information. Already as early as in the sixties of the last century, Fredkin and Zuse visualized the universe altogether as a digital computer, a line of argument that Wolfram has followed more recently. Not to speak of the even more recent theories on quantum information that emerged during the nineties and tended from the beginning on to coupling generically to theories of quantum gravity. As Deutsch ([3], 93, 100) has formulated: " [...] [b]its, Boolean variables, and classical computation are all emergent or approximate properties of qubits, manifested mainly when they undergo de-coherence [...]. The world is made of qubits [...]. What we perceive to some degree of approximation as a world of single-valued variables is actually part of a larger reality in which the full answer to a yes-no question is not just yes or no, nor even both yes and no in parallel, but a quantum-observable—something that can be represented as a large Hermitian matrix ". In fact, we would rather tend to add energy-mass (= matter) to this as a second register, because, if visualizing the universe as a quantum computer, this means that a computer consists of both hardware and software, respectively. Energy (or matter as to that) stands for the former, information for the latter. This viewpoint goes actually back as far as to John Wheeler in 1977 whose perspective led at the time to the famous " it-from-bit " thesis proposing that " the universe be fundamentally an information processing system from which the appearance of matter emerges at a higher level of reality ". (Davies [2], 10) In fact, very much in the sense of Deutsch [3], both Zizzi [16] and Lloyd ([6,7]) generalized this thesis by replacing it in terms of a new " it-from-qubit " thesis. It is in particular Lloyd who developed the cosmological implications in detail when presenting his work in 2006 and 2010. For him, the big bang was also a bit bang. Hence, within our picture, it is ultimately both matter and information that show up as two different aspects of the same underlying primordial structure. It is especially in loop quantum gravity that these features are most prominent, the adequate modelling language being that of topos theory. In the meantime, recent work on the concept of quantum de-coherence (Schlosshauer [8]) as well as on its origin in gravity itself (Zych, Pikovksi, Costa, Brukner [17]) has clarified this viewpoint even more. From this development in physics and its philosophical conceptualization we can draw a number of relevant conclusions which are listed in the following manifesto.
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Papers by Annette Grathoff