http://www.mdpi.com/journal/information Latest open access articles published in Information at http://www.mdpi.com/journal/information http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/2/198 Jensen-Shannon, J-divergence and Arithmetic-Geometric mean divergences are three classical divergence measures known in the information theory and statistics literature. These three divergence measures bear interesting inequality among the three non-logarithmic measures known as triangular discrimination, Hellingar’s divergence and symmetric chi-square divergence. However, in 2003, Eve studied seven means from a geometrical point of view, which are Harmonic, Geometric, Arithmetic, Heronian, Contra-harmonic, Root-mean square and Centroidal. In this paper, we have obtained new inequalities among non-negative differences arising from these seven means. Correlations with generalized triangular discrimination and some new generating measures with their exponential representations are also presented. Information 2013-04-24 4 2 Article 10.3390/info4020198 198 239 2078-2489 2013-04-24 doi: 10.3390/info4020198 Inder Taneja http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/2/182 In order to promote the core competitive power for telecom operating enterprises to face market fine operation, this article compares the ECTA mode (Extension Case Transmission Mode) and the LCA mode (Loosen Couple Mode), both of which are promoted by WfMC. By comparing these two modes, the suitable situations for these two modes are determined. We also carry out empirical analysis based on the customization mode of mobile phones between China telecom and mobile phone manufacturers and to expound the ascension effect of mechanism based on the agile telecom loose coupling workflow with positive feedback to the telecom enterprises. Finally, on the basis of positive feedback system, the task complexity and information transparency of LCA mode are improved, so that the semantics of public flow mode is kept unchanged and the sub workflow is optimized when modifying the sub workflow. Information 2013-04-15 4 2 Article 10.3390/info4020182 182 197 2078-2489 2013-04-15 doi: 10.3390/info4020182 Qi Wang Furong Lv Yao Li http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/2/171 It has been found in a variety of face-to-face networks that diffusion of information, behaviors and sentiments extend up to two to four degrees of distance from the original source. This regularity has been popularized as the three degrees of influence phenomenon. Prior works have suggested a number of possible explanations to this pattern. In this paper, we study it in the context of an online network. We find similar results in this online setting to those already found offline. However, our approach suggests that two of the previously proposed explanations (increasing instability of connections at greater distances from the source and simple information decay) should not be central to explain the pattern. Information 2013-04-15 4 2 Article 10.3390/info4020171 171 181 2078-2489 2013-04-15 doi: 10.3390/info4020171 Jorge Fabrega Pablo Paredes http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/2/169 The following paragraphs are reproduced from the website of the publisher [1]. At the dawn of the information age, a proper understanding of information and how it relates to matter and energy is of utmost importance for the survival of civilisation. Yet, attempts to reconcile information concepts underlying science and technology with those en vogue in social science, humanities, and arts are rather rare. This book offers a new approach, departing from fragmented information concepts. Information 2013-04-15 4 2 New Book Received 10.3390/info4020169 169 170 2078-2489 2013-04-15 doi: 10.3390/info4020169 Shu-Kun Lin http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/2/124 Evolutionary information theory is a constructive approach that studies information in the context of evolutionary processes, which are ubiquitous in nature and society. In this paper, we develop foundations of evolutionary information theory, building several measures of evolutionary information and obtaining their properties. These measures are based on mathematical models of evolutionary computations, machines and automata. To measure evolutionary information in an invariant form, we construct and study universal evolutionary machines and automata, which form the base for evolutionary information theory. The first class of measures introduced and studied in this paper is evolutionary information size of symbolic objects relative to classes of automata or machines. In particular, it is proved that there is an invariant and optimal evolutionary information size relative to different classes of evolutionary machines. As a rule, different classes of algorithms or automata determine different information size for the same object. The more powerful classes of algorithms or automata decrease the information size of an object in comparison with the information size of an object relative to weaker4 classes of algorithms or machines. The second class of measures for evolutionary information in symbolic objects is studied by introduction of the quantity of evolutionary information about symbolic objects relative to a class of automata or machines. To give an example of applications, we briefly describe a possibility of modeling physical evolution with evolutionary machines to demonstrate applicability of evolutionary information theory to all material processes. At the end of the paper, directions for future research are suggested. Information 2013-04-11 4 2 Article 10.3390/info4020124 124 168 2078-2489 2013-04-11 doi: 10.3390/info4020124 Mark Burgin http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/1/117 With an increasing pervasiveness, prevalence and severity of cybercrimes, various metrics, measures and statistics have been developed and used to measure various aspects of this phenomenon. Cybercrime-related data, metrics, and information, however, pose important and difficult dilemmas regarding the issues of reliability, validity, comparability and practical utility. While many of the issues of the cybercrime economy are similar to other underground and underworld industries, this economy also has various unique aspects. For one thing, this industry also suffers from a problem partly rooted in the incredibly broad definition of the term “cybercrime”. This article seeks to provide insights and analysis into this phenomenon, which is expected to advance our understanding into cybercrime-related information. Information 2013-02-11 4 1 Article 10.3390/info4010117 117 123 2078-2489 2013-02-11 doi: 10.3390/info4010117 Nir Kshetri http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/1/94 Logan [1] in his book The Extended Mind developed the hypothesis that language, culture, technology and science can be treated as organisms that evolve and reproduce themselves. This idea is extended by making use of the notion of teleodynamics that Deacon [2] introduced and developed in his book Incomplete Nature to explain the nature of life, sentience, mind and a self that acts in its own interest. It is suggested that language, culture, technology and science (LCT&S) like living organisms also act in their own self-interest, are self-correcting and are to a certain degree autonomous even though they are obligate symbionts with their human hosts. Specifically, it will be argued that LCT&S are essentially teleodynamic systems, which Deacon defines as “self-creating, self-maintaining, self-reproducing, individuated systems [2] (p. 325)”. Information 2013-02-07 4 1 Review 10.3390/info4010094 94 116 2078-2489 2013-02-07 doi: 10.3390/info4010094 Robert Logan http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/1/75 The main aim of this paper is to show how the design and creation of computational models to study and simulate of the behaviour of dynamical complex systems, and in particular crowds of pedestrian, actually implicitly employs elements of a framework introduced by Luciano Floridi in his paper “The Method of Levels of Abstraction”. The example of the computer based simulation of the complex phenomenon of crowd dynamics and the related knowledge requiring different abstract levels and representation will be introduced in order to show how concepts like observables and system behaviour are commonly employed to compare and evaluate simulation models. Information 2013-01-15 4 1 Article 10.3390/info4010075 75 93 2078-2489 2013-01-15 doi: 10.3390/info4010075 Stefania Bandini Giuseppe Vizzari http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/1/60 In this work we provide a statistical form of empirical analysis of classical propositional logic decision methods called SAT solvers. This work is perceived as an empirical counterpart of a theoretical movement, called the enduring scandal of deduction, that opposes considering Boolean Logic as trivial in any sense. For that, we study the predictability of classical logic, which we take to be the distribution of the runtime of its decision process. We present a series of experiments that determines the run distribution of SAT solvers and discover a varying landscape of distributions, following the known existence of a transition of easy-hard-easy cases of propositional formulas. We find clear distributions for the easy areas and the transitions easy-hard and hard-easy. The hard cases are shown to be hard also for the detection of statistical distributions, indicating that several independent processes may be at play in those cases. Information 2013-01-14 4 1 Article 10.3390/info4010060 60 74 2078-2489 2013-01-14 doi: 10.3390/info4010060 Marcelo Finger Poliana Reis http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/1/33 In this paper we discuss Floridi’s views concerning semantic information in the light of a recent contribution (in collaboration with the present author) [1] that defies the traditional view of deductive reasoning as “analytic” or “tautological” and construes it as an informative, albeit non-empirical, activity. We argue that this conception paves the way for a more realistic notion of semantic information where the “ideal agents” that are assumed by the standard view can be indefinitely approximated by real ones equipped with growing computational resources. Information 2013-01-11 4 1 Article 10.3390/info4010033 33 59 2078-2489 2013-01-11 doi: 10.3390/info4010033 Marcello D'Agostino http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/1/31 In this collection of selected articles, we discuss some aspects of the extensive work of Luciano Floridi, with special emphasis on how it relates to and has influenced research work on Computer Science. Information 2013-01-07 4 1 Editorial 10.3390/info4010031 31 32 2078-2489 2013-01-07 doi: 10.3390/info4010031 Flavio da Silva http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/4/1/1 What is information? Although researchers have used the construct of information liberally to refer to pertinent forms of domain-specific knowledge, relatively few have attempted to generalize and standardize the construct. Shannon and Weaver (1949) offered the best known attempt at a quantitative generalization in terms of the number of discriminable symbols required to communicate the state of an uncertain event. This idea, although useful, does not capture the role that structural context and complexity play in the process of understanding an event as being informative. In what follows, we discuss the limitations and futility of any generalization (and particularly, Shannon’s) that is not based on the way that agents extract patterns from their environment. More specifically, we shall argue that agent concept acquisition, and not the communication of states of uncertainty, lie at the heart of generalized information, and that the best way of characterizing information is via the relative gain or loss in concept complexity that is experienced when a set of known entities (regardless of their nature or domain of origin) changes. We show that Representational Information Theory perfectly captures this crucial aspect of information and conclude with the first generalization of RIT to continuous domains. Information 2012-12-20 4 1 Article 10.3390/info4010001 1 30 2078-2489 2012-12-20 doi: 10.3390/info4010001 Ronaldo Vigo http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/809 Observations of quantum systems carried out by finite observers who subsequently communicate their results using classical data structures can be described as “local operations, classical communication” (LOCC) observations. The implementation of LOCC observations by the Hamiltonian dynamics prescribed by minimal quantum mechanics is investigated. It is shown that LOCC observations cannot be described using decoherence considerations alone, but rather require the a priori stipulation of a positive operator-valued measure (POVM) about which communicating observers agree. It is also shown that the transfer of classical information from system to observer can be described in terms of system-observer entanglement, raising the possibility that an apparatus implementing an appropriate POVM can reveal the entangled system-observer states that implement LOCC observations. Information 2012-12-13 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040809 809 831 2078-2489 2012-12-13 doi: 10.3390/info3040809 Chris Fields http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/790 Metadata has been around and has evolved for centuries, albeit not recognized as such. Medieval manuscripts typically had illuminations at the start of each chapter, being both a kind of signature for the author writing the script and a pictorial chapter anchor for the illiterates at the time. Nowadays, there is so much fragmented information on the Internet that users sometimes fail to distinguish the real facts from some bended truth, let alone being able to interconnect different facts. Here, the metadata can both act as noise-reductors for detailed recommendations to the end-users, as it can be the catalyst to interconnect related information. Over time, metadata thus not only has had different modes of information, but furthermore, metadata’s relation of information to meaning, i.e., “semantics”, evolved. Darwin’s evolutionary propositions, from “species have an unlimited reproductive capacity”, over “natural selection”, to “the cooperation of mutations leads to adaptation to the environment” show remarkable parallels to both metadata’s different modes of information and to its relation of information to meaning over time. In this paper, we will show that the evolution of the use of (meta)data can be mapped to Darwin’s nine evolutionary propositions. As mankind and its behavior are products of an evolutionary process, the evolutionary process of metadata with its different modes of information is on the verge of a new-semantic-era. Information 2012-12-07 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040790 790 808 2078-2489 2012-12-07 doi: 10.3390/info3040790 Erik Mannens Ruben Verborgh Seth van Hooland Laurence Hauttekeete Tom Evens Sam Coppens Rik van de Walle http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/771 In today’s economy, one of the most important national indicators of economic growth performance is the country’s ability to produce new technology—and use it responsibly and efficiently—for environmental protection or energy conservation, production and consumption in agreement with international standards. The purpose of this study is to identify the Research and Development (R&D) capability in the area of environmentally friendly technologies in China, Japan and Korea over the last twenty years. As the field is very wide, Water-Gas Shift (WGS) reaction technologies were taken as a case study for the purpose of this article. During 1990–2011 a total of 788 papers in the field of WGS technologies were published by scientists in China, Japan and Korea. China was the top producing country with 394 papers (50%) followed by Japan with 250 papers (32%), and Korea with 144 papers (18%). The growth of the literature in the field was found to be exponential in nature for China. The R&D capabilities were found to correlate directly with the Gross Domestic Expenditures on R&D (GERD), Researchers in Full-time equivalents (FTE), and other economic parameters. Information 2012-11-29 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040771 771 789 2078-2489 2012-11-29 doi: 10.3390/info3040771 Edoardo Magnone http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/756 A multi-layered perceptron type neural network is presented and analyzed in this paper. All neuronal parameters such as input, output, action potential and connection weight are encoded by quaternions, which are a class of hypercomplex number system. Local analytic condition is imposed on the activation function in updating neurons’ states in order to construct learning algorithm for this network. An error back-propagation algorithm is introduced for modifying the connection weights of the network. Information 2012-11-28 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040756 756 770 2078-2489 2012-11-28 doi: 10.3390/info3040756 Teijiro Isokawa Haruhiko Nishimura Nobuyuki Matsui http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/751 What can we hope for from studies of information related to energy/matter (as it appears for us in space/time)? Information is a concept known for its ambiguity in both common, everyday use and in its specific technical applications throughout different fields of research and technology. However, most people are unaware that matter/energy today is also a concept surrounded by a disquieting uncertainty. What for Democritus were building blocks of the whole universe appear today to constitute only 4% of its observed content. (NASA 2012) [1] The rest is labeled “dark matter” (conjectured to explain gravitational effects otherwise unaccounted for) and “dark energy” (introduced to account for the expansion of the universe). We do not know what “dark matter” and “dark energy” actually are. This indicates that our present understanding of the structure of the physical world needs re-examination. [...] Information 2012-11-26 3 4 Editorial 10.3390/info3040751 751 755 2078-2489 2012-11-26 doi: 10.3390/info3040751 Gordana Dodig Crnkovic http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/739 We survey a few aspects of the thermodynamics of computation, connecting information, thermodynamics, computability and physics. We suggest some lines of research into how information theory and computational thermodynamics can help us arrive at a better understanding of biological processes. We argue that while a similar connection between information theory and evolutionary biology seems to be growing stronger and stronger, biologists tend to use information simply as a metaphor. While biologists have for the most part been influenced and inspired by information theory as developed by Claude Shannon, we think the introduction of algorithmic complexity into biology will turn out to be a much deeper and more fruitful cross-pollination. Information 2012-11-22 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040739 739 750 2078-2489 2012-11-22 doi: 10.3390/info3040739 Hector Zenil http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/715 Rafael Capurro has defined Angeletics (or messaging theory—John Holgate’s preferred term) as the study of messages and messaging and proposed its paradigmatic role in 21st century science and society. As stated in Messages and Messengers. Angeletics as an Approach to the Phenomenology of Communication, edited by Capurro and Holgate, the objective of Angeletics is to further both a philosophical and a hermeneutical understanding of this phenomenon. My paper is directed at key issues outlined in the reference document by several authors that involve the physical grounding and evolution of messaging and information processes. My approach is to apply my recent extension of logic to complex real systems, processes and concepts, including information, messages and their interaction (Logic in Reality, LIR). LIR supports the grounding of Angeletics in reality and emphasizes the congruence between informational issues in science and in philosophy, as in Capurro’s distinction between an “angeletic philosophy” and “philosophic Angeletics”. From this perspective, LIR can act as a framework for the debate about the nature and function of messaging and information theory and their relevance for a more ethical information society. Information 2012-11-21 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040715 715 738 2078-2489 2012-11-21 doi: 10.3390/info3040715 Joseph Brenner http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/676 In his Incomplete Nature, Deacon extends a thermodynamic concept of energy to yield a description of complex processes in which absence plays a critical role in their emergence and evolution. Starting from a quantum-mechanical picture of energy as an energy-matter duality, the critical role of potential as well as actual properties of processes is also described in the new extension of logic to real phenomena, Logic in Reality (LIR), which I have proposed. Deacon shows how an interactive operation of both Shannon entropy and Boltzmann entropy must be taken into account in information. Here, I demonstrate the complementarity of our two approaches to what is not, or not fully, present for an understanding of the dynamics of complex phenomena, especially, of intentionality, information and meaning. Deacon shows that the hallmark of information is its absent content, and LIR shows that presence (actuality) and absence (potentiality) in such processes are related dynamically. Deacon’s approach and LIR ground and extend Logan’s concepts of biotic information and the relativity of information vs. meaning. Their conjunction constitutes a new conceptual structure for exploring the relationship of information to materiality, that is, to the matter-energy that constitutes it as its carrier and/or substrate. Information 2012-11-16 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040676 676 714 2078-2489 2012-11-16 doi: 10.3390/info3040676 Joseph Brenner http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/661 Multidimensional on-line analytical processing (MOLAP) systems deal well with dense data than relational ones (ROLAP). In the existence of sparse data, MOLAP systems become memory consuming, which may limit and slow down data processing tasks. Many compression techniques have been proposed to deal with the sparsity of data in MOLAP systems. One of these techniques is the bitmap compression, which allows a significant reduction of the memory space used for data processing. In this article, we propose an extension to the bitmap compression technique by storing the compressed data as bits into multiple efficient data structures based on a new indexing strategy instead of the linear structure. Compared with the classical bitmap, the proposed enhancement not only allows space reduction but also reduces the search time through the compressed data. We present some algorithms that allow maintaining and searching within the compressed structure without the need for decompression. We demonstrate that the complexity of the proposed algorithms varies from logarithmic to constant, compared with the linear complexity of the classical bitmap technique. Information 2012-11-14 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040661 661 675 2078-2489 2012-11-14 doi: 10.3390/info3040661 Joseph Zalaket http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/644 Information must have physical support and this physical universe comprisesphysical interactions. Hence actual information processes should have a description byinteractions alone, i.e., an extensional description. In this paper, such a model of the processof information articulation from the universe is developed by generalizing the extensivemeasurement theory in metrology. Moreover, a model of the attribute creation processis presented to exemplify a step of the informational articulation process. These modelsdemonstrate the valuableness of the extensional view and are expected to enhance theunderstanding of the extensional aspects of fundamentals of information. Information 2012-11-13 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040644 644 660 2078-2489 2012-11-13 doi: 10.3390/info3040644 Makoto Yoshitake Yasufumi Saruwatari http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/635 While some information is clearly meaningful and some clearly is not, no one has been able to identify exactly what the difference is. The major obstacle has been the way information and meaning are conceptualized: the one in the physical realm of tangible, objective entities and the other in the mental world of intangible, subjective ones. This paper introduces an approach that incorporates both of them within a unified framework by defining them in terms of what they do, rather than what they are. Meaningful information is thus conceptualized here as patterns of matter and energy that have a tangible effect on the entities that detect them, either by changing their function, structure or behavior, while patterns of matter and energy that have no such effects are considered meaningless. The way that meaningful information can act as a causal agent in bio-behavioral systems enables us to move beyond dualistic concepts of ourselves as comprised of a material body that obeys the laws of physics and a non-material essence that is too elusive to study [1]. Information 2012-11-02 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040635 635 643 2078-2489 2012-11-02 doi: 10.3390/info3040635 Anthony Reading http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/621 The liberation from the view that only one way of making sense of experience is legitimate (the one that “corresponds to reality”), which follows from the results of 20th century science and philosophy, puts us into a position to consciously choose and assign a purpose to the creation of meaning; and based on that choice, to develop completely new modes of information, to suit each chosen purpose. We present an instance of this approach, where information and knowledge work are considered as key societal systemic components, and then designed as it may best suit the various functions that pertain to this role, notably the function of illuminating the way to all other systemic self-organization. Design epistemology provides an academic foundation for this approach; the Knowledge Federation community implements it in practice. Information 2012-10-24 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040621 621 634 2078-2489 2012-10-24 doi: 10.3390/info3040621 Dino Karabeg http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/601 We consider the case of a peculiar complex behavior in open boson systems sufficiently away from equilibrium, having relevance in the functioning of information-processing biological and condensed matter systems. This is the so-called Fröhlich–Bose–Einstein condensation, a self-organizing-synergetic dissipative structure, a phenomenon apparently working in biological processes and present in several cases of systems of boson-like quasi-particles in condensed inorganic matter. Emphasis is centered on the quantum-mechanical-statistical irreversible thermodynamics of these open systems, and the informational characteristics of the phenomena. Information 2012-10-24 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040601 601 620 2078-2489 2012-10-24 doi: 10.3390/info3040601 Áurea R. Vasconcellos Fabio Stucchi Vannucchi Sérgio Mascarenhas Roberto Luzzi http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/595 In this paper I consider the usefulness of the compositional hierarchy model in understanding the information flows involved in group behaviors in animals. I propose that short-term memory can function to transduce information across scale, thereby connecting different modes of information and mediating coherent group motions. This transduction I propose to be mediated by the “sign” as understood in Peircean semiotics, generating the meaning of the information for the social animal. Information 2012-10-22 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040595 595 600 2078-2489 2012-10-22 doi: 10.3390/info3040595 Stanley N. Salthe http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/567 The concept of information plays a fundamental role in our everyday experience, but is conspicuously absent in framework of classical physics. Over the last century, quantum theory and a series of other developments in physics and related subjects have brought the concept of information and the interface between an agent and the physical world into increasing prominence. As a result, over the last few decades, there has arisen a growing belief amongst many physicists that the concept of information may have a critical role to play in our understanding of the workings of the physical world, both in more deeply understanding existing physical theories and in formulating of new theories. In this paper, I describe the origin of the informational view of physics, illustrate some of the work inspired by this view, and give some indication of its implications for the development of a new conception of physical reality. Information 2012-10-17 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040567 567 594 2078-2489 2012-10-17 doi: 10.3390/info3040567 Philip Goyal http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/4/546 This paper presents a toy model for the representation related phenomena. It is the representation that is always referred to. The represented thing in itself is indeterminate existence at a fundamental level of understanding. In order to capture such property of representation, this paper provides a toy model using an algebraic structure: torsor. The toy model captures this baselessness of representation naturally, and can be used to describe various phenomena of representations. Adopting the torsor and focusing on the two-sidedness and the closure property of representation enables the toy model to express some consistency of representations. Information 2012-10-09 3 4 Article 10.3390/info3040546 546 566 2078-2489 2012-10-09 doi: 10.3390/info3040546 Makoto Yoshitake http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/504 We are moving towards the information society, and we need to overcome the discouraging perspective, which is caused by the false belief that our thoughts (and thereby also our acting) represent a somehow externally existing world. Indeed, it is already a step forward to proclaim that there exists a somehow common world for all people. But if those internal forms of representation are primarily bound to the subject itself, then, consequently, anybody can argue for his or her view of the world as being the “right” one. Well, what is the exit strategy out of this dilemma? It is information; information as understood in its actual and potential dimension, in its identity of structure and meaning. Such an approach requires a deeper elaborated conceptual approach. The goal of this study is to show that such a concept is glued by the strong relationship between seemingly unrelated disciplines: physics, semantics (semiotics/cognition) and computer science, and even poetry. But the terminus of information is nowadays discussed and elaborated in all those disciplines. Hence, there is no shortcut, no way around. The aim of this study is not even to show that those strong relationships exist. We will see within the same horizon that, based on such a concept, new kinds of computing systems are becoming possible. Nowadays energy consumption is becoming a major issue regarding computing systems. We will work towards an approach, which enables new devices consuming a minimum amount of energy and maximizing the performance at the same time. And within the same horizon it becomes possible to release the saved energy towards a new ethical spirit—towards the information society. Information 2012-09-24 3 3 Article 10.3390/info3030504 504 545 2078-2489 2012-09-24 doi: 10.3390/info3030504 Gerhard Luhn http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/472 In this first part of the paper, the category of meaning is traced starting from the origin of the Universe itself as well as its very grounding in pre-geometry (the second part deals with an appropriate bottom-up approach). In contrast to many former approaches in the theories of information and also in biosemiotics, we will show that the forms of meaning emerge simultaneously (alongside) with information and energy. Hence, information can be visualized as being always meaningful (in a sense to be explicated) rather than visualizing meaning as a later specification of information within social systems only. This perspective taken has two immediate consequences: (1) We follow the GDI as defined by Floridi, though we modify it somehow as to the aspect of truthfulness. (2) We can conceptually solve Capurro’s trilemma. Hence, what we actually do is to follow the strict (i.e., optimistic) line of UTI in the sense of Hofkirchner’s. While doing this, we treat energy and information as two different categorial aspects of one and the same underlying primordial structure. We thus demonstrate the presently developing convergence of physics, biology, and computer science (as well as the various theories of information) in some detail and draft out a line of argument eventually leading up to the further unification of UTI and biosemiotics. Information 2012-09-19 3 3 Article 10.3390/info3030472 472 503 2078-2489 2012-09-19 doi: 10.3390/info3030472 Rainer E. Zimmermann José M. Díaz Nafría http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/442 In the field of media ecology, defined as the study of media as environments, media and medium, and ecology and environment are key terms, while information, although commonly employed, is generally used without reference to a specific definition. This article examines the mostly implicit assumptions about and understandings of the term information in the context of the field of media ecology. Information can be seen as a synonym or subset of content or message, can be divided into different orders or levels of content/communication and relationship/medium, and on both levels is dependent on and altered by changes in technology, code, and form. Although sometimes discussed as if it were a substance, information is best understood as a function of communication, which in turn is a function of mediation. As a function of mediated communication, information is closely associated with news and control. Information is also considered the defining characteristic of our contemporary period, but is best understood as a product of electricity, electric technology, and the electronic media. As we have moved from orality to literacy to electricity, so too has the emphasis shifted from wisdom to knowledge to information. Despite popular celebration, this evolution is not an unmitigated good, and what is needed is a balanced media environment. Information 2012-09-18 3 3 Article 10.3390/info3030442 442 471 2078-2489 2012-09-18 doi: 10.3390/info3030442 Lance Strate http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/420 Signals acquired by sensors in the real world are non-linear combinations, requiring non-linear mixture models to describe the resultant mixture spectra for the endmember’s (pure pixel’s) distribution. This communication discusses inferring class fraction through a novel hybrid mixture model (HMM). HMM is a three-step process, where the endmembers are first derived from the images themselves using the N-FINDR algorithm. These endmembers are used by the linear mixture model (LMM) in the second step that provides an abundance estimation in a linear fashion. Finally, the abundance values along with the training samples representing the actual ground proportions are fed into neural network based multi-layer perceptron (MLP) architecture as input to train the neurons. The neural output further refines the abundance estimates to account for the non-linear nature of the mixing classes of interest. HMM is first implemented and validated on simulated hyper spectral data of 200 bands and subsequently on real time MODIS data with a spatial resolution of 250 m. The results on computer simulated data show that the method gives acceptable results for unmixing pixels with an overall RMSE of 0.0089 ± 0.0022 with LMM and 0.0030 ± 0.0001 with the HMM when compared to actual class proportions. The unmixed MODIS images showed overall RMSE with HMM as 0.0191 ± 0.022 as compared to the LMM output considered alone that had an overall RMSE of 0.2005 ± 0.41, indicating that individual class abundances obtained from HMM are very close to the real observations. Information 2012-09-14 3 3 Article 10.3390/info3030420 420 441 2078-2489 2012-09-14 doi: 10.3390/info3030420 Uttam Kumar Kumar S. Raja Chiranjit Mukhopadhyay T.V. Ramachandra http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/403 I define information from a philosophical perspective as a category that indicates the presence of indirect existence, which is a self-display by material entities (with direct existence) of the status and trajectory of that existence. In this paper, based in part on articles published only in Chinese over the last 30 years, information is shown to include three basic forms: In-itself, for-itself and regenerated information, which is constituted by the first two. Information in these three basic forms establishes the essence of information which is further developed in a fourth form—social information. Information is further characterized by the qualities of its three different grades, corresponding to these forms: The quality of first-grade information demonstrates direct objective existence and indirect objective existence; the quality of second-grade information demonstrates multiple levels of direct objective and indirect objective existence; the quality of third-grade information is that of the subjective relationships in human understanding that are encoded as information. The grounding of information in the ontological structure of the world gives it a central role in the approach to knowledge, constituting a new and necessary critique of the classical separation of the academic disciplines and the bases of modern philosophy. Information 2012-09-10 3 3 Article 10.3390/info3030403 403 419 2078-2489 2012-09-10 doi: 10.3390/info3030403 Kun Wu http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/391 People increasingly can and want to obtain and generate health information themselves. With the increasing do-it-yourself sentiment comes also the desire to be more involved in one’s health care decisions. Patient driven health-care and health research models are emerging; terms such as participatory medicine and quantified-self are visible increasingly. Given the health consumer’s desire to be more involved in health data generation and health care decision making processes the authors submit that it is important to be health policy literate, to understanding how health policies are developed, what themes are discussed among health policy researchers and policy makers, to understand how ones demands would be discussed within health policy discourses. The public increasingly obtains their knowledge through the internet by searching web browsers for keywords. Question is whether the “health consumer” to come has knowledge of key terms defining key health policy discourses which would enable them to perform targeted searches for health policy literature relevant to their situation. The authors found that key health policy terms are virtually absent from printed and online news media which begs the question how the “health consumer” might learn about key health policy terms needed for web based searches that would allow the “health consumer” to access health policy discourses relevant to them. Information 2012-08-31 3 3 Article 10.3390/info3030391 391 402 2078-2489 2012-08-31 doi: 10.3390/info3030391 Gregor Wolbring Verlyn Leopatra Sophya Yumakulov http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/372 Virtual Globes reached the mass market in 2005. They created multi-million dollar businesses in a very short time by providing novel ways to explore data geographically. We use the term “Virtual Globes” as the common denominator for technologies offering capabilities to annotate, edit and publish geographic information to a world-wide audience and to visualize information provided by the public and private sectors, as well as by citizens who volunteer new data. Unfortunately, but not surprising for a new trend or paradigm, overlapping terms such as “Virtual Globes”, “Digital Earth”, “Geospatial Web”, “Geoportal” or software specific terms are used heterogeneously. We analyze the terminologies and trends in scientific publications and ask whether these developments serve science and society. While usage can be answered quantitatively, the authors reason from the literature studied that these developments serve to educate the masses and may help to democratize geographic information by extending the producer base. We believe that we can contribute to a better distinction between software centered terms and the generic concept as such. The power of the visual, coupled with the potential of spatial analysis and modeling for public and private purposes raises new issues of reliability, standards, privacy and best practice. This is increasingly addressed in scientific literature but the required body of knowledge is still in its infancy. Information 2012-08-31 3 3 Article 10.3390/info3030372 372 390 2078-2489 2012-08-31 doi: 10.3390/info3030372 Thomas Blaschke Karl Donert Frank Gossette Stefan Kienberger Martin Marani Salman Qureshi Dirk Tiede http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/351 This paper offers terms for talking about information and how it relates to both matter-energy and communication, by: (1) Identifying three different levels of signs: Index, based in contiguity, icon, based in similarity, and symbol, based in convention; (2) examining three kinds of coding: Analogic differences, which deal with positive quantities having contiguous and continuous values, and digital distinctions, which include “either/or functions”, discrete values, and capacities for negation, decontextualization, and abstract concept-transfer, and finally, iconic coding, which incorporates both analogic differences and digital distinctions; and (3) differentiating between “information theoretic” orientations (which deal with data, what is “given as meaningful” according to selections and combinations within “contexts of choice”) and “communication theoretic” ones (which deal with capta, what is “taken as meaningful” according to various “choices of context”). Finally, a brief envoi reflects on how information broadly construed relates to probability and entropy. Information 2012-08-27 3 3 Concept Paper 10.3390/info3030351 351 371 2078-2489 2012-08-27 doi: 10.3390/info3030351 Corey Anton http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/344 D. Pollen and M. Trachtenberg proposed the holographic brain theory to help explain the existence of photographic memories in some people. They suggested that such individuals had more vivid memories because they somehow could access a very large region of their memory holograms. Hameroff suggested in his paper that cylindrical neuronal microtubule cavities, or centrioles, function as waveguides for the evanescent photons for quantum signal processing. The supposition is that microtubular structures of the brain function as a coherent fiber bundle set used to store holographic images, as would a fiber-optic holographic system. In this paper, the author proposes that superluminal photons propagating inside the microtubules via evanescent waves could provide the access needed to record or retrieve a quantum coherent entangled holographic memory. Information 2012-08-17 3 3 Article 10.3390/info3030344 344 350 2078-2489 2012-08-17 doi: 10.3390/info3030344 Takaaki Musha http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/331 The paper considers the relation of Shannon-type information to those semantic and hermeneutic aspects of communication, which are often referred to as meaning. It builds on considerations of Talcott Parsons, Niklas Luhmann and Robert K. Logan and relates them to an agent-based model that reproduces key aspects of the Talking Head experiment by Luc Steels. The resulting insights seem to give reason to regard information and meaning not as qualitatively different entities, but as interrelated forms of order that emerge in the interaction of autonomous (self-referentially closed) agents. Although on first sight, this way of putting information and meaning into a constructivist framework seems to open possibilities to conceive meaning in terms of Shannon-information, it also suggests a re-conceptualization of information in terms of what cybernetics calls Eigenform in order to do justice to its dynamic interrelation with meaning. Information 2012-08-14 3 3 Article 10.3390/info3030331 331 343 2078-2489 2012-08-14 doi: 10.3390/info3030331 Manfred Füllsack http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/307 Practicing experiments on the origins of life within the framework of quantum mechanics comes to face a task of distinguishing the descriptive spaces of the object between a space of physical states and a space of probability distributions. One candidate for accommodating both the physical and the probabilistic description in a mutually tolerable manner is to apply first-second person descriptions to the space of physical states while letting the space of probability distributions addressable in third person descriptions be accessible via first-second person descriptions. The mediator or messenger for accommodating these two types of description is the process of probability flow equilibration. The relative state formulation of quantum mechanics opens a possibility for the likelihood that a simple atom such as a carbon atom may carry a message for holding the process of probability flow equilibration. An experimental example demonstrating a carbon atom serving as a messenger is found in the running of the citric acid cycle in the absence of biological enzymes. Information 2012-08-13 3 3 Article 10.3390/info3030307 307 330 2078-2489 2012-08-13 doi: 10.3390/info3030307 Koichiro Matsuno http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/290 We review and summarize Terrence Deacon’s book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. Information 2012-08-07 3 3 Review 10.3390/info3030290 290 306 2078-2489 2012-08-07 doi: 10.3390/info3030290 Robert K. Logan http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/278 The paper provides empirical evidence supporting the assumption that content plays a critical role in determining the virality, i.e., the influence, of social media information. The analysis focuses on multimedia content on Twitter and explores the idea that links to multimedia information increase the virality of posts. In particular, we put forward the following three main hypotheses: (1) posts with a link to multimedia content (photo or video) are more retweeted than posts without a link; (2) posts linking a photo are more retweeted than posts linking a video, and (3) posts linking a video raise more sentiment than posts linking a photo. Hypotheses are tested on a sample of roughly two million tweets posted in July 2011 including comments on Berlin, London, Madrid, and Milan relevant from a tourism perspective. Findings support our hypotheses and indicate that multimedia content plays an important role in determining not only the volumes of retweeting, but also the dynamics of the virality of posts measured as speed of retweeting. Information 2012-07-25 3 3 Article 10.3390/info3030278 278 289 2078-2489 2012-07-25 doi: 10.3390/info3030278 Leonardo Bruni Chiara Francalanci Paolo Giacomazzi http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/3/256 Interpretability and accuracy are two important features of fuzzy systems which are conflicting in their nature. One can be improved at the cost of the other and this situation is identified as “Interpretability-Accuracy Trade-Off”. To deal with this trade-off Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEA) are frequently applied in the design of fuzzy systems. Several novel MOEA have been proposed and invented for this purpose, more specifically, Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithms (NSGA-II), Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA2), Fuzzy Genetics-Based Machine Learning (FGBML), (2 + 2) Pareto Archived Evolutionary Strategy ((2 + 2) PAES), (2 + 2) Memetic- Pareto Archived Evolutionary Strategy ((2 + 2) M-PAES), etc. This paper introduces and reviews the approaches to the issue of developing fuzzy systems using Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization (EMO) algorithms considering ‘Interpretability-Accuracy Trade-off’ and mainly focusing on the work in the last decade. Different research issues and challenges are also discussed. Information 2012-07-12 3 3 Review 10.3390/info3030256 256 277 2078-2489 2012-07-12 doi: 10.3390/info3030256 Praveen Kumar Shukla Surya Prakash Tripathi http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/2/229 Human beings inherit an informational culture transmitted through spoken and written language. A growing body of empirical work supports the mutual influence between language and categorization, suggesting that our cognitive-linguistic environment both reflects and shapes our understanding. By implication, artifacts that manifest this cognitive-linguistic environment, such asWikipedia, should represent language structure and conceptual categorization in a way consistent with human behavior. We use this intuition to guide the construction of a computational cognitive model, situated in Wikipedia, that generates semantic association judgments. Our unsupervised model combines information at the language structure and conceptual categorization levels to achieve state of the art correlation with human ratings on semantic association tasks including WordSimilarity-353, semantic feature production norms, word association, and false memory. Information 2012-06-18 3 2 Article 10.3390/info3020229 229 255 2078-2489 2012-06-18 doi: 10.3390/info3020229 Andrew M. Olney Rick Dale Sidney K. D’Mello http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/2/224 A review of a major, definitive source book on the basis of information theory is presented. Information 2012-06-01 3 2 Book Review 10.3390/info3020224 224 228 2078-2489 2012-06-01 doi: 10.3390/info3020224 Joseph E. Brenner http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/2/219 In this paper I discuss the question: what comes first, physics or information? The two have had a long-standing, symbiotic relationship for almost a hundred years out of which we have learnt a great deal. Information theory has enriched our interpretations of quantum physics, and, at the same time, offered us deep insights into general relativity through the study of black hole thermodynamics. Whatever the outcome of this debate, I argue that physicists will be able to benefit from continuing to explore connections between the two. Information 2012-05-11 3 2 Article 10.3390/info3020219 219 223 2078-2489 2012-05-11 doi: 10.3390/info3020219 Vlatko Vedral http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/2/204 The framework is proposed where matter can be seen as related to energy in a way structure relates to process and information relates to computation. In this scheme matter corresponds to a structure, which corresponds to information. Energy corresponds to the ability to carry out a process, which corresponds to computation. The relationship between each two complementary parts of each dichotomous pair (matter/energy, structure/process, information/computation) are analogous to the relationship between being and becoming, where being is the persistence of an existing structure while becoming is the emergence of a new structure through the process of interactions. This approach presents a unified view built on two fundamental ontological categories: Information and computation. Conceptualizing the physical world as an intricate tapestry of protoinformation networks evolving through processes of natural computation helps to make more coherent models of nature, connecting non-living and living worlds. It presents a suitable basis for incorporating current developments in understanding of biological/cognitive/social systems as generated by complexification of physicochemical processes through self-organization of molecules into dynamic adaptive complex systems by morphogenesis, adaptation and learning—all of which are understood as information processing. Information 2012-04-26 3 2 Article 10.3390/info3020204 204 218 2078-2489 2012-04-26 doi: 10.3390/info3020204 Gordana Dodig Crnkovic http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/2/175 It has been proposed that the general function of the brain is inference, which corresponds quantitatively to the minimization of uncertainty (or the maximization of information). However, there has been a lack of clarity about exactly what this means. Efforts to quantify information have been in agreement that it depends on probabilities (through Shannon entropy), but there has long been a dispute about the definition of probabilities themselves. The “frequentist” view is that probabilities are (or can be) essentially equivalent to frequencies, and that they are therefore properties of a physical system, independent of any observer of the system. E.T. Jaynes developed the alternate “Bayesian” definition, in which probabilities are always conditional on a state of knowledge through the rules of logic, as expressed in the maximum entropy principle. In doing so, Jaynes and others provided the objective means for deriving probabilities, as well as a unified account of information and logic (knowledge and reason). However, neuroscience literature virtually never specifies any definition of probability, nor does it acknowledge any dispute concerning the definition. Although there has recently been tremendous interest in Bayesian approaches to the brain, even in the Bayesian literature it is common to find probabilities that are purported to come directly and unconditionally from frequencies. As a result, scientists have mistakenly attributed their own information to the neural systems they study. Here I argue that the adoption of a strictly Jaynesian approach will prevent such errors and will provide us with the philosophical and mathematical framework that is needed to understand the general function of the brain. Accordingly, our challenge becomes the identification of the biophysical basis of Jaynesian information and logic. I begin to address this issue by suggesting how we might identify a probability distribution over states of one physical system (an “object”) conditional only on the biophysical state of another physical system (an “observer”). The primary purpose in doing so is not to characterize information and inference in exquisite, quantitative detail, but to be as clear and precise as possible about what it means to perform inference and how the biophysics of the brain could achieve this goal. Information 2012-04-20 3 2 Article 10.3390/info3020175 175 203 2078-2489 2012-04-20 doi: 10.3390/info3020175 Christopher D. Fiorillo http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/1/151 This first part of the study introduces an elementary concept of information. Our interest for newness, our curiosity in the new, will be considered as a main building block of information, and of reality itself. A typical definition of information (the reduction of uncertainty) needs to be fundamentally inverted: Information is a compositional activity, including the inconsistent, the paradox, the contradiction and the incoherent meaning. This study expands on the analysis of the composition of new structure (new macrophysical laws), and the analysis of the causality and causal state of such structures (“causally active symbols”). The classical, scientific-objective, passive understanding of information gives meaning to the fact that modern information technology does not by itself lead to an increase of human values. However, our social and moral stance is an informational one, and our informational, active conscious process holds the power to mediate and to enforce this process towards an enriched life. The indicator for such enrichment is given to us by information, and the knowledge about this process will feed us with energy to move towards an active spirit of ethics, and towards the information society. Part I of this study expands on the fundament basis and on our intrinsic responsibility to release the forces that are based on the active dimension of information. Those forces are required in order to reveal the so-called information society from its metaphorical character (Part II). Information 2012-03-16 3 1 Article 10.3390/info3010151 151 174 2078-2489 2012-03-16 doi: 10.3390/info3010151 Gerhard Luhn http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/1/124 All scientists use data visualizations to discover patterns in their phenomena that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. Likewise, we also use scientific visualizations to help us describe our verbal theories and predict those data patterns. But scientific visualization may also constitute a hindrance to theory development when new data cannot be accommodated by the current dominant framework. Here we argue that the sciences of language are currently in an interim stage using an increasingly outdated scientific visualization borrowed from the box-and-arrow flow charts of the early days of engineering and computer science. The original (and not yet fully discarded) version of this obsolete model assumes that the language faculty is composed of autonomously organized levels of linguistic representation, which in turn are assumed to be modular, organized in rank order of dominance, and feed unidirectionally into one another in stage-like algorithmic procedures. We review relevant literature in psycholinguistics and language acquisition that cannot be accommodated by the received model. Both learning and processing of language in children and adults, at various putative ‘levels’ of representation, appear to be highly integrated and interdependent, and function simultaneously rather than sequentially. The fact that half of the field sees these findings as trivially true and the other half argues fiercely against them suggests to us that the sciences of language are on the brink of a paradigm shift. We submit a new scientific visualization for language, in which stacked levels of linguistic representation are replaced by trajectories in a multidimensional space. This is not a mere redescription. Processing language in the brain equates to traversing such a space in regions afforded by multiple probabilistic cues that simultaneously activate different linguistic representations. Much still needs to be done to convert this scientific visualization into actual implemented models, but at present it allows language scientists to envision new concepts and venues for research that may assist the field in transitioning to a new conceptualization, and provide a clear direction for the next decade. Information 2012-02-20 3 1 Article 10.3390/info3010124 124 150 2078-2489 2012-02-20 doi: 10.3390/info3010124 Luca Onnis Michael J. Spivey http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/1/92 Interpretations of quantum theory have traditionally assumed a “Galilean” observer, a bare “point of view” implemented physically by a quantum system. This paper investigates the consequences of replacing such an informationally-impoverished observer with an observer that satisfies the requirements of classical automata theory, i.e., an observer that encodes sufficient prior information to identify the system being observed and recognize its acceptable states. It shows that with reasonable assumptions about the physical dynamics of information channels, the observations recorded by such an observer will display the typical characteristics predicted by quantum theory, without requiring any specific assumptions about the observer’s physical implementation. Information 2012-02-16 3 1 Article 10.3390/info3010092 92 123 2078-2489 2012-02-16 doi: 10.3390/info3010092 Chris Fields http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/1/68 We review the historic development of concept of information including the relationship of Shannon information and entropy and the criticism of Shannon information because of its lack of a connection to meaning. We review the work of Kauffman, Logan et al. that shows that Shannon information fails to describe biotic information. We introduce the notion of the relativity of information and show that the concept of information depends on the context of where and how it is being used. We examine the relationship of information to meaning and materiality within information theory, cybernetics and systems biology. We show there exists a link between information and organization in biotic systems and in the various aspects of human culture including language, technology, science, economics and governance. Information 2012-02-14 3 1 Review 10.3390/info3010068 68 91 2078-2489 2012-02-14 doi: 10.3390/info3010068 Robert K. Logan http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/1/36 Information Technology (IT) adoption is an important field of study in a number of areas, which include small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Due to the numerous advantages of IT, SMEs are trying to adopt IT applications to support their businesses. IT adoption by SMEs differs from larger organizations because of their specific characteristics, such as resources constraints. Therefore, this research aims to provide a better and clearer understanding of IT adoption within SMEs by reviewing and analyzing current IT literature. In this research, the review of literature includes theories, perspectives, empirical research and case studies related to IT adoption, in particular within SMEs from various databases such as Business Premier, Science Direct, JStor, Emerald Insight and Springer Link. The proposed model of effective IT adoption is believed to provide managers, vendors, consultants and governments with a practical synopsis of the IT adoption process in SMEs, which will in turn assist them to be successful with IT institutionalization within these businesses. Information 2012-02-13 3 1 Review 10.3390/info3010036 36 67 2078-2489 2012-02-13 doi: 10.3390/info3010036 Morteza Ghobakhloo Tang Sai Hong Mohammad Sadegh Sabouri Norzima Zulkifli http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/1/21 Chemical affinity involves the integration of two different types of interaction. One is the interaction operating between a pair of reactants while forming a chemical bond, and the other is the prior interaction between those reactants when they identify a reaction partner. The context of the environments under which chemical reactions proceed is identified by the interaction of the participating chemical reactants themselves unless the material process of internal measurement is substituted by theoretical artifacts in the form of imposed boundary conditions, as in the case, for example, of thermal equilibrium. The identification-interaction specific to each local participant serves as a preparation for the making of chemical bonds. The identification-interaction is intrinsically selective in precipitating those chemical bonds that are synthesized most rapidly among possible reactions. Once meta-stable products appear that mediate chemical syntheses and their partial decompositions without totally decomposing, those products would become selective because of their ongoing participation in the identification-interaction. One important natural example must have been the origin and evolution of life on Earth. Information 2012-01-16 3 1 Article 10.3390/info3010021 21 35 2078-2489 2012-01-16 doi: 10.3390/info3010021 Koichiro Matsuno Stanley N. Salthe http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/1/16 During the last two decades, a systematic re-examination of the whole information science field has taken place around the FIS—Foundations of Information Science—initiative. With the occasion of its Fourth Conference in Beijing 2010, a group of selected contributors and leading practitioners of those fields have been invited to contribute to this Special Issue. What is the status of information science today? What is the relationship between information and the laws of nature? Is information merely “physical”? What is the difference between information and computation? Has the genomic revolution changed the contemporary views on information and life? And what about the nature of social information? Cogent answers to these questions and to quite many others are attempted in the contributions that follow. Information 2012-01-04 3 1 Editorial 10.3390/info3010016 16 20 2078-2489 2012-01-04 doi: 10.3390/info3010016 Raquel del Moral Pedro C. Marijuán http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/1/1 This paper discusses concepts of self-organized complexity and the theory of Coherent Infomax in the light of Jaynes’s probability theory. Coherent Infomax, shows, in principle, how adaptively self-organized complexity can be preserved and improved by using probabilistic inference that is context-sensitive. It argues that neural systems do this by combining local reliability with flexible, holistic, context-sensitivity. Jaynes argued that the logic of probabilistic inference shows it to be based upon Bayesian and Maximum Entropy methods or special cases of them. He presented his probability theory as the logic of science; here it is considered as the logic of life. It is concluded that the theory of Coherent Infomax specifies a general objective for probabilistic inference, and that contextual interactions in neural systems perform functions required of the scientist within Jaynes’s theory. Information 2012-01-04 3 1 Article 10.3390/info3010001 1 15 2078-2489 2012-01-04 doi: 10.3390/info3010001 William A. Phillips http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/4/697 Information is usually related to knowledge. However, the recent development of information theory demonstrated that information is a much broader concept, being actually present in and virtually related to everything. As a result, many unknown types and kinds of information have been discovered. Nevertheless, information that acts on knowledge, bringing new and updating existing knowledge, is of primary importance to people. It is called epistemic information, which is studied in this paper based on the general theory of information and further developing its mathematical stratum. As a synthetic approach, which reveals the essence of information, organizing and encompassing all main directions in information theory, the general theory of information provides efficient means for such a study. Different types of information dynamics representation use tools of mathematical disciplines such as the theory of categories, functional analysis, mathematical logic and algebra. Here we employ algebraic structures for exploration of information and knowledge dynamics. In Introduction (Section 1), we discuss previous studies of epistemic information. Section 2 gives a compressed description of the parametric phenomenological definition of information in the general theory of information. In Section 3, anthropic information, which is received, exchanged, processed and used by people is singled out and studied based on the Componential Triune Brain model. One of the basic forms of anthropic information called epistemic information, which is related to knowledge, is analyzed in Section 4. Mathematical models of epistemic information are studied in Section 5. In Conclusion, some open problems related to epistemic information are given. Information 2011-12-16 2 4 Article 10.3390/info2040697 697 726 2078-2489 2011-12-16 doi: 10.3390/info2040697 Mark Burgin http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/4/672 It has been argued that the mental representation resulting from sentence comprehension is not (just) an abstract symbolic structure but a “mental simulation” of the state-of-affairs described by the sentence. We present a particular formalization of this theory and show how it gives rise to quantifications of the amount of syntactic and semantic information conveyed by each word in a sentence. These information measures predict simulated word-processing times in a dynamic connectionist model of sentence comprehension as mental simulation. A quantitatively similar relation between information content and reading time is known to be present in human reading-time data. Information 2011-11-23 2 4 Article 10.3390/info2040672 672 696 2078-2489 2011-11-23 doi: 10.3390/info2040672 Stefan L. Frank Gabriella Vigliocco http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/4/651 Contemporary biological research (particularly in systems biology and the “omic” disciplines) is factually answering some of the poignant questions associated with the information concept and the limitations of information theory. Here, rather than emphasizing and persisting on a focalized discussion about the i-concept, an ampler conception of “informational entities” will be advocated. The way living cells self-produce, interact with their environment, and collectively organize multi-cell systems becomes a paradigmatic case of what such informational entities consist of. Starting with the fundamentals of molecular recognition, and continuing with the basic cellular processes and subsystems, a new interpretation of the global organization of the living cell must be assayed, so that the equivalents of meaning, value, and intelligence will be approached along an emerging “bioinformational” perspective. Further insights on the informational processes of brains, companies, institutions and human societies at large, and even the sciences themselves, could benefit from—and cross-fertilize with—the advancements derived from the informational approach to living systems. The great advantage fuelling the expansion of the bioinformation paradigm is that, today, cellular information processes may be defined almost to completion at the molecular scale (at least in the case of prokaryotic cells). This is not the case, evidently, with nervous systems and the variety of human organizational, cultural, and social developments. Concretely, the crucial evolutionary phenomenon of protein-domain recombination—knowledge recombination—will be analyzed here as a showcase of, and even as a model for, the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary mixing of the sciences so prevalent in contemporary societies. Scientomics will be proposed as a new research endeavor to assist advancement. Informationally, the “society of enzymes” appears as a forerunner of the “society of neurons”, and even of the “society of individuals”. Information 2011-11-09 2 4 Article 10.3390/info2040651 651 671 2078-2489 2011-11-09 doi: 10.3390/info2040651 Raquel del Moral Mónica González Jorge Navarro Pedro C. Marijuán http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/4/635 This article explores some open questions related to the problem of verification of theories in the context of empirical sciences by contrasting three epistemological frameworks. Each of these epistemological frameworks is based on a corresponding central metaphor, namely: (a) Neo-empiricism and the gambling metaphor; (b) Popperian falsificationism and the scientific tribunal metaphor; (c) Cognitive constructivism and the object as eigen-solution metaphor. Each of one of these epistemological frameworks has also historically co-evolved with a certain statistical theory and method for testing scientific hypotheses, respectively: (a) Decision theoretic Bayesian statistics and Bayes factors; (b) Frequentist statistics and p-values; (c) Constructive Bayesian statistics and e-values. This article examines with special care the Zero Probability Paradox (ZPP), related to the verification of sharp or precise hypotheses. Finally, this article makes some remarks on Lakatos’ view of mathematics as a quasi-empirical science. Information 2011-10-31 2 4 Article 10.3390/info2040635 635 650 2078-2489 2011-10-31 doi: 10.3390/info2040635 Julio Michael Stern http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/4/624 In 1872 Ludwig von Boltzmann derived a statistical formula to represent the entropy (an apophasis) of a highly simplistic system. In 1948 Claude Shannon independently formulated the same expression to capture the positivist essence of information. Such contradictory thrusts engendered decades of ambiguity concerning exactly what is conveyed by the expression. Resolution of widespread confusion is possible by invoking the third law of thermodynamics, which requires that entropy be treated in a relativistic fashion. Doing so parses the Boltzmann expression into separate terms that segregate apophatic entropy from positivist information. Possibly more importantly, the decomposition itself portrays a dialectic-like agonism between constraint and disorder that may provide a more appropriate description of the behavior of living systems than is possible using conventional dynamics. By quantifying the apophatic side of evolution, the Shannon approach to information achieves what no other treatment of the subject affords: It opens the window on a more encompassing perception of reality. Information 2011-10-25 2 4 Essay 10.3390/info2040624 624 634 2078-2489 2011-10-25 doi: 10.3390/info2040624 Robert E. Ulanowicz http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/4/621 Remarking on the relationship between the concepts of trust and privacy, Charles Fried (1990, p. 56) [1] writes: Trust is the attitude of expectation that another will behave according to the constraints of morality… There can be no trust where there is no possibility of error. More specifically, man cannot know that he is trusted unless he has the right to act without constant surveillance so that he knows he can betray the trust. Privacy confers that essential right… Without privacy and the possibility of error which it protects that aspect of his humanity is denied to him. The important relationship between trust and privacy that Fried describes is often overlooked in the contemporary literature on privacy, as well in the recent publications that focus on trust and trust-related topics. The six essays included in this special issue of Information, however, give us some additional insights into certain conceptual and practical connections involving the notions of trust and privacy. In this respect, the contributing authors expand upon the insight in Fried’s classic work on the interconnection between the two concepts.[...] Information 2011-10-11 2 4 Editorial 10.3390/info2040621 621 623 2078-2489 2011-10-11 doi: 10.3390/info2040621 Herman T. Tavani Dieter Arnold http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/4/594 Constructing a personal identity is an activity much more complex than elaborating a series of online profiles, which are only digital hints of the Self. The construction of our personal identity is a context-mediated activity. Our hypothesis is that young people are enabled, as digital natives and social network users, to co-construct the “context of communication” in which their narrative identities will be interpreted and understood. In particular, the aim of this paper is to show that such “context of communication”, which can be seen as the hermeneutical counterpart of the “networked publics” elaborated by Danah Boyd, emerges out of the tension between trust and privacy. In other terms, it is, on the one hand, the outcome of a web of trustful relations and, on the other, the framework in which the informational norms regulating teens’ expectations of privacy protection are set and evaluated. However, these expectations can be frustrated, since the information produced in such contexts can be disembedded and re-contextualized across time. The general and widespread use of information technology is, in fact, challenging our traditional way of thinking about the world and our identities in terms of stable and durable structures; they are reconstituted, instead, into novel forms. Information 2011-10-11 2 4 Article 10.3390/info2040594 594 620 2078-2489 2011-10-11 doi: 10.3390/info2040594 Massimo Durante http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/4/579 Theorists of language have argued that co-speech hand gestures are an intentional part of social communication. The present study provides evidence for these claims by showing that speakers adjust their gesture use according to their perceived relevance to the audience. Participants were asked to read about items that were and were not useful in a wilderness survival scenario, under the pretense that they would then explain (on camera) what they learned to one of two different audiences. For one audience (a group of college students in a dormitory orientation activity), the stakes of successful communication were low; for the other audience (a group of students preparing for a rugged camping trip in the mountains), the stakes were high. In their explanations to the camera, participants in the high stakes condition produced three times as many representational gestures, and spent three times as much time gesturing, than participants in the low stakes condition. This study extends previous research by showing that the anticipated consequences of one’s communication—namely, the degree to which information may be useful to an intended recipient—influences speakers’ use of gesture. Information 2011-10-10 2 4 Article 10.3390/info2040579 579 593 2078-2489 2011-10-10 doi: 10.3390/info2040579 Spencer Kelly Kelly Byrne Judith Holler http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/3/560 Semiotics is widely applied in theories of information. Following the original triadic characterization of reality by Peirce, the linguistic processes involved in information—production, transmission, reception, and understanding—would all appear to be interpretable in terms of signs and their relations to their objects. Perhaps the most important of these relations is that of the representation-one, entity, standing for or representing some other. For example, an index—one of the three major kinds of signs—is said to represent something by being directly related to its object. My position, however, is that the concept of symbolic representations having such roles in information, as intermediaries, is fraught with the same difficulties as in representational theories of mind. I have proposed an extension of logic to complex real phenomena, including mind and information (Logic in Reality; LIR), most recently at the 4th International Conference on the Foundations of Information Science (Beijing, August, 2010). LIR provides explanations for the evolution of complex processes, including information, that do not require any entities other than the processes themselves. In this paper, I discuss the limitations of the standard relation of representation. I argue that more realistic pictures of informational systems can be provided by reference to information as an energetic process, following the categorial ontology of LIR. This approach enables naïve, anti-realist conceptions of anti-representationalism to be avoided, and enables an approach to both information and meaning in the same novel logical framework. Information 2011-09-19 2 3 Article 10.3390/info2030560 560 578 2078-2489 2011-09-19 doi: 10.3390/info2030560 Joseph E. Brenner http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/3/546 This paper focuses on the interdisciplinary research between Theoretical Informatics (TI) and the Humanities (philosophy, history, literature, etc.). There are five main sections: 1. A brief introduction to TI and its functions in the aspects of worldview and methodology, 2. An illustration of the problems associated with dualism as set out by Plato and René Descartes by means of a theoretical model of the mutual contact and interaction between the material world and the information world, 3. An explanation of the historical view of R. G. Collingwood through informationalism, 4. A discussion of the basic concepts for Humanistic Informatics which is under construction, and 5. A proposal of some approach to the new subject in information science. Information 2011-09-16 2 3 Article 10.3390/info2030546 546 559 2078-2489 2011-09-16 doi: 10.3390/info2030546 Zong-Rong Li Xiao Zhou Ai-Jing Tian http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/3/528 The Chi-Square test (χ2 test) is a family of tests based on a series of assumptions and is frequently used in the statistical analysis of experimental data. The aim of our paper was to present solutions to common problems when applying the Chi-square tests for testing goodness-of-fit, homogeneity and independence. The main characteristics of these three tests are presented along with various problems related to their application. The main problems identified in the application of the goodness-of-fit test were as follows: defining the frequency classes, calculating the X2 statistic, and applying the χ2 test. Several solutions were identified, presented and analyzed. Three different equations were identified as being able to determine the contribution of each factor on three hypothesizes (minimization of variance, minimization of square coefficient of variation and minimization of X2 statistic) in the application of the Chi-square test of homogeneity. The best solution was directly related to the distribution of the experimental error. The Fisher exact test proved to be the “golden test” in analyzing the independence while the Yates and Mantel-Haenszel corrections could be applied as alternative tests. Information 2011-09-15 2 3 Communication 10.3390/info2030528 528 545 2078-2489 2011-09-15 doi: 10.3390/info2030528 Sorana D. Bolboacă Lorentz Jäntschi Adriana F. Sestraş Radu E. Sestraş Doru C. Pamfil http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/3/510 Early in its history and development, there were three types of classical information sciences: computer and information science, library and information science, telecommunications and information science. With the infiltration of the concept of information into various fields, an information discipline community of around 200 members was formed around the sub-fields of information theory or informatics or information science. For such a large community, a systematization, two trends of thought, some perspectives and suggestions are discussed in this paper. Information 2011-08-23 2 3 Article 10.3390/info2030510 510 527 2078-2489 2011-08-23 doi: 10.3390/info2030510 Xue-Shan Yan http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/3/478 The article is focused on the special role of the concept of information understood in terms of the one-many categorical opposition in building a bridge between mind and brain. This particular choice of the definition of information allows unification of the main two manifestations of information implicitly present in literature, the selective and the structural. It is shown that the concept of information formulated this way together with the concept of information integration can be used to explain the unity of conscious experience, and furthermore to resolve several fundamental problems such as understanding the experiential aspect of consciousness without getting into homunculus fallacy, defending free will from mechanistic determinism, and explaining symbolic representation and aesthetical experience. The dual character of selective and structural manifestations opens the way between the orthodox information scientific description of the brain in terms of the former, and description of mind in terms of the latter. Information 2011-08-16 2 3 Article 10.3390/info2030478 478 509 2078-2489 2011-08-16 doi: 10.3390/info2030478 Marcin J. Schroeder http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/3/460 Processes considered rendering information dynamics have been studied, among others in: questions and answers, observations, communication, learning, belief revision, logical inference, game-theoretic interactions and computation. This article will put the computational approaches into a broader context of natural computation, where information dynamics is not only found in human communication and computational machinery but also in the entire nature. Information is understood as representing the world (reality as an informational web) for a cognizing agent, while information dynamics (information processing, computation) realizes physical laws through which all the changes of informational structures unfold. Computation as it appears in the natural world is more general than the human process of calculation modeled by the Turing machine. Natural computing is epitomized through the interactions of concurrent, in general asynchronous computational processes which are adequately represented by what Abramsky names “the second generation models of computation” [1] which we argue to be the most general representation of information dynamics. Information 2011-08-04 2 3 Article 10.3390/info2030460 460 477 2078-2489 2011-08-04 doi: 10.3390/info2030460 Gordana Dodig Crnkovic http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/3/455 Many writings on information mix information on a given system (IS), measurable information content of a given system (IM), and the (also measurable) information content that we communicate among us on a given system (IC). They belong to different levels and different aspects of information. The first (IS) involves everything that one possibly can, at least potentially, know about a system, but will never learn completely. The second (IM) contains quantitative data that one really learns about a system. The third (IC) relates rather to the language (including mathematical) by which we transmit information on the system to one another, rather than to the system itself. The information content of a system (IM —this is what we generally mean by information) may include all (relevant) data on each element of the system. However, we can reduce the quantity of information we need to mediate to each other (IC), if we refer to certain symmetry principles or natural laws which the elements of the given system correspond to. Instead of listing the data for all elements separately, even in a not very extreme case, we can give a short mathematical formula that informs about the data of the individual elements of the system. This abbreviated form of information delivery includes several conventions. These conventions are protocols that we have learnt before, and do not need to be repeated each time in the given community. These conventions include the knowledge that the scientific community accumulated earlier when discovered and formulated the symmetry principle or the law of nature, the language in which those regularities were discovered and formulated, for example, the symmetry principle or the law of nature, the language in which those regularities were formulated and then accepted by the community, and the mathematical marks and abbreviations that are known only for the members of the given scientific community. We do not need to repeat the rules of the convention each time, because the conveyed information includes them, and it is there in our minds behind our communicated data on the information content. I demonstrate this by using two examples, Kepler’s laws, and the law of correspondence between the DNA codons’ triplet structure and the individual amino acids which they encode. The information content of the language by which we communicate the obtained information cannot be identified with the information content of the system that we want to characterize, and moreover, it does not include all the possible information that we could potentially learn about the system. Symmetry principles and natural laws may reduce the information we need to communicate about a system, but we must keep in mind the conventions that we have learnt about the abbreviating mechanism of those principles, laws, and mathematical descriptions. Information 2011-07-22 2 3 Article 10.3390/info2030455 455 459 2078-2489 2011-07-22 doi: 10.3390/info2030455 György Darvas http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/3/426 Nowadays, location-enabled mobile phones are becoming more and more widespread. Various players in the mobile business forecast that, in the future, a significant part of total wireless revenue will come from Location-Based Services (LBS). An LBS system extracts information about the user’s geographical location and provides services based on the positioning information. A successful LBS service should create value for the end-user, by satisfying some of the users’ needs or wants, and at the same time preserving the key factors of the mobile wireless device, such as low costs, low battery consumption, and small size. From many users’ perspectives, location services and mobile location capabilities are still rather poorly known and poorly understood. The aim of this research is to investigate users’ views on the LBS, their requirements in terms of mobile device characteristics, their concerns in terms of privacy and usability, and their opinion on LBS applications that might increase the social wellbeing in the future wireless world. Our research is based on two surveys performed among 105 students (average student age: 24 years) from two European technical universities. The survey questions were intended to solicit the youngsters’ views on present and future technological trends and on their perceived needs and wishes regarding Location-Based Services, with the aim of obtaining a better understanding of designer constraints when building a location receiver and generating new ideas related to potential future killer LBS applications. Information 2011-07-18 2 3 Article 10.3390/info2030426 426 454 2078-2489 2011-07-18 doi: 10.3390/info2030426 Elena-Simona Lohan Alexandru Rusu-Casandra Oana Cramariuc Ion Marghescu Bogdan Cramariuc http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/3/417 Certain definitions of information can be seen to be compatible with each other if their relationships are properly understood as referring to different levels of organization in a subsumptive hierarchy. The resulting hierarchy, with thermodynamics subsuming information theory, and that in turn subsuming semiotics, amounts to a naturalizing of the information concept. Information 2011-07-07 2 3 Article 10.3390/info2030417 417 425 2078-2489 2011-07-07 doi: 10.3390/info2030417 Stanley N. Salthe http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/3/406 What is information? This is the first question that information science should answer clearly. However, the definitions of information have been so diversified that people are questioning if there is any unity among the diversity, leading to a suspicion on whether it is possible to establish a unified theory of information or not. To answer this question, a system approach to defining information is introduced in this paper. It is proved that the unity of information definitions can be maintained with this approach. As a by-product, an important concept, the information eco-system, was also achieved. Information 2011-07-05 2 3 Article 10.3390/info2030406 406 416 2078-2489 2011-07-05 doi: 10.3390/info2030406 Yixin Zhong http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/3/383 Information precipitates the flow of time from scratch. Information as a noun, equivalent of the transitive verb “inform”, stands out in the contrast between a direct and an indirect object of the verb, that is to say, between the messenger of a message and its dative. The root of the contrast is sought in the occurrence of the flow of time in the sense that the flow requires both the invariant reference and the dative being subject to something flowing through against the reference. Empirical evidence of the contrast is found in the class identity kept by a molecular aggregate that can constantly exchange the constituent molecular subunits with those of a similar kind available in the neighborhood. The exchange of the subunits derives from the action of pulling-in, originating from the inside of the body holding the class identity. The action of pulling-in that underlies the synthesis of the flow of time empirically in a bottom-up manner originates in the constant update of the present perfect tense in the present progressive tense. The material aggregate preserving the class identity at the cost of the vicissitudes of the constituent individual subunits serves as the dative of information. The unfathomable depth of information is associated with the immense multitude of the messengers in their kinds toward the likely datives having the capacity of receiving them. The bottom line is that being informed is materially being receptive to a flow of substrate, so the information is being embodied by the receptor. Information 2011-07-01 2 3 Article 10.3390/info2030383 383 405 2078-2489 2011-07-01 doi: 10.3390/info2030383 Koichiro Matsuno http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/2/372 Currently, a Science of Information does not exist. What we have is Information Science that grew out of Library and Documentation Science with the help of Computer Science. The basic understanding of information in Information Science is the Shannon type of “information” at which numerous criticisms have been levelled so far. The task of an as-yet-to-be-developed Science of Information would be to study the feasibility of, and to advance, approaches toward a more general Theory of Information and toward a common concept of information. What scientific requirements need to be met when trying to develop a Science of Information? What are the aims of a Science of Information? What is the scope of a Science of Information? What tools should a Science of Information make use of? The present paper responds to these questions. Information 2011-06-16 2 2 Article 10.3390/info2020372 372 382 2078-2489 2011-06-16 doi: 10.3390/info2020372 Wolfgang Hofkirchner http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/2/360 The emergence of what is commonly known as “ambient intelligence” or “ubiquitous computing” means that our conception of privacy and trust needs to be reconsidered. Many have voiced their concerns about the threat to privacy and the more prominent role of trust that have been brought about by emerging technologies. In this paper, I will present an investigation of what this means for the self and identity in our ambient intelligence environment. Since information about oneself can be actively distributed and processed, it is proposed that in a significant sense it is the self itself that is distributed throughout a pervasive or ubiquitous computing network when information pertaining to the self of the individual travels through the network. Hence privacy protection needs to be extended to all types of information distributed. It is also recommended that appropriately strong legislation on privacy and data protection regarding this pervasive network is necessary, but at present not sufficient, to ensure public trust. What is needed is a campaign on public awareness and positive perception of the technology. Information 2011-05-27 2 2 Article 10.3390/info2020360 360 371 2078-2489 2011-05-27 doi: 10.3390/info2020360 Soraj Hongladarom http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/2/327 In his article Open Problems in the Philosophy of Information [1] Luciano Floridi presented a Philosophy of Information research program in the form of eighteen open problems, covering the following fundamental areas: Information definition, information semantics, intelligence/cognition, informational universe/nature and values/ethics. We revisit Floridi’s program, highlighting some of the major advances, commenting on unsolved problems and rendering the new landscape of the Philosophy of Information (PI) emerging at present. As we analyze the progress of PI we try to situate Floridi’s program in the context of scientific and technological development that have been made last ten years. We emphasize that Philosophy of Information is a huge and vibrant research field, with its origins dating before Open Problems, and its domains extending even outside their scope. In this paper, we have been able only to sketch some of the developments during the past ten years. Our hope is that, even if fragmentary, this review may serve as a contribution to the effort of understanding the present state of the art and the paths of development of Philosophy of Information as seen through the lens of Open Problems. Information 2011-05-23 2 2 Article 10.3390/info2020327 327 359 2078-2489 2011-05-23 doi: 10.3390/info2020327 Gordana Dodig Crnkovic Wolfgang Hofkirchner http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/2/302 This article describes research investigating the on-line processing of language in unscripted conversational settings. In particular, we focus on the process of formulating and interpreting definite referring expressions. Within this domain we present results of two eye-tracking experiments addressing the problem of how speakers interrogate the referential domain in preparation to speak, how they select an appropriate expression for a given referent, and how addressees interpret these expressions. We aim to demonstrate that it is possible, and indeed fruitful, to examine unscripted, conversational language using modified experimental designs and standard hypothesis testing procedures. Information 2011-05-06 2 2 Article 10.3390/info2020302 302 326 2078-2489 2011-05-06 doi: 10.3390/info2020302 Sarah Brown-Schmidt Agnieszka E. Konopka http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/2/277 This article analyzes the role of entropy in Bayesian statistics, focusing on its use as a tool for detection, recognition and validation of eigen-solutions. “Objects as eigen-solutions” is a key metaphor of the cognitive constructivism epistemological framework developed by the philosopher Heinz von Foerster. Special attention is given to some objections to the concepts of probability, statistics and randomization posed by George Spencer-Brown, a figure of great influence in the field of radical constructivism. Information 2011-04-04 2 2 Article 10.3390/info2020277 277 301 2078-2489 2011-04-04 doi: 10.3390/info2020277 Julio Michael Stern http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/2/266 Given the occurrence frequency of any term within any set of articles within MEDLINE, we define “characteristic” terms as words and phrases that occur in that literature more frequently than expected by chance (at p < 0.001 or better). In this report, we studied how the cut-off criterion varied as a function of literature size and term frequency in MEDLINE as a whole, and have compared the distribution of characteristic terms within a number of journal-defined, affiliation-defined and random literatures. We also investigated how the characteristic terms were distributed among MEDLINE titles, abstracts, and last sentence of abstracts, including “regularized” terms that appear both in the title and abstract of the same paper for at least one paper in the literature. For a set of 10 disciplinary journals, the characteristic terms comprised 18% of the total terms on average. Characteristic terms are utilized in several of our web-based services (Anne O’Tate and Arrowsmith), and should be useful for a variety of other information-processing tasks designed to improve text mining in MEDLINE. Information 2011-03-30 2 2 Article 10.3390/info2020266 266 276 2078-2489 2011-03-30 doi: 10.3390/info2020266 Neil R. Smalheiser Wei Zhou Vetle I. Torvik http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/2/247 Since the mid 1990s, lawmakers and scholars have worked on the idea of embedding data protection safeguards in information and communication technology (ICT) with the aim to access and control personal data in compliance with current regulatory frameworks. This effort has been strengthened by the capacities of computers to draw upon the tools of artificial intelligence (AI) and operations research. However, work on AI and the law entails crucial ethical issues concerning both values and modalities of design. On one hand, design choices might result in conflicts of values and, vice versa, values may affect design features. On the other hand, the modalities of design cannot only limit the impact of harm-generating behavior but also prevent such behavior from occurring via self-enforcement technologies. In order to address some of the most relevant issues of data protection today, the paper suggests we adopt a stricter, yet more effective version of “privacy by design.” The goal should be to reinforce people’s pre-existing autonomy, rather than having to build it from scratch. Information 2011-03-29 2 2 Article 10.3390/info2020247 247 265 2078-2489 2011-03-29 doi: 10.3390/info2020247 Ugo Pagallo http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/1/217 Some content in multimedia resources can depict or evoke certain emotions in users. The aim of Emotional Information Retrieval (EmIR) and of our research is to identify knowledge about emotional-laden documents and to use these findings in a new kind of World Wide Web information service that allows users to search and browse by emotion. Our prototype, called Media EMOtion SEarch (MEMOSE), is largely based on the results of research regarding emotive music pieces, images and videos. In order to index both evoked and depicted emotions in these three media types and to make them searchable, we work with a controlled vocabulary, slide controls to adjust the emotions’ intensities, and broad folksonomies to identify and separate the correct resource-specific emotions. This separation of so-called power tags is based on a tag distribution which follows either an inverse power law (only one emotion was recognized) or an inverse-logistical shape (two or three emotions were recognized). Both distributions are well known in information science. MEMOSE consists of a tool for tagging basic emotions with the help of slide controls, a processing device to separate power tags, a retrieval component consisting of a search interface (for any topic in combination with one or more emotions) and a results screen. The latter shows two separately ranked lists of items for each media type (depicted and felt emotions), displaying thumbnails of resources, ranked by the mean values of intensity. In the evaluation of the MEMOSE prototype, study participants described our EmIR system as an enjoyable Web 2.0 service. Information 2011-03-02 2 1 Article 10.3390/info2010217 217 246 2078-2489 2011-03-02 doi: 10.3390/info2010217 Kathrin Knautz Diane Rasmussen Neal Stefanie Schmidt Tobias Siebenlist Wolfgang G. Stock http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/1/195 Privacy issues in social and business e-networks are daunting in complexity—private information about oneself might be routed through countless artificial agents. For each such agent, in that context, two questions about trust are raised: Where an agent must access (or store) personal information, can one trust that artificial agent with that information and, where an agent does not need to either access or store personal information, can one trust that agent not to either access or store that information? It would be an infeasible task for any human being to explicitly determine, for each artificial agent, whether it can be trusted. That is, no human being has the computational resources to make such an explicit determination. There is a well-known class of problems in the artificial intelligence literature, known as frame problems, where explicit solutions to them are computationally infeasible. Human common sense reasoning solves frame problems, though the mechanisms employed are largely unknown. I will argue that the trust relation between two agents (human or artificial) functions, in some respects, is a frame problem solution. That is, a problem is solved without the need for a computationally infeasible explicit solution. This is an aspect of the trust relation that has remained unexplored in the literature. Moreover, there is a formal, iterative structure to agent-agent trust interactions that serves to establish the trust relation non-circularly, to reinforce it, and to “bootstrap” its strength. Information 2011-03-01 2 1 Article 10.3390/info2010195 195 216 2078-2489 2011-03-01 doi: 10.3390/info2010195 Jeff Buechner http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/1/166 Genetic specificity information “seen by” the transcriptase is in terms of hydrogen bonded proton states, which initially are metastable amino (–NH2) and, consequently, are subjected to quantum uncertainty limits. This introduces a probability of arrangement, keto-amino → enol-imine, where product protons participate in coupled quantum oscillations at frequencies of ~ 1013 s−1 and are entangled. The enzymatic ket for the four G′-C′ coherent protons is │ψ > = α│+ − + − > + β│+ − − + > + γ│− + + − > + δ│− + − + >. Genetic specificities of superposition states are processed quantum mechanically, in an interval ∆t < < 10−13 s, causing an additional entanglement between coherent protons and transcriptase units. The input qubit at G-C sites causes base substitution, whereas coherent states within A-T sites cause deletion. Initially decohered enol and imine G′ and *C isomers are “entanglement-protected” and participate in Topal-Fresco substitution-replication which, in the 2nd round of growth, reintroduces the metastable keto-amino state. Since experimental lifetimes of metastable keto-amino states at 37 °C are ≥ ~3000 y, approximate quantum methods for small times, t < ~100 y, yield the probability, P(t), of keto-amino → enol-imine as Pρ(t) = ½ (γρ/ħ)2 t2. This approximation introduces a quantum Darwinian evolution model which (a) simulates incidence of cancer data and (b) implies insight into quantum information origins for evolutionary extinction. Information 2011-02-25 2 1 Article 10.3390/info2010166 166 194 2078-2489 2011-02-25 doi: 10.3390/info2010166 Willis Grant Cooper http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/1/140 The predominant analysis of privacy on Facebook focuses on personal information revelation. This paper is critical of this kind of research and introduces an alternative analytical framework for studying privacy on Facebook, social networking sites and web 2.0. This framework is connecting the phenomenon of online privacy to the political economy of capitalism—a focus that has thus far been rather neglected in research literature about Internet and web 2.0 privacy. Liberal privacy philosophy tends to ignore the political economy of privacy in capitalism that can mask socio-economic inequality and protect capital and the rich from public accountability. Facebook is in this paper analyzed with the help of an approach, in which privacy for dominant groups, in regard to the ability of keeping wealth and power secret from the public, is seen as problematic, whereas privacy at the bottom of the power pyramid for consumers and normal citizens is seen as a protection from dominant interests. Facebook’s privacy concept is based on an understanding that stresses self-regulation and on an individualistic understanding of privacy. The theoretical analysis of the political economy of privacy on Facebook in this paper is based on the political theories of Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. Based on the political economist Dallas Smythe’s concept of audience commodification, the process of prosumer commodification on Facebook is analyzed. The political economy of privacy on Facebook is analyzed with the help of a theory of drives that is grounded in Herbert Marcuse’s interpretation of Sigmund Freud, which allows to analyze Facebook based on the concept of play labor (= the convergence of play and labor). Information 2011-02-09 2 1 Article 10.3390/info2010140 140 165 2078-2489 2011-02-09 doi: 10.3390/info2010140 Christian Fuchs http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/1/117 The objective of this paper is to analyze the properties of information in general and to define biological information in particular. Information 2011-01-21 2 1 Article 10.3390/info2010117 117 139 2078-2489 2011-01-21 doi: 10.3390/info2010117 Jan Charles Biro http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/1/102 Information manifests a reduction in uncertainty or indeterminacy. As such it can emerge in two ways: by measurement, which involves the intentional choices of an observer; or more generally, by development, which involves systemically mutual (‘self-organizing’) processes that break symmetry. The developmental emergence of information is most obvious in ontogeny, but pertains as well to the evolution of ecosystems and abiotic dissipative structures. In this review, a seminal, well-characterized ontogenetic paradigm—the sea urchin embryo—is used to show how cybernetic causality engenders the developmental emergence of biological information at multiple hierarchical levels of organization. The relevance of information theory to developmental genomics is also discussed. Information 2011-01-21 2 1 Review 10.3390/info2010102 102 116 2078-2489 2011-01-21 doi: 10.3390/info2010102 James A. Coffman http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/1/61 The purpose of this paper is to look at some existing methods of semantic information quantification and suggest some alternatives. It begins with an outline of Bar-Hillel and Carnap’s theory of semantic information before going on to look at Floridi’s theory of strongly semantic information. The latter then serves to initiate an in-depth investigation into the idea of utilising the notion of truthlikeness to quantify semantic information. Firstly, a couple of approaches to measure truthlikeness are drawn from the literature and explored, with a focus on their applicability to semantic information quantification. Secondly, a similar but new approach to measure truthlikeness/information is presented and some supplementary points are made. Information 2011-01-18 2 1 Article 10.3390/info2010061 61 101 2078-2489 2011-01-18 doi: 10.3390/info2010061 Simon D’Alfonso http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/1/41 In this paper information concepts will be roughly divided into two categories: The cybernetic and the semiotic-pragmatic. They are further divided into three and four subcategories, respectively. The cybernetic conception of information, which comprises both the mathematical-statistic and the logical-semantic approaches, misses some aspects of information and knowing, that are important in economics and technology studies, among others. The semiotic-pragmatic approach presumes the existence of several modes of being of information, as well as connects certainty and ambiguity to information in a different way from how the cybernetic approach does. These two general approaches to information and knowing are strikingly different, especially in their analysis of ignorance or incomplete knowledge. None of the cybernetic conceptions, and only some conceptions within the semiotic-pragmatic approach, can vindicate the elusive intuition of the potential positive role of ignorance. This comparative, philosophical discussion of the modes of ignorance may be taken as a challenge for cybernetics and computational philosophy to make better sense of incomplete knowledge. Information 2011-01-17 2 1 Article 10.3390/info2010041 41 60 2078-2489 2011-01-17 doi: 10.3390/info2010041 Erkki Patokorpi http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/1/17 In principle, information theory could provide useful metrics for statistical inference. In practice this is impeded by divergent assumptions: Information theory assumes the joint distribution of variables of interest is known, whereas in statistical inference it is hidden and is the goal of inference. To integrate these approaches we note a common theme they share, namely the measurement of prediction power. We generalize this concept as an information metric, subject to several requirements: Calculation of the metric must be objective or model-free; unbiased; convergent; probabilistically bounded; and low in computational complexity. Unfortunately, widely used model selection metrics such as Maximum Likelihood, the Akaike Information Criterion and Bayesian Information Criterion do not necessarily meet all these requirements. We define four distinct empirical information metrics measured via sampling, with explicit Law of Large Numbers convergence guarantees, which meet these requirements: Ie, the empirical information, a measure of average prediction power; Ib, the overfitting bias information, which measures selection bias in the modeling procedure; Ip, the potential information, which measures the total remaining information in the observations not yet discovered by the model; and Im, the model information, which measures the model’s extrapolation prediction power. Finally, we show that Ip + Ie, Ip + Im, and Ie — Im are fixed constants for a given observed dataset (i.e. prediction target), independent of the model, and thus represent a fundamental subdivision of the total information contained in the observations. We discuss the application of these metrics to modeling and experiment planning.     Information 2011-01-11 2 1 Article 10.3390/info2010017 17 40 2078-2489 2011-01-11 doi: 10.3390/info2010017 Christopher Lee http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/1/1 Three forms of trust: topic-focused trust, general trust, and personal trust are distinguished. Personal trust is argued to be the most fundamental form of trust, deeply connected with the construction of one’s self. Information technology has posed new problems for us in assessing and developing appropriate forms of the trust that is central to our personhood. Information 2011-01-10 2 1 Article 10.3390/info2010001 1 16 2078-2489 2011-01-10 doi: 10.3390/info2010001 Willem A. DeVries http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/1/2/153 Acupuncture and meridian channels have been major components of Chinese and Eastern Asian medicine—especially for analgesia—for over 2000 years. In recent decades, electroacupuncture (EA) analgesia has been applied clinically and experimentally. However, there were controversial results between different treatment frequencies, or between the active and the placebo treatments; and the mechanisms of the treatments and the related meridian channels are still unknown. In this study, we propose a new term of infophysics therapy and develop information models of acupuncture (or EA) analgesia and meridian channels, to understand the mechanisms and to explain the controversial results, based on Western theories of information, trigonometry and Fourier series, and physics, as well as published biomedical data. We are trying to build a bridge between Chinese medicine and Western medicine by investigating the Eastern acupuncture analgesia and meridian channels with Western sciences; we model the meridians as a physiological system that is mostly constructed with interstices in or between other physiological systems; we consider frequencies, amplitudes and wave numbers of electric field intensity (EFI) as information data. Our modeling results demonstrate that information regulated with acupuncture (or EA) is different from pain information, we provide answers to explain the controversial published results, and suggest that mechanisms of acupuncture (or EA) analgesia could be mostly involved in information regulation of frequencies and amplitudes of EFI as well as neuronal transmitters such as endorphins. Information 2010-12-15 1 2 Article 10.3390/info1020153 153 168 2078-2489 2010-12-15 doi: 10.3390/info1020153 Kang Cheng Chang Hua Zou http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/1/2/119 The general theory of information (GTI) is a synthetic approach, which reveals the essence of information, organizing and encompassing all main directions in information theory. On the methodological level, it is formulated as system of principles explaining what information is and how to measure information. The goal of this paper is the further development of a mathematical stratum of the general theory of information based on category theory. Abstract categories allow us to construct flexible models for information and its flow. Now category theory is also used as unifying framework for physics, biology, topology, and logic, as well as for the whole mathematics, providing a base for analyzing physical and information systems and processes by means of categorical structures and methods. There are two types of representation of information dynamics, i.e., regularities of information processes, in categories: the categorical representation and functorial representation. Here we study the categorical representations of information dynamics, which preserve internal structures of information spaces associated with infological systems as their state/phase spaces. Various relations between information operators are introduced and studied in this paper. These relations describe intrinsic features of information, such as decomposition and complementarity of information, reflecting regularities of information processes. Information 2010-11-18 1 2 Article 10.3390/info1020119 119 152 2078-2489 2010-11-18 doi: 10.3390/info1020119 Mark Burgin http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/1/2/74 This paper is devoted to a study of the concept of information. We first situate the concept of information within the context of other philosophical concepts. However, an analysis of the concept of knowledge turns out to be the key when clarifying the concept of information. Our investigations produce the ‘missing link’ for the “severely neglected connection between theories of information and theories of knowledge” (Capurro/Hjørland). The results presented here clarify what information is and have the potential to provide answers to several of Floridi’s “open problems in the philosophy of information”. Information 2010-10-22 1 2 Article 10.3390/info1020074 74 118 2078-2489 2010-10-22 doi: 10.3390/info1020074 Wolfgang Lenski http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/1/2/60 The use of computational methodologies for chemical database mining and molecular similarity searching or structure-activity relationship analysis has become an integral part of modern chemical and pharmaceutical research. These types of computational studies fall into the chemoinformatics spectrum and usually have large-scale character. Concepts from information theory such as Shannon entropy and Kullback-Leibler divergence have also been adopted for chemoinformatics applications. In this review, we introduce these concepts, describe their adaptations, and discuss exemplary applications of information theory to a variety of relevant problems. These include, among others, chemical feature (or descriptor) selection, database profiling, and compound recall rate predictions. Information 2010-10-20 1 2 Review 10.3390/info1020060 60 73 2078-2489 2010-10-20 doi: 10.3390/info1020060 Martin Vogt Anne Mai Wassermann Jürgen Bajorath http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/1/1/28 All new developments in biology deal with the issue of the complexity of organisms, often pointing out the necessity to update our current understanding. However, it is impossible to think about a change of paradigm in biology without introducing new explanatory mechanisms. I shall introduce the mechanisms of teleonomy and teleology as viable explanatory tools. Teleonomy is the ability of organisms to build themselves through internal forces and processes (in the expression of the genetic program) and not external ones, implying a freedom relative to the exterior; however, the organism is able to integrate internal and external constraints in a process of co-adaptation. Teleology is that mechanism through which an organism exercises an informational control on another system in order to establish an equivalence class and select some specific information for its metabolic needs. Finally, I shall examine some interesting processes in phylogeny, ontogeny, and epigeny in which these two mechanisms are involved. Information 2010-09-13 1 1 Article 10.3390/info1010028 28 59 2078-2489 2010-09-13 doi: 10.3390/info1010028 Gennaro Auletta http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/1/1/13 We introduce a three-parameter generalized normal distribution, which belongs to the Kotz type distribution family, to study the generalized entropy type measures of information. For this generalized normal, the Kullback-Leibler information is evaluated, which extends the well known result for the normal distribution, and plays an important role for the introduced generalized information measure. These generalized entropy type measures of information are also evaluated and presented. Information 2010-08-20 1 1 Article 10.3390/info1010013 13 27 2078-2489 2010-08-20 doi: 10.3390/info1010013 Christos P. Kitsos Thomas L. Toulias http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/1/1/3 We address the problem of estimating the efficiency and capacity of computers. The main goal of our approach is to give a method for comparing the capacity of different computers, which can have different sets of instructions, different kinds of memory, a different number of cores (or processors), etc. We define efficiency and capacity of computers and suggest a method for their estimation, which is based on the analysis of processor instructions and their execution time. How the suggested method can be applied to estimate the computer capacity is shown. In particular, this consideration gives a new look at the organization of the memory of a computer. Obtained results can be of some interest for practical applications. Information 2010-08-12 1 1 Article 10.3390/info1010003 3 12 2078-2489 2010-08-12 doi: 10.3390/info1010003 Boris Ryabko http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/1/1/1 We plan to expand our Open Access publishing project to encompass additional fundamental areas in science and technology and to provide publication opportunities for scientists working in these areas. To achieve these goals, we are in the process of launching new journals. [...] Information 2010-06-23 1 1 Editorial 10.3390/info1010001 1 2 2078-2489 2010-06-23 doi: 10.3390/info1010001 Lin