Living Technology: Exploiting Life's Principles in Technology

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Bedau ◽  
John S. McCaskill ◽  
Norman H. Packard ◽  
Steen Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Artificial Life ◽  
Evolvable Hardware ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Chemical Systems ◽  
The Social ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Electronic Chemical ◽  
Core Features

The concept of living technology—that is, technology that is based on the powerful core features of life—is explained and illustrated with examples from artificial life software, reconfigurable and evolvable hardware, autonomously self-reproducing robots, chemical protocells, and hybrid electronic-chemical systems. We define primary (secondary) living technology according as key material components and core systems are not (are) derived from living organisms. Primary living technology is currently emerging, distinctive, and potentially powerful, motivating this review. We trace living technology's connections with artificial life (soft, hard, and wet), synthetic biology (top-down and bottom-up), and the convergence of nano-, bio-, information, and cognitive (NBIC) technologies. We end with a brief look at the social and ethical questions generated by the prospect of living technology.

scholarly journals Switching perception of musical meters by listening to different acoustic cues of biphasic sound stimulus.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sotaro Kondoh ◽  
Kazuo Okanoya ◽  
Ryosuke O Tachibana
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Sound Stimulus ◽  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
Point Scale ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Core ◽  
Entire Structure ◽  
Core Features

Meter is one of the core features of music perception. It is the cognitive grouping of regular sound sequences, typically for every 2, 3, or 4 beats. Previous studies have suggested that one can not only passively perceive the meter from acoustic cues such as loudness, pitch, and duration of sound elements, but also actively perceive it by paying attention to isochronous sound events without any acoustic cues. Studying the interaction of top-down and bottom-up processing in meter perception leads to understanding the cognitive system’s ability to perceive the entire structure of music. The present study aimed to demonstrate that meter perception requires the top-down process (which maintains and switches attention between cues) as well as the bottom-up process for discriminating acoustic cues. We created a “biphasic” sound stimulus, which consists of successive tone sequences designed to provide cues for both the triple and quadruple meters in different sound attributes, frequency, and duration, and measured how participants perceived meters from the stimulus in a five-point scale (ranged from “strongly triple” to “strongly quadruple”). Participants were asked to focus on differences in frequency and duration. We found that well-trained participants perceived different meters by switching their attention to specific cues, while untrained participants did not. This result provides evidence for the idea that meter perception involves the interaction between top-down and bottom-up processes, which training can facilitate.

scholarly journals Switching perception of musical meters by listening to different acoustic cues of biphasic sound stimulus

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0256712
Author(s):  
Sotaro Kondoh ◽  
Kazuo Okanoya ◽  
Ryosuke O. Tachibana
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Sound Stimulus ◽  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
Point Scale ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Core ◽  
Entire Structure ◽  
Core Features

Meter is one of the core features of music perception. It is the cognitive grouping of regular sound sequences, typically for every 2, 3, or 4 beats. Previous studies have suggested that one can not only passively perceive the meter from acoustic cues such as loudness, pitch, and duration of sound elements, but also actively perceive it by paying attention to isochronous sound events without any acoustic cues. Studying the interaction of top-down and bottom-up processing in meter perception leads to understanding the cognitive system’s ability to perceive the entire structure of music. The present study aimed to demonstrate that meter perception requires the top-down process (which maintains and switches attention between cues) as well as the bottom-up process for discriminating acoustic cues. We created a “biphasic” sound stimulus, which consists of successive tone sequences designed to provide cues for both the triple and quadruple meters in different sound attributes, frequency, and duration. Participants were asked to focus on either frequency or duration of the stimulus, and to answer how they perceived meters on a five-point scale (ranged from “strongly triple” to “strongly quadruple”). As a result, we found that participants perceived different meters by switching their attention to specific cues. This result adds evidence to the idea that meter perception involves the interaction between top-down and bottom-up processes.

The Psychology of the Main Social Groups

2020 ◽  
pp. 102-138
Author(s):  
Jon Elster
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
The Social

This chapter refers to the beliefs of individuals that occupied various positions in the structures of the old regime. For histoire des mentalités, the chapter tries to determine popular beliefs, elite beliefs, and beliefs about beliefs in accordance with reasons given in the Madisonian caveats. It also analyzes the behavior of the main agents in the economic and political system, which includes the peasantry, local authorities, several urban groupings, the parlements, provincial estates, the royal administration, the royal court, and the king himself. It includes the top-down beliefs of the authorities about their subjects and the bottom-up beliefs of the subjects about the authorities. This chapter also describes beliefs of the members of any group in the social hierarchy about other members of the same group.

scholarly journals Microfluidics for Artificial Life: Techniques for Bottom-Up Synthetic Biology

Micromachines ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Supramaniam ◽  
Ces ◽  
Salehi-Reyhani
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Artificial Life ◽  
Living Cells ◽  
Cellular Biology ◽  
Artificial Cells ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Artificial Cell ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
Cell Synthesis ◽  
New Generation

Synthetic biology is a rapidly growing multidisciplinary branch of science that exploits the advancement of molecular and cellular biology. Conventional modification of pre-existing cells is referred to as the top-down approach. Bottom-up synthetic biology is an emerging complementary branch that seeks to construct artificial cells from natural or synthetic components. One of the aims in bottom-up synthetic biology is to construct or mimic the complex pathways present in living cells. The recent, and rapidly growing, application of microfluidics in the field is driven by the central tenet of the bottom-up approach—the pursuit of controllably generating artificial cells with precisely defined parameters, in terms of molecular and geometrical composition. In this review we survey conventional methods of artificial cell synthesis and their limitations. We proceed to show how microfluidic approaches have been pivotal in overcoming these limitations and ushering in a new generation of complexity that may be imbued in artificial cells and the milieu of applications that result.

Top Down versus Bottom Up: The Social Construction of the Health Literacy Movement

2012 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey T. Huber ◽  
Robert M. Shapiro ◽  
Mary L. Gillaspy
Keyword(s):  
Health Literacy ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals Functionalizing cell-mimetic giant vesicles with encapsulated bacterial biosensors

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 20180024 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Trantidou ◽  
Linda Dekker ◽  
Karen Polizzi ◽  
Oscar Ces ◽  
Yuval Elani
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Genetically Engineered ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Giant Vesicles ◽  
Artificial Cells ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Regulatory Pathways ◽  
Genetically Engineered Microbes ◽  
Molecular Components ◽  
Cellular Components

The design of vesicle microsystems as artificial cells (bottom-up synthetic biology) has traditionally relied on the incorporation of molecular components to impart functionality. These cell mimics have reduced capabilities compared with their engineered biological counterparts (top-down synthetic biology), as they lack the powerful metabolic and regulatory pathways associated with living systems. There is increasing scope for using whole intact cellular components as functional modules within artificial cells, as a route to increase the capabilities of artificial cells. In this feasibility study, we design and embed genetically engineered microbes ( Escherichia coli ) in a vesicle-based cell mimic and use them as biosensing modules for real-time monitoring of lactate in the external environment. Using this conceptual framework, the functionality of other microbial devices can be conferred into vesicle microsystems in the future, bridging the gap between bottom-up and top-down synthetic biology.

scholarly journals Biology by Design: From Top to Bottom and Back

2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian R. Fritz ◽  
Laura E. Timmerman ◽  
Nichole M. Daringer ◽  
Joshua N. Leonard ◽  
Michael C. Jewett
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Biological Systems ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Societal Needs ◽  
Technical Discipline ◽  
Higher Order Networks

Synthetic biology is a nascent technical discipline that seeks to enable the design and construction of novel biological systems to meet pressing societal needs. However, engineering biology still requires much trial and error because we lack effective approaches for connecting basic “parts” into higher-order networks that behave as predicted. Developing strategies for improving the performance and sophistication of our designs is informed by two overarching perspectives: “bottom-up” and “top-down” considerations. Using this framework, we describe a conceptual model for developing novel biological systems that function and interact with existing biological components in a predictable fashion. We discuss this model in the context of three topical areas: biochemical transformations, cellular devices and therapeutics, and approaches that expand the chemistry of life. Ten years after the construction of synthetic biology's first devices, the drive to look beyond what does exist to what can exist is ushering in an era of biology by design.

scholarly journals Self-Organized Temporal Criticality: Bottom-Up Resilience versus Top-Down Vulnerability

Complexity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Korosh Mahmoodi ◽  
Bruce J. West ◽  
Paolo Grigolini
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Mathematical Foundation ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Societal Benefit ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
The Social ◽  
Range Correlation

We propose a social model of spontaneous self-organization generating criticality and resilience, called Self-Organized Temporal Criticality (SOTC). The criticality-induced long-range correlation favors the societal benefit and can be interpreted as the social system becoming cognizant of the fact that altruism generates societal benefit. We show that when the spontaneous bottom-up emergence of altruism is replaced by a top-down process, mimicking the leadership of an elite, the crucial events favoring the system’s resilience are turned into collapses, corresponding to the falls of the leading elites. We also show with numerical simulation that the top-down SOTC lacks the resilience of the bottom-up SOTC. We propose this theoretical model to contribute to the mathematical foundation of theoretical sociology illustrated in 1901 by Pareto to explain the rise and fall of elites.

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