Life's demons: information and order in biology

Exercising Demons: A Molecular Information Ratchet

Nature uses molecular-sized motors and machines in virtually every important biological process and their extraordinary success is inspiring scientists to try to create synthetic devices that mimic the function of these amazing natural systems. However, it is far from obvious to see how to design such machines because mechanical behaviour at the molecular level, where everything is constantly m...

Lifes preservative against self-killing

in the "index of botanical names", where the medieval Latin designations take you to the main dictionary, for example to the items satirion and testiculus leporis, under which the Middle English names are listed, in the case of satirion indiscriminately with other possible identifications, such as Arum and Endymion. Admittedly, the difficulties of identification are considerable-one reason bein...

On Demons and Oracles

Implementing Demons and Ratchets

Experimental results show that ratchets may be implemented in semiconductor and chemical systems, bypassing the second law and opening up huge gains in energy production. This paper summarizes or describes experiments and results on systems that effect demons and ratchets operating in chemical or electrical domains. One creates temperature differences that can be harvested by a heat engine. A s...

Demons in Physics

Maxwell’s ”finite being” was born in 1867, as one ”who knows the paths and velocities of all the molecules” ([7], p.213), and who, unlike us, is ”clever enough” ([7], p.213), and can violate the second law of thermodynamics. It was baptized as a demon by Lord Kelvin ([7], p. 214), and ever since has fueled the discussions in the foundations of statistical mechanics. Since its inception, and con...