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Decoding The Universe
''Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes'' is the third non-fiction book by American author and journalist Charles Seife. The book was initially published on January 30, 2007 by Viking. Synopsis In this book Seife concentrates on the information theory, discussing various issues, such as decoherence and probability, relativity and quantum mechanics, works of Turing and Schrödinger, entropy and superposition, etc. Review —''Salon'' Similar books on the information theory * Leon Brillouin, ''Science and Information Theory'', Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 956, 19622004. * James Gleick, '' The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood'', New York: Pantheon, 2011. * A. I. Khinchin, ''Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory'', New York: Dover, 1957. * H. S. Leff and A. F. Rex, Editors, ''Maxwell's Demon: Entropy, Information, Computing'', Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jerse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Seife
Charles Seife is an American author and journalist, and a professor at New York University. He has written extensively on scientific and mathematical topics. Career Seife holds a mathematics degree from Princeton University (1993),Greenwood, Katherine Federici (13 October 2010)Numbers can mislead - Charles Seife ’93 reveals mischief behind data ''Princeton Alumni Weekly'' an M.S. in mathematics from Yale University and a M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.Journalism at NYU - Faculty Seife wrote for ''Science'' magazine and '''' before joining the Department of Journalism at New York ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryptographers
This is a list of cryptographers. Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries. Pre twentieth century * Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi: wrote a (now lost) book on cryptography titled the "''Book of Cryptographic Messages''". * Al-Kindi, 9th century Arabic polymath and originator of frequency analysis. * Athanasius Kircher, attempts to decipher crypted messages * Augustus the Younger, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, wrote a standard book on cryptography * Ibn Wahshiyya: published several cipher alphabets that were used to encrypt magic formulas. * John Dee, wrote an occult book, which in fact was a cover for crypted text * Ibn 'Adlan: 13th-century cryptographer who made important contributions on the sample size of the frequency analysis. * Duke of Mantua Francesco I Gonzaga is the one who used the earliest example of homophonic Substitution cipher in early 1400s. * Ibn al-Durayhim: gave detailed d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2007 Non-fiction Books
7 (seven) is the natural number following 6 and preceding 8. It is the only prime number preceding a cube. As an early prime number in the series of positive integers, the number seven has greatly symbolic associations in religion, mythology, superstition and philosophy. The seven Classical planets resulted in seven being the number of days in a week. It is often considered lucky in Western culture and is often seen as highly symbolic. Unlike Western culture, in Vietnamese culture, the number seven is sometimes considered unlucky. It is the first natural number whose pronunciation contains more than one syllable. Evolution of the Arabic digit In the beginning, Indians wrote 7 more or less in one stroke as a curve that looks like an uppercase vertically inverted. The western Ghubar Arabs' main contribution was to make the longer line diagonal rather than straight, though they showed some tendencies to making the digit more rectilinear. The eastern Arabs developed the digit f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Programming The Universe
''Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos'' is a 2006 popular science book by Seth Lloyd, professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The book proposes that the Universe is a quantum computer (supercomputer), and advances in the understanding of physics may come from viewing entropy as a phenomenon of information, rather than simply thermodynamics. Lloyd also postulates that the Universe can be fully simulated using a quantum computer; however, in the absence of a theory of quantum gravity, such a simulation is not yet possible. "Particles not only collide, they compute." Reaction Reviewer Corey S. Powell of ''The New York Times'' writes: In the space of 221 dense, frequently thrilling and occasionally exasperating pages, … tackles computer logic, thermodynamics, chaos theory, complexity, quantum mechanics, cosmology, consciousness, sex and the origin of life — throwing in, for good measure, a heartbre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seth Lloyd
Seth Lloyd (born August 2, 1960) is a professor of mechanical engineering and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research area is the interplay of information with complex systems, especially quantum systems. He has performed seminal work in the fields of quantum computation, quantum communication and quantum biology, including proposing the first technologically feasible design for a quantum computer, demonstrating the viability of quantum analog computation, proving quantum analogs of Shannon's noisy channel theorem, and designing novel methods for quantum error correction and noise reduction. Biography Lloyd was born on August 2, 1960. He graduated from Phillips Academy in 1978 and received a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard College in 1982. He earned a certificate of advanced study in mathematics and a master of philosophy degree from Cambridge University in 1983 and 1984, while on a Marshall Scholarship. Lloyd was awarded a doctorate by Rockefeller ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Man
''Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life'' is a 1982 book written by the Evening Standard's Washington correspondent, Jeremy Campbell. The book touches on topics of probability, Information Theory, cybernetics, genetics and linguistics. The book frames and examines existence, from the Big Bang to DNA to human communication to artificial intelligence, in terms of information processes. The text consists of a foreword, twenty-one chapters, and an afterword. It is divided into four parts: ''Establishing the Theory of Information''; ''Nature as an Information Process''; ''Coding Language, Coding Life''; ''How the Brain Puts It All Together''. Part 1: Establishing the Theory of Information *The book's first chapter, ''The Second Law and the Yellow Peril'', introduces the concept of entropy and gives brief outlines of the histories of Information Theory, and cybernetics, examining World War II figures such as Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener. *''The Noise of H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A History, A Theory, A Flood
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Gleick
James Gleick (; born August 1, 1954) is an American author and historian of science whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for his writing about complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonfiction, he has been called "one of the great science writers of all time". He is part of the inspiration for Jurassic Park character Ian Malcolm. Gleick's books include the international bestsellers '' Chaos: Making a New Science'' (1987) and '' The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood'' (2011). Three of his books have been Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists; and ''The Information'' was awarded the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award in 2012 and the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2012. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages. Biography A native of New York City, Gleick attended Harvard College, where he was an editor of ''The Harvard Crimson'', graduating in 1976 with an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salon
Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments * French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home * Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment Arts and entertainment * Salon (Paris), a prestigious annual juried art exhibition in Paris begun under Louis XIV * ''The Salon'' (TV series), a British reality television show * ''The Salon'' (film), a 2005 American dramatic comedy movie * ''The Salon'' (comics), a graphic novel written and illustrated by Nick Bertozzi Places * Salon, Aube, France, a commune * Salon, Dordogne, France, a commune * Salon, India, a town and nagar panchayat * Salon (Assembly constituency), India, a constituency for the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly Other uses * Salon.com, an online magazine * Champagne Salon, a producer of sparkling wine * Salon Basnet (born 1991), Nepali actor and model See also * * Salon-de-Provence, France, a commune * Salon-la-Tour, France, a commune * Sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subatomic Particles
In physical sciences, a subatomic particle is a particle that composes an atom. According to the Standard Model of particle physics, a subatomic particle can be either a composite particle, which is composed of other particles (for example, a proton, neutron, or meson), or an elementary particle, which is not composed of other particles (for example, an electron, photon, or muon). Particle physics and nuclear physics study these particles and how they interact. Experiments show that light could behave like a stream of particles (called photons) as well as exhibiting wave-like properties. This led to the concept of wave–particle duality to reflect that quantum-scale behave like both particles and waves; they are sometimes called wavicles to reflect this. Another concept, the uncertainty principle, states that some of their properties taken together, such as their simultaneous position and momentum, cannot be measured exactly. The wave–particle duality has been shown to apply n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information Theory
Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification (science), quantification, computer data storage, storage, and telecommunication, communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. The field is at the intersection of probability theory, statistics, computer science, statistical mechanics, information engineering (field), information engineering, and electrical engineering. A key measure in information theory is information entropy, entropy. Entropy quantifies the amount of uncertainty involved in the value of a random variable or the outcome of a random process. For example, identifying the outcome of a fair coin flip (with two equally likely outcomes) provides less information (lower entropy) than specifying the outcome from a roll of a dice, die (with six equally likely outcomes). Some other important measures in information theory are mutual informat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theory: the Schrödinger equation provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time. In addition, he wrote many works on various aspects of physics: statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, physics of dielectrics, colour theory, electrodynamics, general relativity, and cosmology, and he made several attempts to construct a unified field theory. In his book ''What Is Life?'' Schrödinger addressed the problems of genetics, looking at the phenomenon of life from the point of view of physics. He also paid great attention to the philosophical aspects of science, ancient, and oriental philosophical concepts, ethics, and religion. He also wrote on philosophy and theoretical biology. In popular culture, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
