Self-organizing systems

Anderson P Wand Stein D 1987 Broken symmetry, emergent properties, dissipative structures, life Self-Organizing Systems ed F E Yates (New York Plenum) pp 445-57... 

It should be noted that the glassy state of amorphous polymers, metals, or other inorganics is neither self-assembled, nor self-organized. Even though it is not an equilibrium structure, it lacks the characteristic order and regular structure that is inherent in self-assembly or self organization systems. 

Self-organization seems to be counterintuitive, since the order that is generated challenges the paradigm of increasing disorder based on the second law of thermodynamics. In statistical thermodynamics, entropy is the number of possible microstates for a macroscopic state. Since, in an ordered state, the number of possible microstates is smaller than for a more disordered state, it follows that a self-organized system has a lower entropy. However, the two need not contradict each other it is possible to reduce the entropy in a part of a system while it increases in another. A few of the system s macroscopic degrees of freedom can become more ordered at the expense of microscopic disorder. This is valid even for isolated, closed systems. Eurthermore, in an open system, the entropy production can be transferred to the environment, so that here even the overall entropy in the entire system can be reduced. 

In a self-organizing system, agents pursue individual courses that are unpredictable. Reliable, reproducible structures emerge at the collective level from the interactions of those agents. Individual agents are literally out of control, but the system as a whole produces relatively stable results (see Kelly, 1994 for many interesting applications of this concept to economic life). 

Self-organization systems under thermodynamic control (spontaneous processes with a negative free-energy change), such as supramolecular complexes, crystallization, surfactant aggregation, certain nano-structures, protein folding, protein assembly, DNA duplex. 

Self-organization systems under kinetic control (biological systems with genomic, enzymatic and/or evolutionary control), such as protein biosynthesis, virus assembly, formation of beehive and anthill, swarm intelligence. 

The criterion of the marginal complexity of self-organized systems... 

R. H. Abraham and C. D. Shaw. Dynamics A visual introduction. In F. E. Yates (ed.), Self-Organizing Systems. New York Plenum Publishing Corp. (1987). See also their four-part series, Dynamics. Santa Cruz Ariel Press, 1983. 

Here, I would like to elaborate further on the theme of bifurcation. Section II describes the present state of bifurcation analysis of nonequilibrium systems and gives some of my personal perspectives on what I consider to be some promising lines of development. Section III reviews a number of physical, chemical, or biological problems which can be modeled by means of this theory and which provide us with illustrations of chemical evolution, the subject of the present volume. A representative case, the origin and selection of chirality, is analyzed in Section IV. Some conclusions regarding the dynamics of self-organizing systems are presented in Section V. 

Molecular programming points to a molecular information science, molecular informatics and semiochemistry (see Section 8.5) involving information and signal processing and communication at the molecular and supramolecular levels (see also Section 2.1). The design of molecular information dependent, instructed and functional self-organizing systems reveals new horizons in supramolecular chemistry. 

Chemical interference is mostly realized by selecting reactions capable of organizational interaction. Hence, an ensemble of molecules and, consequently, an ensemble of reactions, create an algorithm for implementation of interrelated spontaneous reactions able to interfere. Note that the structure of the molecular ensemble may be different, which may also affect the course of conjugated processes. The communication channels between self-organized systems (ensembles) of reactions are performed by reactive intermediate particles, general to all current processes. 

The design of artificial self-organizing systems is based on the ability of some molecules which contain simultaneously hydrophobic and hydrophilic groups to form molecular assemblies of definite structure in solution. Examples of the assemblies that can be used to suppress undesirable recombination processes are polyelectrolytes, micelles, microemulsions, planar lipid membranes covering an orifice in a film separating two aqueous solutions, unilamellar vesicles, multilamel-lar vesicles and colloids of various inorganic substances (see reviews [8-18] and references therein). 

The control system may rather be regarded as a complex, self-organizing system that controls the detailed metabolic traffic, and where the movements of fatty acids play an integral role. 

Flaken, FI., "Advance Synergetics. Instability Hierarchies of Self-Organizing Systems and Devices". Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, Tokyo, (1983). 

Supramolecular chemistry. 2. Self-organizing systems. I. Jones, William, 1949—. II. Rao, C. N. R. (Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra), 1934—... 

Zhang, P, Parrot-Lopez, H., Tchoreloff, P, Basakin, A., Ling, C. C., De Rango, C., and Coleman, A. W. (1992), Self-organizing systems based on amphiphilic cyclodextrins diesters, J. Phys. Org. Chem., 5, 518-528. 

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