CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR NEW DOCTOR !

Livio Riboli Sasco presented his PhD defense on October 25th 2010 in Salles des Actes, at Ecole normale supérieure

PhD title : Evolving information in living systems, a pathway for the understanding of cooperation and other major transitions (abstract below)

Abstract : We define information in living systems as a reproducible and versatile catalyst. We argue that a key dimension for the evolution of information and the understanding of life is informactivity, a measure of the contribution of information to fitness. We then move to a clarification of information processing characteristics. We organise these characteristics into three sets related to content-holding, interfacing and transferring processes. We argue that evolution can play with
mobility and interoperability of information which are aggregates of first order characteristics. We also argue that a better understanding of how these processes evolve will lead to a better and more exhaustive perception of major transitions in evolution. We then exemplify how in certain "procooperative" environments interoperability can co-evolve with cooperative behaviours. We argue that a Red Queen process can affect interoperability of information related to public good
production. In specific conditions this may allow to maintain cooperation in a population. At last, we discuss how science and education in human culture can be understood within the theoretical framework that has been proposed.






Evelyn Fox Keller (MIT) , François Taddei (Inserm, TaMaRa's Lab), Miroslav Radman (Académie des Sciences, Inserm, TaMaRa's Lab), Livio Riboli Sasco (PhD), Michel Morange (ENS, IHPST)), Dominique Lestel (ENS) et Sam Brown (Oxford)