Time & clocks: A thermodynamic approach

Calling Time on Digital Clocks

I explore two logical possibilities for the discretization of time, termed “instantaneous” and “smeared”. These are found by discretizing a continuous theory, and the resulting structure of configuration space and velocities are described. It is shown that results known in numerical methods for integration of dynamical systems preclude the existence of a system with fixed discrete time step whi...

Measuring Time and Comparing Clocks

Can mitochondrial clocks keep time?

Put a scientist on the analyst's couch, say the word "mitochondria," and she's likely to blurt out "powerhouse of the cell" in response. But if she happens to be an evolutionary biologist, she might instead connect this organelle with a different type of power: the ability to illuminate evolutionary events deep in the past. For over two decades, biologists have been using mitochondrial DNA (mtD...

On the Thermodynamic Approach towards Time Series Analysis

A scheme is presented which allows for the computation of the topological pressure and power spectra associated with equilibrium measures from a given time series. Its convergence properties are demonstrated on numerical data sets obtained from the Lozi and the Henon map. Numerical evidence for sharp peaks in the power spectrum of the non{hyperbolic phase is given and supported by estimates usi...

Time, Internal Clocks and Movement

Tile ability of all animal to process temporal information has adaptive significance across different temporal ranges. The ability to encode and utilize temporal information allows an animal to predict and anticipate events. However, the lime scales var3.' widely. The predictable event might be based on information that changes over relatively long periods such as a year or a day. or over perio...