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From: Simon Kirby <simon@ling.ed.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: quantitative evolution
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To: Benny Warlick <bwarlick@thor.tjhsst.edu>
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Reply-To: Simon Kirby <simon@ling.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
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Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 15:22:43 GMT
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On Thu, 17 Oct 1996, Benny Warlick wrote:

> I'm wondering if there is a quantitative measure of evolution.  I'm
> studying how evolution rates change when a system receives varying
> levels of energy.  I know from preliminary results (and empirical
> knowledge) that evolution is much faster when their is very little
> energy available.  I need to quantify the difference though.

I believe that Robert Worden has done some work that might be of interest
to you. Check out his home page at http://public.logica.com/~wordenr/. He
has a paper proving a speed limit for evolution. I'm sure some of his
methods may be useful.

Also, there's a paper in ALIFE II by Ackley and Littman that has some
discussion of quantitative measures of evolution in it (although I'm not
sure if they'll be relevant to your case.) They used a technique from
biology called functional constraints to quantify what parts of the genome
were important for evolution. They suggest deliberately including "junk"
DNA (pseudogenes) which are subjected to the same mutation pressure as the
rest of the genome, and then comparing the rate of change of the junk and
non-junk sections of the genome to highlight the sections that are
functionally important. Could this or something similar be adapted for
your case? The reference is:

Ackley, David and Michael Littman. 1991. Interactions between learning and
evolution. Alife II, ed. by C.G. Langton et al. Addison Wesley.

Simon

--
Simon Kirby -- Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh
simon@ling.ed.ac.uk ------------ http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~simon/


