| Edited by Sankar Adhya Supplemental information: (2007) | |||||||||||||
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| Information theory was introduced in the late 1940s by Claude Shannon for the study of communications systems[1, 2]. With this mathematical tool, information passing through a telephone or computer data line can be measured and compared to the theoretical limit of the line, called the channel capacity. The information measure is given in units of bits per second, where one bit is the choice between two equally likely possibilities. Surprisingly, one of Shannon's theorems states that as long as the channel capacity is not exceeded, the communications may have as few errors as desired[3]. An example of the practical use of this result is the clear music of compact discs (CDs) which are specially coded to protect against noise. Cleaning instructions for CDs say that they should be wiped in a radial direction. If any scratches are introduced, they will have less eect on the coding, which runs in concentric circles and is capable of correcting up to 4000 data bit errors[4]. Evolutionary conservation indicates the functional importance of biological structures, so a robust and precise measure for conservation is necessary | |||||||||||||
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