Brief Summary of Each Supplement
Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement No. 173
What is Life? The Next 100 Years of Yukawa's Dream
Proceedings of the 22nd Nishinomiya-Yukawa Memorial Symposium
Edited by M. Murase and I. Tsuda
This volume contains some of invited papers at the international
symposium ``What is Life? The Next 100 Years of Yukawa's Dream" held
in Kyoto, Japan, from October 15 to 20, 2007.
The topic ``What is Life?" seems to be very popular and has attracted
so many people including specialists and non-specialists. There are,
however, few chances to discuss such a topic if our interest
is to focus on creating bridges among different disciplines
such as physics, biology, psychology, mathematics, computer
science, neuroscience, environmental science, philosophy,
and so on. In this sense, the symposium provided the most
attractive and challenging program for all of us, and
hence the present volume must be one of the most valuable
proceedings for those who are interested in the topic ``What is Life?".
The late Professor Hideki Yukawa was born in the year 1907. The
year 2007, therefore, happened to be the centennial of Yukawa's
birth. Indeed, Prof. Yukawa was known as a theoretical physicist
who got the first Nobel Prize as a Japanese nation after World War II.
Yukawa had been very interested in the study of life and the
mind as he was the one who introduced Schr\"odinger's famous book
``What is Life?" to Japan. Although it is very difficult to get a
final answer to this question ``What is Life?", we believe that this
volume makes some successful advancement towards modern syntheses.
The topics covered include:
(1) Sorting of polar filaments by multiple motor action,
(2) Cell modeling,
(3) Neural basis of vocal communication in songbirds,
(4) A new hypothesis of the tRNA evolution,
(5) Molecular and cellular mechanisms of aging,
(6) Origin of life,
(7) The central neural foundations of awareness, etc.
The present volume serves as a survey on the recent theoretical and
experimental development in this field, and will be of value to
researchers, as well as to non-experts and students
interested in this subject.
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