The vertical lines in the 2-D age distribution highlight
the fact that as a cell ages its structure varies. It may become white,
gray or black. Structure is not correlated with age.
There is no correlation between structure and age. Each cell is characterized by two coordinates {structure(t), age(t)}. At first sight it may appear as if two remote cells at a given time may have the same coordinates {structure(t), age(t)}. Even so, their subsequent state will differ, since it depends also on the coordinates of their neighbors. We may distinguish between the coordinates of a process itself {structure(t, x), age(t, x) } and its context, which is provided by other processes e.g., {structure(t, x-i ), age(t, x-i )} and {structure(t, x+i), age(t, x+i )}.
Process interaction
The following experiment demonstrates that all processes
interact. CA1 serves as reference. At t = 40 CA2 was injured, and its
left border bit was set to zero. The next image is the 2-D age distribution
of the injured CA2. Then, the
CA2 structure was subtracted from CA1. Finally CA2 age distribution was
subtracted from CA1 (which is depicted above).
Perturbation propagation
The absolute CA difference indicates which parts of CA-2
changed after injury. Prior to t=40, both CA are identical and their difference
is zero (white) . Following injury the nonwhite area spreads to the right
and at t=70 it reaches the right border. It takes 30 time units for the
perturbation to cover the entire CA.
Processes in the body interact even more, and treatment affects them all. Even a local treatment induces a perturbation
which spreads out. Treatment always induces systemic changes. Medicine postulates
that process interaction is insignificant and may be neglected, which
may not be so.
Further reading:
Iatrogenic Medicine
Setup
injurystate[1, j, 20, f1, 2, 1]; injurystate[1,
j, 40, f1, 1, 0]; effect[1,
25];