An alternative, or perhaps complementary, way to think about this issue is in terms of how the energetic activity in the brain is organized rather than its global level or localization. Indeed, this has implicitly been the focus of recent research that aims to provide quantitative measures of consciousness levels. In one study, researchers used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to send a magnetic pulse through the brains of healthy controls and patients with various states of impaired consciousness ( Casali et al., 2013). By measuring how the pulse perturbed the cortex the researchers were able to determine the relative complexity and extent of the pathways through which the pulse propagated and correlate these to levels of consciousness. The researchers calculated a perturbation-complexity index (PCI) that quantified the levels of consciousness present in each person they studied. This method was further validated as a reliable objective measure of levels of consciousness by Casarotto et al. (2016). Yuan Baolong, Ren Shenggang, Chen Xiaohong. The effects of urbanization, consumption ratio and consumption structure on residential indirect CO2 emissions in China: A regional comparative analysis. Applied Energy. 2015;140:94–106. The concept of energy that we are familiar with today emerged only slowly from its beginnings in the late eighteenth century. It developed through the study of thermodynamics in the nineteenth century, and then found its place at the center of theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, and cosmology in the twentieth ( Coopersmith, 2010). In colloquial usage energy refers to ideas of vigor, vitality, power, activity, and zest. In scientific usage, however, energy is defined as the ability of a system to do work 6. Work is defined as the transfer of energy involved in moving an object over a distance by an external force, at least part of which is applied in the direction of the displacement ( Duncan, 2002). Scientists and engineers often refer to energy as an abstract property: “Energy is a mathematical abstraction that has no existence apart from its functional relationship to other variables” ( Abbott and Van Ness, 1972; Rose, 1986). It is a property that can be converted from one form to another, and in an isolated system the total quantity is conserved ( Smil, 2008). Kumar Ujjwal, Jain V.K. Time series models (Grey-Markov, Grey Model with rolling mechanism and singular spectrum analysis) to forecast energy consumption in India. Energy. 2010;35,(4):1709–1716. Logan (2012) , in work undertaken with Stuart Kauffman and others, defines ‘biotic information’ as the organization of the exchange of energy and matter between organism and environment – a further example of information theory being used to quantify the biological organization of energy flows.

The energy consumption structure is closely related to economic development [ 1], energy intensity [ 2], total energy consumption [ 3, 4], industrial structure [ 5], and preference for energy consumption demand guided by energy policies [ 6– 9]. Scholars have carried out a lot of research using the grey relational prediction method [ 10], input-output method [ 11], mechanism design methodology [ 12], index decomposition method [ 11, 13], Divisia agglomeration analysis method [ 14], RAS model [ 15], LMDI model [ 16– 18] and other methods to study the influence factors of energy consumption, the trend of total energy consumption, and the optimization path of energy consumption structure, the relationship between energy consumption structure and energy intensity. The research conclusions are mainly used for the adjustment and optimization of the energy consumption structure [ 2], including the development of the tertiary industry, the control of high energy consuming industries, the cultivation of emerging low-carbon industries, the integration of coal resources, the implementation of energy price mechanism reform, the promotion of technological progress, cost sharing, the adjustment of energy consumption in the private sector, the guidance of residents’ energy consumption preferences, and the substitution of capital energy etc. Is it reasonable then to propose that consciousness is caused by the way energetic activity is dynamically and recursively organized in the brain? It is no less reasonable than attributing the causes of other biological phenomena, such as the behavior of the nematode worm, to the way energetic activity is organized. If consciousness is a physical (biological and chemical) process, and if physical processes are caused by energetic activity (alongside forces and work), then consciousness, in principle, could be caused by energetic activity and the way it is organized. Naturalizing ConsciousnessThe most widely cited technical definition of information is that given by Shannon (1948) as part of his mathematical theory of communication. For Shannon, information does not refer to meaning or semantics, as it does colloquially. The information is the amount of uncertainty in a message (a sequence of data) measured through probabilistic analysis of its elements. Information theory has developed into an exceptionally powerful mathematical tool that can be used, among many other things, to measure the complexity of physical systems. But a quantity of Shannon information is a measure of what can be known about a system as distinct from the system itself. The information lies with the measurer rather than the measured 13. Das Aparna, Paul Saikat Kumar. Changes in energy requirements of the residential sector in India between 1993–94 and 2006–07. Energy Policy. 2013;53:27–40.

We gain some insight into the association between consciousness and the organization of energetic processing in the brain from studies of anesthesia. The reason why anesthetic agents obliterate consciousness is not understood ( Mashour, 2004). Recent work has focused on the ways in which they interfere with the brain’s capacity to generate patterns of localized differentiation (often termed ‘information’) and to bind together or integrate those patterns across widely distributed brain networks ( Hudetz, 2012; Hudetz and Mashour, 2016). Evidence from studies on the neurological effects of anesthetics suggests that consciousness is lost as distant regions of the brain become functionally isolated and global integration breaks down ( Lewis et al., 2012). The idea that consciousness depends on maximizing differentiation and integration in the brain lies at the heart of IIT ( Tononi, 2012; Oizumi et al., 2014). Torresani Michele, Rocchini Duccio, Sonnenschein Ruth, Zebisch Marc, Marcantonio Matteo, Ricotta Carlo, et al. Estimating tree species diversity from space in an alpine conifer forest: The Rao’s Q diversity index meets the spectral variation hypothesis. Ecological Informatics. 2019;52:26–34.

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The mechanisms that enable performance of these tasks can be seen at work in organisms with relatively simple nervous systems, such as the C. elegans worm ( Sterling and Laughlin, 2017). Chemical gradients in the environment activate chemosensory neurons on the worm’s surface that connect via interneurons to motor neurons that control the action of dorsal and ventral muscles, which, in turn, control the worm’s movement ( de Bono and Maricq, 2005). In this way, differences of chemical potential energy in the environment are converted into differences of electro-chemical energy in the sensing apparatus of the organism and then into differences of chemical energy in the muscles, which, by antagonistic action, are converted into the kinetic energy of the organism’s movement. The organism makes discriminations in the environment relevant to its interests so that it can take appropriate actions in response. Zhao Xiaoli, Ma Chunbo, Hong Dongyue. Why did China’s energy intensity increase during 1998–2006: Decomposition and policy analysis. Energy Policy. 2010;38(3):1379–1388.

Mozumder Pallab, Vásquez William F., Marathe Achla. Consumers’ preference for renewable energy in the southwest USA. 2011;33(6):1119–1126.

It turns out this arrangement is energy efficient It should be noted that forest biomass, due to the presence of bark and juvenile wood, tends to have higher lignin contents ( Zhu et al., 2015). As a result, forest biomass is more recalcitrant to bioconversion into sugars than other biomass types such as agricultural residues ( Yamamoto et al., 2014). Although there are pretreatment processes to overcome such a high level of recalcitrance for efficient sugar/biofuel production, they are more time-consuming and costlier. One of these methods is steam explosion treatment which has been reported to increase bioethanol production of Hemp fiber by upto 70% ( Zhao et al., 2020). It has also been claimed that the application of surfactants, owing to their unique structure and functional properties, could improve the solubility, fluidity, bioavailability, and biodegradability of forest biomass, thereby increasing the production of bioethanol. Zheng et al. (2020) argued that tween, polyethylene glycol (PEG), and sulfonate-based surfactants could increase the conversion rate of lignocellulose by 10–20%. The PCI was calculated using data from electroencephalographic (EEG) measurements of the cerebral perturbation following the TMS. Images from the EEG were filtered into binary data that was then analyzed using a Lempel–Ziv algorithm, a commonly used information-theoretical technique in which complexity is measured as a function of data string compressibility, with more complex data strings being less compressible ( Ziv and Lempel, 1977; Aboy et al., 2006). Other researchers have developed similar information-theoretical methods for quantifying the complexity of brain activity and levels of consciousness. King et al. (2013) analyzed data from 181 EEG recordings of patients who were diagnosed with varying states of impaired consciousness and applied a measure of weighted symbolic mutual information (wSMI) that sharply distinguished between patients in vegetative state, minimally conscious state, and conscious state.

Citation: Yin T (2023) The diversity of energy consumption structure, energy efficiency and carbon emissions: Evidence from Shaanxi, China. PLoS ONE 18(5): We do not fully understand the biological function of energy in the brain or how it relates to the presence of consciousness in the person 3. Given that the human brain accounts for only 2% of the body’s mass it demands a large portion of the body’s total energy budget, some 20% ( Laughlin, 2001; Magistretti and Allaman, 2013). Most of this energy is derived from the oxidization of glucose supplied to the cerebral tissue through the blood. Roy and Sherrington were the first to propose a direct correspondence between changes in cerebral blood flow and functional activity ( Roy and Sherrington, 1890). Many features of human brain anatomy, such as the number of blood vessels per unit of space, the lengths of neural connections, the width of axons, and even the ratio of brain to stomach size are thought to be determined by the high metabolic demands associated with complex cognitive processing ( Allen, 2009). Treating brains as neural information processors does not help us to understand consciousness as a physical process because information, according to the commonly accepted definitions, is not a physical property of brains at the neural level; there is no information in a neuron 15. It is useful, however, to apply information-theoretical methods to study the organization of physical systems, such as brains. Wiener (1948) stated: “…the amount of information in a system is a measure of its degree of organization…” As exemplified in several studies and theories cited here, we can measure and model the way the organization of energetic processes in the brain contributes to the presence of consciousness in a person 16. But the abstract difference between 0 and 1 is not equivalent to the actualized difference between a neuron at rest and firing. The Brain as a ‘Difference Engine’ Meanwhile, it is somewhat surprising to find that energy use during non-rapid eye movement sleep remains at ∼85% of that in the waking state, while during rapid eye movement sleep it can be as high as in the waking state ( Dinuzzo and Nedergaard, 2017). At the same time, consciousness can be minimally sustained with energy use at only 42% of the level that occurs in healthy conscious individuals, suggesting that much cerebral metabolic activity in normal waking states does not directly contribute to consciousness ( Stender et al., 2016). Many anesthetic agents are thought to obliterate consciousness because they reduce the global rate of cerebral metabolism ( Hudetz, 2012). Administering ketamine, on the other hand, increases brain metabolism yet can still lead to loss of responsiveness ( Pai and Heining, 2007). Overall, it seems we find no clear correlation between the total amount of energy used by the brain, or the location where the energy is used, and the level of consciousness detectable in the person. Consciousness and the Organization of Energetic Processing in the BrainSchrodinger, E. What Is Life?—Physical View of Living Cells; Shanghai Foreign Natural Science Philosophy Works Compilation and Group, Translator; Shanghai People’s Press: Shanghai, China, 1973. (In Chinese) [ Google Scholar] Brains – as parts of people – process information in the colloquial sense, just as they process abstract ideas, equations, numbers, thoughts, emotions, or memories. But they do so as a consequence of the underlying energetic processing (conversion, distribution, and dissipation) going on in neural tissue. Computers also ‘process’ information in the colloquial sense. Mechanically and electronically speaking, however, they actually manipulate energy states (voltages, light, etc.) the results of which we, as conscious people, interpret informationally. It is worth noting that all mechanical information processing necessarily entails the dissipation of a certain amount of energy ( Landauer, 1961 ). Recent experiments have confirmed this principle and demonstrated the intimate link between energy and what many refer to as information ( Bérut et al., 2012 ). Information is variously and sometimes imprecisely defined in science ( Capurro and Hjørland, 2003), its meaning is still strongly contested ( Lombardi et al., 2016; Roederer, 2016), and many people regard it as being to some extent subjective, relativistic, or observer-dependent ( von Foerster, 2003; Deacon, 2010; Werner, 2011; Logan, 2012; Searle, 2013; de-Wit et al., 2016). The term is often used in science colloquially (meaning ‘what is conveyed by an arrangement of things’) or “intuitively” ( Erra et al., 2016). And where one might expect to find a clear definition, such as in a dictionary of physics, biology or chemistry, none appears ( Hine, 2015; Rennie, 2015, 2016). Shannon-Wiener diversity index can measure the level of species diversity [ 30]. The energy system also plays an important role in the development of human society, and it is also applied to diversity concept, because it is the key driving force and material basis for promoting economic and social development. Therefore, it is appropriate to introduce the concept of diversity into the energy system [ 31], including energy supply diversity, energy consumption diversity, and energy import diversity [ 20]. Among them, the energy consumption structure diversity is particularly reflected in the energy end-use consumption which heavily impacts energy efficiency and carbon emissions [ 32].