Formal And Natural Computing

This book presents state of the art research in theoretical computer science and related ?elds. In particular, the following areas are discussed: automata theory, formal languages and combinatorics of words, graph transformations, Petri nets, concurrency, as well as natural and molecular computing. The articles are written by leading researchers in these areas. The writers were originally invited to contribute to this book but then the normal refereeing procedure was applied as well. All of the articles deal with some issue that has been under vigorous study during recent years. Still, the topics range from very classical ones to issues raised only two or three years ago. Both survey articles and papers attacking speci?c research problems are included. The book highlights some key issues of theoretical computer science, as they seem to us now at the beginning of the new millennium. Being a comprehensive overview of some of the most active current research in theoretical computer science, it should be of de?nite interest for all researchers in the areas covered. The topics range from basic decidability and the notion of information to graph grammars and graph transformations, and from trees and traces to aqueous algorithms, DNA encoding and self-assembly. Special e?ort has been given to lucid presentation. Therefore, the book should be of interest also for advanced students.

This book presents state of the art research in theoretical computer science and related ?elds. In particular, the following areas are discussed: automata theory, formal languages and combinatorics of words, graph transformations, Petri nets, concurrency, as well as natural and molecular computing. The articles are written by leading researchers in these areas. The writers were originally invited to contribute to this book but then the normal refereeing procedure was applied as well. All of the articles deal with some issue that has been under vigorous study during recent years. Still, the topics range from very classical ones to issues raised only two or three years ago. Both survey articles and papers attacking speci?c research problems are included. The book highlights some key issues of theoretical computer science, as they seem to us now at the beginning of the new millennium. Being a comprehensive overview of some of the most active current research in theoretical computer science, it should be of de?nite interest for all researchers in the areas covered. The topics range from basic decidability and the notion of information to graph grammars and graph transformations, and from trees and traces to aqueous algorithms, DNA encoding and self-assembly. Special e?ort has been given to lucid presentation. Therefore, the book should be of interest also for advanced students.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation, UCNC 2015, held in Auckland, New Zealand, in August/September 2015. The 16 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics including among others molecular (DNA) computing; quantum computing; optical computing; chaos computing; physarum computing; computation in hyperbolic spaces; collision-based computing; cellular automata; neural computation; evolutionary computation; swarm intelligence; nature-inspired algorithms; artificial immune systems; artificial life; membrane computing; amorphous computing; computational systems biology; genetic networks; protein-protein networks; transport networks; synthetic biology; cellular (in vivo) computing; and computations beyond the Turing model and philosophical aspects of computing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Natural Computing, TPNC 2016, held in Sendai, Japan, in December 2016. The 16 revised full papers presented together with one invited talk in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. The papers are grouped in topical sections on applications of natural computing, evolutionary computation, formal models, and machine learning.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Natural Computing, TPNC 2015, held in Mieres, Spain, in December 2015. The 12 revised full papers presented together with 20 invited talks in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 30 submissions. The scope of TPNC is rather broad, containing topics of either theoretical, experimental or applied interest such as soft computing, computing architectures, and formal models.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation, UCNC 2019, held in Tokyo, Japan, in June 2019. The 19 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. The papers cover topics such as hypercomputation; chaos and dynamical systems based computing; granular, fuzzy and rough computing; mechanical computing; cellular, evolutionary, molecular, neural, and quantum computing; membrane computing; amorphous computing, swarm intelligence; artificial immune systems; physics of computation; chemical computation; evolving hardware; the computational nature of self-assembly, developmental processes, bacterial communication, and brain processes.

This book is about nature considered as the totality of physical existence, the universe, and our present day attempts to understand it. If we see the universe as a network of networks of computational processes at many different levels of organization, what can we learn about physics, biology, cognition, social systems, and ecology expressed through interacting networks of elementary particles, atoms, molecules, cells, (and especially neurons when it comes to understanding of cognition and intelligence), organs, organisms and their ecologies? Regarding our computational models of natural phenomena Feynman famously wondered: “Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do?” Phenomena themselves occur so quickly and automatically in nature. Can we learn how to harness nature’s computational power as we harness its energy and materials? This volume includes a selection of contributions from the Symposium on Natural Computing/Unconventional Computing and Its Philosophical Significance, organized during the AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012, held in Birmingham, UK, on July 2-6, on the occasion of the centenary of Alan Turing’s birth. In this book, leading researchers investigated questions of computing nature by exploring various facets of computation as we find it in nature: relationships between different levels of computation, cognition with learning and intelligence, mathematical background, relationships to classical Turing computation and Turing’s ideas about computing nature - unorganized machines and morphogenesis. It addresses questions of information, representation and computation, interaction as communication, concurrency and agent models; in short this book presents natural computing and unconventional computing as extension of the idea of computation as symbol manipulation.