Membrane Computing

Membrane computing is an unconventional model of computation associated with a new computing paradigm. The field of membrane computing was initiated in 1998 by the author of this book; it is a branch of natural computing inspired by the structure and functioning of the living cell and devises distributed parallel computing models in the form of membrane systems. This book is the first monograph surveying the new field in a systematic and coherent way. It presents the central notions and results: the main classes of P systems, the main results about their computational power and efficiency, a complete bibliography, and a series of open problems and research topics.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed extended postproceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Membrane Computing, WMC 2008, held in Edinburgh, UK, in July 2008 under the auspices of the European Molecular Computing Consortium (EMCC) and the Molecular Computing Task Force of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. The 22 revised full papers presented together with 5 invited papers went through two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers in this volume cover all the main directions of research in membrane computing, ranging from theoretical topics in mathematics and computer science to application issues. A special attention was paid to the interaction of membrane computing with biology and computer science, focusing both on the biological roots of membrane computing, on applications of membrane computing in biology and medicine, and on possible electronically based implementations.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Membrane Computing, WMC 2009, held in Curtea de Arges, Romania, during August 24 to 27, 2009 under the auspices of the European Molecular Computing Consortium (EMCC) and the Molecular Computing Task Force of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. The 22 revised full papers presented together with 10 invited papers went through two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers in this volume cover all the main directions of research in membrane computing, ranging from theoretical topics in mathematics and computer science to application issues; the invited lectures present fundamental contributions to membrane computing; thus highlighting important directions of current research in this area.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed extended postproceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Membrane Computing, WMC 2004, held in Milan, Italy in June 2004. The 20 revised full papers presented together with 6 invited papers went through two rounds of reviewing and improvement. All current topics in the area of membrane computing are addressed, ranging from mathematics and theoretical computer science to applications in biology, linguistics, and computer graphics. Issues related to computational power and complexity classes, new classes of P systems, fuzzy approaches, and reversibility and energy consumption are dealt with as well.

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 19th International Conference on Membrane Computing (CMC19), CMC 2018, which was held in Dresden, Germany, in September 2018. The 15 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 20 submissions. The contributions aim to abstract computing ideas and models from the structure and the functioning of living cells, as well as from the way the cells are organized in tissues or higher order structures.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed extended post-proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Membrane Computing, WMC 2006, held in Leiden, Netherlands in July 2006. The papers in this volume cover all the main directions of research in membrane computing, ranging from theoretical topics in mathematics and computer science, to application issues. Special attention was paid to the interaction of membrane computing with biology.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Membrane Computing, CMC 2014, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in August 2014. The 19 revised selected papers presented together with 5 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 24 papers presented at the conference. In addition, two papers selected from the 22 papers presented at the regional version of CMC, the Asian Conference on Membrane Computing , ACMC 2014, held in Coimbatore, India, are included. The papers cover a wide range of topics in the area of membrane computing, which is an area of computer science aiming to abstract computing ideas and models from the structure and the functioning of living cells, as well as from the way the cells are organized in tissues or higher order structures.

For anyone needing to keep up to date with all the latest research in the field of membrane computing, this book will come as a breath of fresh air. It is the extended post-proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Membrane Computing, held in June 2007. A total of 27 revised papers are presented. All of them have been through two rounds of reviewing. Special attention has been paid to the interaction of membrane computing with biology and computer science.