How high-level behaviors arise from low-level rules, and how understanding this relationship can suggest novel solutions to complex real-world problems such as disease prevention, stock-market prediction, and data mining on the Internet. The term "artificial life" describes research into synthetic systems that possess some of the essential properties of life. This interdisciplinary field includes biologists, computer scientists, physicists, chemists, geneticists, and others. Artificial life may be viewed as an attempt to understand high-level behavior from low-level rules -- for example, how the simple interactions between ants and their environment lead to complex trail-following behavior. An understanding of such relationships in particular systems can suggest novel solutions to complex real-world problems such as disease prevention, stock-market prediction, and data mining on the Internet. Since their inception in 1987, the Artificial Life meetings have grown from small workshops to truly international conferences, reflecting the field's increasing appeal to researchers in all areas of science.

In addition to presenting the latest work in the field, Artificial Life V includes a retrospective and prospective look at both artificial and natural life with the aim of refining the methods and approaches discovered so far into viable, practical tools for the pursuit of science and engineering goals. May 16-18, 1996 · Nara, Japan Despite all the successes in computer engineering, adaptive computation, bottom-up AI, and robotics, Artificial Life must not become simply a one-way bridge, borrowing biological principles to enhance our engineering efforts in the construction of life-as-it-could-be. We must ensure that we give back to biology in kind, by developing tools and methods that will be of real value in the effort to understand life-as-it-is. Artificial Life V marks a decade since Christopher Langton organized the first workshop on artificial life--a decade characterized by the exploration of new possibilities and techniques as researchers have sought to understand, through synthetic experiments, the organizing principles underlying the dynamics (usually the nonlinear dynamics) of living systems. In addition to presenting the latest work in the field, Artificial Life V includes a retrospective and prospective look at both artificial and natural life with the aim of refining the methods and approaches discovered so far into viable, practical tools for the pursuit of science and engineering goals. Complex Adaptive Systems series

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Artificial Life, ECAL 2003, held in Dortmund, Germany in September 2003. The 96 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from more than 140 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on artificial chemistries, self-organization, and self-replication; artificial societies; cellular and neural systems; evolution and development; evolutionary and adaptive dynamics; languages and communication; methodologies and applications; and robotics and autonomous agents.

This book brings together contributions to the Fourth Artificial Life Workshop, held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the summer of 1994.

TheArti?cialLifetermappearedmorethan20yearsagoinasmallcornerofNew Mexico, USA. Since then the area has developed dramatically, many researchers joining enthusiastically and research groups sprouting everywhere. This frenetic activity led to the emergence of several strands that are now established ?elds in themselves. We are now reaching a stage that one may describe as maturer: with more rigour, more benchmarks, more results, more stringent acceptance criteria, more applications, in brief, more sound science. This, which is the n- ural path of all new areas, comes at a price, however. A certain enthusiasm, a certain adventurousness from the early years is fading and may have been lost on the way. The ?eld has become more reasonable. To counterbalance this and to encourage lively discussions, a conceptual track, where papers were judged on criteria like importance and/or novelty of the concepts proposed rather than the experimental/theoretical results, has been introduced this year. A conference on a theme as broad as Arti?cial Life is bound to be very - verse,but a few tendencies emerged. First, ?elds like ‘Robotics and Autonomous Agents’ or ‘Evolutionary Computation’ are still extremely active and keep on bringing a wealth of results to the A-Life community. Even there, however, new tendencies appear, like collective robotics, and more speci?cally self-assembling robotics, which represent now a large subsection. Second, new areas appear.

This book looks at artificial life science - A-Life, an important new area of scientific research involving the disciplines of microbiology, evolutionary theory, physics, chemistry and computer science. In the 1940s a mathematician named John von Neumann, a man with a claim to being the father of the modern computer, invented a hypothetical mathematical entity called a cellular automaton. His aim was to construct a machine that could reproduce itself. In the years since, with the development of hugely more sophisticated and complex computers, von Neumann's insights have gradually led to a point where scientists have created, within the wiring of these machines, something that so closely simulates life that it may, arguably, be called life. This machine reproduces itself, mutates, evolves through generations and dies.

Since their inception in 1987, the Artificial Life meetings have grown from small workshops to truly international conferences, reflecting the fields increasing appeal to researchers in all areas of science.

The two-volume set LNAI 5777 and LNAI 5778 constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 10th European Conference, ECAl 2009, held in Budapest, Hungary, in September 2009. The 141 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from161 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on evolutionary developmental biology and hardware, evolutionary robotics, protocells and prebiotic chemistry, systems biology, artificial chemistry and neuroscience, group selection, ecosystems and evolution, algorithms and evolutionary computation, philosophy and arts, optimization, action, and agent connectivity, and swarm intelligence.

The Italian community in Artificial Life and Evolutionary computation has grown remarkably in recent years, and this book is the first broad collection of its major interests and achievements (including contributions from foreign countries). The contributions in Artificial Life as well as in Evolutionary Computation allow one to see the deep connections between the two fields. The topics addressed are extremely relevant for present day research in Artificial Life and in Evolutionary Computation, which include important contributions from very well-known researchers. The volume provides a very broad picture of the Italian activities in this field.

Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life examines the construction, manipulation and re-definition of life in contemporary technoscientific culture. It takes a critical political view of the concept of life as information, tracing this through the new biology and the discourse of genomics as well as through the changing discipline of artificial life and its manifestation in art, language, literature, commerce and entertainment. From cloning to computer games, and incorporating an analysis of hardware, software and 'wetware', Sarah Kember extends current understanding by demonstrating the ways in which this relatively marginal field connects with, and connects up global networks of information systems. Ultimately, this book aims to re-focus concern on the ethics rather than on the 'nature' of life-as-it-could-be.