This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Natural Computing, TPNC 2019, held in Kingston, ON, Canada, in December 2019. The 15 full papers presented in this book, together with two invited talk, were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections named: Applications of Natural Computing; Evolutionary Computation; Genetic Algorithms, Swarm Intelligence, and Heuristics; Quantum Computing and Information.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Natural Computing, TPNC 2017, held in Dublin, Ireland, in December 2018. The 35 full papers presented in this book, together with one invited talk, were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. The papers are organized around the following topical sections: applications of natural computing as algorithms, bioinformatics, control, cryptography, design, economics. The more theoretical contributions handle with artificial chemistry, artificial immune systems, artificial life, cellular automata, cognitive computing, cognitive engineering, cognitive robotics, collective behaviour, complex systems, computational intelligence, computational social science, computing with words, developmental systems, DNA computing, DNA nanotechnology, evolutionary algorithms, evolutionary computing, evolutionary game theory, fractal geometry, fuzzy control, fuzzy logic, fuzzy sets, fuzzy systems, genetic algorithms, genetic programming, granular computing, heuristics, intelligent agents, intelligent systems, machine intelligence, molecular programming, neural computing, neural networks, quantum communication, quantum computing, rough sets, self-assembly.

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 refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Natural Computing, TPNC 2021, held virtually, in December 2021. The 9 full papers presented together with 3 invited talks, in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 14 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections named Applications of Natural Computing, Deep Learning and Transfer Learning, Evolutionary and Swarm Algorithms.

Natural Computing is the field of research that investigates both human-designed computing inspired by nature and computing taking place in nature, i.e., it investigates models and computational techniques inspired by nature and also it investigates phenomena taking place in nature in terms of information processing. Examples of the first strand of research covered by the handbook include neural computation inspired by the functioning of the brain; evolutionary computation inspired by Darwinian evolution of species; cellular automata inspired by intercellular communication; swarm intelligence inspired by the behavior of groups of organisms; artificial immune systems inspired by the natural immune system; artificial life systems inspired by the properties of natural life in general; membrane computing inspired by the compartmentalized ways in which cells process information; and amorphous computing inspired by morphogenesis. Other examples of natural-computing paradigms are molecular computing and quantum computing, where the goal is to replace traditional electronic hardware, e.g., by bioware in molecular computing. In molecular computing, data are encoded as biomolecules and then molecular biology tools are used to transform the data, thus performing computations. In quantum computing, one exploits quantum-mechanical phenomena to perform computations and secure communications more efficiently than classical physics and, hence, traditional hardware allows. The second strand of research covered by the handbook, computation taking place in nature, is represented by investigations into, among others, the computational nature of self-assembly, which lies at the core of nanoscience, the computational nature of developmental processes, the computational nature of biochemical reactions, the computational nature of bacterial communication, the computational nature of brain processes, and the systems biology approach to bionetworks where cellular processes are treated in terms of communication and interaction, and, hence, in terms of computation. We are now witnessing exciting interaction between computer science and the natural sciences. While the natural sciences are rapidly absorbing notions, techniques and methodologies intrinsic to information processing, computer science is adapting and extending its traditional notion of computation, and computational techniques, to account for computation taking place in nature around us. Natural Computing is an important catalyst for this two-way interaction, and this handbook is a major record of this important development.

Computational complexity is one of the most beautiful fields of modern mathematics, and it is increasingly relevant to other sciences ranging from physics to biology. But this beauty is often buried underneath layers of unnecessary formalism, and exciting recent results like interactive proofs, phase transitions, and quantum computing are usually considered too advanced for the typical student. This book bridges these gaps by explaining the deep ideas of theoretical computer science in a clear and enjoyable fashion, making them accessible to non-computer scientists and to computer scientists who finally want to appreciate their field from a new point of view. The authors start with a lucid and playful explanation of the P vs. NP problem, explaining why it is so fundamental, and so hard to resolve. They then lead the reader through the complexity of mazes and games; optimization in theory and practice; randomized algorithms, interactive proofs, and pseudorandomness; Markov chains and phase transitions; and the outer reaches of quantum computing. At every turn, they use a minimum of formalism, providing explanations that are both deep and accessible. The book is intended for graduate and undergraduate students, scientists from other areas who have long wanted to understand this subject, and experts who want to fall in love with this field all over again.

The book introduces the reader to computer programming, i.e. algorithms and data structures. It covers many new programming concepts that have emerged in recent years including object-oriented programming and design patterns. The book emphasizes the practical aspects of software construction without neglecting their solid theoretical foundation.

The first complete overview of evolutionary computing, the collective name for a range of problem-solving techniques based on principles of biological evolution, such as natural selection and genetic inheritance. The text is aimed directly at lecturers and graduate and undergraduate students. It is also meant for those who wish to apply evolutionary computing to a particular problem or within a given application area. The book contains quick-reference information on the current state-of-the-art in a wide range of related topics, so it is of interest not just to evolutionary computing specialists but to researchers working in other fields.

The book provides readers with a snapshot of the state of the art in the field of nature-inspired computing and its application in optimization. The approach is mainly practice-oriented: each bio-inspired technique or algorithm is introduced together with one of its possible applications. Applications cover a wide range of real-world optimization problems: from feature selection and image enhancement to scheduling and dynamic resource management, from wireless sensor networks and wiring network diagnosis to sports training planning and gene expression, from topology control and morphological filters to nutritional meal design and antenna array design. There are a few theoretical chapters comparing different existing techniques, exploring the advantages of nature-inspired computing over other methods, and investigating the mixing time of genetic algorithms. The book also introduces a wide range of algorithms, including the ant colony optimization, the bat algorithm, genetic algorithms, the collision-based optimization algorithm, the flower pollination algorithm, multi-agent systems and particle swarm optimization. This timely book is intended as a practice-oriented reference guide for students, researchers and professionals.

NVIDIA's Full-Color Guide to Deep Learning: All You Need to Get Started and Get Results "To enable everyone to be part of this historic revolution requires the democratization of AI knowledge and resources. This book is timely and relevant towards accomplishing these lofty goals." -- From the foreword by Dr. Anima Anandkumar, Bren Professor, Caltech, and Director of ML Research, NVIDIA "Ekman uses a learning technique that in our experience has proven pivotal to success—asking the reader to think about using DL techniques in practice. His straightforward approach is refreshing, and he permits the reader to dream, just a bit, about where DL may yet take us." -- From the foreword by Dr. Craig Clawson, Director, NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Deep learning (DL) is a key component of today's exciting advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Learning Deep Learning is a complete guide to DL. Illuminating both the core concepts and the hands-on programming techniques needed to succeed, this book is ideal for developers, data scientists, analysts, and others--including those with no prior machine learning or statistics experience. After introducing the essential building blocks of deep neural networks, such as artificial neurons and fully connected, convolutional, and recurrent layers, Magnus Ekman shows how to use them to build advanced architectures, including the Transformer. He describes how these concepts are used to build modern networks for computer vision and natural language processing (NLP), including Mask R-CNN, GPT, and BERT. And he explains how a natural language translator and a system generating natural language descriptions of images. Throughout, Ekman provides concise, well-annotated code examples using TensorFlow with Keras. Corresponding PyTorch examples are provided online, and the book thereby covers the two dominating Python libraries for DL used in industry and academia. He concludes with an introduction to neural architecture search (NAS), exploring important ethical issues and providing resources for further learning. Explore and master core concepts: perceptrons, gradient-based learning, sigmoid neurons, and back propagation See how DL frameworks make it easier to develop more complicated and useful neural networks Discover how convolutional neural networks (CNNs) revolutionize image classification and analysis Apply recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and long short-term memory (LSTM) to text and other variable-length sequences Master NLP with sequence-to-sequence networks and the Transformer architecture Build applications for natural language translation and image captioning NVIDIA's invention of the GPU sparked the PC gaming market. The company's pioneering work in accelerated computing--a supercharged form of computing at the intersection of computer graphics, high-performance computing, and AI--is reshaping trillion-dollar industries, such as transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing, and fueling the growth of many others. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.