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.

The two-volume set LNCS 5601 and LNCS 5602 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Work-Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation, IWINAC 2009, held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in June 2009. The 108 revised papers presented are thematically divided into two volumes. The first volume includes papers relating the most recent collaborations with Professor Mira and contributions mainly related with theoretical, conceptual and methodological aspects linking AI and knowledge engineering with neurophysiology, clinics and cognition. The second volume contains all the contributions connected with biologically inspired methods and techniques for solving AI and knowledge engineering problems in different application domains.

This book is the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Natural Computing, IWNC 2007, held in Noyori Conference Hall, Nagoya University in December 2007. IWNC aims to bring together computer scientists, biologists, mathematicians, electronic engineers, physicists, and humanitarians, to critically assess present findings in the field, and to outline future developments in nature-inspired computing.

The book is a collection of papers presented at First Doctoral Symposium on Natural Computing Research (DSNCR 2020), held during 8 August 2020 in Pune, India. The book covers different topics of applied and natural computing methods having applications in physical sciences and engineering. The book focuses on computer vision and applications, soft computing, security for Internet of Things, security in heterogeneous networks, signal processing, intelligent transportation system, VLSI design and embedded systems, privacy and confidentiality, big data and cloud computing, bioinformatics and systems biology, remote healthcare, software security, mobile and pervasive computing, biometrics-based authentication, natural language processing, analysis and verification techniques, large scale networking, distributed systems, digital forensics, and human–computer interaction.

This book contains the joint proceedings of the Winter School of Hakodate (WSH) 2011 held in Hakodate, Japan, March 15–16, 2011, and the 6th International Workshop on Natural Computing (6th IWNC) held in Tokyo, Japan, March 28–30, 2012, organized by the Special Interest Group of Natural Computing (SIG-NAC), the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI). This volume compiles refereed contributions to various aspects of natural computing, ranging from computing with slime mold, artificial chemistry, eco-physics, and synthetic biology, to computational aesthetics.

Ever since Chomsky laid the framework for a mathematically formal theory of syntax, two classes of formal models have held wide appeal. The finite state model offered simplicity. At the opposite extreme numerous very powerful models, most notable transformational grammar, offered generality. As soon as this mathematical framework was laid, devastating arguments were given by Chomsky and others indicating that the finite state model was woefully inadequate for the syntax of natural language. In response, the completely general transformational grammar model was advanced as a suitable vehicle for capturing the description of natural language syntax. While transformational grammar seems likely to be adequate to the task, many researchers have advanced the argument that it is "too adequate. " A now classic result of Peters and Ritchie shows that the model of transformational grammar given in Chomsky's Aspects [IJ is powerful indeed. So powerful as to allow it to describe any recursively enumerable set. In other words it can describe the syntax of any language that is describable by any algorithmic process whatsoever. This situation led many researchers to reasses the claim that natural languages are included in the class of transformational grammar languages. The conclu sion that many reached is that the claim is void of content, since, in their view, it says little more than that natural language syntax is doable algo rithmically and, in the framework of modern linguistics, psychology or neuroscience, that is axiomatic.

This Festschrift is in honor of Mario de Jesús Pérez-Jiménez, Professor in the Department of Computer Science of University of Seville, Spain, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The title of this volume reflects both his main research area, viz., Natural Computing, and the guiding principle of his functioning: “once you choose to do something, enjoy doing it". The respect that Professor Mario de Jesús Pérez-Jiménez enjoys in the scientific community was well demonstrated by the enthusiastic response received to the request to contribute to this book. The contributions by more than 70 authors from 15 countries cover a wide spectrum of research areas and reflect well the broad range of research interests of Professor Mario de Jesús Pérez-Jiménez. The research areas presented in this Festschrift include membrane computing, spiking neural networks, phylogenetic networks, ant colonies optimization, workbench for biocomputing, reaction systems, entropy of computation, rewriting systems, and insertion-deletion systems.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Unconventional Computation, UC 2012, held in Orléans, France, during September 3-7, 2012. The 28 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from numerous submissions. Conference papers are organized in 4 technical sessions, covering topics of 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 volume is a collection of papers written by several researchers that have in common the use of bio-inspired models to approach formal and natural languages. The main goal of the volume is to promote interdisciplinarity among linguistics, biology and computation. The area of convergence between these three disciplines is giving rise to the emergence of new scientific paradigms that will have an epistemological, social and cultural impact. The book is organized around three thematic areas. Every area relates two of the three main topics: language, computation and biology. This volume stands out from existing publications because of its interdisciplinary nature. There has been a long tradition of interchanging methods among the aforementioned three disciplines, but it is difficult to find a single volume where this interchange of methods is shown. The volume includes chapters that clearly illustrate these interdisciplinary approaches and their benefits. This book will be of value to specialists who work in linguistics, biology or computation, and have interest in using methods from other disciplines that can provide new ideas, new tools and new formalisms to approach their problems, and that can help in the improvement of their theories and models.

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.