Unconventional Computing 2005: From Cellular Automata to Wetware [Paperback]

Christof Teuscher (Editor), Andrew Adamatzky (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 2005 | ISBN-10: 095511702X | ISBN-13: 978-0955117022 | Edition: 2nd

THE BOOK BRINGS TOGETHER WORK FROM A MULTIDISCIPLINARY CORE OF SCIENTISTS WHO ARE WORKING IN THE FIELD OF UNCONVENTIONAL COMPUTING. THE GOAL WAS TO PROVIDE A COMMON GROUND FOR DIALOG AND INTERACTION, TO HIGHLIGHT THE LATEST ADVANCES, AND TO DISCUSS THE MAIN DIRECTIONS FOR THE FUTURE. TOPICS INCLUDE PROGRAMMING OF CHEMICAL SYSTEMS, EVOLVING LOGICAL GATES IN LIQUID CRYSTAL, IMAGE PROCESSING IN CHEMICAL MEDIA, REACTION-DIFFUSION ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS FOR COMPUTATION AND PATTERN GENERATION, RULE MIGRATION IN CELLULAR AUTOMATA, MULTI-STATE QUANTUM AUTOMATA, DNA COMPUTING OF SHORTEST PATH PROBLEMS, AND ARTIFICIAL CHEMISTRIES. THE PAPERS COLLECTED IN THIS BOOK PROVIDE A GOOD OVERVIEW OF HOT RESEARCH TOPICS IN THE VIBRANT FIELD OF UNCONVENTIONAL COMPUTING.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

For more than half a century, the von Neumann computer architecture (i.e., the stored program concept) and the abstract concept of the Turing machine have largely dominated computer science in many variants and refinements. One might certainly ask â€" “how the future of these two major paradigms will look”? Whereas it is unlikely that they will disappear, there seems to be a growing need for novel and unconventional computing paradigms to face specific needs and challenges in new fields and application domains. This quest is also motivated by the observation that fundamental progress in several fields of computer science sometimes seems to stagnate. For example, one of the keys to machine intelligence is computers that learn, and we are still just scratching the surface of this problem. Another example is our inability to create and program complex systems that is simply not keeping up with the desire to solve complex problems. The goal of the workshop is to bring together a multidisciplinary core of scientists who are working in the field of unconventional computing, to provide a common ground for dialog and interaction, to highlight the latest advances, and to discuss the main directions for the future. From over thirty papers submitted to the workshop, we selected eight contributions which got highest praises from referees and which, when considered together, give a good sampling of hot research points in the vibrant field of unconventional computing. Thus, papers by Gorecki and Gorecka (Chemical Wave Based Programming in Reaction-Diffusion Systems) and by Harding andMiller (Evolution InMaterio: Evolving Logic Gates in Liquid Crystal) discuss results of cutting edge research in designing logical systems in non-linear spatially extended systems, Belousov-Zhabotinsky excitable chemical medium, and liquid crystal. Oya, Asai and Amemiya (A Single-Electron Reaction-Diffusion Device for Computation of a Voronoi Diagram) and Suzuki, Takayama, Motoike and Asai (Striped and Spotted Pattern Generation on Reaction-Diffusion Cellular Automata â€" Theory and LSI Implementation) demonstrate how to overcome the drawbacks (i.e., the speed of computation is somewhat limited by the slowly travelling diffusive and phase waves in the chemical medium) of reaction-diffusion computers by designing networks of single-electron oscillators and silicon large-scale integrated circuits. A novel approach to designing cellular automata with possibly useful computational properties is tackled by Turner and Stepney (Rule Migration: Exploring a Design Framework for Modelling Emergence in CALike Systems). More classical topics of non-classical computation (i.e., DNA computing and quantum-computation) are studied by Ibrahim, Tsuboi, Ono and Khalid (Experimental Implementation of Direct-Proportional Length-Based DNA Computing for Numerical Optimization of the Shortest Path Problem) and by Lebar Bajec and Mraz (Towards Multi-State Based Computing Using Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata). A non-trivial solution to a classical computer science problem is given by Salzberg (A Reflexive Busy Beaver Problem). Finally, to spice things even more up, we have also decided to invite two non-referred guest presentations: Rambidi, Ulyakhin, and Tsvetkov (Several Remarks on Practical Implementation of Image Processing by Chemical Reaction- DiffusionMedia) will highlight their recent results in image-processing in Belousov-Zhabotinsky chemical systems, and there will be an excurse in artificial chemistries applied to computation by Matsumaru, Centler and Dittrich (Chemical Organization Theory as a Theoretical Base for Chemical Computing).

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Luniver Press; 2nd edition (January 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 095511702X
• ISBN-13: 978-0955117022
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,471,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)