Slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a monstrous single cell well known for its task-solving abilities solves computational geometry and logical problems, navigates robots and generates music. The slime mould could also build motorways, highways and expressways. It is used to analyse transport networks of Africa, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Iberia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, The Netherlands, UK and USA. The largest cities are represented by oat flakes and the slime mould is inoculated in a capital. When all oat flakes are covered by the slime mould, the structure of the protoplasmic networks formed are analyzed. In the laboratory experiments and theoretical analyses, intriguing country-specific properties of the motorway networks are uncovered and compared with the man-made and slime mould networks. They are studied as proximity graphs, leading to hierarchies of complexity and bio-rationality of the motorways. The book will inspire novel and original thoughts, paradigms and approaches for re-evaluation of historical findings on the emergence of ancient roads and will help to design future transcontinental pathways. The book is self-contained and does not require any special training or knowledge. This lavishly illustrated text will be appreciated by readers from all walks of life.

This book is devoted to Slime mould Physarum polycephalum, which is a large single cell capable for distributed sensing, concurrent information processing, parallel computation and decentralized actuation. The ease of culturing and experimenting with Physarum makes this slime mould an ideal substrate for real-world implementations of unconventional sensing and computing devices The book is a treatise of theoretical and experimental laboratory studies on sensing and computing properties of slime mould, and on the development of mathematical and logical theories of Physarum behavior. It is shown how to make logical gates and circuits, electronic devices (memristors, diodes, transistors, wires, chemical and tactile sensors) with the slime mould. The book demonstrates how to modify properties of Physarum computing circuits with functional nano-particles and polymers, to interface the slime mould with field-programmable arrays, and to use Physarum as a controller of microbial fuel cells. A unique multi-agent model of slime is shown to serve well as a software slime mould capable for solving problems of computational geometry and graph optimization. The multiagent model is complemented by cellular automata models with parallel accelerations. Presented mathematical models inspired by Physarum include non-quantum implementation of Shor's factorization, structural learning, computation of shortest path tree on dynamic graphs, supply chain network design, p-adic computing and syllogistic reasoning. The book is a unique composition of vibrant and lavishly illustrated essays which will inspire scientists, engineers and artists to exploit natural phenomena in designs of future and emergent computing and sensing devices. It is a 'bible' of experimental computing with spatially extended living substrates, it spanstopics from biology of slime mould, to bio-sensing, to unconventional computing devices and robotics, non-classical logics and music and arts.

This Festschrift is a tribute to Susan Stepney’s ideas and achievements in the areas of computer science, formal specifications and proofs, complex systems, unconventional computing, artificial chemistry, and artificial life. All chapters were written by internationally recognised leaders in computer science, physics, mathematics, and engineering. The book shares fascinating ideas, algorithms and implementations related to the formal specification of programming languages and applications, behavioural inheritance, modelling and analysis of complex systems, parallel computing and non-universality, growing cities, artificial life, evolving artificial neural networks, and unconventional computing. Accordingly, it offers an insightful and enjoyable work for readers from all walks of life, from undergraduate students to university professors, from mathematicians, computers scientists and engineers to physicists, chemists and biologists.

This book and its companion volumes, LNCS volumes 9140, 9141 and 9142, constitute the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Swarm Intelligence, ICSI 2015 held in conjunction with the Second BRICS Congress on Computational Intelligence, CCI 2015, held in Beijing, China in June 2015. The 161 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 294 submissions. The papers are organized in 28 cohesive sections covering all major topics of swarm intelligence and computational intelligence research and development, such as novel swarm-based optimization algorithms and applications; particle swarm opt8imization; ant colony optimization; artificial bee colony algorithms; evolutionary and genetic algorithms; differential evolution; brain storm optimization algorithm; biogeography based optimization; cuckoo search; hybrid methods; multi-objective optimization; multi-agent systems and swarm robotics; Neural networks and fuzzy methods; data mining approaches; information security; automation control; combinatorial optimization algorithms; scheduling and path planning; machine learning; blind sources separation; swarm interaction behavior; parameters and system optimization; neural networks; evolutionary and genetic algorithms; fuzzy systems; forecasting algorithms; classification; tracking analysis; simulation; image and texture analysis; dimension reduction; system optimization; segmentation and detection system; machine translation; virtual management and disaster analysis.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry, ACRI 2018, held in Como, Italy, in September 2018. The 47 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 64 submissions. This volume contains invited contributions and accepted papers from the main track and from the three organized workshops. The volume is organized in the following topics: biological systems modeling; simulation and other applications of CA; multi-agent systems; pedestrian and traffic dynamics; synchronization and control; theory and cryptography; asynchronous cellular automata; and crowds, traffic and cellular automata.

This pioneering text/reference explores how innovative new modes of computation may provide exciting new directions for future developments in the music industry, guiding the reader through the latest research in this emerging, interdisciplinary field. This work includes coverage of electronic music compositions and performances that incorporate unconventional interfacing, hacking and circuit bending. Features: presents an introduction to unconventional computing in music; discusses initiatives involving biophysical electronic music, the work of self-styled silicon luthiers, and the intersection of music and quantum computing; introduces the memristor, a new electronic component with the potential to revolutionize how computers are built; reviews experiments and practical applications of biological memristors in music; describes IMUSIC, an unconventional tone-based programming language, which enables the programming of computers using musical phrases; includes review questions at the end of each chapter.

The unconventional computing is a niche for interdisciplinary science, cross-bred of computer science, physics, mathematics, chemistry, electronic engineering, biology, material science and nanotechnology. The aims of this book are to uncover and exploit principles and mechanisms of information processing in and functional properties of physical, chemical and living systems to develop efficient algorithms, design optimal architectures and manufacture working prototypes of future and emergent computing devices. This second volume presents experimental laboratory prototypes and applied computing implementations. Emergent molecular computing is presented by enzymatic logical gates and circuits, and DNA nano-devices. Reaction-diffusion chemical computing is exemplified by logical circuits in Belousov-Zhabotinsky medium and geometrical computation in precipitating chemical reactions. Logical circuits realised with solitons and impulses in polymer chains show advances in collision-based computing. Photo-chemical and memristive devices give us a glimpse on hot topics of a novel hardware. Practical computing is represented by algorithms of collective and immune-computing and nature-inspired optimisation. Living computing devices are implemented in real and simulated cells, regenerating organisms, plant roots and slime mould. The book is the encyclopedia, the first ever complete authoritative account, of the theoretical and experimental findings in the unconventional computing written by the world leaders in the field. All chapters are self-contains, no specialist background is required to appreciate ideas, findings, constructs and designs presented. This treatise in unconventional computing appeals to readers from all walks of life, from high-school pupils to university professors, from mathematicians, computers scientists and engineers to chemists and biologists.