The aim of the book is to lay out the foundations and provide a detailed treatment of the subject. It will focus on two main elements in dual phase evolution: the relationship between dual phase evolution and other phase transition phenomena and the advantages of dual phase evolution in evolutionary computation and complex adaptive systems. The book will provide a coherent picture of dual phase evolution that encompasses these two elements and frameworks, methods and techniques to use this concept for problem solving.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Simulated Evolution and Learning, SEAL 2008, held in Melbourne, Australia, during December 7-10, 2008. The 65 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 140 submissions. The topics covered are evolutionary learning; evolutionary optimisation; hybrid learning; adaptive systems; theoretical issues in evolutionary computation; and real-world applications of evolutionary computation techniques.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third Australian Conference on Artificial Life, ACAL 2007, held in Gold Coast, Australia, in December 2007. The 34 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 submissions. Research in Alife covers the main areas of biological behaviour as a metaphor for computational models, computational models that reproduce/duplicate a biological behaviour, and computational models to solve biological problems.

artensite forms under rapid cooling of austenitic grains accompanied by a change of the crystal lattice. Large deformations are induced which lead to plastic dislocations. In this work a transformation model based on the sharp interface theory, set in a finite strain context is developed. Crystal plasticity effects, the kinetic of the singular surface as well as a simple model of the inheritance from austenite dislocations into martensite are accounted for.

This 2006 work began with the author's exploration of the applicability of the finite deformation theory of elasticity when various standard assumptions such as convexity of various energies or ellipticity of the field equations of equilibrium are relinquished. The finite deformation theory of elasticity turns out to be a natural vehicle for the study of phase transitions in solids where thermal effects can be neglected. This text will be of interest to those interested in the development and application of continuum-mechanical models that describe the macroscopic response of materials capable of undergoing stress- or temperature-induced transitions between two solid phases. The focus is on the evolution of phase transitions which may be either dynamic or quasi-static, controlled by a kinetic relation which in the framework of classical thermomechanics represents information that is supplementary to the usual balance principles and constitutive laws of conventional theory.

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.