A Mathematical Structure For Emergent Computation

An understanding of emergent computation requires a profound revision of the most fundamental ideas. A noticeable attempt of such a rethinking is a world view in which natural systems are seen not as separate entities but as integrated parts of a unified whole. The book for the first time presents such a mathematical structure, which remarkably is based on integers as the single concept. As integers are considered to be the most fundamental entities irreducible to something simpler, this makes the mathematical structure a final theory, and thus we do not have to look for its explanation in terms of deeper concepts. The book is not only applicable to models of computation and optimization but also has scientific consequences, as it contributes to a rethinking of the most fundamental ideas about nature. Audience: The book is written at a level suitable for advanced undergraduate students and graduate students as well as research workers and practitioners in computer science information technology, mathematics and physics. The book is suitable as a reference or as supplementary reading material for an advanced graduate course. Only a basic knowledge of calculus is required.

This book is dedicated to Professor Selim G. Akl to honour his groundbreaking research achievements in computer science over four decades. The book is an intellectually stimulating excursion into emergent computing paradigms, architectures and implementations. World top experts in computer science, engineering and mathematics overview exciting and intriguing topics of musical rhythms generation algorithms, analyse the computational power of random walks, dispelling a myth of computational universality, computability and complexity at the microscopic level of synchronous computation, descriptional complexity of error detection, quantum cryptography, context-free parallel communicating grammar systems, fault tolerance of hypercubes, finite automata theory of bulk-synchronous parallel computing, dealing with silent data corruptions in high-performance computing, parallel sorting on graphics processing units, mining for functional dependencies in relational databases, cellular automata optimisation of wireless sensors networks, connectivity preserving network transformers, constrained resource networks, vague computing, parallel evolutionary optimisation, emergent behaviour in multi-agent systems, vehicular clouds, epigenetic drug discovery, dimensionality reduction for intrusion detection systems, physical maze solvers, computer chess, parallel algorithms to string alignment, detection of community structure. The book is a unique combination of vibrant essays which inspires scientists and engineers to exploit natural phenomena in designs of computing architectures of the future.

Search engines, with Google at the top, have become the most heavily used online service, with millions of searches performed every day and many remarkable capabilities. Soft Computing for Information Processing and Analysis includes reports from the front of soft computing in the internet industry and imparts knowledge and understanding of the significance of the field's accomplishments, new developments and future directions. This carefully edited book has evolved from presentations made by the participants of a meeting entitled "Fuzzy Logic and the Internet: Enhancing the Power of the Internet", organized by the Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC), University of California, Berkeley. It addresses the important topics of modern search engines such as fuzzy query, decision analysis and support systems, including articles about topics such as Web Intelligence, World Knowledge and Fuzzy Logic (by Lotfi A. Zadeh), perception based information processing, or web intelligence.

This volume contains, in part, a selection of papers presented at the sixth Australian Optimization Day Miniconference (Ballarat, 16 July 1999), and the Special Sessions on Nonlinear Dynamics and Optimization and Operations Re search - Methods and Applications, which were held in Melbourne, July 11-15 1999 as a part of the Joint Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and Australian Mathematical Society. The editors have strived to present both con tributed papers and survey style papers as a more interesting mix for readers. Some participants from the meetings mentioned above have responded to this approach by preparing survey and 'semi-survey' papers, based on presented lectures. Contributed paper, which contain new and interesting results, are also included. The fields of the presented papers are very large as demonstrated by the following selection of key words from selected papers in this volume: • optimal control, stochastic optimal control, MATLAB, economic models, implicit constraints, Bellman principle, Markov process, decision-making under uncertainty, risk aversion, dynamic programming, optimal value function. • emergent computation, complexity, traveling salesman problem, signal estimation, neural networks, time congestion, teletraffic. • gap functions, nonsmooth variational inequalities, derivative-free algo rithm, Newton's method. • auxiliary function, generalized penalty function, modified Lagrange func tion. • convexity, quasiconvexity, abstract convexity.

During the last decades, considerable progress has been observed in all aspects regarding the study of cooperative systems including modeling of cooperative systems, resource allocation, discrete event driven dynamical control, continuous and hybrid dynamical control, and theory of the interaction of information, control, and hierarchy. Solution methods have been proposed using control and optimization approaches, emergent rule based techniques, game theoretic and team theoretic approaches. Measures of performance have been suggested that include the effects of hierarchies and information structures on solutions, performance bounds, concepts of convergence and stability, and problem complexity. These and other topics were discusses at the Second Annual Conference on Cooperative Control and Optimization in Gainesville, Florida. Refereed papers written by selected conference participants from the conference are gathered in this volume, which presents problem models, theoretical results, and algorithms for various aspects of cooperative control. Audience: The book is addressed to faculty, graduate students, and researchers in optimization and control, computer sciences and engineering.

The goal of the Encyclopedia of Optimization is to introduce the reader to a complete set of topics that show the spectrum of research, the richness of ideas, and the breadth of applications that has come from this field. The second edition builds on the success of the former edition with more than 150 completely new entries, designed to ensure that the reference addresses recent areas where optimization theories and techniques have advanced. Particularly heavy attention resulted in health science and transportation, with entries such as "Algorithms for Genomics", "Optimization and Radiotherapy Treatment Design", and "Crew Scheduling".

In recent years, scientists have applied the principles of complex systems science to increasingly diverse fields. The results have been nothing short of remarkable: their novel approaches have provided answers to long-standing questions in biology, ecology, physics, engineering, computer science, economics, psychology and sociology. "Unifying Themes in Complex Systems" is a well established series of carefully edited conference proceedings that serve the purpose of documenting and archiving the progress of cross-fertilization in this field. About NECSI: For over 10 years, The New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) has been instrumental in the development of complex systems science and its applications. NECSI conducts research, education, knowledge dissemination, and community development around the world for the promotion of the study of complex systems and its application for the betterment of society. NECSI hosts the International Conference on Complex Systems and publishes the NECSI Book Series in conjunction with Springer Publishers.

At the beginning of the new millennium, fuzzy logic opens a new challenging perspective in information processing. This perspective emerges out of the ideas of the founder of fuzzy logic - Lotfi Zadeh, to develop 'soft' tools for direct computing with human perceptions. The enigmatic nature of human perceptions manifests in their unique capacity to generalize, extract patterns and capture both the essence and the integrity of the events and phenomena in human life. This capacity goes together with an intrinsic imprecision of the perception-based information. According to Zadeh, it is because of the imprecision of the human imprecision that they do not lend themselves to meaning representation through the use of precise methods based on predicate logic. This is the principal reason why existing scientific theories do not have the capability to operate on perception-based information. We are at the eve of the emergence of a theory with such a capability. Its applicative effectiveness has been already demonstrated through the industrial implementation of the soft computing - a powerful intelligent technology centred in fuzzy logic. At the focus of the papers included in this book is the knowledge and experience of the researchers in relation both to the engineering applications of soft computing and to its social and philosophical implications at the dawn of the third millennium. The papers clearly demonstrate that Fuzzy Logic revolutionizes general approaches for solving applied problems and reveals deep connections between them and their solutions.

During last decade significant progress has been made in the oil indus try by using soft computing technology. Underlying this evolving technology there have, been ideas transforming the very language we use to describe problems with imprecision, uncertainty and partial truth. These developments offer exciting opportunities, but at the same time it is becoming clearer that further advancements are confronted by funda mental problems. The whole idea of how human process information lies at the core of the challenge. There are already new ways of thinking about the problems within theory of perception-based information. This theory aims to understand and harness the laws of human perceptions to dramatically im prove the processing of information. A matured theory of perception-based information is likely to be proper positioned to contribute to the solution of the problems and provide all the ingredients for a revolution in science, technology and business. In this context, Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC), Univer sity of California, Berkeley from one side and Chevron-Texaco from another formed a Technical Committee to organize a Meeting entitled "State of the Art Assessment and New Directions for Research" to understand the signifi cance of the fields accomplishments, new developments and future directions. The Technical Committee selected and invited 15 scientists (and oil indus try experts as technical committee members) from the related disciplines to participate in the Meeting, which took place at the University of California, Berkeley, and March 15-17, 2002.

This text has been designed as a complete introduction to discrete mathematics, primarily for computer science majors in either a one or two semester course. The topics addressed are of genuine use in computer science, and are presented in a logically coherent fashion. The material has been organized and interrelated to minimize the mass of definitions and the abstraction of some of the theory. For example, relations and directed graphs are treated as two aspects of the same mathematical idea. Whenever possible each new idea uses previously encountered material, and then developed in such a way that it simplifies the more complex ideas that follow.