Unconventional approaches to programming have long been developed, in various niches and out of curiosity, and they constitute a reservoir of alternative avenues to deal with unknown programming challenges. New paradigms of programming are currently experiencing a renewed period of interest and growth to cope with problems from specific application domains. This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the International Workshop on Unconventional Programming Paradigms, UPP 2004, held at Le Mont Saint Michel, France, in September 2004. The 26 revised full papers presented together with an invited paper on quantum computing were carefully reviewed for presentation in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on chemical computing, amorphous computing, bio-inspired computing, autonomic computing, and generative programming.
Programming Language Explorations is a tour of several modern programming languages in use today. The book teaches fundamental language concepts using a language-by-language approach. As each language is presented, the authors introduce new concepts as they appear, and revisit familiar ones, comparing their implementation with those from languages seen in prior chapters. The goal is to present and explain common theoretical concepts of language design and usage, illustrated in the context of practical language overviews. Twelve languages have been carefully chosen to illustrate a wide range of programming styles and paradigms. The book introduces each language with a common trio of example programs, and continues with a brief tour of its basic elements, type system, functional forms, scoping rules, concurrency patterns, and sometimes, metaprogramming facilities. Each language chapter ends with a summary, pointers to open source projects, references to materials for further study, and a collection of exercises, designed as further explorations. Following the twelve featured language chapters, the authors provide a brief tour of over two dozen additional languages, and a summary chapter bringing together many of the questions explored throughout the text. Targeted to both professionals and advanced college undergraduates looking to expand the range of languages and programming patterns they can apply in their work and studies, the book pays attention to modern programming practice, covers cutting-edge languages and patterns, and provides many runnable examples, all of which can be found in an online GitHub repository. The exploration style places this book between a tutorial and a reference, with a focus on the concepts and practices underlying programming language design and usage. Instructors looking for material to supplement a programming languages or software engineering course may find the approach unconventional, but hopefully, a lot more fun.
This book provides an introduction to the essential concepts in programming languages, using operational semantics techniques. It presents alternative programming language paradigms and gives an in-depth analysis of the most significant constructs in modern imperative, functional and logic programming languages. The book is designed to accompany lectures on programming language design for undergraduate students. Each chapter includes exercises which provide the opportunity to apply the concepts and techniques presented.
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 first volume presents theoretical foundations of the future and emergent computing paradigms and architectures. The topics covered are computability, (non-)universality and complexity of computation; physics of computation, analog and quantum computing; reversible and asynchronous devices; cellular automata and other mathematical machines; P-systems and cellular computing; infinity and spatial computation; chemical and reservoir computing. 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.
Addressing the applications of computational intelligence algorithms in energy, this book presents a systematic procedure that illustrates the practical steps required for applying bio-inspired, meta-heuristic algorithms in energy, such as the prediction of oil consumption and other energy products. Contributions include research findings, projects, surveying work and industrial experiences that describe significant advances in the applications of computational intelligence algorithms in energy. For easy understanding, the text provides practical simulation results, convergence and learning curves as well as illustrations and tables. Providing a valuable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students alike, it is also intended for researchers in the fields of computational intelligence and energy.
The field of parallel and distributed computing is undergoing changes at a breathtaking pace. Networked computers are now omnipresent in virtually every application, from games to sophisticated space missions. The increasing complexity, heterogeneity, largeness, and dynamism of the emerging pervasive environments and associated applications are challenging the advancement of the parallel and distributed computing paradigm. Many novel infrastructures have been or are being created to provide the necessary computational fabric for realising parallel and distributed applications from diverse domains. New models and tools are also being proposed to evaluate and predict the quality of these complicated parallel and distributed systems. Current and recent past efforts, made to provide the infrastructures and models for such applications, have addressed many underlying complex problems and have thus resulted in new tools and paradigms for effectively realising parallel and distributed systems. This book showcases these novel tools and approaches with inputs from relevant experts.
"This book is a catalyst for emerging research in intelligent information, specifically artificial intelligent technologies and applications to assist in improving productivity in many roles such as assistants to human operators and autonomous decision-making components of complex systems"--Provided by publisher.
This book provides a handbook of algorithmic recipes from the fields of Metaheuristics, Biologically Inspired Computation and Computational Intelligence that have been described in a complete, consistent, and centralized manner. These standardized descriptions were carefully designed to be accessible, usable, and understandable. Most of the algorithms described in this book were originally inspired by biological and natural systems, such as the adaptive capabilities of genetic evolution and the acquired immune system, and the foraging behaviors of birds, bees, ants and bacteria. An encyclopedic algorithm reference, this book is intended for research scientists, engineers, students, and interested amateurs. Each algorithm description provides a working code example in the Ruby Programming Language.
This book sets out the conditions under which the need for a new approach to the production of architecture in the twenty-first century is established, where our homes and cities are facing increasing pressures from environmental challenges that are compromising our lives and well being. Vibrant architecture embodies a new kind of architectural design practice that explores how lively materials, or 'vibrant matter', may be incorporated into our buildings to confer on them some of the properties of living things, such as movement, growth, sensitivity and self-repair. The theoretical and practical implications of how this may occur are explored through the application of a new group of materials. Characteristically, these substances possess some of the properties of living systems but may not have the full status of being truly alive. They include forms of chemical artificial life such as 'dynamic droplets' or synthetically produced soils. As complex systems, they are able to communicate directly with the natural world using a shared language of chemistry and so, negotiate their continued survival in a restless world. Vibrant architecture may create new opportunities for architectural design practice that venture beyond top-down form-finding programs, by enabling architects to co-design in partnership with human and nonhuman collectives, which result from the production of post natural landscapes. Ultimately, vibrant architecture may operate as an ecological platform for human development that augments the liveliness of our planet, rather than diminishes it.
The rapid development of information communication technologies (ICTs) is having a profound impact across numerous aspects of social, economic, and cultural activity worldwide, and keeping pace with the associated effects, implications, opportunities, and pitfalls has been challenging to researchers in diverse realms ranging from education to competitive intelligence.
