The completion of the first draft of the human genome has led to an explosion of interest in genetics and molecular biology. The view of the genome as a network of interacting computational components is well-established, but researchers are now trying to reverse the analogy, by using living organisms to construct logic circuits. The potential applications for such technologies is huge, ranging from bio-sensors, through industrial applications to drug delivery and diagnostics. This book would be the first to deal with the implementation of this technology, describing several working experimental demonstrations using cells as components of logic circuits, building toward computers incorporating biological components in their functioning.

Reports from the cutting edge, where physics and biology are changing the fundamental assumptions of computing. Computers built from DNA, bacteria, or foam. Robots that fix themselves on Mars. Bridges that report when they are aging. This is the bizarre and fascinating world of Natural Computing. Computer scientist and Scientific American’s “Puzzling Adventures” columnist Dennis Shasha here teams up with journalist Cathy Lazere to explore the outer reaches of computing. Drawing on interviews with fifteen leading scientists, the authors present an unexpected vision: the future of computing is a synthesis with nature. That vision will change not only computer science but also fields as disparate as finance, engineering, and medicine. Space engineers are at work designing machines that adapt to extreme weather and radiation. “Wetware” processing built on DNA or bacterial cells races closer to reality. One scientist’s “extended analog computer” measures answers instead of calculating them using ones and zeros. In lively, readable prose, Shasha and Lazere take readers on a tour of the future of smart machines.

Problem solving in computing is referred to as computational thinking. The theory behind this concept is challenging in its technicalities, yet simple in its ideas. This book introduces the theory of computation from its inception to current form of complexity; from explanations of how the field of computer science was formed using classical ideas in mathematics by Gödel, to conceptualization of the Turing Machine, to its more recent innovations in quantum computation, hypercomputation, vague computing and natural computing. It describes the impact of these in relation to academia, business and wider society, providing a sound theoretical basis for its practical application.Written for accessibility, Demystifying Computation provides the basic knowledge needed for non-experts in the field, undergraduate computer scientists and students of information and communication technology and software development.

Sir Francis Crick would undoubtedly be at the front of the line ordering this fascinating book. Being one of the discoverers of DNA, he would be amazed at how his work has been applied to mankind's most important invention, the computer. In this excellent text, the reader is given a comprehensive introduction to the field of DNA computing. The book emphasizes computational methods to tackle central problems of DNA computing, such as controlling living cells, building patterns, and generating nanomachines. It also includes laboratory-scale human-operated models of computation, as well as a description of the first experiment of DNA computation conducted by Adleman in 1994.

Upon its initial publication, the Handbook of Circuits and Filters broke new ground. It quickly became the resource for comprehensive coverage of issues and practical information that can be put to immediate use. Not content to rest on his laurels, editor Wai-kai Chen divided the second edition into volumes, making the information easily accessible and digestible. In the third edition, these volumes have been revised, updated, and expanded so that they continue to provide solid coverage of standard practices and enlightened perspectives on new and emerging techniques. Feedback, Nonlinear, and Distributed Circuits draws together international contributors who discuss feedback amplifier theory and then move on to explore feedback amplifier configurations. They develop Bode’s feedback theory as an example of general feedback theory. The coverage then moves on to the importance of complementing numerical analysis with qualitative analysis to get a global picture of a circuit’s performance. After reviewing a wide range of approximation techniques and circuit design styles for discreet and monolithic circuits, the book presents a comprehensive description of the use of piecewise-linear methods in modeling, analysis, and structural properties of nonlinear circuits highlighting the advantages. It describes the circuit modeling in the frequency domain of uniform MTL based on the Telegrapher’s equations and covers frequency and time domain experimental characterization techniques for uniform and nonuniform multiconductor structures. This volume will undoubtedly take its place as the engineer's first choice in looking for solutions to problems encountered in the analysis and behavior predictions of circuits and filters.

Membrane computing is a branch of natural computing which investigates computing models abstracted from the structure and functioning of living cells and from their interactions in tissues or higher-order biological structures. The models considered, called membrane systems (P systems), are parallel, distributed computing models, processing multisets of symbols in cell-like compartmental architectures. In many applications membrane systems have considerable advantages – among these are their inherently discrete nature, parallelism, transparency, scalability and nondeterminism. In dedicated chapters, leading experts explain most of the applications of membrane computing reported so far, in biology, computer science, computer graphics and linguistics. The book also contains detailed reviews of the software tools used to simulate P systems.

Nature-inspired computation is an interdisciplinary topic area that connects the natural sciences to computer science. Since natural computing is utilized in a variety of disciplines, it is imperative to research its capabilities in solving optimization issues. The Handbook of Research on Natural Computing for Optimization Problems discusses nascent optimization procedures in nature-inspired computation and the innovative tools and techniques being utilized in the field. Highlighting empirical research and best practices concerning various optimization issues, this publication is a comprehensive reference for researchers, academicians, students, scientists, and technology developers interested in a multidisciplinary perspective on natural computational systems.

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the 9th Workshop on Membrane Computing, WMC9, which took place in Edinburgh, UK, during July 28–31,2008. The ?rst three workshopson membrane computing were or- nized in Curtea de Arge ̧ s, Romania – they took place in August 2000 (with the proceedings published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 2235), in August 2001 (with a selection of papers published as a special issue of Fun- menta Informaticae, volume 49, numbers 1–3, 2002), and in August 2002 (with the proceedings published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 2597). The next ?ve workshops were organized in Tarragona, Spain, in July 2003, in Milan, Italy, in June 2004, in Vienna, Austria, in July 2005, in Leiden, The Netherlands, in July 2006, and in Thessaloniki, Greece, in June 2007, with the proceedings published as volumes 2933, 3365, 3850, 4361, and 4860 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

Standard-setting, groundbreaking, authoritative, comprehensive—these often overused words perfectly describe The Circuits and Filters Handbook, Third Edition. This standard-setting resource has documented the momentous changes that have occurred in the field of electrical engineering, providing the most comprehensive coverage available. More than 150 contributing experts offer in-depth insights and enlightened perspectives into standard practices and effective techniques that will make this set the first—and most likely the only—tool you select to help you with problem solving. In its third edition, this groundbreaking bestseller surveys accomplishments in the field, providing researchers and designers with the comprehensive detail they need to optimize research and design. All five volumes include valuable information on the emerging fields of circuits and filters, both analog and digital. Coverage includes key mathematical formulas, concepts, definitions, and derivatives that must be mastered to perform cutting-edge research and design. The handbook avoids extensively detailed theory and instead concentrates on professional applications, with numerous examples provided throughout. The set includes more than 2500 illustrations and hundreds of references. Available as a comprehensive five-volume set, each of the subject-specific volumes can also be purchased separately.

The future of writing studies is fundamentally tied to advancing technological development—writing cannot be done without a technology and different technologies mediate writing differently. In Rhetorical Speculations, contributors engage with emerging technologies of composition through “speculative modeling” as a strategy for anticipatory, futural thinking for rhetoric and writing studies. Rhetoric and writing studies often engages technological shifts reactively, after the production and reception of rhetoric and writing has changed. This collection allows rhetoric and writing scholars to explore modes of critical speculation into the transformative effect of emerging technologies, particularly as a means to speculate on future shifts in the intellectual, pedagogical, and institutional frameworks of the field. In doing so, the project repositions rhetoric and writing scholars as proprietors of our technological future to come rather than as secondary receivers, critics, and adjusters of the technological present. Major and emerging voices in the field offer a range of styles that include pragmatic, technical, and philosophical approaches to the issue of speculative rhetoric, exploring what new media/writing studies could be—theoretically, pedagogically, and institutionally—as future technologies begin to impinge on the work of writing. Rhetorical Speculations is at the cutting edge of the subject of futures thinking and will have broad appeal to scholars of rhetoric, literacy, futures studies, and material and popular culture. Contributors: Bahareh Brittany Alaei, Sarah J. Arroyo, Kristine L. Blair, Geoffrey V. Carter, Sid Dobrin, Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Steve Holmes, Kyle Jensen, Halcyon Lawrence, Alexander Monea, Sean Morey, Alex Reid, Jeff Rice, Gregory L. Ulmer, Anna Worm