To: alife@cognet.ucla.edu
Subject:  Alife Digest Volume #090

                       Alife Digest, Number 090
                      Monday, November 30th 1992

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Today's Topics:

                   Calendar of Alife-related Events
                  HMC Symposium on Pattern Formation
               "Creatures" Simulation Software for NeXT
               New Book Available: Proceedings COGANN-92

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Date: Mon, 30 Nov 92 11:24:51 -0800
From: liane@CS.UCLA.EDU (Liane Gabora)
Subject: Calendar of Alife-related Events

 **********************************************************************

 Neural Processing Information Systems (NIPS), Denver    Nov 28-Dec 3, 1992 v73
 Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, Honolulu, Hawaii       Dec 7-11, 1992     v74
 Conference on Complex Systems, Canberra Australia       Dec 14-15, 1992    v84
 International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii     Jan 5-8, 1993      v74
 Symposium on Pattern Formation, Claremont California    Feb 12-13, 1993    v90
 Biol and Tech of Autonomous Agents, Trento Italy        Mar 1-12, 1993     v88
 Conf on Neural Networks, San Francisco CA               Mar 28-Apr 1, 1993 v79
 Conf on Fuzzy Systems, San Francisco CA                 Mar 28-Apr 1, 1993 v79
 AI and Simulation of Behaviour Conf, Birmingham UK      Mar 29-Apr 2, 1993 v75
 Intnl Conf on Neural Nets and GAs, Innsbruck, Austria   Apr 13-16, 1993    v80
 BEAM Robot Olympics, Toronto Canada                     Apr 22-25, 1993    v81
 European Conf on ALife, Brussels                        May 24-26, 1993    v82
 Intnl Workshop Neural Networks, Barcelona Spain         June 9-11, 1993    v76
 Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, Washington   July 7-9, 1993     v84
 Fifth Intnl Conf on GAs, Urbana-Champaign IL            July 17-22, 1993   v80

 (Send announcements of other activities to alife@cognet.ucla.edu)

 **********************************************************************

------------------------------

Subject: HMC Symposium on Pattern Formation
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 92 15:42:01 PST
From: "Robert M. Keller" <keller@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>

		      SYMPOSIUM on PATTERN FORMATION
				     
			   February 12-13, 1993
			    Harvey Mudd College
			Claremont, California 91711
				   
The   symposium   will   provide  a   focus   on  pattern   formation  from
multidisciplinary  vantage points, particularly  on aspects  of interest to
biologists,  computer scientists,  mathematicians, and physical scientists.
It will examine current questions in pattern formation within each of these
fields and also with cross-disciplinary perspectives.  The area  of pattern
formation  includes formation  of  both  natural  and  artificial  cellular
organisms,  formation  of patterns  on  and  within  these  organisms,  and
space-time  growth patterns.  Of major concern is the formation of emergent
patterns  through  the  actions  and  interactions  of many semi-autonomous
units, none of which directs or has full knowledge of the overall process.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
     Cell growth		Fractals		Morphogenesis
     Cellular automata		Genetic algorithms	Osmotic growth
     Chaotic patterns		Genetic patterns	Percolation theory
     Emergent computation	L-systems		Reaction-diffusion
     Feature formation		

Partial list of invited speakers and their topics

Richard Belew, University of California, San Diego  
Interposing a model of development between neural networks and 
  genetic algorithms

Bruce Boghosian, Thinking Machines Inc.
Cellular automata fluids

Leah Edelstein-Keshet, University of British Columbia  
Theories of pattern formation based on short and long-ranged interaction

Stephanie Forrest, University of New Mexico     
Emergent computation in the immune system

Scott Fraser, Caltech
Patterning of the developing brain

John Gerhart, University of California, Berkeley 

Rob Shaw, MacArthur Fellow              
Transitions to turbulence in a reaction-diffusion system

David Soll, University of Iowa                 
Rhythmic behavior of cells in chemotactic waves during 
    dicytostelium aggregation

Requests for participation 

Requests for participation by  researchers, faculty, and students should be
directed  to one  of the organizing  committee  listed  below.   Applicants
should state briefly why they desire to participate and indicate the nature
of their contribution, if any.  The  number of participants may be  limited
due  to physical constraints.  Contributed  papers  are welcome  and  it is
anticipated that  a proceedings will be  published. The final selection  of
papers will be  made by the organizing  committee in consultation  with the
advisory board.   A registration fee of $75 U.S. will be charged to  defray
costs.  The fee will include two lunches and  one dinner  at the conference
site.  Student participation is  encouraged  and it is  expected that  some
scholarships will be available.

Organizing committee

T.J.  Mueller, Biology (chair)   mueller@hmcvax.claremont.edu, 909-621-8561
Robert Keller, Computer Science  keller@jarthur.claremont.edu, 909-621-8483
Robert Borrelli, Mathematics    borrelli@hmcvax.claremont.edu, 909-621-8023
Stavros Busenberg, Mathematics busenberg@hmcvax.claremont.edu, 909-621-8023
Harvey Mudd College        
Claremont, CA 91711

Symposium advisory board

Leah Edelstein-Keshet, University of British Columbia
Scott Fraser, Caltech
David Goldberg, University of Illinois
J.D. Murray, University of Washington
Clifford Pickover, IBM Watson Research Center

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 13:41:56 +0000 (GMT)
From: "I Stephenson" <ian@ohm.york.ac.uk>
Subject: "Creatures" Simulation Software for NeXT

I've recently placed copies of "Cinc", the NeXTStep implementation of  
my parallel agent based modeling system "Creatures" on the  
sonata.cc.purdue.edu (pub/next/submissions/CincDist.tar.Z) and  
ftp.cognet.ucla.edu (alife/public/CincDist.tar.Z) ftp sites .

The system is similar to other systems which model 2-D Turing  
machines, but does so in a more fundamental fashion. No attempt is  
made to include features such as GA or other tricks relevent to only  
a few users. The "Creatures" project's aim is to develop a paradigm  
of processing that may be used by modellers in the same way that CA  
are recognised today. Clearly some problems will be more suited to  
the model than others (emmergent behavior being particularly  
appropriate), but the model has been developed in an application  
independant manner. A programming environment is provided wich allows  
the end user to program in the features they require (extended  
neighborhoods, higher dimmensional and more densly connected  
lattices, new graphical representations, new load and save formats),  
without clouding the basic model.

This is a Beta-release of the software, and I'd be very interested to  
get as much feedback as possible. Some support is available (further  
examples, programming hints, MasPar/CM2 alpha releases etc) to anyone  
interested in developing on the system.

I've included part of the README file - further instructions are  
included in the package.

Ian Stephenson
Adaptive Systems Engineering
Dept of Electronics
University of York
England

 -------------------------------------------------

Cinc - The NeXT Creatures Simulator

Cinc is an implementation of the Creatures processing model for the  
NeXT. Creatures attempts to retain many of the attractive features of  
CA while allowing dynamic systems to be studied more easily. This is  
done by describing the active elements of a system, rather than the  
space in which they live.

Consider a simple model of road traffic - on a CA we must describe  
roads as either holding cars or not, then passing cars between them.  
The negotiation to support this rapidly swamps any consideration of  
what the CARS are doing. With Creatures we describe the cars - after  
all everyone knows what a car does!

The net result of this is a simulation environment that allows  
emergent behaviour to be studied easily, and models to be built  
rapidly without a great deal of programming experience - just  
describe what all the bits do, and what they do when they meet.

Once written and debugged on a NeXT, the same (or at least VERY  
similar) code may be run on  a CM-2(pretty fast) or a MasPar(very  
fast). This allows you to test models when very large numbers of  
elements are active.

Further details of Creatures may be ftp'd from shiraz.ohm.york.ac.uk.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 14:43:28 EST
From: ds1@philabs.Philips.Com  (Dave Schaffer)
Subject: New Book Available: Proceedings COGANN-92

Announcing the availability of a new book:

Proceedings COGANN-92 International Workshop on
Combinations of Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks

Editors: L.D. Whitley and J.D. Schaffer
ISBN 0-8186-2787-5
Publisher: IEEE Computer Society Press
	10662 Los Vaqueros Circle
	P.O. Box 3014
	Los Alamitos, CA 90720-1264
	USA
	Phone: 800-272-6657
	(714) 821-4010 (FAX)

Price: $34.00 for members of IEEE or Computer Society
	$68.00 for non-members
	add $4.00 for shipping and handling.

CONTENTS

Preface

AUTHORS: J. David Schaffer, Darrell Whitley and Larry J. Eshelman 
TITLE:   Combinations of Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks: 
         A Survey of the State of the Art

AUTHOR:  John G. Elias 
TITLE:   Genetic Generation of Connection Patterns 
         for a Dynamic Artificial Neural Network.

AUTHOR:  Frederic Gruau
TITLE:   Genetic Synthesis of Boolean Neural Networks
         with a Cell Rewriting Developmental Process 

AUTHORS: Kristian Lindgren, Anders Nilsson, Mats Nordahl and Ingrid Rade
TITLE:   Regular Language Inference Using Evolving Neural Networks.

AUTHORS: Dipankar Dasgupta and Douglas McGregor 
TITLE:   Designing Application-Specific Neural Networks
         using the Structured Genetic Algorithm.

AUTHORS: Rajarshi Das and Darrell Whitley
TITLE:   Genetic Sparse Distributed Memories.

AUTHOR:  Peter J.B. Hancock
TITLE:   Genetic Algorithms and Permutation Problems:
         A Comparison of Recombination Operators for
	 Neural Net Structure Specification.

AUTHOR:  Mitchell A. Potter
TITLE:   A Genetic Cascade-Correlation Learning Algorithm.

AUTHORS: Nachimuthu Karunanithi, Rajarshi Das and Darrell Whitley
TITLE:   Genetic Cascade Learning for Neural Networks.

AUTHOR:  K. KrishnaKumar
TITLE:   Immunized Neurocontrol--Concepts and Initial Results.

AUTHOR:  Russell C. Eberhart
TITLE:   The Role of Genetic Algorithms in Neural Network 
         Query-Based Learning and Explanation Facilities.
      
AUTHOR:  Thomas P. Caudell
TITLE:   Genetic Algorithms as a Tool for the Analysis of
         Adaptive Resonance Theory Network Training Sets.

AUTHORS: C.N. Schizas, C.S. Pattichis and L.T. Middleton
TITLE:   Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms and K-Means Algorithm:
         In Search of Data Classification.

AUTHORS: Zhichao Guo and Robert Uhrig
TITLE:   Using Genetic Algorithms to Select Inputs for Neural Networks.

AUTHORS: Loke Soo Hsu and Zhi Biao Wu
TITLE:   Input Pattern Encoding Though Generalized Adaptive Search.

AUTHORS: R. Shonkwiler and Kenyon R. Miller
TITLE:   Genetic Algorithm/Neural Network Synergy
         For Nonlinear Constrained Optimization Problems.

COGANN-92 Attendees

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End of ALife Digest
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