Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
9.4. Cellular Automata
General
. There is unfortunately no completely satisfactory unified treat-
ment of cellular automata above the recreational. Ilachinski (246) attempts a
general survey aimed at readers in the physical sciences, and is fairly satisfac-
tory on purely mathematical aspects, but is more out of date than its year of pub-
lication suggests. Chopard and Droz (247) has good material on models of
pattern formation missing from Ilachinski, but the English is often choppy. Tof-
foli and Margolus (248) is inspiring and sound, though cast on a piece of hard-
ware and a programming environment that are sadly no longer supported. Much
useful material on CA modeling has appeared in conference proceedings (249-
251).
CA as Self-Reproducing Machines
. The evolution of CA begins in (252),
continues in (253), and is brought up to the modern era in (254); the last is a
beautiful, thought-provoking and modest topic, sadly out of print. The modern
era itself opens with (255).
Mathematical and Automata-Theoretic Aspects
. Many of the papers in
(256) are interesting. Ilachinski (146), as mentioned, provides a good survey.
The Gutowitz volume (250) has good material on this topic, too. (257) is up-to-
date.
Lattice gases
. (124) is a good introduction, and (258) somewhat more ad-
vanced. The pair of proceedings edited by Doolen (259,260) describe many in-
teresting applications, and contain useful survey and pedagogical articles. (There
is little overlap between the two volumes.)
9.5. Agent-Based Modeling
There do not seem to be any useful textbooks or monographs on agent-
based modeling. The
Artificial Life
conference proceedings, starting with (255),
were a prime source of inspiration for agent-based modeling, along with the
work of Axelrod (261). (262) is also worth reading. The journal
Artificial Life
continues to be relevant, along with the
From Animals to Animats
conference
series. Epstein and Axtell's topic (263) is in many ways the flagship of the
"minimalist" approach to ABMs; while the arguments in its favor (e.g.,
(264,265)) are often framed in terms of social science, many apply with equal
force to biology.
32
(266) illustrates how ABMs can be combined with extensive
real-world data. Other notable publications on agent-based models include
(267), spanning social science and evolutionary biology, (268) on agent-based
models of morphogenesis, and (269) on biological self-organization.
(131) introduces object-oriented programming and the popular Java pro-
gramming language at the same time; it also discusses the roots of object-
orientation in computer simulation. There are many, many other topics on ob-
ject-oriented programming.
