Some operations preserving primitivity of words

We investigate some operations where essentially, from a given word w, the word ww′ is constructed where w′ is a modified copy of w or a modified mirror image of w. We study whether ww′ is a primitive word provided that w is primitive. For instance, we determine all cases with an edit distance of w and w′ at most 2 such that the primitivity of w implies the primitivity of ww′. The operations are chosen in such a way that in the case of a two-letter alphabet, all primitive words of length ≤11 can be obtained from single letters

Evolving Complexity and Similarity in an Artificial Life Framework based on Formal Language Theory

In this thesis, a formal framework where the evolution of biological complexity can be studied in an objective way is defined. That objectivity is due to state complexity for regular languages is used and it is a well-known and rigorous complexity measure. Such a framework is composed of a population of cyclic unary regular languages (individuals) that try to adapt to a given environment (that also consists of cyclic unary regular languages) by means of evolutionary computation