This volume aims to provide a state-of-the-art of the work recently done, by some relevant Spanish Research Groups, in the area of nets of processors

De la Cruz Echeandía, Marina

Ortega de la Puente, Alfonso

Revistes Publicacions URV (Universitat Rovira i Virgili)

Preface to the volume Languages: BioinspiredApproachesGemma Bel-EnguixLanguages, whether they be natural or artificial, are particular cases of asymbol system. And the manipulation of symbols is the stem of formallanguage theory. The theory of formal languages mainly originated frommathematics and generative linguistics. It was born in the middle of the20th century as a tool for modelling and investigating the syntax of naturallanguages. After 1964, it developed as a separate branch with specific prob-lems, techniques and results and since then it has had an important role inthe field of computer science. Formal language theory, due to its abstractand formal properties, has been applied to a wide range of fields (besidesinitial linguistic motivation): economic modelling, developmental biology,cryptography, sociology... Therefore, natural languages, computer scienceand formal languages had a mutual influence over the years.During the 20th century, biology became a pilot science, and many dis-ciplines have formulated their theories using models taken from nature.Bio-informatics, bio-engineering and bio-linguistics are good examples ofthis pre-eminence of ’bio’-sciences. Computer science has almost becomeanother bio-inspired field thanks to the considerable development of natu-ral computing and DNA computing.Following this tradition of interaction between biology and computerscience, the articles in this volume present bioinspired approaches to formallanguage therory. Artion Alhazov and his co-author Tseren-Onolt IshdorjTriangle: Language, Literature, Computation,  n. 6, 2011 Publicacions Universitat Rovira i Virgili · ISSN: 2013-939X https://revistes.urv.cat/index.php/triangleXIV Gemma Bel-Enguixdevelop some aspects of Membrane Computing in the first two papers ofthe journal. Membranes are also the central topic of Mihai Ionescu’s contri-bution, that introduces P Systems with promoted/inhibited rules and traces.Adria-Horia Dediu presents some applications of evolutionary algorithmsto formal languages. María Dolores Jiménez-López applies one of the mainprocesses in DNA, recombination, to formalize some patterns in syntax ofnatural languages. The paper by Remco Loos and Benedek Nagy explainssome concepts of parallelism in DNA computing. Finally, the contributionby K.G. Subramanian, Mary Roslin and P. Helen Chandra is focused in thedescription of splicing for bidimensional languages.The work that is published in this volume has been been previouslypresented and discussed in the weekly seminars that the GRLMC organizedduring several years. The authors have improved and updated articles thatprovide new ideas, tools and formalisms which can help to the description,analyis and processing of natural and artificial languages.I am deeply grateful to all the contributors, for their professional andfriendly cooperation, and to the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, for supportingthe publication of this issue.TRIANGLE 6 • December 2011

Preface to the volume Languages: Bionspired Approaches

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Revistes Publicacions URV (Universitat Rovira i Virgili)