Special Issue:
Complex dynamics, simple rules: the power of cellular automata
Article type: Editorial
Extended summary
Cellular automata (CA) means science of complexity but also conceptual simplicity, easiness of implementation for computer simulation, and versatility to describe a wide variety of amazingly complex behavior. With this special issue, we encourage researchers from different areas to propose works exhibiting how complex or sometimes counter-intuitive phenomena are the result of simple local dynamics that can be reproduced with a not so sophisticated CA approach and using basic programming commands that are easy to understand even for non-expert users.
CA is one of the oldest models of natural computing, used by John von Neumann, around the 1940s, motivated by the analysis of biological systems and dealing with self-replication in order to provide a reductionist theory of biological development. In the early 1960s, E.F. Moore and Myhill demonstrated the Garden-of-Eden theorems that establish the conditions for the existence of patterns that cannot appear on the CA lattice except as initial conditions. In 1970 the mathematician John Conway presented his game Life, probably the most popular automaton ever, and one of the simplest computational models ever proved to be a universal computer.
In the 1980s, Stephen Wolfram worked in a series of articles where he explored in depth the one-dimensional CA, providing the first qualitative taxonomy of its behavior and laying the foundations for future research. This effort represented a great contribution that placed the growing community of CA followers on the scientific map.
During the years that followed, up to date, CA have been applied in modeling different areas. Among many others, some of them are:
In fact, CA's are extremely useful idealizations of the dynamic behavior of many real systems. The reason lies in the fact that in nature many processes are governed by local and homogeneous underlying rules. Being abstract, CA can be described in purely mathematical terms and implemented using physical structures equipping us therefore with an easy and surprising tool to study of pattern formation, from the shell on the beach of the sea, passing through the skin of a lizard in the desert, and up to the sublime beauty of a snowflake structure. As M. Gardner stated, “to play life you must have a fairly large checkerboard and a plentiful supply of flat counters of two colors. It is possible to work with pencil and graph paper but it is much easier, particularly for beginners, to use counters and a board.”
We address this call for the special edition of the journal to the growing number of researchers from all sciences willing to study complexity in the pure abstract CA setting. We wish that this work can be a small step further than the infinite path for understanding the nature of complexity seen in the our life and world using such programs for the purposes of modeling.
We would like to thank in advance all the authors for their contributions in all the different topics in which a CA model could provide impactful solutions.
ESR Journal Special Issue Editorial Board
Managing / Lead Editor
Luca Meacci
Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação
Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Co-Lead Editor
Mario Primicerio
Dipartimento di Matematica ¨U. Dini¨
Universirsità degli Studi di Firenze, Italy
Juan Carlos Nuño
Departamento de Matemática Aplicada
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Gustavo Carlos Buscaglia
Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação
Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Débora de Oliveira Medeiros
Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação
Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Irineu Lopes Palhares Junior
Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação
Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Vincenzo di Bari
Division of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics, School of Biosciences/Faculty of Science
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Andrea Ceretani
Escuela de Ciencia y Tecnología
Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina
Fernando Mut
Department of Bioengineering
George Mason University, United States
Angiolo Farina
Dipartimento di Matematica ¨U. Dini¨
Universirsità degli Studi di Firenze, Italy
Gujji Murali Mohan Reddy
Department of Mathematics
Birla Institute of Technology & Science, India
Submission process
6 months in Rolling submission, that is the papers can be submitted and published one by one once they has been accepted.