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The purpose of this paper is to review computational techniques that differ from the familiar “von Neumann” or “Turing” model. The review is prompted by an issue of ERCIM News in which a variety of current projects is reviewed, but attention is also given to earlier computational schemes that were important in the development of cybernetic ideas. The early work was aimed at simulation of biological mechanisms, but accepting neurons as complete entities. The current projects now reviewed fall under two headings, one relating to biology, but differing from the earlier studies in giving attention to internal cellular mechanisms. The other heading is quantum computing, which at first sight seems distinct from the first. Attention is drawn to a paper by Ball in 2011that narrows this apparent gap by indicating important connections between quantum physics and biology.

The aim is to review developments on the internet, especially those of general cybernetic interest.

The material from the special issue of ERCIM News refers to ongoing research that offers, in the biological context, new computing paradigms with capacity for adaptation and self‐organisation, and in the quantum context super‐fast computing and security.

In addition to the above, two‐way interaction is claimed to give fresh insight into biological mechanisms.

It is hoped this is a valuable periodic review.

The purpose of this paper is to minimize corrosion-related pollution in the environment. From the lemongrass extract (LGE), the authors selected one of the best green inhibitors.

The corrosion and inhibition of mild steel in traditional acidification solutions were estimated by electrochemical measurements. The corrosion appearance was observed with scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy micrographs and attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopy spectrum. The correlation was formed between the gained inhibition efficiency (IE)% from electrochemical measurements and certain quantum chemical parameters.

The results displayed that the IE was up to 90% when the LGE concentration was 300 ppm. The results confirmed that the theoretical experiments are very similar to the experimental observations.

For the first time, LGE was used as a cheap and safe corrosion inhibitor for mild steel corrosion in the acidification process. The mechanism of mild steel corrosion and anti-corrosion in acid solution has been suggested.

The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap between experimental and abstract‐theoretic models of reaction‐diffusion computing. Chemical reaction‐diffusion computers are amongst leading experimental prototypes in the field of unconventional and nature‐inspired computing. In the reaction‐diffusion computers, the data are represented by concentration profiles of reagents, information is transferred by propagating diffusive and phase waves, computation is implemented in interaction of the traveling patterns, and results of the computation are recorded as a final concentration profile.

The paper analyzes a possibility of co‐algebraic representation of the computation in reaction‐diffusion systems using reaction‐diffusion cellular‐automata models.

Using notions of space‐time trajectories of local domains of a reaction‐diffusion medium the logic of trajectories is built, where well‐formed formulas and their truth‐values are defined by co‐induction. These formulas are non‐well‐founded set‐theoretic objects. It is demonstrated that the logic of trajectories is a co‐algebra.

The paper uses the logic defined to establish a semantical model of the computation in reaction‐diffusion media.

The work presents the first ever attempt toward mathematical formalization of reaction‐diffusion processes and is built building up semantics of reaction‐diffusion computing. It is envisaged that the formalism produced will be used in developing programming techniques of reaction‐diffusion chemical media.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a multi‐robot solution to the problem of chemical source localization, in which a team of inexpensive, simple vehicles with short‐range, low‐power sensing, communication, and processing capabilities trace a chemical plume to its source emitter

The source localization problem is analyzed using computational fluid dynamics simulations of airborne chemical plumes. The analysis is divided into two parts consisting of two large experiments each: the first part focuses on the issues of collaborative control, and the second part demonstrates how task performance is affected by the number of collaborating robots. Each experiment tests a key aspect of the problem, e.g. effects of obstacles, and defines performance metrics that help capture important characteristics of each solution.

The new empirical simulations confirmed previous theoretical predictions: a physics‐based approach is more effective than the biologically inspired methods in meeting the objectives of the plume‐tracing mission. This gain in performance is consistent across a variety of plume and environmental conditions. This work shows that high success rate can be achieved by robots using strictly local information and a fully decentralized, fault‐tolerant, and reactive control algorithm.

This is the first paper to compare a physics‐based approach against the leading alternatives for chemical plume tracing under a wide variety of fluid conditions and performance metrics. This is also the first presentation of the algorithms showing the specific mechanisms employed to achieve superior performance, including the underlying fluid and other physics principles and their numerical implementation, and the mechanisms that allow the practitioner to duplicate the outstanding performance of this approach under conditions of many robots navigating through obstacle‐dense environments.

Partially‐decoupled upwind‐based total‐variation‐diminishing (TVD) finite‐difference schemes for the solution of the conservation laws governing two‐dimensional non‐equilibrium vibrationally relaxing and chemically reacting flows of thermally‐perfect gaseous mixtures are presented. In these methods, a novel partially‐decoupled flux‐difference splitting approach is adopted. The fluid conservation laws and species concentration and vibrational energy equations are decoupled by means of a frozen flow approximation. The resulting partially‐decoupled gas‐dynamic and thermodynamic subsystems are then solved alternately in a lagged manner within a time marching procedure, thereby providing explicit coupling between the two equation sets. Both time‐split semi‐implicit and factored implicit flux‐limited TVD upwind schemes are described. The semi‐implicit formulation is more appropriate for unsteady applications whereas the factored implicit form is useful for obtaining steady‐state solutions. Extensions of Roe's approximate Riemann solvers, giving the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the fully coupled systems, are used to evaluate the numerical flux functions. Additional modifications to the Riemann solutions are also described which ensure that the approximate solutions are not aphysical. The proposed partially‐decoupled methods are shown to have several computational advantages over chemistry‐split and fully coupled techniques. Furthermore, numerical results for single, complex, and double Mach reflection flows, as well as corner‐expansion and blunt‐body flows, using a five‐species four‐temperature model for air demonstrate the capabilities of the methods.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the network structure of technology in and between different fields, as well as the evolution of their relations.

Using the patent data in Derwent Innovation Index (DII) from 1991 to 2010, this paper analyzes the co-classification of Derwent Manual Code (DMC) of patents in all technology fields. Large-scaled co-classification matrices are employed to generate the DMC co-classification networks. In addition, analyses are pursued at different levels of aggregation in four five-year windows: 1991-1995, 1996-2000, 2001-2005 and 2006-2010. Using Girvan-Newman algorithm in the clustering process, the structure transformations over time are detected.

The paper identifies the key technological knowledge in certain fields and finds out how different technological fields are connected and integrated. What is more, the dynamic evolution between networks in different time periods reveals the trend of generic technology development in the macroscopic level.

The paper investigates a large quantity of data – all the patent data in DII from 1991 to 2010 in this paper. The paper applies Girvan-Newman algorithm in the co-classification analysis and uses co-classification networks to reveal technology network structures. Evolution coincident with the realistic technological shifts can be observed.

In looking to ensure that engineers receives the recognition they deserve, the Royal Academy of Engineering, which provides a voice for Britain's engineering community, annually awards a number of medals to the very best of British engineering talent.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Five of the UK's finest engineers have won the Royal Academy of Engineering's prestigious Silver Medal for their outstanding personal contribution to British engineering. These contributions include the successful development and commercialization of Snake Arm Robots; research into “high volume” carbon fiber composite structures; helping to revolutionize the computing world through virtualization, and major developments in membrane technology, which could significantly improve the energy efficiency of industrial processes. In addition, biomedical engineer Dr Silvia Schievano has won the 2009 Sir George MacFarlane Medal from the Academy, which has been awarded for her pioneering work in engineering patient‐specific heart valves.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

Based on the US Department of Commerce′s survey data of US direct investment abroad for 1977 and 1985, this study examines the shift in global market share of US multinational manufacturing firms for the 1977‐1985 period. Consolidated global market shares of US multinationals for 26 industries are estimated for 1977 and 1985. The shift in their global market share is analysed from a perspective of three alternative, if not independent, strategic thrusts: namely, home market orientation, export orientation, and foreign production orientation. Contrary to the commonly stated claim that the competitiveness of US manufacturing firms has been declining, findings of this study indicate that, on average, US manufacturing multinationals have maintained global market share on a consolidated basis fairly well.

The parallel Naples airshed model (PNAM) is a parallel software package for the numerical simulation of photosmog episodes in urban scale domains. It solves the atmospheric diffusion equations, which model the air pollution dynamics in a Eulerian approach, using a symmetric time‐splitting, where the advection is separated from the (coupled) diffusion and chemistry. Presents some results of a numerical simulation of a severe photochemical smog episode, which occurred in the Naples area. A preliminary comparison with measured data is reported, as a first step toward the validation of PNAM. Some parallel performance results, obtained on an IBM SP machine, are also shown.