The theory of formal languages is widely accepted as the backbone of t- oretical computer science. It mainly originated from mathematics (com- natorics, algebra, mathematical logic) and generative linguistics. Later, new specializations emerged from areas ofeither computer science(concurrent and distributed systems, computer graphics, arti?cial life), biology (plant devel- ment, molecular genetics), linguistics (parsing, text searching), or mathem- ics (cryptography). All human problem solving capabilities can be considered, in a certain sense, as a manipulation of symbols and structures composed by symbols, which is actually the stem of formal language theory. Language - in its two basic forms, natural and arti?cial - is a particular case of a symbol system. This wide range of motivations and inspirations explains the diverse - plicability of formal language theory ? and all these together explain the very large number of monographs and collective volumes dealing with formal language theory. In 2004 Springer-Verlag published the volume Formal Languages and - plications, edited by C. Martin-Vide, V. Mitrana and G. P?un in the series Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing 148, which was aimed at serving as an overall course-aid and self-study material especially for PhD students in formal language theory and applications. Actually, the volume emerged in such a context: it contains the core information from many of the lectures - livered to the students of the International PhD School in Formal Languages and Applications organized since 2002 by the Research Group on Mathem- ical Linguistics from Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona, Spain."

In the last years, it was observed an increasing interest of computer scientists in the structure of biological molecules and the way how they can be manipulated in vitro in order to define theoretical models of computation based on genetic engineering tools. Along the same lines, a parallel interest is growing regarding the process of evolution of living organisms. Much of the current data for genomes are expressed in the form of maps which are now becoming available and permit the study of the evolution of organisms at the scale of genome for the first time. On the other hand, there is an active trend nowadays throughout the field of computational biology toward abstracted, hierarchical views of biological sequences, which is very much in the spirit of computational linguistics. In the last decades, results and methods in the field of formal language theory that might be applied to the description of biological sequences were pointed out.

The contributors present the main results and techniques of their specialties in an easily accessible way accompanied with many references: historical, hints for complete proofs or solutions to exercises and directions for further research. This volume contains applications which have not appeared in any collection of this type. The book is a general source of information in computation theory, at the undergraduate and research level.

Formal Languages and Applications provides a comprehensive study-aid and self-tutorial for graduates students and researchers. The main results and techniques are presented in an readily accessible manner and accompanied by many references and directions for further research. This carefully edited monograph is intended to be the gateway to formal language theory and its applications, so it is very useful as a review and reference source of information in formal language theory.

Presenting interdisciplinary research at the forefront of present advances in information technologies and their foundations, Scientific Applications of Language Methods is a multi-author volume containing pieces of work (either original research or surveys) exemplifying the application of formal language tools in several fields, including logic and discrete mathematics, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, natural computing and bioinformatics.

The conventional wisdom was that biology influenced mathematics and computer science. But a new approach has taken hold: that of transferring methods and tools from computer science to biology. The reverse trend is evident in Grammars and Automata for String Processing: From Mathematics and Computer Science to Biology and Back. The contributors address the structural (syntactical) view of the domain. Mathematical linguistics and computer science can offer various tools for modeling complex macromolecules and for analyzing and simulating biological issues. This collection is valuable for students and researchers in biology, computer science, and applied mathematics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Natural Computing, TPNC 2017, held in Dublin, Ireland, in December 2018. The 35 full papers presented in this book, together with one invited talk, were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. The papers are organized around the following topical sections: applications of natural computing as algorithms, bioinformatics, control, cryptography, design, economics. The more theoretical contributions handle with artificial chemistry, artificial immune systems, artificial life, cellular automata, cognitive computing, cognitive engineering, cognitive robotics, collective behaviour, complex systems, computational intelligence, computational social science, computing with words, developmental systems, DNA computing, DNA nanotechnology, evolutionary algorithms, evolutionary computing, evolutionary game theory, fractal geometry, fuzzy control, fuzzy logic, fuzzy sets, fuzzy systems, genetic algorithms, genetic programming, granular computing, heuristics, intelligent agents, intelligent systems, machine intelligence, molecular programming, neural computing, neural networks, quantum communication, quantum computing, rough sets, self-assembly.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Statistical Language and Speech Processing, SLSP 2018, held in Mons, Belgium, in October 2018. The 15 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 40 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: speech synthesis and spoken language generation; speech recognition and post-processing; natural language processing and understanding; and text processing and analysis.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 5th InternationalConference on Algorithms for Computational Biology, AlCoB 2018, held in Hong Kong, China, in June 2018. The 11 full papers presented together with 1 invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 20 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: Phylogenetics, Sequence Rearrangement and Analysis, Systems Biology and Other Biological Processes.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference,on Theory and Practice of Natural Computing, TPNC 2017, held in Prague, Czech Republic, December 2017. The 22 full papers presented in this book, together with one invited talk, werecarefully reviewed and selected from 39 submissions. The papers are organized around the following topical sections: applications of natural computing; evolutionary computation; fuzzy logic; Molecular computation; neural networks; quantum computing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Statistical Language and Speech Processing, SLSP 2017, held in Le Mans, France, in October 2017. The 21 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 39 submissions. The papers cover topics such as anaphora and conference resolution; authorship identification, plagiarism and spam filtering; computer-aided translation; corpora and language resources; data mining and semanticweb; information extraction; information retrieval; knowledge representation and ontologies; lexicons and dictionaries; machine translation; multimodal technologies; natural language understanding; neural representation of speech and language; opinion mining and sentiment analysis; parsing; part-of-speech tagging; question and answering systems; semantic role labeling; speaker identification and verification; speech and language generation; speech recognition; speech synthesis; speech transcription; speech correction; spoken dialogue systems; term extraction; text categorization; test summarization; user modeling. They are organized in the following sections: language and information extraction; post-processing and applications of automatic transcriptions; speech paralinguistics and synthesis; speech recognition: modeling and resources.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference, TPNC 2014, held in Granada, Spain, in December 2014. The 22 revised full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 47 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on nature-inspired models of computation; synthesizing nature by means of computation; nature-inspired materials; and information processing in nature.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference, AlCoB 2014, held in July 2014 in Tarragona, Spain.

The 20 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 39 submissions. The scope of AlCoB includes topics of either theoretical or applied interest, namely: exact sequence analysis, approximate sequence analysis, pairwise sequence alignment, multiple sequence alignment, sequence assembly, genome rearrangement, regulatory motif finding, phylogeny reconstruction, phylogeny comparison, structure prediction, proteomics: molecular pathways, interaction networks, transcriptomics: splicing variants, isoform inference and quantification, differential analysis, next-generation sequencing: population genomics, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, microbiome analysis, systems biology.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Language and Automata Theory and Applications, LATA 2013, held in Bilbao, Spain in April 2013.
The 45 revised full papers presented together with 5 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 97 initial submissions. The volume features contributions from both classical theory fields and application areas (bioinformatics, systems biology, language technology, artificial intelligence, etc.). Among the topics covered are algebraic language theory; algorithms for semi-structured data mining; algorithms on automata and words; automata and logic; automata for system analysis and program verification; automata, concurrency and Petri nets; automatic structures; cellular automata; combinatorics on words; computability; computational complexity; computational linguistics; data and image compression; decidability questions on words and languages; descriptional complexity; DNA and other models of bio-inspired computing; document engineering; foundations of finite state technology; foundations of XML; fuzzy and rough languages; grammars (Chomsky hierarchy, contextual, multidimensional, unification, categorial, etc.); grammars and automata architectures; grammatical inference and algorithmic learning; graphs and graph transformation; language varieties and semigroups; language-based cryptography; language-theoretic foundations of artificial intelligence and artificial life; parallel and regulated rewriting; parsing; pattern recognition; patterns and codes; power series; quantum, chemical and optical computing; semantics; string and combinatorial issues in computational biology and bioinformatics; string processing algorithms; symbolic dynamics; symbolic neural networks; term rewriting; transducers; trees, tree languages and tree automata; weighted automata.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference, TPNC 2012, held in Tarragona, Spain, in October 2012. The 12 revised full papers presented together with 6 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 34 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on nature-inspired models of computation; synthesizing nature by means of computation; nature-inspired materials; and information processing in nature.

Formal Languages and Applications provides a comprehensive study-aid and self-tutorial for graduates students and researchers. The main results and techniques are presented in an readily accessible manner and accompanied by many references and directions for further research. This carefully edited monograph is intended to be the gateway to formal language theory and its applications, so it is very useful as a review and reference source of information in formal language theory.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language and Automata Theory and Applications, LATA 2011, held in Tarragona, Spain in May 2011. The 36 revised full papers presented together with four invited articles were carefully selected from 91 submissions. Among the topics covered are algebraic language theory, automata and logic, systems analysis, systems verifications, computational complexity, decidability, unification, graph transformations, language-based cryptography, and applications in data mining, computational learning, and pattern recognition.

In the last years, it was observed an increasing interest of computer scientists in the structure of biological molecules and the way how they can be manipulated in vitro in order to define theoretical models of computation based on genetic engineering tools. Along the same lines, a parallel interest is growing regarding the process of evolution of living organisms. Much of the current data for genomes are expressed in the form of maps which are now becoming available and permit the study of the evolution of organisms at the scale of genome for the first time. On the other hand, there is an active trend nowadays throughout the field of computational biology toward abstracted, hierarchical views of biological sequences, which is very much in the spirit of computational linguistics. In the last decades, results and methods in the field of formal language theory that might be applied to the description of biological sequences were pointed out.

The theory of formal languages is widely accepted as the backbone of t- oretical computer science. It mainly originated from mathematics (com- natorics, algebra, mathematical logic) and generative linguistics. Later, new specializations emerged from areas ofeither computer science(concurrent and distributed systems, computer graphics, arti?cial life), biology (plant devel- ment, molecular genetics), linguistics (parsing, text searching), or mathem- ics (cryptography). All human problem solving capabilities can be considered, in a certain sense, as a manipulation of symbols and structures composed by symbols, which is actually the stem of formal language theory. Language - in its two basic forms, natural and arti?cial - is a particular case of a symbol system. This wide range of motivations and inspirations explains the diverse - plicability of formal language theory ? and all these together explain the very large number of monographs and collective volumes dealing with formal language theory. In 2004 Springer-Verlag published the volume Formal Languages and - plications, edited by C. Martin-Vide, V. Mitrana and G. P?un in the series Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing 148, which was aimed at serving as an overall course-aid and self-study material especially for PhD students in formal language theory and applications. Actually, the volume emerged in such a context: it contains the core information from many of the lectures - livered to the students of the International PhD School in Formal Languages and Applications organized since 2002 by the Research Group on Mathem- ical Linguistics from Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona, Spain."

The contributors present the main results and techniques of their specialties in an easily accessible way accompanied with many references: historical, hints for complete proofs or solutions to exercises and directions for further research. This volume contains applications which have not appeared in any collection of this type. The book is a general source of information in computation theory, at the undergraduate and research level.

These proceedings containall the papers that werepresented at the 4th Inter- tional Conference on Language and Automata Theory and Applications (LATA 2010), held in Trier, Germany, during May 24-28, 2010. The scope of LATA is rather broad, including: algebraic language theory; algorithms on automata and words; automata and logic; automata for system analysis and program veri?cation; automata, concurrency and Petri nets; cel- lar automata; combinatorics on words; computability; computational compl- ity; computer linguistics; data and image compression; decidability questions on words and languages; descriptional complexity; DNA and other models of bio-inspired computing; document engineering; foundations of ?nite state te- nology; fuzzy and rough languages; grammars (Chomsky hierarchy, contextual, multidimensional, uni?cation, categorial, etc. ); grammars and automata arc- tectures; grammatical inference and algorithmic learning; graphs and graph transformation; language varieties and semigroups; language-based cryptog- phy; language-theoretic foundations of arti?cial intelligence and arti?cial life; neuralnetworks;parallelandregulatedrewriting;parsing;patternmatching and pattern recognition; patterns and codes; power series; quantum, chemical and optical computing; semantics; string and combinatorial issues in computational biology and bioinformatics; symbolic dynamics; term rewriting; text algorithms; textretrieval;transducers;trees, treelanguagesandtreemachines;andweighted machines. LATA 2010 received 115 submissions, many among them of good quality. Each one was reviewed by at least three Program Committee members plus, in mostcases, byadditionalexternalreferees. Afterathoroughandvividdiscussion phase, the committee decided to accept 47 papers (which means an acceptance rate of 40. 86%). The conference program also included four invited talk

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Language and Automata Theory and Applications, LATA 2009, held in Tarragona, Spain, in April 2009.

The 58 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited lectures and two tutorials were carefully reviewed and selected from 121 submissions. The papers address all the various issues related to automata theory and formal languages.

These proceedings contain most of the papers that werepresented at the Second International Conference on Language and Automata Theory and Applications (LATA 2008), held in Tarragona, Spain, during March 13-19, 2008. The scope of LATA is rather broad, including: words, languages and - tomata; grammars (Chomsky hierarchy, contextual, multidimensional, uni?- tion, categorial, etc. );grammarsandautomataarchitectures;extendedautomata; combinatorics on words; language varieties and semigroups; algebraic language theory; computability; computational, descriptional, and parameterized c- plexity;decidability questions onwordsandlanguages;patterns andcodes;s- bolic dynamics; regulated rewriting; trees, tree languages and tree machines; term rewriting; graphs and graph transformation; power series; fuzzy and rough languages; cellular automata; DNA and other models of bio-inspired comp- ing; quantum, chemical and optical computing; biomolecular nanotechnology; automata and logic; algorithms on automata and words; automata for s- tem analysis and program veri?cation; automata, concurrency and Petri nets; parsing; weighted machines; transducers; foundations of ?nite state technology; grammatical inference and algorithmic learning; text retrieval, pattern mat- ing and pattern recognition; text algorithms; string and combinatorial issues in computationalbiologyandbioinformatics;mathematicalevolutionarygenomics; language-based cryptography; data and image compression; circuits and n- works; language-theoretic foundations of arti?cial intelligence and arti?cial life; digital libraries; and document engineering. LATA 2008 received 134 submissions. Each of them was reviewed by at least three Program Committee members plus, in most cases, by additional external referees. After a thorough and vivid evaluation phase the committee decided to accept 40 papers (which means an acceptance rate of 29. 85%

This volume is based on papers presented at the Workshop on Membrane Computing, WMC 2003, which took place in Tarragona, Spain, in the - riod July 17-July 22, 2003. This was the Fourth Annual Membrane Computing Workshop, and the ?rst one held outside Romania. The ?rst three meetings were organized in Curtea de Arge, s, Romania - they took place in August 2000 (with the proceedings published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2235), in August 2001 (with a selection of papers published as a special issue of F- damenta Informaticae, Vol. 49, Nos. 1-3, 2002), and in August 2002 (with the proceedings published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2597). The 2003 workshop was the second workshop of the Molecular Computing Network (MolCoNet) funded by the EU Commission in the Fifth Framework Program Information Society Technologies (project number IST-2001-32008). The preproceedings of WMC 2003 were published as Technical Report 28/03 of theResearchGrouponMathematicalLinguisticsfromRoviraiVirgiliUniversity, Tarragona, and they were available during the workshop.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Natural Computing, TPNC 2021, held virtually, in December 2021. The 9 full papers presented together with 3 invited talks, in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 14 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections named Applications of Natural Computing, Deep Learning and Transfer Learning, Evolutionary and Swarm Algorithms.