Genetic programming (GP), one of the most advanced forms of evolutionary computation, has been highly successful as a technique for getting computers to automatically solve problems without having to tell them explicitly how. Since its inceptions more than ten years ago, GP has been used to solve practical problems in a variety of application fields. Along with this ad-hoc engineering approaches interest increased in how and why GP works. This book provides a coherent consolidation of recent work on the theoretical foundations of GP. A concise introduction to GP and genetic algorithms (GA) is followed by a discussion of fitness landscapes and other theoretical approaches to natural and artificial evolution. Having surveyed early approaches to GP theory it presents new exact schema analysis, showing that it applies to GP as well as to the simpler GAs. New results on the potentially infinite number of possible programs are followed by two chapters applying these new techniques.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence, ANTS 2006, held in Brussels, Belgium, in September 2006.

The 27 revised full papers, 23 revised short papers, and 12 extended abstracts presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 115 submissions. The papers are devoted to theoretical and foundational aspects of ant algorithms, evolutionary optimization, ant colony optimization, and swarm intelligence and deal with a broad variety of optimization applications in networking, operations research, multiagent systems, robot systems, networking, etc.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Genetic Programming, EuroGP 2003, held in Essex, UK in April 2003. The 45 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 61 submissions. All current aspects of genetic programming and genetic algorithms are addressed, ranging from foundational, theoretical, and methodological issues to advanced applications in various fields.

Genetic programming (GP), one of the most advanced forms of evolutionary computation, has been highly successful as a technique for getting computers to automatically solve problems without having to tell them explicitly how. Since its inceptions more than ten years ago, GP has been used to solve practical problems in a variety of application fields. Along with this ad-hoc engineering approaches interest increased in how and why GP works. This book provides a coherent consolidation of recent work on the theoretical foundations of GP. A concise introduction to GP and genetic algorithms (GA) is followed by a discussion of fitness landscapes and other theoretical approaches to natural and artificial evolution. Having surveyed early approaches to GP theory it presents new exact schema analysis, showing that it applies to GP as well as to the simpler GAs. New results on the potentially infinite number of possible programs are followed by two chapters applying these new techniques.

This volume contains the proceedings of EuroGP 2000, the European Conf- ence on Genetic Programming, held in Edinburgh on the 15th and 16th April 2000. This event was the third in a series which started with the two European workshops: EuroGP'98, held in Paris in April 1998, and EuroGP'99, held in Gothenburg in May 1999. EuroGP 2000 was held in conjunction with EvoWo- shops 2000 (17th April) and ICES 2000 (17th-19th April). Genetic Programming (GP) is a growing branch of Evolutionary Compu- tion in which the structures in the population being evolved are computer p- grams. GP has been applied successfully to a large number of di?cult problems like automatic design, pattern recognition, robotic control, synthesis of neural networks, symbolic regression, music and picture generation, biomedical app- cations, etc. In recent years,even human-competitive results have been achieved by a number of groups. EuroGP 2000, the ?rst evolutionary computation conference of the new m- lennium, was the biggest event devoted to genetic programming to be held in Europe in 2000. It was a high quality conference where state-of-the-art work on the theory of GP and applications of GP to real world problems was presented.

The increasingly active eld of Evolutionary Computation (EC) provides val- ble tools, inspired by the theory of natural selection and genetic inheritance, to problem solving, machine learning, and optimization in many real-world app- cations. Despite some early intuitions about EC, that can be dated back to the - vention of computers, and a better formal de nition of EC, made in the 1960s, the quest for real-world applications of EC only began in the late 1980s. The dramatic increase in computer performances in the last decade of the 20th c- tury gave rise to a positive feedback process: EC techniques became more and more applicable, stimulating the growth of interest in their study, and allowing, in turn, new powerful EC paradigms to be devised. In parallel with new theoretical results, the number of elds to which EC is being applied is increasing day by day, along with the complexity of applications and application domains. In particular, industrially relevant elds, such as signal and image processing, computer vision, pattern recognition, industrial control, telecommunication, scheduling and timetabling, and aerospace engineering are employing EC techniques to solve complex real-world problems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Genetic Programming, EuroPG '99, held in Göteborg, Sweden in May 1999.The 12 revised full papers and 11 posters presented have been carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. All the relevant aspects of genetic programming are addressed ranging from traditional and foundational issues to applications in a variety of fields.

This book consitutes the refereed joint proceedings of the First European Workshop on Evolutionary Computation in Image Analysis and Signal Processing, EvoIASP '99 and of the First European Workshop on Evolutionary Telecommunications, EuroEcTel '99, held in G teborg, Sweden in May 1999. The 18 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the volume. The book presents state-of-the-art research results applying techniques from evolutionary computing in the specific application areas.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First European Workshop on Genetic Programming, EuroGP'98, held in Paris, France, in April 1998, under the sponsorship of EvoNet, the European Network of Excellence in Evolutionary Computing.
The volume presents 12 revised full papers and 10 short presentations carefully selected for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on experimental and theoretical studies; algorithms, representations and operators; and applications.

The central idea developed by the contributions to this book is that the split between analytic philosophy and phenomenology - perhaps the most impor tant schism in twentieth-century philosophy - resulted from a radicalization of reciprocal partialities. Both schools of thought share, in fact, the same cultural background and their same initial stimulus in the thought of Franz Brentano. And one outcome of the subsequent rift between them was the oblivion into which the figure and thought of Brentano have fallen. The first step to take in remedying this split is to return to Brentano and to reconstruct the 'map' of Brent ani sm. The second task (which has been addressed by this book) is to revive inter est in the theoretical complexity of Brentano' s thought and of his pupils and to revitalize those aspects that have been neglected by subsequent debate within the various movements of Brentanian inspiration. We have accordingly decided to organize the book into two introductory es says followed by two sections (Parts 1 and 2) which systematically examine Brentano's thought and that of his followers. The two introductory essays re construct the reasons for the 'invisibility', so to speak, of Brentano and set out of his philosophical doctrine. Part 1 of the book then ex the essential features amines six of Brentano's most outstanding pupils (Marty, Stumpf, Meinong, Ehrenfels, Husserl and Twardowski). Part 2 contains nine essays concentrating on the principal topics addressed by the Brentanians."

Genetic programming (GP) is a systematic, domain-independent method for getting computers to solve problems automatically starting from a high-level statement of what needs to be done. Using ideas from natural evolution, GP starts from an ooze of random computer programs, and progressively refines them through processes of mutation and sexual recombination, until high-fitness solutions emerge. All this without the user having to know or specify the form or structure of solutions in advance. GP has generated a plethora of human-competitive results and applications, including novel scientific discoveries and patentable inventions. This unique overview of this exciting technique is written by three of the most active scientists in GP. See www.gp-field-guide.org.uk for more information on the book.