Multisets are the fundamental data structure of P systems [12]. In this paper we relate P systems with the language and theory for multisets presented in [5]. This allows us, on the one hand, to define and implement P systems using multiset constraints in a constraint logic programming framework, and, on the other hand, to define and implement constraint solving procedures used to test multiset...

A current research topic in membrane computing is to find more realistic P systems from a biological point of view, and one target in this respect is to relax the condition of using the rules in a maximally parallel way. We contribute in this paper to this issue by considering the minimal parallelism of using the rules: if at least a rule from a set of rules associated with a membrane or a regi...

Several algorithms of maximum search are investigated and evaluated in different types of P systems, namely using priorities, multiple nested membranes and linked transport. The proposed solutions are expected to find application in a wide range of problems. In particular, the authors are currently working on modeling an algorithm for DNA sequence alignment using P systems.

In computational processes based on backwards chaining, a rule of the type A ← B1, . . . , Bn is seen as a procedure which points that the problem A can be split into the problems B1, . . . , Bn. In classical devices, the subproblems B1, . . . , Bn are solved sequentially. In this paper we present some questions that circulated during the Second Brainstorming Week related to the application of ...

We consider here spiking neural P systems with a non-synchronized (i.e., asynchronous) use of rules: in any step, a neuron can apply or not apply its rules which are enabled by the number of spikes it contains (further spikes can come, thus changing the rules enabled in the next step). Because the time between two firings of the output neuron is now irrelevant, the result of a computation is th...

In this paper, the authors propose a new approach to fully asynchronous P systems, and a matching complexity measure, both inspired from the field of distributed algorithms. The authors validate the proposed approach by implementing several well-known distributed depth-first search (DFS) and breadth-first search (BFS) algorithms. Empirical results show that the proposed P algorithms have shorte...

Searching all the configurations C′ such that produce a given configuration C, or, in other words, computing backwards in Membrane Computing is an extremely hard task. The current approximations are based in heavy hand-made calculus by considering the specific features of the given configuration. In this paper we present a general method for characterizing all the configurations C′ such that pr...

One of the main ideas of membrane systems as introduced by Gheorghe Păun in [7] is the distributed way of computation in the different membrane regions of a membrane system. On the other hand, even for the original variant of membrane systems using catalysts it has been shown that all computations can be carried out in only one single membrane for getting computational completeness (see [3]). U...

The field of peer-to-peer reputation systems has exploded in the last few years. Our goal is to organize existing ideas and work to facilitate system design. We present a taxonomy of reputation system components, their properties, and discuss how user behavior and technical constraints can conflict. In our discussion, we describe research that exemplifies compromises made to deliver a useable, ...

This Report characterizes the performance of peer-to-peer storage systems in terms of the delivered data lifetime and data availability. Two schemes for recovering lost data are modeled and analyzed: the first is centralized and relies on a server that recovers multiple losses at once, whereas the second is distributed and recovers one loss at a time. For each scheme, we propose a basic Markovi...