Books

“Parallel and Distributed Computational Intelligence” edited by Francisco Fernández de Vega & Erick Cantú-Paz and published by Springer is out for pre-order. The first chapter “When Huge is Routine: Scaling Genetic Algorithms and Estimation of Distribution Algorithms via Data-Intensive Computing” of the book was written together with coauthors Abhishek Verma, Roy Campbell, and David E. Goldberg describing how data-intensive computing can help push the size of problems that GAs and EDAs can address. You may find the abstact of the book below. ...

A while ago, I wrote about “Publishing yourself online”. Among other solutions, Lulu, seemed to be a more traditional publishing method, with the twist you do it your self, and you can decide what kind of book you want (e-book, paperback, hardcover, etc.). The other day I was spending some cycles trying to find out if they provide LaTeX templates, and no, they are a Microsoft shop (with the option of dealing with Open Office). They, however allow you to upload PDFs, so you can also prepare manuscripts in LaTeX. I searched a bit, and run into and very useful post by Veta Project describing how to take your LaTeX document and make it Lulu friendly. Worth taking a look at it… ...

Long time delayed, I finally got a copy of The Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose. The book was originally published in 1989. Yes, I never read it from cover to back, and finally yesterday I run out of self imposed excuses and got me a copy. I guess that it was the result of listening to the Teaching Company lecture series The Phylosophy of Mind by John Searl, also falling on the same alley. Recreative reading, may be, but I am still fascinated to keep running into belivers and detractors of strong and soft AI almost 20 years after Penrose’s book was published. ...

Walking the streets of Barcelona—oops didn’t I mention I am on vacation?—I run into a bookstore near las Ramblas. Meandering around the narrow stacks, I found the newly released Catalan translation of Amélie Nothomb’s “Jornal d’Hirondelle” (Diary de l’oreneta/Diary of the swallow). The first book I read from her was “Méthaphysique des tubes”, and she got me at the first line. I need to speed up with Ulam’s autobiography—extremely addictive—so I can move on to this one. ...

Preparing the list of reading for the summer vacation, I finally got a copy of Ulam’s autobiography. Mainly know for his contribution to the Manhattan project, Stanislaw Ulam may have been one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century. Close friend to another giant—John von Newman—, Stanislaw contributions have affected a wide range of scientific disciplines. A friend recommended me this book a while ago. The book went into the must-read queue, but till yesterday it did not make it to the head :) ...