Artificial Immune Systems and Their Applications [Paperback]

This is a pioneering work on the emerging field of artificial immune systems-highly distributed systems based on the principles of the natural system. Like artificial neural networks, artificial immune systems can learn new information and recall previously learned information. This book provides an overview of artificial immune systems, explaining its applications in areas such as immunological memory, anomaly detection algorithms, and modeling the effects of prior infection on vaccine efficacy.Artificial immune systems are highly distributed systems based on the principles of the natural system. This is a new and rapidly growing field offering powerful and robust information processing capabilities for solving complex problems. Like artificial neural networks, artificial immune systems can learn new information, recall previously learned information, and perform pattern recognition in a highly decentralized fashion. This volume provides an overview of the immune system from the computational viewpoint. It discusses computational models of the immune system and their applications, and provides a wealth of insights on immunological memory and the effects of viruses in immune response. It will be of professional interest to scientists, academics, vaccine designers, and practitioners.An Overview of Artificial Immune Systems and Their Applications.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Computational Aspects of the Immune System.- 3 The Nervous System and the Immune System.- 4 Immune System Based Models.- 5 Some Applications of Artificial Immune Systems.- 6 Summary.- References.- The Endogenous Double Plasticity of the Immune Network and the Inspiration to be Drawn for Engineering Artifacts.- 1 Introduction.- 2 An Elementary Immune Network and the Basic Principles to be Obeyed by a Double Plastic Adaptive System.- 3 The Endogenous Double Plasticity in Neural Net Classifiers.- 4 The Endogenous Double Plasticity in Autonomous Agents Learning by Reinforcement.- 5 The Endogenous Double Plastlc§