                         TIERRA UPDATE
		           July 1994:

This message contains:

0)  Network initiative
1)  Tierra moves to ATR in Japan
2)  New manuscripts available
3)  Upcoming Tierra lectures
4)  Change of address for Virtual Life
5)  Tierra video animation
6)  Tierra publications
7)  Tierra in the news 1993
8)  Tierra ftp access
9)  Mailing lists
10) What Tierra Is

0) Network initiative

     The concept for the network initiative is described in the following
manuscript which is available by ftp:

Ray, T. S.  Accepted.  A proposal to create a network-wide biodiversity
reserve for digital organisms.  For oral presentation at Artificial Life
IV conference.  In ftp site as reserves.tex

     If you do not have ftp access, let me know and I will mail you the
manuscript.

     Let me make some comments in response to frequently asked questions:

     The network system is still in the development and testing stage,
so is not ready for distribution yet.  It will initially be developed for
unix systems, and perhaps later for other platforms.  The Tierra system
will be run as a low priority background process, and so will only soak
up CPU cycles not being otherwise used by the users of the node.  Thus
the network Tierra should have a minimal impact on the performance of
the nodes where it is installed.

     Although we ask for a long term commitment by those who choose to
participate, this does not mean that the Tierra process must run continuously
for long periods.  The Tierra process on any particular node may be brought
up and down whenever it is suitable to the users of the node (the Tierran
creatures will experience down-time as a local catastrophe).  Participating
nodes must be connected to the net, but presumably any kind of connection
will be suitable, including intermittent.  We will have to deal with special
cases as they arise.

     I have received a lot of interest from people who have Macs or PCs at
home, who connect to the net via modem.  In theory, this is fine, and
adds interesting temporal-topological properties to the environment of
the digital biodiversity reserve.  However, the system will initially be
developed for unix with continuous network connections, and only after we
have fully tested and deployed the unix version will we look at including
Macs and PCs.

1) Tierra moves to ATR in Japan

     The Tierra project has emerged from a one year period of dormancy,
and has moved to the new Evolutionary Systems Department headed by
Katsunori Shimohara, in the Human Information Processing Research
Laboratories of ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute
International).  ATR is located in the new Kansai Science City, near
Nara and Kyoto.

     Tom Ray came to ATR as an invited researcher on August 8, 1993,
and is on a two year leave of absence from the University of Delaware.
Current email is ray@hip.atr.co.jp, ray@udel.edu is forwarded.
Kurt Thearling joined ATR as a research affiliate on November 1, 1993.
Kurt remains an employee of Thinking Machines, but will be working on
the Tierra project at ATR until April 1994.  Email is kurt@hip.atr.co.jp,
kurt@think.com is forwarded.

     The primary objective of the Tierra project for the coming months
will be to experiment with the evolution of multi-cellular digital
organisms, which are parallel processes.

      Several other evolutionary projects are also underway in the
 Evolutionary Systems Department at ATR as follows:

 - CAM-Brain project aiming at growing/evolving an artificial brain, which
   contain thousands of interconnected artificial neural network modules,
   inside special hardware called Cellular Automata Machines.
   Hugo de Garis, degaris@hip.atr.co.jp

 - Emergent Intelligence project modeling intelligence as a non-linear
   developmental process from genotype to phenotype, under the influence
   of the environment.  Jari Vaario, jari@hip.atr.co.jp

 - EgoWare (Evolutionary Generator of Genome in Hardware) project aiming
   at self-producing hardware-description programs by evolving
   HDL (Hardware Description Language) production rules and derivation
   trees.  Hitoshi Hemmi, hemmi@hip.atr.co.jp and Junichi Mizoguchi,
   mizo@hip.atr.co.jp

 - Learning methods for modularized neural networks with evolvability
   aiming at developing an autonomous system consisting of heterogeneous
   neural network modules.  Sung-Bae Cho, sbcho@hip.atr.co.jp

 - Computational evolutionary biology, Kennosuke Wada, kwada@hip.atr.co.jp

 - Chaotic information processing, Yukio Hayashi, yhayashi@hip.atr.co.jp
   and Masaaki Sato, masaaki@hip.atr.co.jp

 - Alife and music, Seiji Adachi, adachi@hip.atr.co.jp and
   Hiroyuki Ohtsuki ohtsuki@hip.atr.co.jp

     Additional foreign researchers will be joining the department next
year to extend these projects to evolutionary robotics and molecular
computers.

2) New manuscripts available

     Several new manuscripts have been written, and are listed with
the Tierra publications below.  The most important manuscripts have
also been placed in the Tierra ftp site (see section 8 below).  These
manuscripts are in the /doc directory of the ftp site.  The one in
the journal Artificial Life is available as the file Zen.tex or Zen.ps.
The one in press at Physica D is available as the file PhysicaD.tex or
PhysicaD.ps.  The one with Thearling, to be presented and published at
the fourth Artificial Life conference is available as multi_cell.ps and
multi_cell.ps.gz.  The one on the biodiversity reserve for digital
organisms is available as reserves.tex.  Unfortunately some of these
manuscripts include a figures which are not available electronically.

3) Upcoming Tierra lectures

International Institute for Advanced Study, Kansai Science City,
August 22-24, 1994,contact: katsu@hip.atr.co.jp

From Perception to Action, Lausanne, Switzerland, September 7--9, 1994
contact: Eduardo Sanchez eduardo@lslsun.epfl.ch

Seminar on Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Life;
Systems Control and Information Society, Osaka, Japan, September 29--30, 1994
contact: Katsu Shimohara katsu@hip.atr.co.jp

Seminar on Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Life;
Systems Control and Information Society, Tokyo, Japan, October 4--5, 1994
contact: Katsu Shimohara katsu@hip.atr.co.jp

Bionomics Conference, San Francisco, October 20-21, 1994
contact: bionomix@well.sf.ca.us

BIO Japan, Osaka, December 1, 1994

4) Change of address for Virtual Life

     The mailing address of Virtual Life has been changed to:

Virtual Life
25631 Jorgensen Rd.
Newman, CA 95360
USA

     Virtual Life provides the Tierra software on disk for those who
can not get it by ftp.

5) Tierra video animation

     The Santa Fe Institute has produced a thirteen minute promotional
video, which includes a roughly five minute segment discussing the
Tierra research project.  The Tierra segment is illustrated with a
very high quality animation produced by the Anti Gravity Workshop
in Santa Monica, CA.  The video was produced and directed by Linda
Feferman.  To obtain the video, contact the Santa Fe Institute:

Santa Fe Institute
1660 Old Pecos Trail, Suite A
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
phone: 505-984-8800
fax:   505-982-0565
email: email@santafe.edu

or contact Linda Feferman:  fef@santafe.edu or 0005851689@mcimail.com

Linda is editing a new version of the video which will just be about
Tierra.  It will include some footage and animation that was not
included in the Santa Fe Institute video.

6) Tierra Publications

Ray, T. S.  1991.  Is it alive, or is it GA?
{\it In} : Belew, R. K., and L. B. Booker [eds.], Proceedings of the 1991
International Conference on Genetic Algorithms, 527--534.  San Mateo, CA:
Morgan Kaufmann.

Ray, T. S.  1991.  An approach to the synthesis of life.
{\it In} : Langton, C., C. Taylor, J. D. Farmer, \& S. Rasmussen [eds],
Artificial Life II, Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of
Complexity, vol. XI, 371--408.  Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley.

Ray, T. S.  1991.  Population dynamics of digital organisms.
{\it In} : Langton, C. G. [ed.], Artificial Life II Video Proceedings.
Redwood City, CA: Addison Wesley.

Ray, T. S.  1991.  Evolution and optimization of digital
organisms.  {\it In} : Billingsley K. R., E. Derohanes, H. Brown, III [eds.],
Scientific Excellence in Supercomputing: The IBM 1990 Contest Prize Papers,
Athens, GA, 30602: The Baldwin Press, The University of Georgia.  Publication
date: December 1991, Pp. 489--531.

Ray, T. S.  1992.  Evolution, ecology and optimization of
digital organisms.  Santa Fe Institute working paper 92-08-042.
In ftp site as tierra.tex.

Ray, T. S.  1992.  J'ai jou\'{e} \`{a} Dieu et cr\'{e}\'{e}
la vie dans mon ordinateur.  Le Temps strat\'{e}gique 47: 68--81.

Ray, T. S.  1993.  Quando giocavo a essere Dio.  Virtual
(Italian magazine), December 1993, 1(4): 40--46.

Ray, T. S.  1994.  An evolutionary approach to synthetic biology:
Zen and the art of creating life.  Artificial Life 1(1/2): 195--226
In ftp site as Zen.tex and Zen.ps

Ray, T. S.  1994.  Artificial life and real computation.
IPSJ-SIGAI Notes (Artificial Intelligence committee of the Information
Processing Society of Japan) 94--AI--93 94(20): 31--38.

Ray, T. S.  In press.  Evolution and complexity.  {\it In}:
Cowan, George A., David Pines and David Metzger [eds.],
Complexity: Metaphor and Reality.  Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.

Ray, T. S.  In press.  Jugu\'{e} a ser Dios y cre\'{e} la
vida en mi computadora.  {\it In}: Claudio Guti\'{e}rrez [ed],
Epistemolog\'{i}a e Inform\'{a}tica.  San Jos\'{e}, Costa Rica:
UNED, 1993.

Ray, T. S.  In press.  Evolution, complexity, entropy, and artificial reality.
Physica D 75: 239--263.  In ftp site as PhysicaD.tex and PhysicaD.ps

Thearling, Kurt, and Ray, T. S.  In press.  Evolving multi-cellular
artificial life.  Artificial Life IV conference proceedings.
In ftp site as multi_cell.ps and multi_cell.ps.gz.

Ray, T. S.  In press.  Biological models of evolution:
simulation and instantiation.  Proceedings of the 1992 Summer School on
Environmental Dynamics, Istitute Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti,
Venice, Italy.

Ray, T. S.  In press.  Evolution of parallel processes in organic and
digital media.  ``Natural and Artificial Parallel Computation'',
David Waltz, [ed.].  SIAM Press, Philadelphia, 1994.

Ray, T. S.  Accepted.  How I created life in a virtual universe.
Natural History Magazine, American Museum of Natural History.
In ftp site as create.tex and create.ps.

Ray, T. S.  Accepted.  A proposal to create a network-wide biodiversity
reserve for digital organisms.  For oral presentation at Artificial Life
IV conference.  In ftp site as reserves.tex

7) Tierra in the News 1993

The Tierra Simulator continues to be widely reported in the media.  Below
is a list of most of the national or international reports that I am aware
of for the 1993 calendar year and beyond.  If you know of some news report
not on this list, please send me a hard copy.

Science (Faye Flam, USA) May 20, 1994: ``Ecologist plans to let
cyberlife run wild in internet reserve.''

The Economist (Anonymous, UK) May 14, 1994: ``Netlife''.

The Daily Telegraph (Roger Highfield, UK) June 14, 1993: ``Life, but not
as we know it.  An American academic has developed a computer program
that successfully simulates Darwinian evolution, natural selection and
all.''

New Scientist (Roger Lewin, Melanie Mitchell, Jacqueline McGlade, UK)
February 13, 1993: ``Complexity, New Scientist Supplement.  Order
for free (Standing at the edge of chaos).  Alternate ecologies.
Imitation of life.''

Pacific Discovery (Gordy Slack, USA) Summer 1994: ``Virtual Evolution''.

U.S. News \& World Report (Karen F. Schmidt, US) May 3, 1993: ``Computing
the primordial ooze.  Scientists are modeling the origins of life.''

Maclean's (Mark Nichols, Canada) June 7, 1993: ``Compelling signs of
artificial life.  Digital `creatures' that clone themselves may
really be alive.''

Computer Graphics World (Diana Phillips Mahoney, US) July 1993:
``That's Life.''

Computer Graphics World (Diana Phillips Mahoney, US) February 1993:
``Artificial Life, organisms and systems created in the computer
exhibit behaviors characteristic of natural evoltuion.''

PC Magazine (Michael J. Miller, US) May 25, 1993: ``It's Alive!  Lots
of computer users give funny names to their computers.  But did you
ever stop to think that your computer programs might actually be alive?''

Focus (John Browning, UK) March 1993: ``It's life, but not as we know it...
How close is technology to creating artificial life.''

Scientific American - Japanese edition (Katsunori Shimohara, Japan)
October 1993: ``Ultimate autonomy, artificial life.''

Monthly Journal of Science, Kagaku Asahi (Tatsuo Unemi, Japan),
November 1993: ``Reproduction logic of computer viruses.''

Semanario Universidad (Eduardo Ramirez F., Costa Rica) June 16, 1993:
``Un creador de vida en computadoras.''

Esta Semana (G. Aburto and J. C. Cruz, Costa Rica) May 18--24, 1993:
``Un programa de computadora devela los misterios del origen de
la vida y la evoluci\'on.''

Courrier International (Der Spiegel, France) August 19, 1993: ``La vie
artificielle, ou les `adventistes du Huiti\`{e}me Jour'.''

Helsingin Sanomat (Timo Paukku, Finland) March 27, 1993:
``Tekoel\"{a}m\"{a}n evoluutio etenee sekunneissa.  Voidaanko uusia
lajeja tuotta my\"{o}s s\"{a}hk\"{o}ll\"{a} ja piisiruilla?
Pikaevoluutio synnytti tuhansia lajeja, loisia ja seksin.''

8) Tierra ftp access

     The Tierra V4.0 source code; and the source code, and DOS executables
of all tools; and documentation and manuscripts is available.  Please
note that the source code in the ftp site and the source code provided on
disk will each compile and run on either DOS or UNIX platforms.  It is
exactly the same source code in either case.  The DOS executables are
available only on disk (available from Virtual Life), and can not be
freely distributed.

     The complete source code and documentation (but not executables) is
available by anonymous ftp at:

tierra.slhs.udel.edu [128.175.41.34] and
  life.slhs.udel.edu [128.175.41.33]

the file: tierra/tierra.tar.Z

To get it, ftp to tierra or life, log in as user ``anonymous'' and give your
ema il address (eg. tom@udel.edu) as a password.  Change to the tierra
directory and get tierra.tar.Z, a compressed tar file.  Be sure to transfer
in binary mode.  It will expand into the complete directory structure with
the following commands (Unix only):

uncompress tierra.tar.Z
tar oxvf tierra.tar

     The contents of the ftp site described above are mirrored in another
ftp site: alife.santafe.edu in the directory: pub/SOFTWARE/Tierra

9) Mailing Lists

     There are two mailing lists for Tierra users.  The first list is for
people who only want to get the official announcements, updates and bug-fixes.
The other will carry the official postings, and are intended for discussion
of Tierra by users.  This one is distributed in digest form, when there is
enough material.  The lists are:

tierra-announce    official updates, patches and announcements only
tierra-digest      discussion, updates, etc. (digest form)

The addresses are: 

tierra-request@life.slhs.udel.edu   the list administrator (Tom Uffner). to
                                    be added, removed, or complain about
                                    problems with any of these lists.

tierra-digest@life.slhs.udel.edu    to post to the list.

tierra-bug@life.slhs.udel.edu       for bug-reports or questions about the
                                    code or installation.

     You may also be interested in the Artificial Life mailing list.
Subscribe to the list by sending a message to:

alife-request@cognet.ucla.edu

     Post to the list by sending a message to:

alife@cognet.ucla.edu

10) What Tierra Is

     The C source code creates a virtual computer and its operating system,
whose architecture has been designed in such a way that the executable
machine codes are evolvable.  This means that the machine code can be mutated
(by flipping bits at random) or recombined (by swapping segments of code
between algorithms), and the resulting code remains functional enough of the
time for natural (or presumably artificial) selection to be able to improve
the code over time.

     Along with the C source code which generates the virtual computer, we
provide several programs written in the assembler code of the virtual
computer.  Some of these were written by a human and do nothing more than make
copies of themselves in the RAM of the virtual computer.  The others evolved
from the first, and are included to illustrate the power of natural selection.

     The operating system of the virtual computer provides memory management
and timesharing services.  It also provides control for a variety of factors
that affect the course of evolution: three kinds of mutation rates,
disturbances, the allocation of CPU time to each creature, the size of the
soup, etc.  In addition, the operating system provides a very elaborate
observational system that keeps a record of births and deaths, sequences
the code of every creature, and maintains a genebank of successful genomes.
The operating system also provides facilities for automating the ecological
analysis, that is, for recording the kinds of interactions taking place
between creatures.

     This system results in the production of synthetic organisms based on
a computer metaphor of organic life in which CPU time is the ``energy''
resource and memory is the ``material'' resource.  Memory is organized into
informational patterns that exploit CPU time for self-replication.  Mutation
generates new forms, and evolution proceeds by natural selection as different
genotypes compete for CPU time and memory space.

     Diverse ecological communities have emerged.  These digital communities
have been used to experimentally examine ecological and evolutionary
processes: e.g., competitive exclusion and coexistence, host/parasite density
dependent population regulation, the effect of parasites in enhancing
community diversity, evolutionary arms race, punctuated equilibrium, and the
role of chance and historical factors in evolution.  This evolution in a
bottle may prove to be a valuable tool for the study of evolution and ecology.

				Tom Ray
