Natural Computing and Beyond

This book contains the joint proceedings of the Winter School of Hakodate (WSH) 2011 held in Hakodate, Japan, March 15-16, 2011, and the 6th International Workshop on Natural Computing (6th IWNC) held in Tokyo, Japan, March 28-30, 2012, organized by the Special Interest Group of Natural Computing (SIG-NAC), the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI). This volume compiles refereed contributions to various aspects of natural computing, ranging from computing with slime mold, artificial chemistry, eco-physics, and synthetic biology, to computational aesthetics.