@article {691, title = {A quick introduction to membrane computing}, journal = {Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming}, volume = {79}, year = {2010}, month = {08/2010}, pages = {291-294}, publisher = {Elsevier B.V.}, address = {North Holland}, abstract = {Membrane computing is a branch of natural computing inspired from the architecture and the functioning of biological cells. The obtained computing models are distributed parallel devices, called P systems, processing multisets of objects in the compartments defined by hierarchical or more general arrangements of membranes. Many classes of P systems were investigated {\textendash} mainly from the point of view of computing power and computing efficiency; also, a series of applications (especially in modeling biological processes) were reported. This note is a short and informal introduction to this research area, introducing a few basic notions, research topics, types of results, and pointing out to some relevant references.}, keywords = {Natural computing; Membrane computing; P system; Turing computability}, issn = {1567-8326}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jlap.2010.04.002}, url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL\&_udi=B6VBS-516Y4T5-3\&_user=603129\&_coverDate=10\%2F11\%2F2010\&_rdoc=1\&_fmt=high\&_orig=search\&_origin=search\&_sort=d\&_docanchor=\&view=c\&_acct=C000031118\&_version=1\&_urlVersion=0\&_userid=603129\&md5=9e594779e}, author = {Gheorghe Paun} }