4 Algorithms We Borrowed from Nature

We use algorithms every day for things like image searches, predictive text, and securing sensitive data. Algorithms show up all over nature, too, in places like your immune system and schools of fish, and computer scientists have learned a lot from studying them. Here are four ways our technology has improved thanks to algorithms we swiped from nature!

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Sources:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/algorithm
https://www.pnas.org/content/108/46/18726
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-00267-0_9
Fly hashing:
https://www.slaney.org/malcolm/yahoo/Slaney2008-LSHTutorial.pdf
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6364/793
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2017/11/09/358.6364.793.DC1
https://medium.com/@jaiyamsharma/efficient-nearest-neighbors-inspired-by-the-fruit-fly-brain-6ef8fed416ee
Object recognition:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361841517301135 (open copy at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.05747.pdf)
https://dev.to/clarifai/what-convolutional-neural-networks-look-at-when-they-see-nudity
http://www.cse.iitm.ac.in/~vplab/courses/CV_DIP/PDF/Feature_Detectors_and_Descriptors.pdf
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~10701/slides/Perceptron_Reading_Material.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2718241/
https://knowingneurons.com/2014/10/29/hubel-and-wiesel-the-neural-basis-of-visual-perception/
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Neocognitron
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2015.00036/full
https://www.rctn.org/bruno/public/papers/Fukushima1980.pdf
Anomaly detection:
https://blogs.oracle.com/datascience/introduction-to-anomaly-detection
ftp://ftp.dca.fee.unicamp.br/pub/docs/vonzuben/lnunes/ieee_tec01.pdf
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/283699.283742
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11047-006-9026-4.pdf
https://www.cs.unm.edu/~immsec/publications/virus.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221421261630240X
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-642-59901-9.pdf
Swarm algorithms and TERMES:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780124051638000016
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/13068244/Petersen_gsas.harvard.inactive_0084L_11836.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2e4GIZ3W1o
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6172/754
Simulated annealing:
https://pdb101.rcsb.org/learn/guide-to-understanding-pdb-data/methods-for-determining-structure
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.pc.42.100191.001213
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.cgd.9b00517#
https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780124167438/nature-inspired-optimization-algorithms
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/annealing
https://science.sciencemag.org/sites/all/libraries/pdfjs/web/viewer.html?file=/content/sci/220/4598/671.full.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/simulated-annealing
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-015-9370-8
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/itor.12001

Image Sources:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hubel%2Bwiesel.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/niaid/29122039942
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_showing_the_position_of_the_thymus_gland_CRUK_362.svg