ABSTRACT
Diffusion, random walks, travelling waves and electrical flows have much in common. They are employed in this chapter to solve various problems of graph construction and optimization on graphs, particularly the shortest-path problem. Generally, the spread of and competition between disturbances in nonlinear media for a skeleton of all algorithms discussed here, although particular realizations vary from automata models of excitable media to morphogenetic computing by neurites to collective problem-solving in ant families. The text is spiced up by a game application, a practical problem of load balancing in communication networks and recipes for real chemical processors.
