Alife

Alife may refer to:

See also

Alife, Campania

Alife is a town and comune in the province of Caserta (Campania), Italy. It is located in the Volturno valley, and is a flourishing center of agricultural production.

History

Ancient history

The name of Alife has Samnite origin, although a settlement in the hills around the city existed probably since the Iron Age. After the First Punic War, it became a Roman municipium, with the name of Alliphae - the ruins of which extend to the nearby comune of Sant'Angelo d'Alife.

Later history

A bishopric was present in Alife in the 5th century, but in the following century it disappeared. The city was a Lombard possession, as part of the Duchy of Benevento and, later, of the Principality of Capua. The bishop was reinstated in 969, four years after the city became an independent county.

In 1132, the Norman Count Ranulf (one of the most outstanding military leaders of medieval Italy) began the construction of Alife Cathedral. At this time, Alife, together with other centers of northern Campania, was almost independent from Capua, and began governing itself. This, of course, caused increasing strife with the central power of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily (created by Roger II in 1130). In 1135, the city was occupied by Sicilian troops; but, two years later, Count Ranulf had his vengeance, obtaining the title of Duke.

Artificial life

Artificial life (often abbreviated ALife or A-Life) is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986. There are three main kinds of alife, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life imitates traditional biology by trying to recreate some aspects of biological phenomena.

Overview

Artificial life studies the logic of living systems in artificial environments in order to gain a deeper understanding of the complex information processing that defines such systems.

Also sometimes included in the umbrella term "artificial life" are agent based systems which are used to study the emergent properties of societies of agents.

While life is, by definition, alive, artificial life is generally referred to as being confined to a digital environment and existence.