Invited Papers -- Tree-Walking Automata -- Formal Language Tools for Template-Guided DNA Recombination -- Subsequence Counting, Matrix Representations and a Theorem of Eilenberg -- Synchronizing Automata and the ?erný Conjecture -- Contributed Papers -- About Universal Hybrid Networks of Evolutionary Processors of Small Size -- On Bifix Systems and Generalizations -- Finite Automata, Palindromes, Powers, and Patterns -- One-Dimensional Quantum Cellular Automata over Finite, Unbounded Configurations -- The Three-Color and Two-Color TantrixTM Rotation Puzzle Problems Are NP-Complete Via Parsimonious Reductions -- Optional and Iterated Types for Pregroup Grammars -- Transformations and Preservation of Self-assembly Dynamics through Homotheties -- Deterministic Input-Reversal and Input-Revolving Finite Automata -- Random Context in Regulated Rewriting Versus Cooperating Distributed Grammar Systems -- Extending the Overlap Graph for Gene Assembly in Ciliates -- Automatic Presentations for Cancellative Semigroups -- Induced Subshifts and Cellular Automata -- Hopcroft's Algorithm and Cyclic Automata -- Efficient Inclusion Checking for Deterministic Tree Automata and DTDs -- Consensual Definition of Languages by Regular Sets -- k-Petri Net Controlled Grammars -- 2-Synchronizing Words -- Not So Many Runs in Strings -- A Hybrid Approach to Word Segmentation of Vietnamese Texts -- On Linear Logic Planning and Concurrency -- On the Relation between Multicomponent Tree Adjoining Grammars with Tree Tuples (TT-MCTAG) and Range Concatenation Grammars (RCG) -- Anti-pattern Matching Modulo -- Counting Ordered Patterns in Words Generated by Morphisms -- Literal Varieties of Languages Induced by Homomorphisms onto Nilpotent Groups -- Characterization of Star-Connected Languages Using Finite Automata -- Match-Boundswith Dependency Pairs for Proving Termination of Rewrite Systems -- Further Results on Insertion-Deletion Systems with One-Sided Contexts -- On Regularity-Preservation by String-Rewriting Systems -- Minimizing Deterministic Weighted Tree Automata -- Lower Bounds for Generalized Quantum Finite Automata -- How Many Figure Sets Are Codes? -- On Alternating Phrase-Structure Grammars -- A Two-Dimensional Taxonomy of Proper Languages of Lexicalized FRR-Automata -- Minimalist Grammars with Unbounded Scrambling and Nondiscriminating Barriers Are NP-Hard -- Sorting and Element Distinctness on One-Way Turing Machines -- On Periodicity of Generalized Two-Dimensional Words -- On the Analysis of "Simple" 2D Stochastic Cellular Automata -- Polycyclic and Bicyclic Valence Automata -- Length Codes, Products of Languages and Primality -- An Efficient Algorithm for the Inclusion Problem of a Subclass of DPDAs.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Language and Automata Theory and Applications, LATA 2008, held in Tarragona, Spain, in March 2008. The 40 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 134 submissions. The papers deal with the various issues related to automata theory and formal languages.