Before revision:  This paper presents practical tools along with applications for the analysis and control of multistate networks. The first result is a polynomial normal form representation for discrete functionsthat provides a partition of the inputs of the function into canalizing and non-canalizing variables and, within the canalizing ones, we categorize the input variables into layers of canalization.
After revision:  Regulatory rules that appear in published models tend to have special features such as the property of being nested canalizing, a concept inspired by the concept of canalization in evolutionary biology. We provide a polynomial normal form representation for discrete functionsthat provides a partition of the inputs of the function into canalizing and non-canalizing variables and, within the canalizing ones, we categorize the input variables into layers of canalization.