This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First Australian Workshop on Distributed Artificial Intelligence, held in Canberra, ACT, Australia, in November 1995.
The 16 full papers included in the book are revised versions of the contributions accepted for presentation at the workshop; they cover a wide range of current issues in the field of DAI, such as formal frameworks, methodology, theory, and architecture; various aspects of agents and multi-agent systems are addressed.

The three-dimensional structure of proteins is a key factor in their biological activity. There is an increasing need to be able to predict the structure of a protein once its amino-acid sequence is known; this book presents practical methods of achieving that ambitious aim, using the latest computer modelling algorithms.

This book is the first comprehensive volume on the computer simulation of plant development. It contains a full account of the algorithms used to model plant shapes and developmental processes, Lindenmayer systems in particular. With nearly 50 color plates, the spectacular results of the modelling are vividly illustrated. "This marvelous book will occupy an important place in the scientific literature." #Professor Heinz-Otto Peitgen# "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants will perform a valuable service by popularizing this enlightening and bewitching form of mathematics." #Steven Levy# " ... the garden here is full of delights and an excellent introduction to L-systems, ..." #Alvy Ray Smith, IEEE Computer Graphics and its Applications#

This book contains a selection of papers about a broad range of topics relating to CAD modelling and graphics. These papers present an excellent overview of the research and application work done at different R&D institutions in Europe and USA. The papers are grouped into sections. First, issues in feature-based product development (such as representation of form features, consistency management, and reasoning) are addressed from different perspectives. Next, CAD models and architectures are introduced from an application perspective. Then some design techniques are presented. The following sections deal with communication in design and analysis, input and interaction techniques, and visualization.

This book is based on the author's PhD thesis which was selected during the 1993 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Competition as one of the three best submissions.
This monograph investigates the problem of selecting adequate models for reasoning about physical systems and applications to engineering problem solving. An elegant treatment of both the theoretical and practical sides are presented: the problem is precisely formalized, its computational complexity is analyzed in detail, and an efficient algorithm for finding adequate models is derived; on the practical side, a methodology for building systems that automatically construct adequate models is provided, and implementational aspects and tests are described.

Alongside experimental and theoretical work, computer simulation now forms one of the major tools of research in physics. The Monte Carlo method is the most important simulation method in the area of condensed matter physics. This book, written by foremost experts in the field, describes the state of the art of simulation methods in solid state physics. It also reviews selected applications in areas of particular current interest like simulations of growth processes far from equilibrium, interfacial phenomena, quantum and classical fluids, polymers, quantum problems on lattices, and random systems. A new chapter on recent developments in the Monte Carlo simulation of condensed matter has been attached.

It is well-known that some 85% of the resources necessary to design and bring to market a product are committed by decisions taken in the first 10% of the design activity. This together with the wish to reduce further the time-to-market of high quality innovative products has increased the need for computer support at the conceptual design stage of the engineering design process life-style. This proceedings firmly focuses on the continuing research into new uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) during the conceptual design process. It shows how novel applications of AI may be integrated with aspects of solid modelling, simulation optimisation and multiple criterion decision- making. A particular emphasis is placed on the use of AI methods in the overall design of products from major Civil Engineering structures to Consumer Electronics.

This monograph is devoted to the problem of inferring geometric information about arbitrarily curved surfaces from visual cues; this is a central problem in computer vision with immediate relevance for robot manipulation and navigation.
The author develops computational theories and techniques relating visual information arising from viewer movements to the differential geometry of visible surfaces. The theories developed have been implemented and tested using a real-time tracking system based on deformable contours. Applications of the techniques to geometric modelling, obstacle avoidance, navigation, and object manipulation are presented.

This volume contains research papers that were presented at the Sixth Eurographics Workshop on Animation and Simulation which took place at Maastricht, The Nether lands, September 2-3, 1995. A core area within computer graphics, animation is concerned with the computer synthesis of dynamic scenes. The creation of realistic animation based on the simulation of physical and biological phenomena is a unify ing and rapidly evolving research theme. This series of workshops, an activity of the Eurographics Working Group on Animation and Simulation, is an international forum where researchers representing the animation and simulation communities convene to exchange knowledge and experience related to this theme and to physics-based mod elling, human modelling, motion control, visualization, etc. Of keen interest at this sixth workshop were novel animation techniques and animation systems that simulate the dynamics and interactions of physical objects-solid, fluid, and gaseous-as well as the behaviors of living systems such as plants, lower animals, and humans. The workshop continued to promote the confluence of animation and simulation as a leading edge of computer graphics research that is providing animators with sophisticated new algorithms for synthesizing dynamic scenes. The call for extended abstracts for the workshop, issued in February 1995, elicited an enthusiastic response."

Protein engineering endeavors to design new peptides and proteins or to change the structural and/or functional characteristics of existing ones for specific purposes, opening the way for the development of new drugs. This work develops in a comprehensive way the theoretical formulation for the methods used in computer-assisted modeling and predictions, starting from the basic concepts and proceeding to the more sophisticated methods, such as Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics. An evaluation of the approximations inherent to the simulations will allow the reader to obtain a perspective of the possible deficiencies and difficulties and approach the task with realistic expectations. Examples from the authors laboratories, as well as from the literature provide useful information.

This volume contains thoroughly refereed full versions of the best papers presented at the 5th European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agent World, MAAMAW '93, held in NeuchA[tel, Switzerland in August 1993.
The volume opens with a detailed introduction by the volume editors bringing the papers in line and offering a readers' guide. The 15 full research papers reflect the state-of-the-art in this dynamic field of research; they are organized in sections on emergence of global properties, emergence of sociality, multi-agent planning, multi-agent communication, and multi-agent architectures.

Experts from university and industry are presenting new technologies for solving industrial problems and giving many important and practicable impulses for new research. Topics explored include NURBS, product engineering, object oriented modelling, solid modelling, surface interrogation, feature modelling, variational design, scattered data algorithms, geometry processing, blending methods, smoothing and fairing algorithms, spline conversion. This collection of 24 articles gives a state-of-the-art survey of the relevant problems and issues in geometric modelling.

Macrosystems are systems in which the stochastic behaviour of the elements is transformed into deterministic behaviour of the system as a whole. This publication discusses equilibrium in these systems. Mathematical models of stationary states using the principle of maximum entropy are presented. This is developed and generalized for macrosystems with constrained resources. Parametric properties which characterize a model's response to data variations are discussed. The author has developed new computational methods for the computer-aided realization of stationary state models. Algorithms and computer experiments are evaluated. Mathematical modelling methods are applied to problems of hierarchical structures, interregional product exchange and image reconstruction.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE '95, held in Jyvaskyla, Finland in June 1995.
The 26 full papers presented in this volume were selected from more than 100 submissions; in addition there are three invited papers. Among the contributing authors are academics as well as information system practitioners from industry and administration. The volume is organized in sections on behaviour modelling, requirements engineering, 00 concepts and applications, work and communication modelling, meta modelling, user interface issues, CASE integration, reuse, conceptual modelling issues, and software development issues."

This book develops, for the first time, a qualitative model for the representation of spatial knowledge based only on locative relations between the objects involved.
The core of this book is devoted to the study of qualitative inference methods that take into account the rich structure of space. These methods can be applied to quite a number of areas characterized by uncertain or incomplete knowledge, as for example geographic information systems, robot control, computer-aided architectural design, and natural language information systems.

The theory of evolution has been most successful explaining the emergence of new species in terms of their morphological traits. Ethologists teach that behaviors, too, qualify as first-class phenotypic features, but evolutionary accounts of behaviors have been much less satisfactory. In part this is because maturational "programs" transforming genotype to phenotype are "open" to environmental influences affected by behaviors. Further, many organisms are able to continue to modify their behavior, i.e., learn, even after fully mature. This creates an even more complex relationship between the genotypic features underlying the mechanisms of maturation and learning and the adapted behaviors ultimately selected.A meeting held at the Santa Fe Institute during the summer of 1993 brought together a small group of biologists, psychologists, and computer scientists with shared interests in questions such as these. This volume consists of papers that explore interacting adaptive systems from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives. About half of the articles are classic, seminal references on the subject, ranging from biologists like Lamarck and Waddington to psychologists like Piaget and Skinner. The other half represent new work by the workshop participants. The role played by mathematical and computational tools, both as models of natural phenomena and as algorithms useful in their own right, is particularly emphasized in these new papers. In all cases, the prefaces help to put the older papers in a modern context. For the new papers, the prefaces have been written by colleagues from a discipline other than the paper's authors, and highlight, for example, what a computer scientist can learn from a biologist's model, or vice versa. Through these cross-disciplinary "dialogues" and a glossary collecting multidisciplinary connotations of pivotal terms, the process of interdisciplinary investigation itself becomes a central theme.

The conference, coorganized by INRIA and Ecole des Mines de Paris, focuses on Discrete Event Systems (DES) and is aimed at engineers, scientists and mathematicians working in the fields of Automatic Control, Operations Research and Statistics who are interested in the modelling, analysis and optimization of DES. Various methods such as Automata theory, Petri nets, etc. are proposed to describe and analyze such systems. Comparison of these different mathematical approaches and the global confrontation of theoretical approaches with applications in manufacturing, telecommunications, parallel computing, transportation, etc. are the goals of the conference.

Performance evaluation, reliability, and performability are key factors in the development and improvement of computer systems and computer networks. This volume contains the 25 accepted and invited papers presented at the 7th International Conference on Modelling Techniques and Tools for Computer Performance Evaluation. The papers focus on new techniques and the extension of existing techniques for performance and reliability analysis. Tools to support performance and reliability modelling and measurement in all kinds of applications and environments are presented, and the practicability and generality of the approaches are emphasized. The volume summarizes the state of the art and points out future demands and challenges, and will interest both scientists and practitioners.

Dynamic Modeling introduces an approach to modeling that makes it a more practical, intuitive endeavour. The book enables readers to convert their understanding of a phenomenon to a computer model, and then to run the model and let it yield the inevitable dynamic consequences built into the structure of the model. Part I provides an introduction to modeling dynamic systems, while Part II offers general methods for modeling. Parts III through to VIII then apply these methods to model real-world phenomena from chemistry, genetics, ecology, economics, and engineering. To develop and execute dynamic simulation models, Dynamic Modeling comes with STELLA II run- time software for Windows-based computers, as well as computer files of sample models used in the book. A clear, approachable introduction to the modeling process, of interest in any field where real problems can be illuminated by computer simulation.

The software process is the total set of software engineering activities necessary to develop and maintain software products. Software process technology (SPT) deals with methods, formalisms, and tools for supporting the software process. SPT has developed into a key technology in terms of its importance to software engineering environments, systems integration, cooperative working, and business process re-engineering. This volume contains the proceedings of the third European Workshop on Software Process Technology. It is organized into six parts: architecture, meta-process and methodology, process modeling concepts, PML concepts and paradigms, experiences with SPT, and related domains.

This book is a collection of work arising from a NSF/ AFOSR sponsored workshop held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 18-20th June 1992. Sixty-nine researchers, from nine countries, participated. Twelve keynote essays give an overview of the field and speculate on future directions and nineteen technical papers delineate the state of the art in the field. This book serves both as in introduction to the topic and as a reference on the current technical problems and approaches.

This book contains the proceedings of the International Confer ence on Artificial Neural Networks which was held between September 13 and 16 in Amsterdam. It is the third in a series which started two years ago in Helsinki and which last year took place in Brighton. Thanks to the European Neural Network Society, ICANN has emerged as the leading conference on neural networks in Europe. Neural networks is a field of research which has enjoyed a rapid expansion and great popularity in both the academic and industrial research communities. The field is motivated by the commonly held belief that applications in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics will benefit from a good understanding of the neural information processing properties that underlie human intelligence. Essential aspects of neural information processing are highly parallel execution of com putation, integration of memory and process, and robustness against fluctuations. It is believed that intelligent skills, such as perception, motion and cognition, can be easier realized in neuro-computers than in a conventional computing paradigm. This requires active research in neurobiology to extract com putational principles from experimental neurobiological find ings, in physics and mathematics to study the relation between architecture and function in neural networks, and in cognitive science to study higher brain functions, such as language and reasoning. Neural networks technology has already lead to practical methods that solve real problems in a wide area of industrial applications. The clusters on robotics and applications contain sessions on various sub-topics in these fields."

Computer Simulation and Computer Algebra. Starting from simple examples in classical mechanics, these introductory lectures proceed to simulations in statistical physics (using FORTRAN) and then explain in detail the use of computer algebra (by means of Reduce). This third edition takes into account the most recent version of Reduce (3.4.1) and updates the description of large-scale simulations to subjects such as the 170000 X 170000 Ising model. Furthermore, an introduction to both vector and parallel computing is given.

In this volume experts from university and industry are presenting new technologies for solving industrial problems as well as important and practicable impulses for new research. The following topics are treated: - solid modelling - geometry processing - feature modelling - product modelling - surfaces over arbitrary topologies - blending methods - scattered data algorithms - smooting and fairing algorithms - NURBS 21 articles are giving a state-of-the-art survey of the relevant problems and issues in the rapidly growing area of geometric modelling.

From mulching to greenhouses, the air space between the cover and the soil surface is the key to the classification of climates under cover. The same mechanism governs environments produced by the various covers. This book describes and analyses all the different environments from mulching to greenhouses. The relationship between plants and environment is another important topic in the book. Stress is placed on the link between quantitative phenomena and qualitative analyses. Most phenomena involved are nonlinear and non-steady-state. An approach called System Dynamics is used, and simulation models developed in the simulation language CSMP are fully used. The subjects covered are of relevance to graduate students, to scientists and researchers in agriculture and biological sciences and, of course, to agricultural organizations in both the developing and developed countries.