This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12 European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks, EWSN 2015, held in Porto, Portugal, in February 2015. The 14 full papers and 9 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 85 submissions. They cover a wide range of topics grouped into five sessions: services and applications, mobility and delay-tolerance, routing and data dissemination, and human-centric sensing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Engineering Secure Software and Systems, ESSoS 2015, held in Milan, Italy, in March 2015. The 11 full papers presented together with 5 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. The symposium features the following topics: formal methods; cloud passwords; machine learning; measurements ontologies; and access control.

The LNCS journal Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems focuses on data management, knowledge discovery, and knowledge processing, which are core and hot topics in computer science. Since the 1990s, the Internet has become the main driving force behind application development in all domains. An increase in the demand for resource sharing across different sites connected through networks has led to an evolution of data- and knowledge-management systems from centralized systems to decentralized systems enabling large-scale distributed applications providing high scalability. Current decentralized systems still focus on data and knowledge as their main resource. Feasibility of these systems relies basically on P2P (peer-to-peer) techniques and the support of agent systems with scaling and decentralized control. Synergy between grids, P2P systems, and agent technologies is the key to data- and knowledge-centered systems in large-scale environments. This, the 18th issue of Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems, contains extended and revised versions of seven papers presented at the 24th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA 2013, held in Prague, in the Czech Republic, in August 2013. Following the conference, and two further rounds of reviewing and selection, five extended papers and two invited keynote papers were chosen for inclusion in this special issue. The subject areas covered include argumentation, e-government, business processes, predictive traffic estimation, semantic model integration, top-k query processing, uncertainty handling, graph comparison, community detection, genetic programming, and web services.

This Brief presents a new method that is based on the author and his students' shared experience in applying a structured procedure that has as its main goal the creation of a material selection technique that uses language and employs a platform that is not restricted to engineers. Based on a hybrid approach that exploits both traditional and semi-quantitative concepts, it moves forward step-by step, and uses a platform based on a Quality Function Deployment matrix framework. Candidate materials are screened out and finally assessed by two user-friendly graphic analysis tools, one based on the value curve of the product and the other on an original Bubble Maps tool. The Brief is written for all those whose aim is for a better understanding of how to integrate and speed up the entire product development process from the initial product concept and engineering design phases to design specs, manufacturability and product marketing with optimal choice of materials.

Embedded Firmware Solutions is the perfect introduction and daily-use field guide--for the thousands of firmware designers, hardware engineers, architects, managers, and developers--to Intel's new firmware direction (including Quark coverage), showing how to integrate Intel (R) Architecture designs into their plans. Featuring hands-on examples and exercises using Open Source codebases, like Coreboot and EFI Development Kit (tianocore) and Chromebook, this is the first book that combines a timely and thorough overview of firmware solutions for the rapidly evolving embedded ecosystem with in-depth coverage of requirements and optimization.

The LNCS journal Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems focuses on data management, knowledge discovery and knowledge processing, which are core and hot topics in computer science. Since the 1990s, the Internet has become the main driving force behind application development in all domains. An increase in the demand for resource sharing across different sites connected through networks has led to an evolution of data- and knowledge-management systems from centralized systems to decentralized systems enabling large-scale distributed applications providing high scalability. Current decentralized systems still focus on data and knowledge as their main resource. Feasibility of these systems relies basically on P2P (peer-to-peer) techniques and the support of agent systems with scaling and decentralized control. Synergy between grids, P2P systems and agent technologies is the key to data- and knowledge-centered systems in large-scale environments. This, the 17th issue of Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems, contains extended and revised versions of five papers, selected from the 24 full and 8 short papers presented at the 15th International Conference on Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery, DaWaK 2013, held in Prague, The Czech Republic, in August 2013. Of the five papers, two cover data warehousing aspects related to query processing optimization in advanced platforms, specifically Map Reduce and parallel databases, and three cover knowledge discovery, specifically the causal network inference problem, dimensionality reduction, and the quality-of-pattern-mining task.

This book constitutes thoroughly refereed and revised selected papers from the 10th International Symposium on Algorithms and Experiments for Sensor Systems, Wireless Networks and Distributed Robotics, ALGOSENSORS 2014, held in Wroclaw, Poland, on September 12, 2014. The 10 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 20 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: robot planning; algorithms and data structures on graphs; and wireless networks.

The Proceedings of SocProS 2014 serves as an academic bonanza for scientists and researchers working in the field of Soft Computing. This book contains theoretical as well as practical aspects using fuzzy logic, neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, swarm intelligence algorithms, etc., with many applications under the umbrella of 'Soft Computing'. The book is beneficial for young as well as experienced researchers dealing across complex and intricate real world problems for which finding a solution by traditional methods is a difficult task. The different application areas covered in the Proceedings are: Image Processing, Cryptanalysis, Industrial Optimization, Supply Chain Management, Newly Proposed Nature Inspired Algorithms, Signal Processing, Problems related to Medical and Healthcare, Networking Optimization Problems, etc.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First Australasian Conference on Artificial Life and Computational Intelligence, ACALCI 2015, held in Newcastle, NSW, Australia, in February 2015. The 34 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 63 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: philosophy and theory; game environments and methods; learning, memory and optimization; and applications and implementations.

This introduction to cryptography employs a programming-oriented approach to study the most important cryptographic schemes in current use and the main cryptanalytic attacks against them. Discussion of the theoretical aspects, emphasizing precise security definitions based on methodological tools such as complexity and randomness, and of the mathematical aspects, with emphasis on number-theoretic algorithms and their applications to cryptography and cryptanalysis, is integrated with the programming approach, thus providing implementations of the algorithms and schemes as well as examples of realistic size. A distinctive feature of the author's approach is the use of Maple as a programming environment in which not just the cryptographic primitives but also the most important cryptographic schemes are implemented following the recommendations of standards bodies such as NIST, with many of the known cryptanalytic attacks implemented as well. The purpose of the Maple implementations is to let the reader experiment and learn, and for this reason the author includes numerous examples. The book discusses important recent subjects such as homomorphic encryption, identity-based cryptography and elliptic curve cryptography. The algorithms and schemes which are treated in detail and implemented in Maple include AES and modes of operation, CMAC, GCM/GMAC, SHA-256, HMAC, RSA, Rabin, Elgamal, Paillier, Cocks IBE, DSA and ECDSA. In addition, some recently introduced schemes enjoying strong security properties, such as RSA-OAEP, Rabin-SAEP, Cramer--Shoup, and PSS, are also discussed and implemented. On the cryptanalysis side, Maple implementations and examples are used to discuss many important algorithms, including birthday and man-in-the-middle attacks, integer factorization algorithms such as Pollard's rho and the quadratic sieve, and discrete log algorithms such as baby-step giant-step, Pollard's rho, Pohlig--Hellman and the index calculus method. This textbook is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of computer science, engineering and mathematics, satisfying the requirements of various types of courses: a basic introductory course; a theoretically oriented course whose focus is on the precise definition of security concepts and on cryptographic schemes with reductionist security proofs; a practice-oriented course requiring little mathematical background and with an emphasis on applications; or a mathematically advanced course addressed to students with a stronger mathematical background. The main prerequisite is a basic knowledge of linear algebra and elementary calculus, and while some knowledge of probability and abstract algebra would be helpful, it is not essential because the book includes the necessary background from these subjects and, furthermore, explores the number-theoretic material in detail. The book is also a comprehensive reference and is suitable for self-study by practitioners and programmers.

This volume contains the post-proceedings of the 9th Doctoral Workshop on Mathematical and Engineering Methods in Computer Science, MEMICS 2014, held in Telc, Czech Republic, in October 2014. The 13 thoroughly revised papers were carefully selected out of 28 submissions and are presented together with 4 invited papers. The topics covered by the papers include: algorithms, logic, and games; high performance computing; computer aided analysis, verification, and testing; hardware design and diagnostics; computer graphics and image processing; and artificial intelligence and natural language processing.

The two volumes LNCS 8805 and 8806 constitute the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of 18 workshops held at the 20th International Conference on Parallel Computing, Euro-Par 2014, in Porto, Portugal, in August 2014. The 100 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 173 submissions. The volumes include papers from the following workshops: APCI&E (First Workshop on Applications of Parallel Computation in Industry and Engineering - BigDataCloud (Third Workshop on Big Data Management in Clouds) - DIHC (Second Workshop on Dependability and Interoperability in Heterogeneous Clouds) - FedICI (Second Workshop on Federative and Interoperable Cloud Infrastructures) - Hetero Par (12th International Workshop on Algorithms, Models and Tools for Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Platforms) - HiBB (5th Workshop on High Performance Bioinformatics and Biomedicine) - LSDVE (Second Workshop on Large Scale Distributed Virtual Environments on Clouds and P2P) - MuCoCoS (7th International Workshop on Multi-/Many-core Computing Systems) - OMHI (Third Workshop on On-chip Memory Hierarchies and Interconnects) - PADAPS (Second Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Agent-Based Simulations) - PROPER (7th Workshop on Productivity and Performance) - Resilience (7th Workshop on Resiliency in High Performance Computing with Clusters, Clouds, and Grids) - REPPAR (First International Workshop on Reproducibility in Parallel Computing) - ROME (Second Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for the Many Core Era) - SPPEXA (Workshop on Software for Exascale Computing) - TASUS (First Workshop on Techniques and Applications for Sustainable Ultrascale Computing Systems) - UCHPC (7th Workshop on Un Conventional High Performance Computing) and VHPC (9th Workshop on Virtualization in High-Performance Cloud Computing.

This book covers the concept of the Semantic Web-what it is, the components that comprise it, including Linked Data, and the various ways that libraries are engaged in contributing to its development in making library resources and services ever more accessible to end-users.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Lanzhou, China, in July 2014. The 45 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 421 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on classification and semi-supervised learning; clustering and kernel; application to recognition; sampling and big data; application to detection; decision tree learning; learning and adaptation; similarity and decision making; learning with uncertainty; improved learning algorithms and applications.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Energy Minimization Methods in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, EMMCVPR 2015, held in Hong Kong, China, in January 2015. The 36 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 45 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on discrete and continuous optimization; image restoration and inpainting; segmentation; PDE and variational methods; motion, tracking and multiview reconstruction; statistical methods and learning; and medical image analysis.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Systems Simulation, Asia Simulation 2014, held in Kitakyushu, Japan, in October 2014. The 32 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on modeling and simulation technology; network simulation; high performance computing and cloud simulation; numerical simulation and visualization; simulation of instrumentation and control application; simulation technology in diversified higher education; general purpose simulation.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Selected Areas in Cryptography, SAC 2014, held in Montreal, QC, Canada, in August 2014. The 22 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 103 submissions. There are four areas covered at each SAC conference. The three permanent areas are: design and analysis of symmetric key primitives and cryptosystems, including block and stream ciphers, hash function, MAC algorithms, cryptographic permutations, and authenticated encryption schemes; efficient implementations of symmetric and public key algorithms; mathematical and algorithmic aspects of applied cryptology. This year, the fourth area for SAC 2014 is: algorithms for cryptography, cryptanalysis and their complexity analysis.

Clear and concise explanations to understand the learning paradigms. Chapters written by leading world experts.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Swarm Intelligence Based Optimization, ICSIBO 2014, held in Mulhouse, France, in May 2014. The 20 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 48 submissions. Topics of interest presented and discussed in the conference focuses on the theoretical progress of swarm intelligence metaheuristics and their applications in areas such as: theoretical advances of swarm intelligence metaheuristics, combinatorial, discrete, binary, constrained, multi-objective, multi-modal, dynamic, noisy, and large-scale optimization, artificial immune systems, particle swarms, ant colony, bacterial foraging, artificial bees, fireflies algorithm, hybridization of algorithms, parallel/distributed computing, machine learning, data mining, data clustering, decision making and multi-agent systems based on swarm intelligence principles, adaptation and applications of swarm intelligence principles to real world problems in various domains.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Security Protocols, held in Cambridge, UK, in March 2010. After an introduction the volume presents 16 revised papers and one abstract, each followed by a revised transcript of the discussion ensuing the presentation at the event. The theme of this year's workshop was "Virtually Perfect Security".

Temporal Information Systems in Medicine introduces the engineering of information systems for medically-related problems and applications. The chapters are organized into four parts; fundamentals, temporal reasoning & maintenance in medicine, time in clinical tasks, and the display of time-oriented clinical information. The chapters are self-contained with pointers to other relevant chapters or sections in this book when necessary. Time is of central importance and is a key component of the engineering process for information systems. This book is designed as a secondary text or reference book for upper -undergraduate level students and graduate level students concentrating on computer science, biomedicine and engineering. Industry professionals and researchers working in health care management, information systems in medicine, medical informatics, database management and AI will also find this book a valuable asset.

Communications and Multimedia Security is an essential reference for both academic and professional researchers in the fields of Communications and Multimedia Security. This state-of-the-art volume presents the proceedings of the Eighth Annual IFIP TC-6 TC-11 Conference on Communications and Multimedia Security, September 2004, in Windermere, UK. The papers presented here represent the very latest developments in security research from leading people in the field. The papers explore a wide variety of subjects including privacy protection and trust negotiation, mobile security, applied cryptography, and security of communication protocols. Of special interest are several papers which addressed security in the Microsoft .Net architecture, and the threats that builders of web service applications need to be aware of. The papers were a result of research sponsored by Microsoft at five European University research centers. This collection will be important not only for multimedia security experts and researchers, but also for all teachers and administrators interested in communications security.

This monograph is based on the third author's lectures on computer architecture, given in the summer semester 2013 at Saarland University, Germany. It contains a gate level construction of a multi-core machine with pipelined MIPS processor cores and a sequentially consistent shared memory. The book contains the first correctness proofs for both the gate level implementation of a multi-core processor and also of a cache based sequentially consistent shared memory. This opens the way to the formal verification of synthesizable hardware for multi-core processors in the future. Constructions are in a gate level hardware model and thus deterministic. In contrast the reference models against which correctness is shown are nondeterministic. The development of the additional machinery for these proofs and the correctness proof of the shared memory at the gate level are the main technical contributions of this work.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 22nd International Symposium on Graph Drawing, GD 2014, held in Wurzburg, Germany, in September 2014. The 41 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. The back matter of the book also contains 2 page poster papers presented at the conference. The contributions are organized in topical sections named: planar subgraphs; simultaneous embeddings; applications; contact representations; k-planar graphs; crossing minimization; level drawings; theory; fixed edge directions; drawing under constraints; clustered planarity; and greedy graphs.

Written for a broad audience this book offers a comprehensive account of early warning systems for hydro meteorological disasters such as floods and storms, and for geological disasters such as earthquakes. One major theme is the increasingly important role in early warning systems played by the rapidly evolving fields of space and information technology. The authors, all experts in their respective fields, offer a comprehensive and in-depth insight into the current and future perspectives for early warning systems. The text is aimed at decision-makers in the political arena, scientists, engineers and those responsible for public communication and dissemination of warnings.