One service mathematics has rendered the 'Bt mm, ... si j'avait su comment en revenir, human race. It has put common sense back je n'y serais point alIe.' Jules Verne where it belongs. on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled 'discarded non The series is divergent; therefore we may be sense'. Eric T. Bell able to do something with it. O. Heavisidc Mathematics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non linearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other parts and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics .. .'; 'One service logic has rendered com puter science .. .'; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics .. .'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'etre of this series."

Whilst Information Systems has the potential to widen our view of the world, it often has the opposite effect by limiting our ability to interact, facilitating managerial and state surveillance or instituting strict hierarchies and personal control. In this book, Bernd Stahl offers an alternative and critical perspective on the subject, arguing that the ongoing problems in this area could be caused by the misconceptualization of the nature and role of IS. Stahl discusses the question of how IS can be used to actually overcome oppression and promote emancipation, breaking the book into four sections. The first section covers the theory of critical research in IS, giving a central place for the subject of ethics. The second section discusses the philosophical underpinnings of this critical research. The third and largest section gives examples of the application of critical work in IS. The final section then reflects on the approach and suggests ways for further development.

This book investigates the characteristics of simple versus complex systems, and what the properties of a cyber-physical system design are that contribute to an effective implementation and make the system understandable, simple to use, and easy to maintain. The targeted audience is engineers, managers and advanced students who are involved in the design of cyber-physical systems and are willing to spend some time outside the silo of their daily work in order to widen their background and appreciation for the pervasive problems of system complexity. In the past, design of a process-control system (now called cyber-physical systems) was more of an art than an engineering endeavor. The software technology of that time was concerned primarily with functional correctness and did not pay much attention to the temporal dimension of program execution, which is as important as functional correctness when a physical process must be controlled. In the ensuing years, many problems in the design of cyber-physical systems were simplified. But with an increase in the functional requirements and system size, the complexity problems have appeared again in a different disguise. A sound understanding of the complexity problem requires some insight in cognition, human problem solving, psychology, and parts of philosophy. This book presents the essence of the author's thinking about complexity, accumulated over the past forty years.

ED-L2L, Learning to Live in the Knowledge Society, is one of the co-located conferences of the 20th World Computer Congress (WCC2008). The event is organized under the auspices of IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) and is to be held in Milan from 7th to 10th September 2008. ED-L2L is devoted to themes related to ICT for education in the knowledge society. It provides an international forum for professionals from all continents to discuss research and practice in ICT and education. The event brings together educators, researchers, policy makers, curriculum designers, teacher educators, members of academia, teachers and content producers. ED-L2L is organised by the IFIP Technical Committee 3, Education, with the support of the Institute for Educational Technology, part of the National Research Council of Italy. The Institute is devoted to the study of educational innovation brought about through the use of ICT. Submissions to ED-L2L are published in this conference book. The published papers are devoted to the published conference themes: Developing digital literacy for the knowledge society: information problem solving, creating, capturing and transferring knowledge, commitment to lifelong learning Teaching and learning in the knowledge society, playful and fun learning at home and in the school New models, processes and systems for formal and informal learning environments and organisations Developing a collective intelligence, learning together and sharing knowledge ICT issues in education - ethics, equality, inclusion and parental role Educating ICT professionals for the global knowledge society Managing the transition to the knowledge society

Discusses all the major tools and techniques for Decision Support System supported by examples Techniques are explained considering their deterministic and stochastic aspects Covers network tools including GERT and Q-GERT Explains application of both probability and fuzzy orientation in the pertinent techniques Includes a number of relevant case studies along with a dedicated chapter on software

Synthesis of Finite State Machines: Functional Optimization is one of two monographs devoted to the synthesis of Finite State Machines (FSMs). This volume addresses functional optimization, whereas the second addresses logic optimization. By functional optimization here we mean the body of techniques that: compute all permissible sequential functions for a given topology of interconnected FSMs, and select a best' sequential function out of the permissible ones. The result is a symbolic description of the FSM representing the chosen sequential function. By logic optimization here we mean the steps that convert a symbolic description of an FSM into a hardware implementation, with the goal to optimize objectives like area, testability, performance and so on. Synthesis of Finite State Machines: Functional Optimization is divided into three parts. The first part presents some preliminary definitions, theories and techniques related to the exploration of behaviors of FSMs. The second part presents an implicit algorithm for exact state minimization of incompletely specified finite state machines (ISFSMs), and an exhaustive presentation of explicit and implicit algorithms for the binate covering problem. The third part addresses the computation of permissible behaviors at a node of a network of FSMs and the related minimization problems of non-deterministic finite state machines (NDFSMs). Key themes running through the book are the exploration of behaviors contained in a non-deterministic FSM (NDFSM), and the representation of combinatorial problems arising in FSM synthesis by means of Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs). Synthesis of Finite State Machines: Functional Optimization will be of interest to researchers and designers in logic synthesis, CAD and design automation.

Linguistic Geometry: From Search to Construction is the first book of its kind. Linguistic Geometry (LG) is an approach to the construction of mathematical models for large-scale multi-agent systems. A number of such systems, including air/space combat, robotic manufacturing, software re-engineering and Internet cyberwar, can be modeled as abstract board games. These are games with moves that can be represented by the movement of abstract pieces over locations on an abstract board. The purpose of LG is to provide strategies to guide the games' participants to their goals. Traditionally, discovering such strategies required searches in giant game trees. These searches are often beyond the capacity of modern and even conceivable future computers. LG dramatically reduces the size of the search trees, making the problems computationally tractable. LG provides a formalization and abstraction of search heuristics used by advanced experts including chess grandmasters. Essentially, these heuristics replace search with the construction of strategies. To formalize the heuristics, LG employs the theory of formal languages (i.e. formal linguistics), as well as certain geometric structures over an abstract board. The new formal strategies solve problems from different domains far beyond the areas envisioned by the experts. For a number of these domains, Linguistic Geometry yields optimal solutions.

This volume is about "Structure." The search for "structure," always the pursuit of sciences within their specific areas and perspectives, is witnessing these days a dra matic revolution. The coexistence and interaction of so many structures (atoms, hu mans, cosmos and all that there is in between) would be unconceivable according to many experts, if there were not, behind it all, some gen eral organizational principle. s that (at least in some asymptotic way) make possible so many equilibria among species and natural objects, fan tastically tuned to an extremely high degree of precision. The evidence accumulates to an increasingly impressive degree; a concrete example comes from physics, whose constant aim always was and is that of searching for "ultimate laws," out of which everything should follow, from quarks to the cosmos. Our notions and philosophy have un dergone major revolutions, whenever the "unthinkable" has been changed by its wonderful endeavours into "fact." Well, it is just from physics that evidence comes: even if the "ultimate" could be reached, it would not in any way be a terminal point. When "complexity" comes into the game, entirely new notions have to be invented; they all have to do with "structure," though this time in a much wider sense than would have been understood a decade or so ago."

This book presents the proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Intelligent and Distributed Computing, IDC 2007, held in Craiova, Romania, October 2007. Coverage includes: autonomous and adaptive computing; data mining and knowledge discovery; distributed problem solving and decision making; e-business, e-health and e-learning; genetic algorithms; image processing; information retrieval; intelligence in mobile and ubiquitous computing.

Distribution and interoperability in heterogeneous computing environments are the key requirements for state-of-the-art information processing systems. Distributed applications are making a critical contribution in many application sectors, such as office automation, finance, manufacturing, telecommunications, aerospace, and transportation. Users demand support for the construction, integration and management of their application systems as well as for the interoperability of independent application components. DAIS '97 provides a forum for researchers, application designers and users to review, discuss and learn about new approaches and concepts in the fields of distributed applications. DAIS '97 will especially focus on the interoperability between different applications and services, different implementations of the same and of different distributed platforms.

Finite model theory,as understoodhere, is an areaof mathematicallogic that has developed in close connection with applications to computer science, in particular the theory of computational complexity and database theory. One of the fundamental insights of mathematical logic is that our understanding of mathematical phenomena is enriched by elevating the languages we use to describe mathematical structures to objects of explicit study. If mathematics is the science of patterns, then the media through which we discern patterns, as well as the structures in which we discern them, command our attention. It isthis aspect oflogicwhichis mostprominentin model theory,"thebranchof mathematical logic which deals with the relation between a formal language and its interpretations". No wonder, then, that mathematical logic, and ?nite model theory in particular, should ?nd manifold applications in computer science: from specifying programs to querying databases, computer science is rife with phenomena whose understanding requires close attention to the interaction between language and structure. This volume gives a broadoverviewof some central themes of ?nite model theory: expressive power, descriptive complexity, and zero-one laws, together with selected applications to database theory and arti?cial intelligence, es- cially constraint databases and constraint satisfaction problems. The ?nal chapter provides a concise modern introduction to modal logic,which emp- sizes the continuity in spirit and technique with ?nite model theory.

Electronic services networks--systems of terminals and computers linked by telecommunication apparatus and used to process transactions--have had an increasing influence on industrial structures and commercial practices over the past decade. Margaret Guerin-Calvert and Steven Wildman have assembled diverse essays representing the best of current thinking on these networks. The book provides the reader with varied theoretical perspectives on ESNs and their effects on business and finance and contains five case studies that apply these theoretical ideas to issues raised by the proliferation of these networks.

Unlike other works, which have focused on ESNs as features of specific industries, this collection explores the networks themselves as economic phenomena. The contributions are grouped into two parts. The first presents general theoretical perspectives on the economics of various ESNs, their effects on the industries and markets that employ them, and the policy issues they raise. Among the topics discussed are structural relationships among ESNs, their effect on organizational structures, compatibility between shared networks, and competitive search facilitation. In Part II, the contributors offer a detailed look at the economic policy histories of ESNs in specific industries, including banking, real estate, airlines, and travel. There are discussions of automatic teller machines, computer reservation systems, multiple-listing services, and electronic data interchange. These studies demonstrate the incredible variety of applications of ESN technology and make this an indispensable resource for professionals in all types of businesses that use or could use ESNs, as well as for students in a wide range of law, business, and public policy courses.

Geotechnical works involve complex geo-engineering issues, which are reviewed in this volume presenting the very latest research and practice in computational mechanics in geotechnical engineering. Application of Computational Mechanics in Geotechnical Engineering V contains contributions on soil and rock excavations, underground structures and ground reinforcement; and on the construction of dams, embankments and rail track. Other papers consider the geomechanics of oil exploration and rock mechanics in mining; while environmental contributions include groundwater management. A wide range of methodologies are discussed: inversed methodologies, artificial intelligence and computational systems, which highlight future trends in the area of computational mechanics applied to geotechnical problems. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, students, software developers, and practical engineers across the field of geotechnics.

Welcome to IWQOS'97 in New York City! Over the past several years, there has been a considerable amount of research within the field of Quality of Service (QOS). Much of that work has taken place within the context of QOS support for distributed multimedia systems, operating systems, transport subsystems, networks, devices and formal languages. The objective of the Fifth International Workshop on Quality of Service (IWQOS) is to bring together researchers, developers and practitioners working in all facets of QOS research. While many workshops and conferences offer technical sessions on the topic QOS, none other than IWQOS, provide a single-track workshop dedicated to QOS research. The theme of IWQOS'97 is building QOS into distributed systems. Implicit in that theme is the notion that the QOS community should now focus on discussing results from actual implementations of their work. As QOS research moves from theory to practice, we are interested in gauging the impact of ideas discussed at previous workshops on development of actual systems. While we are interested in experimental results, IWQOS remains a forum for fresh and innovative ideas emerging in the field. As a result of this, authors were solicited to provide experimental research (long) papers and more speculative position (short) statements for consideration. We think we have a great invited and technical program lined up for you this year. The program reflects the Program Committees desire to hear about experiment results, controversial QOS subjects and retrospectives on where we are and where we are going.

High-Performance Digital VLSI Circuit Design is the first book devoted entirely to the design of digital high-performance VLSI circuits. CMOS, BiCMOS and bipolar ciruits are covered in depth, including state-of-the-art circuit structures. Recent advances in both the computer and telecommunications industries demand high-performance VLSI digital circuits. Digital processing of signals demands high-speed circuit techniques for the GHz range. The design of such circuits represents a great challenge; one that is amplified when the power supply is scaled down to 3.3 V. Moreover, the requirements of low-power/high-performance circuits adds an extra dimension to the design of such circuits. High-Performance Digital VLSI Circuit Design is a self-contained text, introducing the subject of high-performance VLSI circuit design and explaining the speed/power tradeoffs. The first few chapters of the book discuss the necessary background material in the area of device design and device modeling, respectively. High-performance CMOS circuits are then covered, especially the new all-N-logic dynamic circuits. Propagation delay times of high-speed bipolar CML and ECL are developed analytically to give a thorough understanding of various interacting process, device and circuit parameters. High-current phenomena of bipolar devices are also addressed as these devices typically operate at maximum currents for limited device area. Different, new, high-performance BiCMOS circuits are presented and compared to their conventional counterparts. These new circuits find direct applications in the areas of high-speed adders, frequency dividers, sense amplifiers, level-shifters, input/output clock buffers and PLLs. The book concludes with a few system application examples of digital high-performance VLSI circuits. Audience: A vital reference for practicing IC designers. Can be used as a text for graduate and senior undergraduate students in the area.

The relation between logic and knowledge provoked a heated debate since the 1960s. The epistemic approaches, found their formal argument in the mathematics of Brouwer and intuitionistic logic. And following Michael Dummett - started to call themselves: antirealists'. Others persisted with the formal background of the Frege-Tarski tradition, where Cantorian set theory is linked via model theory to classical logic. Jaakko Hintikka tried to join both traditions by means of what is now known as explicit epistemic logic'. Here the epistemic content is introduced into the object language as an operator which yield propositions from propositions rather than as metalogical constraint on the notion of inference. The Realism-Antirealism debate had thus three players: classical logicians, intuitionists and explicit epistemic logicians. The editors of the present volume think that in these days and age of Alternative Logics, where manifold developments in logic happen in a breathtaking pace, this debate should be revisited. Using the most recent logical and epistemological tools, this book provides a novel and refreshing view on the most important topics of the Realism vs. Antirealism debate. Its general scope is to show the most recent developments in philosophical logic to deal with problems inherited from this debate. It is meant for researcher and advanced students in philosophy, logic, formal methods. It's complete collection with a variety of approaches, it is written by leading authors in the fields, every chapter is self-contained.

Practically every crime now involves some aspect of digital evidence. This is the most recent volume in the Advances in Digital Forensics series. It describes original research results and innovative applications in the emerging discipline of digital forensics. In addition, it highlights some of the major technical and legal issues related to digital evidence and electronic crime investigations.

This book contains a selection of twenty-eight edited papers from the Fourth Annual IFIP WG 11.9 Conference on Digital Forensics, held at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan in the spring of 2008.

The present textbook contains the recordsof a two-semester course on que- ing theory, including an introduction to matrix-analytic methods. This course comprises four hours oflectures and two hours of exercises per week andhas been taughtattheUniversity of Trier, Germany, for about ten years in - quence. The course is directed to last year undergraduate and?rst year gr- uate students of applied probability and computer science, who have already completed an introduction to probability theory. Its purpose is to present - terial that is close enough to concrete queueing models and their applications, while providing a sound mathematical foundation for the analysis of these. Thus the goal of the present book is two-fold. On the one hand, students who are mainly interested in applications easily feel bored by elaborate mathematical questions in the theory of stochastic processes. The presentation of the mathematical foundations in our courses is chosen to cover only the necessary results, which are needed for a solid foundation of the methods of queueing analysis. Further, students oriented - wards applications expect to have a justi?cation for their mathematical efforts in terms of immediate use in queueing analysis. This is the main reason why we have decided to introduce new mathematical concepts only when they will be used in the immediate sequel. On the other hand, students of applied probability do not want any heur- tic derivations just for the sake of yielding fast results for the model at hand.

This volume contains the proceedings of the IFIPTM 2008, the Joint iTrust and PST Conferences on Privacy, Trust Management and Security, held in Trondheim, Norway from June 18 to June 20, 2008. IFIPTM 2008 provides a truly global platform for the reporting of research, development, policy and practice in the interdependent areas of Privacy, Security, and Trust. Following the traditions inherited from the highly successful iTrust and PST conference series, IFIPTM 2008 focuses on trust, privacy and security from multidisciplinary perspectives. The conference is an arena for discussion about re levant problems from both research and practice in the areas of academia, busi ness, and government. IFIPTM 2008 is an open IFIP conference, which only accepts contributed pa pers, so all papers in these proceedings have passed strict peer review. The pro gram of the conference features both theoretical research papers and reports of real world case studies. IFIPTM 2008 received 62 submissions. The program commit tee selected 22 papers for presentation and inclusion in the proceedings. In addi tion, the program and the proceedings include 3 demo descriptions. The highlights of IFIPTM 2008 include invited talks and tutorials by industri al and academic experts in the fields of trust management, privacy and security, including Jon Bing and Michael Steiner.

The theory of tree languages, founded in the late Sixties and still active in the Seventies, was much less active during the Eighties. Now there is a simultaneous revival in several countries, with a number of significant results proved in the past five years. A large proportion of them appear in the present volume.

The editors of this volume suggested that the authors should write comprehensive half-survey papers. This collection is therefore useful for everyone interested in the theory of tree languages as it covers most of the recent questions which are not treated in the very few rather old standard books on the subject. Trees appear naturally in many chapters of computer science and each new property is likely to result in improvement of some computational solution of a real problem in handling logical formulae, data structures, programming languages on systems, algorithms etc. The point of view adopted here is to put emphasis on the properties themselves and their rigorous mathematical exposition rather than on the many possible applications.

This volume is a useful source of concepts and methods which may be applied successfully in many situations: its philosophy is very close to the whole philosophy of the ESPRIT Basic Research Actions and to that of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science.

Offering a deep insight into the venture capital deal-making process, "Raising Venture Capital" also provides valuable introduction to the subject. The book is practical in focus but based on sound academic theory, research and teaching materials gathered over the last 4 years at Tanaka Business School.

Part one covers the history of the venture capital industry, shows why entrepreneurs need venture capital finance, and looks at how venture capitals raise and structure their funds. It also covers valuation methods for venture capital investments, and portfolio management.

Part two illustrates how successful entrepreneurs raise finance from venture capitals, and gives details on how to approach venture capitals, how to choose the right venture capital firm, and how venture capitals and entrepreneurs work together after the deal is done.

Part three gives a blow-by-blow account of the structure of a venture capital deal.

Fuzzy modeling has become one of the most productive and successful results of fuzzy logic. Among others, it has been applied to knowledge discovery, automatic classification, long-term prediction, or medical and engineering analysis. The research developed in the topic during the last two decades has been mainly focused on exploiting the fuzzy model flexibility to obtain the highest accuracy. This approach usually sets aside the interpretability of the obtained models. However, we should remember the initial philosophy of fuzzy sets theory directed to serve the bridge between the human understanding and the machine processing. In this challenge, the ability of fuzzy models to express the behavior of the real system in a comprehensible manner acquires a great importance. This book collects the works of a group of experts in the field that advocate the interpretability improvements as a mechanism to obtain well balanced fuzzy models.

Digital technology determines today s world and will be one of the key technologies of the future. Successful technology development, introduction and management are not only a question of technical issues; due to their complexity a close cooperation between different scientific disciplines is required to discuss various consequences, chances and risks from manifold points of view as a starting point for the design of adequate solutions. The ability to integrate business and technology decisions will become a crucial core competence.

The aim of this volume is to highlight a selection of important current research topics in the field of digital technology and management, illustrating the variety of aspects which have to be considered in the development and application of digital technologies.

Main topics of this book are the design of the innovation process, digital rights management, mobile, location-based and ubiquitous services, IT service management and future communication networks."

The lectures contained in this book were presented at Harvard University in June 1979. The workshop at which they were presented was the third such on algebro-geometric methods. The first was held in 1973 in London and the emphasis was largely on geometric methods. The second was held at Ames Research Center-NASA in 1976. There again the emphasis was on geometric methods, but algebraic geometry was becoming a dominant theme. In the two years after the Ames meeting there was tremendous growth in the applications of algebraic geometry to systems theory and it was becoming clear that much of the algebraic systems theory was very closely related to the geometric systems theory. On this basis we felt that this was the right time to devote a workshop to the applications of algebra and algebraic geometry to linear systems theory. The lectures contained in this volume represent all but one of the tutorial lectures presented at the workshop. The lec ture of Professor Murray Wonham is not contained in this volume and we refer the interested to the archival literature. This workshop was jointly sponsored by a grant from Ames Research Center-NASA and a grant from the Advanced Study Institute Program of NATO. We greatly appreciate the financial support rendered by these two organizations. The American Mathematical Society hosted this meeting as part of their Summer Seminars in Applied Mathematics and will publish the companion volume of con tributed papers."