This volume presents revised versions of the papers presented at the 4th International Workshop on Multi-agent Based Simulation (MABS 2003), a workshop federated with the2ndInternationalJointConferenceonAutonomousAgentsandMulti-agentSystems (AAMAS 2003), which was held in Melbourne, Australia, in July 2003. In addition to the papers presented at the workshop, three additional papers have been included in this volume (Robertson, Noto et al., and Marietto et al.). Multiagent Based Simulation (MABS) is a vibrant interdisciplinary area which brings together researchers active within the agent-based social simulation community (ABSS) and the multiagent systems community (MAS). These two communities have different, indeed somewhat divergent, goals. The focus of ABSS is on simulating and synthesizing social behaviors in order to understand observed social systems (human, animal and even electronic) via the development and testing of new models and c- cepts. MAS focuses instead on the solution of hard engineering problems related to the construction, deployment and ef?cient operation of multiagent-based systems.

Studies of surfaces and interactions between dissimilar materials or phases are vital for modern technological applications. Computer simulation methods are indispensable in such studies and this book contains a substantial body of knowledge about simulation methods as well as the theoretical background for performing computer experiments and analyzing the data.

The book is self-contained, covering a range of topics from classical statistical mechanics to a variety of simulation techniques, including molecular dynamics, Langevin dynamics and Monte Carlo methods. A number of physical systems are considered, including fluids, magnets, polymers, granular media, and driven diffusive systems. The computer simulation methods considered include both standard and accelerated versions. The simulation methods are clearly related to the fundamental principles of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.

The 29th International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science(WG2003)washeldintheMennorodeconferenceCenterinElspeet, The Netherlands.TheworkshopwasorganizedbytheCenterforAlgorithmicSystems of the Institute of Information and Computing Sciences of Utrecht University. The workshop took place June 19-21, 2003. The 72 participants of WG 2003 came from universities and research institutes from 18 di?erent countries and ?ve di?erent continents. The workshop looks back at a long tradition. It was ?rst held in 1975, and has been held 20 times in Germany, twice in Austria, and once in Italy, Slo- kia, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, and has now been held for the third time in The Netherlands. The workshop aims at uniting theory and practice by demonstrating how graph-theoretic concepts can be applied to various areas in computerscience, orbyextractingnewproblemsfromapplications.Itisdevoted to the theoretical and practical aspects of graph concepts in computer science. The goal is to present recent research results and to identify and explore - rections of future research. The talks given at the workshop showed how recent research results from algorithmic graph theory can be used in computer science and which graph-theoretic questions arise from new developments in computer scienc

Arti?cialLifehascomealongway. Sincetheinceptionofthe?eldabout16years ago with a seminal workshop at the Santa Fe Institute, the ?eld has developed quickly. Itsinterdisciplinaryrootshavebeenbothablessingandacurse. Critical people would say that nothing was new in the ideas of Arti?cial Life, since many other disciplines had addressed the very same questions, though probably under di?erent names. Other critics would state that the di?culty of interacting in an interdisciplinary way with colleagues from so many other and divergent ?elds would be so great that true progress could not come from such an enterprise, as those involved would be too busy understanding - or misunderstanding - each other. Admirers, on the other hand, would speak of a bold new attack on the most fascinating questions of science with this new approach. Others would say that new perspectives were opened by the questions the area of Arti?cial Life askedsopointedly. Forthoseinvolvedinthise?ortoversomeyears, ithasalways been very interesting and fascinating to work on these questions. From our discussions it also seems that Arti?cial Life is beginning to become mainstream. Evolutionarybiology, computationalandsystemsbiology, andc- putational social science, to name a few, are disciplines bene?tting from ideas hedgedinArti?cialLife. This, plusthesuccessofopen-endedevolutionarygames in the entertainment industry, the sensibility achieved with decades of work - hind us in arti?cial evolutionary approaches with ?xed ?tness measures, and the development of technology towards a networked, asynchronous, world of inter- tingentities, haveallconspiredtopreparethe?oorforAliferesearchcominginto its own. Notably the concept of emergence of new qualities from the interaction of entities without this quality has been a huge success in recent y

The refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on User Modeling, UM 2003, held in Johnstown, PA, USA in June 2003. The 20 revised full papers and 28 revised poster papers presented together with 12 abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from 106 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on adaptive hypermedia, adaptive Web, natural language and dialogue, plan recognition, evaluation, emerging issues of user modeling, group modeling and cooperation, applications, student modeling, learning environments - natural language and paedagogy, and mobile and ubiquitous computing.

Designed for senior electrical engineering students, this textbook explores the theoretical concepts of digital signal processing and communication systems by presenting laboratory experiments using real-time DSP hardware. The experiments are designed for the Texas Instruments TMS320C6701 Evaluation Module or TMS320C6711 DSK but can easily be adapted to other DSP boards. Each chapter begins with a presentation of the required theory and concludes with instructions for performing experiments to implement the theory. In the process of performing the experiments, students gain experience in working with software tools and equipment commonly used in industry.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Multi-Agent-Based Simulation, MABS 2002, held as part of the AAMAS 2002 conference in Bologna, Italy, in July 2002. The 12 revised full papers presented together with an invited paper were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers are organized in topical sections on emergence, alliances, and groups; MABS platforms and languages; and MABS applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 28th International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science, WG 2002, held in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic in June 2002. The 36 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from initially 61 submissions during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers provide a wealth of new results for various classes of graphs, graph computations, graph algorithms, and graph-theoretical applications in various fields.

The 2002 IFIP Workshop on Internet Technologies, Applications, and Societal Impact (WITASI 2002), held in Wroclaw, Poland, October 10-11, 2002, presents different research aspects of the Internet, both technical and societal. The workshop aims at getting together scientists and practitioners from different research areas to work together on Internet development and reflect on Internet consequences to the economy and society. The papers presented in these proceedings describe state-of-the-art research in such areas of Internet applications as languages, mobility, multimedia, quality of service, voice over IP, and wireless access. A total of 40 papers were submitted to WITASI 2002 out of which 18 papers were selected for presentation at the workshop and inclusion in the proceedings. The workshop also includes 4 invited papers. WIT ASI 2002 was sponsored by IFIP -the International Federation for Information Processing. It was organized by Working Group WG 6.4 on Internet Applications Engineering of the Technical Committee TC 6 on Communication Systems. Locally, WITASI 2002 was organized by the Institute of Control and Systems Engineering, Wroclaw University of Technology.

1.1. INTRODUCTION Plastic covering, either framed or floating, is now used worldwide to protect crops from unfavorable growing conditions, such as severe weather and insects and birds. Protected cultivation in the broad sense, including mulching, has been widely spread by the innovation of plastic films. Paper, straw, and glass were the main materials used before the era of plastics. Utilization of plastics in agriculture started in the developed countries and is now spreading to the developing countries. Early utilization of plastic was in cold regions, and plastic was mainly used for protection from the cold. Now plastic is used also for protection from wind, insects and diseases. The use of covering techniques started with a simple system such as mulching, then row covers and small tunnels were developed, and finally plastic houses. Floating mulch was an exception to this sequence: it was introduced rather recently, although it is a simple structure. New development of functional and inexpensive films triggered widespread use of floating mulch. Table 1.1. The use a/plastic mulch in the world (after Jouet, 2001).

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER 2002, held in Tampere, Finland in October 2002.The 30 revised full papers presented with abstracts of various invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from close to 130 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on semantics and meta-models, principles of ontology, web environments, theory and methods, methods and tools, applications for practice, applying ontology in conceptual modeling, applying ontology in coneptual modeling, systems and data integration, quality assessment, and XML and object systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry, ACRI 2002, held in Geneva, Switzerland in October 2002.The 31 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from around 50 submissions. The topics covered range from theoretical issues to applications in various fields, including lattice gases, pattern recognition, cryptography, and authentication. Less known models receive attention as well, such as probabilistic, asynchronous, and multi-level automata. Among novel applications and models are highway traffic, population and growth dynamics, environmental applications, and collective intelligence.

This special volume collects invited articles by participants of the Third International Workshop on Methods for Macromolecular Modeling, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Oct. 12-14, 2000. Leading developers of methods for biomolecular simulations review advances in Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics methods, free energy computational methods, fast electrostatics (particle-mesh Ewald and fast multipole methods), mathematics, and molecular neurobiology, nucleic acid simulations, enzyme reactions, and other essential applications in biomolecular simulations. A Perspectives article by the editors assesses the directions and impact of macromolecular modeling research, including genomics and proteomics. These reviews and original papers by applied mathematicians, theoretical chemists, biomedical researchers, and physicists are of interest to interdisciplinary research students, developers and users of biomolecular methods in academia and industry.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Mining Web Data, WEBKDD 2001 held in San Francisco, CA, USA in August 2001.The seven revised full papers went through two rounds of reviewing an improvement. The book addresses key issues in mining Web log data for e-commerce. The papers are devoted to predicting user access, recommender systems and access modeling, and acquiring and modeling data and patterns.

The refereed proceedings of the 4th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context, CONTEXT 2003, held in Stanford, CA, USA in June 2003. The 31 full papers and 15 short papers presented were carefully reviewed, selected, and revised for inclusion in the book. The papers presented deal with the interdisciplinary topic of modeling and using context from various points of view, ranging through cognitive science, formal logic, artifical intelligence, computational intelligence, philosophical and psychological aspects, and information processing. Highly general philosophical and theoretical issues are complemented by specific applications in various fields.

This volume summarizes the results of a priority program launched by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) called KONDISK-Dynamics and Control of Systems with Mixed Continuous and Discrete Dynamics. The program was motivated by the need for a more comprehensive approach to hybrid systems both in the computer science and the control engineering communities. Technical systems nowadays are composed of physical components with mostly continuous dynamics and computerized control systems where the reaction to discrete events plays a major role, implemented in Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), Distributed Control Systems (DCSs) or real-time computer systems. Several practical examples of systems with mixed continuous-discrete dynamics are presented, such as a conveyor belt, an annealing furnace, a membranous filtration process, a titration plant, a diesel engine, robotic arms, a chemical reactor, tank systems, or an aircraft elevator system.

What should be every software organization's primary goal? Managing Software Quality. Producing and sustaining the high quality of products and processes in evolutionary systems are at the core of software engineering, and it is only through a comprehensive measurement program that a successful outcome can be assured. Cost and budget limitations, schedule due dates, all represent systems engineering constraints which impinge on the degree to which software development and maintenance professional can achieve maximum quality. Richard Nance and James Arthur's guide to managing software quality goes beyond the usual answers to the "why" and "what" questions generally provided in the standards documents. They not only look at the "how to" in their focus of the measurement of software quality, but also come up with specific suggestions to the pressing needs of practising software engineers, quality assurance engineers and software and project managers."This is one of the few books in this area that addresses the 'quality' aspect based upon the important aspect of documentation. In addition, the book provides a basis for not only the software manager concerned with measurement implementation, but also the researcher in identifying the current state of the art and practice. This will be a key reference guide for anyone that is concerned with developing quality software."(William H Farr, PhD, Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division)About the Authors: Research motivated by problems arising in large, complex software systems is what stimulates Richard Nance. His collaboration with the U.S. Navy on major software-intensive programs spans over 30 years. James Arthur is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International SPIN Workshop on Model Checking Software, held in Grenoble, France in April 2002 as a satellite event of ETAPS 2002.The 10 revised full research papers presented together with the abstracts of four invited papers or tutorials, three reports on work in progress, three invited industrial presentations, and four SPIN model checking tool descriptions were carefully reviewed and selected from 20 submissions. The book presents state-of-the-art results on the analysis and verifications of distributed and concurrent systems using the SPIN model checker as one of the most powerful and popular such system.

The book is a state-of-the-art overview on high performance computing (HPC) activities to solve scientific and/or engineering problems on supercomputers. This topic has evolved to a key technology playing an important role in determining, or at least shaping, future research and development activities in many branches of industry. The main topics include the development of advanced numerical methods, parallel computing techniques, grid generation, and visualization. Applications of these techniques are directed to fluid dynamics, turbulence, combustion and porous media related flows, computational structural dynamics, material sciences, chemical engineering, dynamic systems, optimal control, and optimization of electronic circuits. The book includes 44 contributions from renowned international experts in the field of HPC and its applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Articulated Motion and Deformable Objects, AMDO 2002, held in Palma de Mallorca, Spain in November 2002.The 21 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. Among the topics addressed are geometric and physical deformable objects, motion analysis, articulated models and animation, visualization of deformable models, 3D recovery from motion, single or multiple human motion analysis and synthesis, applications of deformable models and motion analysis, face tracking, recovery and recognition models.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed postproceedings of the Second International Conference on Computers and Games, CG 2001, held in Hamamatsu, Japan in October 2000. The 23 revised full papers presented together with two invited contributions and five reviews were carefully refereed and selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers are organized in topical sections on search and strategies, learning and pattern acquisition, theory and complexity issues, and further experiments on game; the reviews presented are on computer language games, computer Go, intelligent agents for computer games, RoboCup, and computer Shogi.

Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) are adaptive systems inspired by the biological immune system and applied to problem solving. This book provides an accessible introduction that will be suitable for anyone who is beginning to study or work in this area. It gives a clear definition of an AIS, sets out the foundations of the topic (including basic algorithms), and analyses how the immune system relates to other biological systems and processes. No prior knowledge of immunology is needed - all the essential background information is covered in the introductory chapters.Key features of the book include:- A discussion of AIS in the context of Computational Intelligence;- Case studies in Autonomous Navigation, Computer Network Security, Job-Shop Scheduling and Data Analysis =B7 An extensive survey of applications;- A framework to help the reader design and understand AIS;- A web site with additional resources including pseudocodes for immune algorithms, and links to related sites.Written primarily for final year undergraduate and postgraduate students studying Artificial Intelligence, Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Computing, this book will also be of interest to industrial and academic researchers working in related areas.

On behalf of the ICES 2001 Conference Committee, it is our pleasure to present to you the proceedings of the fourth International Conference on Evolvable S- tems: From Biology to Hardware, ICES 2001, held in Tokyo, Japan, on 3-5 - tober 2001, addressing the latest developments and discussing challenges facing the ?eld of evolvable systems. The idea of evolving machines, whose origins can be traced back to the - bernetics movement of the 1940s and the 1950s, has recently re-emerged in the form of the nascent ?eld of bio-inspired systems and evolvable hardware. Foll- ing the workshop, Towards Evolvable Hardware, which took place in Lausanne, Switzerland, in October 1995, the First International Conference on Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Hardware (ICES96), was held at the Electrotech- cal Laboratory (MITI), Tsukuba, Japan, in October 1996. The second and the third International Conferences on Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Ha- ware (ICES98 and ICES 2000) were respectively held in Lausanne in September 1998, and in Edinburgh in April 2000. Following the success of these past events, ICES 2001 was dedicated to the promotion and advancement of all aspects of evolvable systems, including ha- ware, software, algorithms, and applications. By bringing together researchers who use biologically inspired concepts to implement real systems in arti?cial - telligence, arti?cial life, robotics, VLSI design, and related domains, ICES 2001 reunited this burgeoning community.

A complete guide to creating usable, realistic game characters with two powerful tools

Creating viable game characters requires a combination of skills. This book teaches game creators how to create usable, realistic game assets using the power of an open-source 3D application and a free game engine. It presents a step-by-step approach to modeling, texturing, and animating a character using the popular Blender software, with emphasis on low polygon modeling and an eye for using sculpting and textures, and demonstrates how to bring the character into the Unity game engine. Game creation is a popular and productive pursuit for both hobbyists and serious developers; this guide brings together two effective tools to simplify and enhance the processArtists who are familiar with Blender or other 3D software but who lack experience with game development workflow will find this book fills important gaps in their knowledgeProvides a complete tutorial on developing a game character, including modeling, UV unwrapping, sculpting, baking displacements, texturing, rigging, animation, and exportEmphasizes low polygon modeling for game engines and shows how to bring the finished character into the Unity game engine

Whether you're interested in a new hobby or eager to enter the field of professional game development, this book offers valuable guidance to increase your skills.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Process Algebra and Performance Modeling and Probabilistic Methods in Verification, PAPM-PROBMIV 2001, held in Aachen, Germany in September 2001.
The 12 revised full papers presented together with one invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 23 submissions. Among the topics addressed are model representation, model checking, probabilistic systems analysis, refinement, Markov chains, random variables, stochastic timed systems, Max-Plus algebra, process algebra, system modeling, and the Mobius modeling framework.