This volume contains the papers presented at the Second International and - terdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context (CONTEXT 99), held in Trento (Italy) from 9 to 11 September 1999. CONTEXT 99 is the second in the CONTEXT series. The rst was held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in 1997. The CONTEXT conference series is meant to provide an interdisciplinary - rum where researchers can exchange ideas, methodologies, and results on c- text, and is increasingly becoming an important reference for all people doing research on context. This is testi ed by the larger number of research areas that are represented at CONTEXT 99 (in particular, Philosophy and Cognitive Psychology were not signi cantly present at the rst conference), and by the number and quality of submitted papers. Speci cally, we received 118 papers, mostly of good or excellent quality. Among them, 33 (28%) have been accepted as full papers, and 21 as short papers. We think it is fair to say that the 54 papers collected in this volume provide a signi cant picture of the international research on context currently going on. The notion of context plays an important role in many areas, both theoretical and applied, such as Formal Logic, Arti cial Intelligence, Philosophy, Pragm- ics, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science, Cognitive Psychology."

User modeling researchers look for ways of enabling interactive software systems to adapt to their users-by constructing, maintaining, and exploiting user models, which are representations of properties of individual users. User modeling has been found to enhance the effectiveness and/or usability of software systems in a wide variety of situations. Techniques for user modeling have been developed and evaluated by researchers in a number of fields, including artificial intelligence, education, psychology, linguistics, human-computer interaction, and information science. The biennial series of International Conferences on User Modeling provides a forum in which academic and industrial researchers from all of these fields can exchange their complementary insights on user modeling issues. The published proceedings of these conferences represent a major source of information about developments in this area.

The SISDEP 93 conference proceedings present outstanding research and development results in the area of numerical process and device simulation. The miniaturization of today's semiconductor devices, the usage of new materials and advanced process steps in the development of new semiconductor technologies suggests the design of new computer programs. This trend towards more complex structures and increasingly sophisticated processes demands advanced simulators, such as fully three-dimensional tools for almost arbitrarily complicated geometries. With the increasing need for better models and improved understanding of physical effects, these proceedings support the simulation community and the process- and device engineers who need reliable numerical simulation tools for characterization, prediction, and development. This book covers the following topics: process simulation and equipment modeling, device modeling and simulation of complex structures, device simulation and parameter extraction for circuit models, integration of process, device and circuit simulation, practical applications of simulation, algorithms and software.

Neural networks have had considerable success in a variety of disciplines including engineering, control, and financial modelling. However a major weakness is the lack of established procedures for testing mis-specified models and the statistical significance of the various parameters which have been estimated. This is particularly important in the majority of financial applications where the data generating processes are dominantly stochastic and only partially deterministic. Based on the latest, most significant developments in estimation theory, model selection and the theory of mis-specified models, this volume develops neural networks into an advanced financial econometrics tool for non-parametric modelling. It provides the theoretical framework required, and displays the efficient use of neural networks for modelling complex financial phenomena. Unlike most other books in this area, this one treats neural networks as statistical devices for non-linear, non-parametric regression analysis.

This book contains the scientific papers presented at the SthEUROGRAPHICS Workshop on Virtual Environments '99, which st st was held in Vienna May 31 and June 1 . It was organized by the Institute of Computer Graphics of the Vienna University of Technology together with the Austrian Academy of Sciences and EUROGRAPHICS. The workshop brought together scientists from all over the world to present and discuss the latest scientific advances in the field of Virtual Environments. 31 papers where submitted for reviewing and 18 where selected to be presented at the workshop. Most of the top research institutions working in the area submitted papers and presented their latest results. These presentations were complemented by invited lectures from Stephen Feiner and Ron Azuma, two key researchers in the area of Augmented Reality. The book gives a good overview of the state of the art in Augmented Reality and Virtual Environment research. The special focus of the Workshop was Augmented Reality, reflecting a noticeable strong trend in the field of Virtual Environments. Augmented Reality tries to enrich real environments with virtual objects rather than replacing the real world with a virtual world. The main challenges include real time rendering, tracking, registration and occlusion of real and virtual objects, shading and lighting interaction, and interaction techniques in augmented environments. These problems are addressed by new research results documented in this book. Besides Augmented Reality, the papers collected here also address levels of detail, distributed environments, systems and applications, and interaction techniques.

This volume contains a collection of selected papers presented at the Symposium on Conceptual Modeling, which was held in Los Angeles, California, on December 2, th 1997, immediately before the 16 International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER'97), which was held at UCLA. A total of eighteen papers were selected for inclusion in this volume. These papers are written by experts in the conceptual modeling area and represent the most current thinking of these experts. This volume also contains the summaries of three workshops that were held on 6 7 December 1997, immediately after the ER'97 conference at UCLA. The topics of these three workshops are: * Behavioral Modeling * Conceptual Modeling in Multimedia Information Seeking * What Is the Role of Cognition in Conceptual Modeling? Since these topics are not only very important but also very timely, we think it is appropriate to include the summary of these three workshops in this volume. Those readers interested in further investigating topics related to the three workshops can either look up the individual paper published on the Web or contact the authors directly. The summary paper by Chen at the beginning of this volume also includes the summary of several interesting speeches at the Symposium.

The correct development of large / com plex pieces of software demands a thorough structuring of the design process. In a first phase the requirements engineering is relevant for capturing the relevant functionality and its adequate formalization in precise mathematical definitions. Prototyping can can be used as a means for checking the functional behaviour at this early stage of development. The ade quate specification resulting from the first phase is then the basis for the second phase which comprises the derivation of an implementation. This phase requires the use of formal methods and tools to verify/validate the implementation. A prerequisite for applying this approach is to have a suitable mechanical support. This volume contains the proceedings of the International Workshop Tool Support for System Specification, Development and Verification organized June 1 - 4, 1998, in Malente, Germany. This workshop is the third in a series of events devoted to this topic. The first two workshops were held in 1994 in Kiel and 1996 in Bremen, Germany. The aim of this workshop is to provide a forum for researchers interested in the use and development of tools which support the use of mathematical techniques for the specification, development and verification of systems. The workshop covers the spectrum from verification tools to graphical editors and compilers. The program of the workshop included an invited lecture and 26 talks. The invited lecture was given by F.W. von Henke (University ofUlm) on Mechanized formal methods and system design."

In the past decade visualization established its importance both in scientific research and in real-world applications. In this book 21 research papers and 9 case studies report on the latest results in volume and flow visualization and information visualization. Thus it is a valuable source of information not only for researchers but also for practitioners developing or using visualization applications.

Neural Networks are a new, interdisciplinary tool for information processing. Neurocomputing being successfully introduced to structural problems which are difficult or even impossible to be analysed by standard computers (hard computing). The book is devoted to foundations and applications of NNs in the structural mechanics and design of structures.

The 9th Eurographics workshop on Animation and Simulation was held on Au- gust 31st -September 1st, 1998, at INESC Lisbon. The workshop was chaired by Bruno Arnaldi (IRISA Rennes, France) and Gerard Hegron (Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France). The local organizer Mario Rui Gomes (INESC Lisbon, Por- tugal) notably contributed to provide a harmonious environment. The main theme of this seventh workshop was centered on Virtual Reality versus Anima- tion and Simulation: from real time animation/simulation to physical perception of virtual environments. About twenty participants attended the workshop, rep- resenting eight countries: France, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Portugal, Germany and USA. The Program Committee selected eight papers among sub- mitted papers. Thirteen minutes of presentation and fifteen minutes discussion time per paper was also planned; this approach succeeded in creating a stimu- lating exchange atmosphere during the two days. Four sessions have been organized : Applications : in this session, two papers were presented, the first one deals with the use of simulation in natural desasters prevention while the second one concerns dynamic light sources for radiosity environments natural simulation : the first paper of this session presents works on real time behavioral simulation from psychological studies, the second one deals with identification of motion for living beeing. Interaction : the first paper presents a method for interactively animate solid using displacement contraints and the second paper presents the modeling of objects for interactive virtual human tasks.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the First International Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems and Agent-Based Simulation, MABS'98, held in Paris, France in July 1998 in conjunction with Agent World 1998. The 15 revised full papers presented together with an introduction by the volume editors were selected from a total of more than 50 submissions. Among the topics covered are multi-agent systems, social simulation, agent-based modelling, cognitive emergence, honey-bee colonies, artificial societies, economic aspects, cultural evolution, roles in agent systems, applications in various areas, etc.

19 papers presented by international experts give a state-of-the-art survey of the relevant problems and issues in modeling, CAD/CAM, scientific visualization, and computational geometry. The following topics are treated: * surface design and fairing * subdivision schemes * variational design * NURBS * reverse engineering * physically-based modelling * medical imaging

The objective of the present work is to review the existing literature on joint incongruity, cellular mechano-transduction, and computer simulations of mechano-adaptive bone remodelling, and to quantitatively assess the effect of incongruity on load transmission and subchondral mineralisation. Idealised computer models of incongruous joints and a specific anatomically based model of the humero-ulnar joint articulation were analysed with the finite element method, and the results directly compared with experimental and morphological data.

The CAPTECH'98 workshop took place at the University of Geneva on November 26-27, 1998, sponsored by FIP Working Group 5.10 (Computer Graphics and Virtual Worlds) and the Suisse Romande regional doctoral seminar in computer science. The subject of the conference was ongoing research in data capture and interpretation. The goals of capturing real world data in order to perceive, understand, and interpret them and then reacting to them in a suitable way are currently important research problems. These data can be very diverse: sounds, emotions, shapes, motions, forces, muscles, actions, etc. Once captured, they have to be treated either to make the invisible visible, or to understand a particular phenomenon so as to formulate an appropriate reaction, or to integrate various information in a new multimedia format. The conference included six sessions of presented papers and three panel discussions. Invited speakers treating various aspects of the topic were: Professor R. Earnshaw from Bradford University, Professor T. L. Kunii from Hosei University, and Professor P. Robert from EPFL. Professor K. Bauknecht, of the University of Zurich, President of IFIP, offered the welcoming address. Mr. E. Badique, project officer for the EU in Brussels, discussed recent results of the EU ACTS research program. Finally, the Geneva Computer Animation '98 Film Festival highlighted the evening of November 26."

I would like to welcome you to Singapore and the 17th International Conf- enceonConceptualModeling(ER 98).Thisconferenceprovidesaninternational forum for technical discussion on conceptual modeling of information systems among researchers, developers and users. This is the ?rst time that this c- ference is held in Asia, and Singapore is a very exciting place to host ER 98. We hope that you will ?nd the technical program and workshops useful and stimulating. The technical program of the conference was selected by the distinguished program committee consisting of two co-chairs and 83 members. Credit for the excellent?nalprogramisduetoTokWangLingandSudhaRam.Specialthanks to Frederick H. Lochovsky for selecting interesting panels, and Alain Pirotte for preparation of attractive tutorials. I would also like to thank Yong Meng Teo (PublicityChair), andtheregionco-ordinators, AlbertoLaender, ErichNeuhold, Shiwei Tang, and Masaaki Tsubaki, for taking care of publicity. The following three workshops are also organized to discuss speci?c t- ics of data modeling and databases: International Workshop on Data Wa- housing and Data Mining organized by Sham Navathe (Workshop chair) and MukeshMohania(ProgramCommitteeChair), InternationalWorkshoponNew Database Technologies for Collaborative Work Support and Spatio-Temporal DataManagement organizedbyYoshifumiMasunaga, and InternationalWo- shop on Mobile Data Access organized by Dik L. Lee. Ee Peng Lim took care of all detailed work related to the workshops. I would like to thank all these people who organized the workshops as well as the members of program committees. The workshop proceedings will be published jointly after the workshop."

We never create anything, We discover and reproduce. The Twelfth International Conference on Industrial and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems has a distinguished theme. It is concerned with bridging the gap between the academic and the industrial worlds of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Expert Systems. The academic world is mainly concerned with discovering new algorithms, approaches, and methodologies; however, the industrial world is mainly driven by profits, and concerned with producing new products or solving customers problems. Ten years ago, the artificial intelligence research gap between academia and industry was very broad. Recently, this gap has been narrowed by the emergence of new fields and new joint research strategies in academia. Among the new fields which contributed to the academic-industrial convergence are knowledge representation, machine learning, searching, reasoning, distributed AI, neural networks, data mining, intelligent agents, robotics, pattern recognition, vision, applications of expert systems, and others. It is worth noting that the end results of research in these fields are usually products rather than empirical analyses and theoretical proofs. Applications of such technologies have found great success in many domains including fraud detection, internet service, banking, credit risk and assessment, telecommunication, etc. Progress in these areas has encouraged the leading corporations to institute research funding programs for academic institutes. Others have their own research laboratories, some of which produce state of the art research."

The book presents innovative methods for the solution of multibody descriptor models. It emphasizes the interdependence of modeling and numerical solution of the arising system of differential-algebraic equations (DAE). Here, it is shown that modifications of non-stiff ODE-solvers are very effective for a large class of multibody systems. In particular, implicit methods are found to dovetail optimally with the linearly implicit structure of the model equations, allowing an inverse dynamics approach for their solution. Furthermore, the book stresses the importance of software development in scientific computing and thus presents a complete example of an interdisciplinary problem solution for an important field of application from technical mechanics.

In twelve selected papers common problems in scientific visualization are discussed: adaptive and multi-resolution methods, feature extraction, flow visualization, and visualization quality. Four papers focus on aspects of mesh reduction, mesh compression, and increasing the quality of the resulting mesh. Two extentions on particle tracing are presented as well as a paper on the simulation of material transport. Two papers are on feature extraction in dynamics systems and on the accuracy of algorithmic extracted features. Three papers focus on stereoscopic volume rendering, on the visualization of atomic collision cascades and of quality of visualization systems in general.

High-temperature materials is a fast-moving research area with numerous practical applications. Materials that can withstand extremely high temperatures and extreme environments are generating considerable attention worldwide; however, designing materials that have low densities, elevated melting temperatures, oxidation resistance, creep resistance, and intrinsic toughness encompass some of the most challenging problems in materials science.
The current search for high-temperature materials is largely based on traditional, trial-and-error experimental methods which are costly and time-consuming. An effective way to accelerate research in this field is to use recent advances in materials simulations and high performance computing and communications (HPCC) to guide experiments. This synergy between experiment and advanced materials modeling will significantly enhance the synthesis of novel high-temperature materials.
This volume collects recent work from experimental and computational scientists on high-temperature materials and emphasizes the potential for collaboration. It features state-of-the-art materials modeling and recent experimental developments in high-temperature materials. Topics include fundamental phenomena and properties; measurements and modeling of interfacial phenomena, stresses, growth of defects, strain, and fracture; and electronic structure and molecular dynamics.

The 20 research papers in this volume demonstrate novel models and concepts in animation and graphics simulation. Special emphasis is given on innovative approaches to Modelling Human Motion, Models of Collision Detection and Perception, Facial Animation and Communication, Specific Animation Models, Realistic Rendering for Animation, and Behavioral Animation.

Aiming to "modernise" the course through the integration of Mathematica, this publication introduces students to its multivariable uses, instructs them on its use as a tool in simplifying calculations, and presents introductions to geometry, mathematical physics, and kinematics. The authors make it clear that Mathematica is not algorithms, but at the same time, they clearly see the ways in which Mathematica can make things cleaner, clearer and simpler. The sets of problems give students an opportunity to practice their newly learned skills, covering simple calculations, simple plots, a review of one-variable calculus using Mathematica for symbolic differentiation, integration and numerical integration, and also cover the practice of incorporating text and headings into a Mathematica notebook. The accompanying diskette contains both Mathematica 2.2 and 3.0 version notebooks, as well as sample examination problems for students, which can be used with any standard multivariable calculus textbook. It is assumed that students will also have access to an introductory primer for Mathematica.

This volume will contain papers from the 5th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop, University of Birmingham, UK, 8-10 September 1998. The theme of the workshop is Connectionist Models in Cognitive Neuroscience, a topic which covers many important issues ranging from modelling physiological structure, to cognitive function and its disorders in neuropsychological and psychiatric cases. The workshop is intended to bring together researchers from such diverse disciplines as artificial intelligence, applied mathematics, cognitive science, computer science, neurobiology, philosophy and psychology, to discuss their work on the connectionist modelling of psychology. The papers will provide a state of the art summary of ongoing research in this exciting and fast-moving field. As such this volume will provide a valuable contribution to the Perspectives in Neural Computing series.

Turbidite sandstone successions are common elements of the stratigraphic content of sedimentary basins, and are important hydrocarbon reservoirs in many parts of the world. This book addresses the important issue of mass-flow sedimentation modelling in the framework of basin-fill dynamics and sequence stratigraphy. The proposed computer algorithm, based on the slope instability criterion and DEMOSTRAT's diffusion equation, can be used to predict the timing and spatial effects of mass-flow sedimentation in a sedimentary basin under conditions specified by the modeller. This volume is for researchers, lecturers and postgraduate students. It will be of particular interest to petroleum geologists and those working for oil companies concerned with exploration of deep-marine siliciclastic successions for hydrocarbon reserves.

Economists are increasingly using computer simulations to understand the implications of their theoretical models and to make policy recommendations. New model solution techniques are required to deal with the increasingly important role of dynamics and uncertainty in macroeconomics. This book consists of articles by leading contributors in the field showing how to use these techniques in the context of standard macroeconomic models.

This book contains papers presented at the Noblesse Workshop on Non-linear model based image analysis held in Glasgow, 1-3 July 1998. Current models have mainly been developed for image coding purposes. They are rather simple and far away from being optimal and do not contribute to more complex tasks like those needed in image databases. This book meets the challenging tasks in multimedia applications by discussing new sophisticated model-based schemes for a high-level description of images and image sequences. Novel results are covered in the papers presented in this book, opening new potential fields of application like the support for building databases in multimedia applications, image archiving and image sequence coding, including such topics as: - 3D Image Models; Image/Video Restoration; Segmentation and Object Oriented Coding; Colour Image Processing; Database Retrieval; Image Models; Video Pre- and Post processing