This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems, held in Alicante, Spain, in June 2011. The 11 revised full papers and 11 revised short papers presented together with 23 poster papers, 1 invited talk and 6 papers of the NLDB 2011 doctoral symposium were carefully reviewed and selected from 74 submissions. The papers address all aspects of Natural Language Processing related areas and present current research on topics such as natural language in conceptual modeling, NL interfaces for data base querying/retrieval, NL-based integration of systems, large-scale online linguistic resources, applications of computational linguistics in information systems, management of textual databases NL on data warehouses and data mining, NLP applications, as well as NL and ubiquitous computing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Symposium, PETS 2011, held in Waterloo, Canada, in July 2011.
The 15 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 61 submissions. The papers address design and realization of privacy services for the Internet, other data systems and communication networks. Presenting novel research on all theoretical and practical aspects of privacy technologies, as well as experimental studies of fielded systems the volume also features novel technical contributions from other communities such as law, business, and data protection authorities, that present their perspectives on technological issues.

The application of new computational techniques and visualisation technologies in the Arts and Humanities are resulting in fresh approaches and methodologies for the study of new and traditional corpora. This 'computational turn' takes the methods and techniques from computer science to create innovative means of close and distant reading. This book discusses the implications and applications of 'Digital Humanities' and the questions raised when using algorithmic techniques. Key researchers in the field provide a comprehensive introduction to important debates surrounding issues such as the contrast between narrative versus database, pattern-matching versus hermeneutics, and the statistical paradigm versus the data mining paradigm. Also discussed are the new forms of collaboration within the Arts and Humanities that are raised through modular research teams and new organisational structures, as well as techniques for collaborating in an interdisciplinary way.

This book contains a selection of thoroughly refereed and revised papers from the Second International ICST Conference on Wireless and Mobile Communication in Healthcare, MobiHealth 2010, held in Ayia Napa, Cyprus, in October 2010. The 33 papers in this volume describe various applications of information and communication technologies in healthcare and medicine and cover a wide range of topics such as intelligent public health monitoring services, mobile health technologies, signal processing techniques for monitoring services, wearable biomedical devices, ambient assistive technologies, emergency and disaster applications, and integrated systems for chronic monitoring and management.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Pacific Asia Workshop on Intelligence and Security Informatics, PAISI 2011, held in Beijing, China, in July 2011. The 8 revised full papers and the 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on terrorism informatics and crime analysis; intelligence analysis and knowledge discovery; information access and security; and infectious disease informatics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience, ISPEC 2011, held in Guangzhou, China, in May/June 2011.
The 26 papers presented together with 6 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 108 submissions. They are grouped in sections on public key encryption, cloud security, security applications, post-quantum cryptography and side-channel attack, block ciphers and MACs, signature, secrete sharing and traitor tracing, system security and network security, and security protocols.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information Theoretic Security, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in May 2011.
The 12 revised full papers presented together with 7 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 submissions. Understanding the minimal requirements for information-theoretic security is a central part of this line of research. Very attractive is the mathematical neatness of the field, and its rich connections to other areas of mathematics, like probability and information theory, algebra, combinatorics, coding theory, and quantum information processing, just to mention the most prominent ones.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12 International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, PROFES 2011, held in Torre Canne, Italy, in June 2011. The 24 revised full papers presented together with the abstracts of 2 keynote addresses were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on agile and lean practices, cross-model quality improvement, global and competitive software development, managing diversity, product and process measurements, product-focused software process improvement, requirement process improvement, and software process improvement.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Information Technology and Mobile Communication, AIM 2011, held at Nagpur, India, in April 2011. The 31 revised full papers presented together with 27 short papers and 34 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 313 submissions. The papers cover all current issues in theory, practices, and applications of Information Technology, Computer and Mobile Communication Technology and related topics.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Web-Based Learning, ICWL 2010, held in Shanghai, China, in December 2010. The 36 revised full papers and 8 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 192 submissions. They deal with topics such as e-learning platforms and tools, technology enhanced learning, Web-based learning for oriental languages, mobile/situated e-learning, learning resource deployment, organization and management, design, model and framework of e-learning systems, e-learning metadata and standards, collaborative learning and game-based learning, as well as practice and experience sharing, and pedagogical issues.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality, REFSQ 2011, held in Essen, Germany, in March 2011. The 10 revised full papers and the 9 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. The papers are organized in seven topical sections on security and sustainability; process improvement and requirements in context; elicitation; models; services; embedded and real-time systems; and prioritization and traceability.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Passive and Active Measurement, PAM 2011, held in Atlanta, GA, USA, in March 2011. The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 56 submissions. The papers were arranged into seven sessions covering passive measurement, wireless models, bandwidth, automated bots, route avoidance, interdomain protocols, timing, and diagnosis.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction, held in College Park, MD, USA, March 29-31, 2011. The 48 papers and 3 keynotes presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 88 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics including social network analysis; modeling; machine learning and data mining; social behaviors; public health; cultural aspects; and effects and search.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint post proceedings of two international workshops, the 5th International Workshop on Data Privacy Management, DPM 2010, and the 3rd International Workshop on Autonomous and Spontaneous Security, SETOP 2010, collocated with the ESORICS 2010 symposium in Athens, Greece, in September 2010. The 9 revised full papers for DPM 2010 presented together with two keynote talks are accompanied by 7 revised full papers of SETOP 2010; all papers were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The DPM 2010 papers cover topics such as how to translate the high-level business goals into system-level privacy policies, administration of privacy-sensitive data, privacy data integration and engineering, privacy access control mechanisms, information-oriented security, and query execution on privacy-sensitive data for partial answers. The SETOP 2010 papers address several specific aspects of the previously cited topics, as for instance the autonomic administration of security policies, secure P2P storage, RFID authentication, anonymity in reputation systems, etc.

We are very pleased to introduce Open Source Development, Communities and Quality. The International Conference on Open Source Systems has come to its fourth edition - OSS 2008. Now, Free, Libre, and Open Source software is by all means now one of the most relevant subjects of study in several disciplines, ranging from information technology to social sciences and including also law, business, and political sciences. There are several conference tracks devoted to open source software with several publications appearing in high quality journals and magazines. OSS 2008 has been organized with the purpose of being the reference venue for those working in this area, being the most prominent conference in this area. For this th reason OSS 2008 has been located within the frameworks of the 20 World Computer Congress, WCC 2008, in Milan, the largest event of IFIP in 2008. We believe that this conference series, and the IFIP working group it represents, can play an important role in meeting these challenges, and hope that this book will become a valuable contribution to the open source body of research.

This book presents the proceedings of the Working Conference on the societal and organizational implications for information systems of social inclusion. The contributed papers explore technology design and use in organizations, and consider the processes that engender social exclusion along with the issues that derive from it. The conference, sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing Working Group 8.2, was held in Limerick, Ireland, in July, 2006.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International ECML/PKDD Workshop on Privacy and Security Issues in Data Mining and Machine Learning, PSDML 2010, held in Barcelona, Spain, in September 2010. The 11 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. The papers range from data privacy to security applications, focusing on detecting malicious behavior in computer systems.

Simplicity in nature is the ultimate sophistication. The world's magnificence has been enriched by the inner drive of instincts, the profound drive of our everyday life. Instinct is an inherited behavior that responds to environmental stimuli. Instinctive computing is a computational simulation of biological and cognitive instincts, which influence how we see, feel, appear, think and act. If we want a computer to be genuinely secure, intelligent, and to interact naturally with us, we must give computers the ability to recognize, understand, and even to have primitive instincts.

This book, Computing with Instincts, comprises the proceedings of the Instinctive Computing Workshop held at Carnegie Mellon University in the summer of 2009. It is the first state-of-the-art survey on this subject. The book consists of three parts: Instinctive Sensing, Communication and Environments, including new experiments with in vitro biological neurons for the control of mobile robots, instinctive sound recognition, texture vision, visual abstraction, genre in cultures, human interaction with virtual world, intuitive interfaces, exploitive interaction, and agents for smart environments.

Big data, surveillance, crisis management. Three largely different and richly researched fields, however, the interplay amongst these three domains is rarely addressed. In this enlightening title, the link between these three fields is explored in a consequential order through a variety of contributions and series of unique and international case studies. Indeed, whilst considering crisis management as an "umbrella term" that covers a number of crises and ways of managing them, the reader will also explore the collection of "big data" by governmental crisis organisations. However, this volume also addresses the unintended consequences of using such data. In particular, through the lens of surveillance, one will also investigate how the use and abuse of big data can easily lead to monitoring and controlling the behaviour of people affected by crises. Thus, the reader will ultimately join the authors in their debate of how big data in crisis management needs to be examined as a political process involving questions of power and transparency. An enlightening and highly topical volume, Big Data, Surveillance and Crisis Management will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields including Sociology and Surveillance Studies, Disaster and Crisis Management, Media Studies, Governmentality, Organisation Theory and Information Society Studies.

This is a book about creating information systems within firms that will truly give managers the information they need to make informed business decisions. The author contends that information is part of an ecological system in which it undergoes a process of evolution and adaptation to the requirements of the local users. The book explains ecological planning tools that guide managers to develop information systems to meet their changing needs.

Electronic business, the integration of IT and the Internet into business processes, has begun to completely revolutionize business and the economy. The aim of this book is to point out the challenges and opportunities Europe and its companies are faced with in electronic business. The material is based upon the authors joint experience of years of research into the use of IT in business, industry, and government, as well as their management experience as President and CEO of leading technology organizations.

Information and knowledge play an increasingly important role in the implementation of public policies, in particular those of the Central and Eastern European Countries. They are involved in many respects in the elaboration of scientific programs. They are more and more present in the political decision making process and as topic for scientific conferences. They are often at the centre of international discussions on related topics, for example, differences in approaches to produce and apply knowledge or different responses to social function of information. A major lesson of these past years applies to democracy. Europeans demand more involvement in decisions that concern them. This demand goes weH beyond decision making. For public action to be acceptable and efficient, the whole process should become more democratic, from the defmition of the problems, to the implementation and the evaluation of solutions. In the context of conducting research on the consequences of scientific and technological advance, the Europaische Akademie Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler in Germany and the Academy of Science of the Czech Republic organised a conference on the relationship between "democracy-participation-technology assessment" in February 1999. The objective of the workshop was to express and to the problems of transition "from exchange various viewpoints and attitudes information society to knowledge society. " The great response given to the international conference underlines the need not only for Central and Eastern European Countries to take into consideration more common projects like this for the future."

Every one relies on some kind of transportation system nearly every day. Go ing to work, shopping, dropping children at school and many other cultural or social activities imply leaving home, and using some form of transportation, which we expect tobe eflicient and reliable. Of course, efliciency and reliabil ity do not occur by chance, but require careful and often relatively complex planning by transportation system managers, both in the public and private sectors. It has long been recognized that mathematics, and, more specifically, op erations research is an important tool of this planning process. However, the range of skills required to cover both fields, even partially, is very large, and the opportunities to gather people with this very diverse expertise are too few. The organization of the NATO Advanced Studies Institute on "Opera tions Research and Decision Aid Methodologies in Traflic and Transportation Management" in March 1997 in Balatonfured, Hungary, was therefore more than welcome and the group of people that gathered for a very studious two weeks on the shores of the beautiful lake Balaton did really enjoy the truly multidisciplinary and high scientific level of the meeting. The purpose of the present volume is to report, in a chronological order, the various questions that were considered by the lecturers and the' students at the institute. After a general introduction to the topic, the first week focused on issues related to traflic modeling, mostly in an urban context."

Web search engines are not just indispensable tools for finding and accessing information online, but have become a defining component of the human condition and can be conceptualized as a complex behavior embedded within an individual's everyday social, cultural, political, and information-seeking activities. This book investigates Web search from the non-technical perspective, bringing together chapters that represent a range of multidisciplinary theories, models, and ideas.

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