Just like the industrial society of the last century depended on natural resources, today s society depends on information and its exchange.

Semantic Web technologies address the problem of information complexity by providing advanced support for representing and processing distributed information, while peer-to-peer technologies address issues of system complexity by allowing flexible and decentralized information storage and processing. Systems that are based on Semantic Web and peer-to-peer technologies promise to combine the advantages of the two mechanisms. A peer-to-peer style architecture for the Semantic Web will avoid both physical and semantic bottlenecks that limit information and knowledge exchange.

Staab and Stuckenschmidt structured the selected contributions into four parts: Part I, "Data Storage and Access," prepares the semantic foundation, i.e. data modelling and querying in a flexible and yet scalable manner. These foundations allow for dealing with the organization of information at the individual peers. Part II, "Querying the Network," considers the routing of queries, as well as continuous queries and personalized queries under the conditions of the permanently changing topological structure of a peer-to-peer network. Part III, "Semantic Integration," deals with the mapping of heterogeneous data representations. Finally Part IV, "Methodology and Systems," reports experiences from case studies and sample applications.

The overall result is a state-of-the-art description of the potential of Semantic Web and peer-to-peer technologies for information sharing and knowledge management when applied jointly. It serves researchers in academia and industry as an excellent and lasting reference and source of inspiration.

Web Systems Design and Online Consumer Behavior takes and interdisciplinary approach toward systems design in the online environment by providing an understanding of how consumers behave while shopping online and how certain system design elements may impact consumers' perceptions, attitude, intentions, and actual behavior. This book contains theoretical and empirical research from expert scholars in a number of areas including communications, psychology, marketing and advertising, and information systems. This book provides an integrated look at the subject area as described above to further our understanding of the linkage among various disciplines inherently connected with one another in electronic commerce.

In the foreword to this volume of conference proceedings for IFIP Working Group 8.4, it is appropriate to review the wider organization to which the Working Group belongs. The International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) is a non-governmental, non-profit umbrella organization for national societies working in the field of information processing that was established in 1960 under the auspices of UNESCO. IFIP's mission is to be the leading, truly international, apolitical organization which encourages and assists in the development, exploitation and application of Information Technology for the benefit of all people. At the heart of IFIP lie its Technical Committees that, between them, count on the active participation of some two thousand people world-wide. These Groups work in a variety of ways to share experience and to develop their specialised knowledge. Technical Committees include: TC 1. Foundations of Computer Science; TC 2: Software: Theory and Practice; TC 3: Education; TC 6: Communication Systems; TC 7: System Modelling and Optimization; TC 9: Relationship between Computers and Society; TC 11: Security and Protection in Information Processing Systems; TC 12: Artificial Intelligence and TC 13: Human-Computer Interaction. The IFIP website www.ifip.org) has further details. Technical Committee 8 (TC8) is concerned with Information Systems in organisations. Within TC8 there are different Working Groups focusing on particular aspects of Information Systems.

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of numerous physically distributed autonomous devices used for sensing and monitoring the physical and/or environmental conditions. A WSN uses a gateway that provides wireless connectivity to the wired world as well as distributed networks. There are many open problems related to Ad-Hoc networks and its applications. Looking at the expansion of the cellular infrastructure, Ad-Hoc network may be acting as the basis of the 4th generation wireless technology with the new paradigm of 'anytime, anywhere communications'. To realize this, the real challenge would be the security, authorization and management issues of the large scale WSNs. This book is an edited volume in the broad area of WSNs. The book covers various chapters like Multi-Channel Wireless Sensor Networks, its Coverage, Connectivity as well as Deployment. It covers comparison of various communication protocols and algorithms such as MANNET, ODMRP and ADMR Protocols for Ad hoc Multicasting, Location Based Coordinated Routing Protocol and other Token based group local mutual exclusion Algorithms. The book also covers a chapter on Extended Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (EAODV) routing protocol based on Distributed Minimum Transmission Multicast Routing (DMTMR). One chapter is dedicated to OCDMA and its future application and another chapter covers development of Home Automation System using SWN.

The book provides a comprehensive investigation of the performance and problems of the TCP/IP protocol stack, when data is transmitted over GSM, GPRS and UMTS. It gives an introduction to the protocols used for Internet access today, and also the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). The basics of GSM, GPRS and UMTS are given, which are necessary for understanding the main topic, TCP performance over GSM, GPRS and UMTS. We describe at length the problems that TCP has when operating over a mobile radio link, and what has been proposed to remedy these problems. We derive the optimum TCP packet length for maximum data throughput on wireless networks, analytically and by simulation. Results on the throughput and various other parameters of TCP over mobile networks are given. This book gives valuable advice to network operators and application programmers to maximize data throughput, and which protocols, transmission modes, and coding schemes to use and which to avoid.

Over the past several years, a great deal of research has been devoted to the use of information technology by small businesses. One technological tool now used to boost company success is Web presence enhancement in alignment with business strategy. ""Effective Web Presence Solutions for Small Businesses: Strategies for Successful Implementation"" is the first book to provide small businesses with a holistic approach to implementing their Web presence through identification of Web site content that matches their business strategy. A valuable read for small business owners as well as academicians and researchers, this book connects the various issues involved in the planning and execution of successful Web sites for small businesses.

As virtual reality approaches mainstream consumer use, new research and innovations in the field have impacted how we view and can use this technology across a wide range of industries. Advancements in this technology have led to recent breakthroughs in sound, perception, and visual processing that take virtual reality to new dimensions. As such, research is needed to support the adoption of these new methods and applications. Cases on Immersive Virtual Reality Techniques is an essential reference source that discusses new applications of virtual reality and how they can be integrated with immersive techniques and computer resources. Featuring research on topics such as 3D modeling, cognitive load, and motion cueing, this book is ideally designed for educators, academicians, researchers, and students seeking coverage on the applications of collaborative virtual environments.

Jerome McGann has been at the forefront of the digital revolution in the humanities. His pioneering critical projects on the World Wide Web have redefined traditional notions about interpreting literature. In this trailblazing book, McGann explores the profound implications digital media have for the core critical tasks of the humanities.Drawing on his work as editor of the acclaimed hypertext project The Rossetti Archive, he sets the foundation for a new critical practice for the digital age. Digital media, he demonstrates, can do much more than organize access to great works of literature and art. Beyond their acknowledged editorial and archival capabilities, digital media are also critical tools of unprecedented power. In McGann’s practical vision, digital tools give scholars a flexible, dynamic means for interpreting expressive works—especially those that combine text and image. Radiant Textuality demonstrates eloquently how new technologies can deepen our understanding of complex, multi-layered works of the human imagination in ways never before thought possible.

This study, written in the context of its first publication in 1970, discusses and documents the invasion of privacy by the corporation and the social institution in the search for efficiency in information processing. Discussing areas such as the impact of the computer on administration, privacy and the storage on information, the authors assess the technical and social feasibility of constructing integrated data banks to cover the details of populations. The book was hugely influential both in terms of scholarship and legislation, and the years following saw the introduction of the Data Protection Act of 1984, which was then consolidated by the Act of 1998. The topics under discussion remain of great concern to the public in our increasingly web-based world, ensuring the continued relevance of this title to academics and students with an interest in data protection and public privacy.

The requirement of causality in system theory is inevitably accompanied by the appearance of certain mathematical operations, namely the Riesz proj- tion,theHilberttransform,andthespectralfactorizationmapping.Aclassical exampleillustratingthisisthedeterminationoftheso-calledWiener?lter(the linear, minimum means square error estimation ?lter for stationary stochastic sequences [88]). If the ?lter is not required to be causal, the transfer function of the Wiener ?lter is simply given by H(?)=? (?)/? (?),where ? (?) xy xx xx and ? (?) are certain given functions. However, if one requires that the - xy timation ?lter is causal, the transfer function of the optimal ?lter is given by 1 ? (?) xy H(?)= P ,?? (??,?] . + [? ] (?) [? ] (?) xx + xx? Here [? ] and [? ] represent the so called spectral factors of ? ,and xx + xx? xx P is the so called Riesz projection. Thus, compared to the non-causal ?lter, + two additional operations are necessary for the determination of the causal ?lter, namely the spectral factorization mapping ? ? ([? ] ,[? ] ),and xx xx + xx? the Riesz projection P .

This book introduces new trends of theory and practice of information technologies in tourism. The book does not handle only the fundamental contribution, but also discusses innovative and emerging technologies to promote and develop new generation tourism informatics theory and their applications. Some chapters are concerned with data analysis, web technologies, social media and their case studies. Travel information on the web provided by travelers is very useful for other travelers make their travel plan. A chapter in this book proposes a method for interactive retrieval of information on accommodation facilities to support travelling customers in their travel preparations. Also an adaptive user interface for personalized transportation guidance system is proposed. Another chapter in this book shows a novel support system for the collaborative tourism planning by using the case reports that are collected via Internet. Also, a system for recommending hotels for the users is proposed and evaluated. Other chapters are concerned with recommendation, personalization and other emerging technologies.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 2008 IFIP Conference on Wireless Sensors and Actor Networks held in Ottawa, Canada on July 14-15, 2008.

The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication. The scope of the series includes: foundations of computer science; software theory and practice; education; computer applications in technology; communication systems; systems modeling and optimization; information systems; computers and society; computer systems technology; security and protection in information processing systems; artificial intelligence; and human-computer interaction. Proceedings and post-proceedings of refereed international conferences in computer science and interdisciplinary fields are featured. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing.

This book presents link-layer cooperative frameworks to improve transmission reliability and network throughput of distributed TDMA MAC protocols in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). The main objective of this book is to present link-layer node cooperation schemes to enhance the link-layer performance of vehicular networks, in terms of reliability and system throughput. The authors present approaches proposed for the medium access control (MAC) and node cooperation in VANETs. The authors also cover cooperative ADHOC MAC for point-to-point communication between a pair of source and destination nodes, and cooperative relay broadcasting for broadcast services in this book. The performance of node cooperation frameworks is evaluated via mathematical analysis and computer simulations, in comparison with distributed TDMA MAC protocols without cooperation. The proposed node cooperation frameworks enhance the performance of distributed TDMA MAC and make it more robust to tackle the dynamic networking conditions in VANETs. Furthermore, with cooperation enabled transmission, the performance of distributed TMDA MAC is more suitable to support the wide range of mobile applications and their strict service requirements which is discussed in this book. The proposed node cooperation schemes and distributed cooperation decisions can be extended to wireless systems other than distributed TDMA MAC, such as cellular communication, for vehicular communications introduced in this book. This book is useful for researchers from academia and industry, as well as advanced level students interested in vehicular communication networks. It is also useful for professionals and engineers developing applications that use cooperative wireless communication systems.

The unprecedented growth in the range of multimedia services offered these days by modern telecommunication systems has been made possible only because of the advancements in signal processing technologies and algorithms. In the area of telecommunications, application of signal processing allows for new generations of systems to achieve performance close to theoretical limits, while in the area of multimedia, signal processing the underlying technology making possible realization of such applications that not so long ago were considered just a science fiction or were not even dreamed about. We all learnt to adopt those achievements very quickly, but often the research enabling their introduction takes many years and a lot of efforts. This book presents a group of invited contributions, some of which have been based on the papers presented at the International Symposium on DSP for Communication Systems held in Coolangatta on the Gold Coast, Australia, in December 2003. Part 1 of the book deals with applications of signal processing to transform what we hear or see to the form that is most suitable for transmission or storage for a future retrieval. The first three chapters in this part are devoted to processing of speech and other audio signals. The next two chapters consider image coding and compression, while the last chapter of this part describes classification of video sequences in the MPEG domain.

PHP is rapidly becoming the language of choice for dynamic Web development, in particular for e-commerce and on-line database systems. It is open source software and easy to install, and can be used with a variety of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows and UNIX.

This comprehensive manual covers the basic core of the language, with lots of practical examples of some of the more recent and useful features available in version 5.0. MySQL database creation and development is also covered, as it is the developer database most commonly used alongside PHP. It will be an invaluable book for professionals wanting to use PHP to develop their own dynamic web pages.

Key Topics:

- Basic Language Constructs

- Manipulating Arrays and Strings

- Errors and Buffering

- Graphic Manipulation

- PDF Library Extension

- MySQL Database Management

- Classes and Objects Concepts

Features and Benefits:

Explains how to use PHP to its full extent - covering the latest features and functions of PHP version 5.0, including the use of object-oriented programming

Describes how to link a database to a web site, using the MySQL database management system

Shows how to connect PHP to other systems and provides many examples, so that you can create powerful and dynamic web pages and applications

Contains lots of illustrated, practical, real-world examples - including an e-commerce application created in PHP using many of the features described within the book

The scripts used in the examples are available for download from www.phpmysql-manual.com

"3D Surface Reconstruction: Multi-Scale Hierarchical Approaches "presents methods to model 3D objects in an incremental way so as to capture more finer details at each step. The configuration of the model parameters, the rationale and solutions are described and discussed in detail so the reader has a strong understanding of the methodology. Modeling starts from data captured by 3D digitizers and makes the process even more clear and engaging.

Innovative approaches, based on two popular machine learning paradigms, namely Radial Basis Functions and the Support Vector Machines, are also introduced. These paradigms are innovatively extended to a multi-scale incremental structure, based on a hierarchical scheme. The resulting approaches allow readers to achieve high accuracy with limited computational complexity, and makes the approaches appropriate for online, real-time operation. Applications can be found in any domain in which regression is required.

"3D Surface Reconstruction: Multi-Scale Hierarchical Approaches" is designed as a secondary text book or reference for advanced-level students and researchers in computer science. This book also targets practitioners working in computer vision or machine learning related fields.

The emergence of Web technologies for the distribution of an immense amount of data and knowledge has given rise to the need for supportive frameworks for kno- edge management. Semantic Web technologies aim at providing shared semantic spaces for Web contents, such that people, applications and communities can use a common platform to share information. Canadian Semantic Web: Technologies and Applications aims at contributing to the advancement of the Semantic Web by providing the most recent signi?cant - search on Semantic Web theory, techniques and applications in academia, industry and government in Canada and all over the world. It also enlightens possible - mantic Web research directions in future by reporting some works in-progress that presenton-goingresearchonprinciplesandapplicationsoftheSemanticWeb, while their implementation or deployment may have not been completed. This book consists of ten chapters. The chapters are extended versions of a - lected set of papers from the second Canadian Semantic Web Working Symposium (CSWWS 2009) and the twenty-?rst international Conference on Software En- neering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE 2009). CSWWS 2009 was held in Kelowna, British Columbia in May 2009. Since many of the challenging aspects of the research problems tackled in the Semantic Web area fall in the realm of Ar- ?cial Intelligence or employ of AI techniques, CSWWS 2009 was organized in - nd sociation with the 22 Canadian Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence

The Semantic Web has evolved as a blueprint for a knowledge-based framework aimed at crossing the chasm from the current Web of unstructured information resources to a Web equipped with metadata and oriented to delegating tasks to software agents. Semantic Web Personalization and Context Awareness: Management of Personal Identities and Social Networking communicates relevant recent research in Semantic Web-based personalization as applied to the context of information systems. This book reviews knowledge engineering for organizational applications, and Semantic Web approaches to information systems and ontology-based information systems research, as well as the diverse underlying database and knowledge representation aspects that impact personalization and customization.

The twentieth century ended with the vision of smart dust: a network of wirelessly connected devices whose size would match that of a dust particle, each one a se- containedpackageequippedwithsensing, computation, communication, andpower. Smart dust held the promise to bridge the physical and digital worlds in the most unobtrusive manner, blending together realms that were previously considered well separated. Applications involved scattering hundreds, or even thousands, of smart dust devices to monitor various environmental quantities in scenarios ranging from habitat monitoring to disaster management. The devices were envisioned to se- organize to accomplish their task in the most ef?cient way. As such, smart dust would become a powerful tool, assisting the daily activities of scientists and en- neers in a wide range of disparate disciplines. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs), as we know them today, are the most no- worthy attempt at implementing the smart dust vision. In the last decade, this ?eld has seen a fast-growing investment from both academia and industry. Signi?cant ?nancial resources and manpower have gone into making the smart dust vision a reality through WSNs. Yet, we still cannot claim complete success. At present, only specialist computerscientists or computerengineershave the necessary background to walk the road from conception to a ?nal, deployed, and running WSN syst

The project of writing this monograph was conceived in August 2006. It is a m- ter of delight and satisfaction that this monograph would be published during the centenary year (May 27, 2008 - May 26, 2009) of our dear alma mater, the Indian Institute of Science, which is truly a magni cent temple and an eternal source of inspiration, with a splendid ambiance for research. Studying the rational behavior of entities interacting with each other in or- nized or ad-hoc marketplaces has been the bread and butter of our research group here at the Electronic Commerce Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science. Speci cally, the application of game th- retic modeling and mechanism design principles to the area of network economics was an area of special interest to the authors. In fact, the dissertations of the s- ond, third, and fourth authors (Dinesh Garg, Ramasuri Narayanam, and Hastagiri Prakash) were all in this area. Dinesh Garg's Doctoral Thesis, which later won the Best Dissertation Award at the Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science for the academic year 2006-07, included an interesting chapter on applying the brilliant work of Roger Myerson (Nobel laureate in E- nomic Sciences in 2007) to the topical problem of sponsored search auctions on the web. Ramasuri's Master's work applied mechanism design to develop robust broadcastprotocolsin wireless adhoc networkswhile Hastagiri's Master's work - veloped resource allocation mechanisms for computational grids.

This book highlights the need for an efficient Handover Decision (HD) mechanism to perform switches from one network to another and to provide unified and continuous mobile services that include seamless connectivity and ubiquitous service access. The author shows how the HD involves efficiently combining handover initiation and network selection process. The author describes how the network selection decision is a challenging task that is a central component to making HD for any mobile user in a heterogeneous environment that involves a number of static and dynamic parameters. The author also discusses prevailing technical challenges like Dynamic Spectrum Allocation (DSA) methods, spectrum sensing, cooperative communications, cognitive network architecture protocol design, cognitive network security challenges and dynamic adaptation algorithms for cognitive system and the evolving behavior of systems in general. The book allows the reader to optimize the sensing time for maximizing the spectrum utilization, improve the lifetime of the cognitive radio network (CRN) using active scan spectrum sensing techniques, analyze energy efficiency of CRN, find a secondary user spectrum allocation, perform dynamic handovers, and use efficient data communication in the cognitive networks. Identifies energy efficient spectrum sensing techniques for Cooperative Cognitive Radio Networks (CRN); Shows how to maximize the energy capacity by minimizing the outage probability; Features end-of-chapter summaries, performance measures, and case studies.