Autonomous, Model-Based Diagnosis Agents defines and describes the implementation of an architecture for autonomous, model-based diagnosis agents. It does this by developing a logic programming approach for model-based diagnosis and introducing strategies to deal with more complex diagnosis problems, and then embedding the diagnosis framework into the agent architecture of vivid agents. Autonomous, Model-Based Diagnosis Agents surveys extended logic programming and shows how this expressive language is used to model diagnosis problems stemming from applications such as digital circuits, traffic control, integrity checking of a chemical database, alarm-correlation in cellular phone networks, diagnosis of an automatic mirror furnace, and diagnosis of communication protocols. The book reviews a bottom-up algorithm to remove contradiction from extended logic programs and substantially improves it by top-down evaluation of extended logic programs. Both algorithms are evaluated in the circuit domain including some of the ISCAS85 benchmark circuits. This comprehensive in-depth study of concepts, architectures, and implementation of autonomous, model-based diagnosis agents will be of great value for researchers, engineers, and graduate students with a background in artificial intelligence. For practitioners, it provides three main contributions: first, it provides many examples from diverse areas such as alarm correlation in phone networks to inconsistency checking in databases; second, it describes an architecture to develop agents; and third, it describes a sophisticated and declarative implementation of the concepts and architectures introduced.

In the last decade, ontologies have received much attention within computer science and related disciplines, most often as the semantic web. Ontology Learning and Population from Text: Algorithms, Evaluation and Applications discusses ontologies for the semantic web, as well as knowledge management, information retrieval, text clustering and classification, as well as natural language processing.

Ontology Learning and Population from Text: Algorithms, Evaluation and Applications is structured for research scientists and practitioners in industry. This book is also suitable for graduate-level students in computer science.

On any advanced integrated circuit or "system-on-chip" there is a need for security. In many applications the actual implementation has become the weakest link in security rather than the algorithms or protocols. The purpose of the book is to give the integrated circuits and systems designer an insight into the basics of security and cryptography from the implementation point of view. As a designer of integrated circuits and systems it is important to know both the state-of-the-art attacks as well as the countermeasures. Optimizing for security is different from optimizations for speed, area, or power consumption. It is therefore difficult to attain the delicate balance between the extra cost of security measures and the added benefits.

Intelligent Decision Support Systems have the potential to transform human decision making by combining research in artificial intelligence, information technology, and systems engineering. The field of intelligent decision making is expanding rapidly due, in part, to advances in artificial intelligence and network-centric environments that can deliver the technology. Communication and coordination between dispersed systems can deliver just-in-time information, real-time processing, collaborative environments, and globally up-to-date information to a human decision maker. At the same time, artificial intelligence techniques have demonstrated that they have matured sufficiently to provide computational assistance to humans in practical applications. This book includes contributions from leading researchers in the field beginning with the foundations of human decision making and the complexity of the human cognitive system. Researchers contrast human and artificial intelligence, survey computational intelligence, present pragmatic systems, and discuss future trends. This book will be an invaluable resource to anyone interested in the current state of knowledge and key research gaps in the rapidly developing field of intelligent decision support.

Traditionally, scientific fields have defined boundaries, and scientists work on research problems within those boundaries. However, from time to time those boundaries get shifted or blurred to evolve new fields. For instance, the original goal of computer vision was to understand a single image of a scene, by identifying objects, their structure, and spatial arrangements. This has been referred to as image understanding. Recently, computer vision has gradually been making the transition away from understanding single images to analyzing image sequences, or video understanding. Video understanding deals with understanding of video sequences, e. g., recognition of gestures, activities, facial expressions, etc. The main shift in the classic paradigm has been from the recognition of static objects in the scene to motion-based recognition of actions and events. Video understanding has overlapping research problems with other fields, therefore blurring the fixed boundaries. Computer graphics, image processing, and video databases have obvious overlap with computer vision. The main goal of computer graphics is to gener ate and animate realistic looking images, and videos. Researchers in computer graphics are increasingly employing techniques from computer vision to gen erate the synthetic imagery. A good example of this is image-based rendering and modeling techniques, in which geometry, appearance, and lighting is de rived from real images using computer vision techniques. Here the shift is from synthesis to analysis followed by synthesis."

There is no doubt that Design Technology plays a key role in today's advanced product development environment. To reduce the time to market, achieve zero defect quality the first time, and use available production and logistics resources effectively, product and design process knowledge covering the whole product life cycle must be efficiently and effectively used during product design. With greater emphasis over the last decade on better functionally, cheaper and greener man-made objects, understanding how to systematically capture, structure and proactively reuse product life cycle knowledge is becoming more and more a necessity if we are to effectively and efficiently support such an industrial requirement.
Knowledge Intensive Design Technology is a collection of papers presented at the Fifth Workshop on Knowledge Intensive CAD, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 5.2 and hosted by the Department of Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Malta in July 2002.
The book chapters progressively take the reader through the following sequential sections;

-Part One - KIC Development Approaches,
-Part Two - Knowledge Systematization,
-Part Three - Prototype KIC Systems.Knowledge Intensive Design Technology makes essential reading for practicing engineers/scientists involved in R&D as well as for relevant Masters and Ph.D. students. The book is also pertinent to those in industry concerned with capturing and structuring company-specific knowledge for proactive reuse to increase product development efficiency, and also to those involved in the development of CAD systems.

Intelligent control is a rapidly developing, complex and challenging field with great practical importance and potential. Because of the rapidly developing and interdisciplinary nature of the subject, there are only a few edited volumes consisting of research papers on intelligent control systems but little is known and published about the fundamentals and the general know-how in designing, implementing and operating intelligent control systems.

Intelligent control system emerged from artificial intelligence and computer controlled systems as an interdisciplinary field. Therefore the book summarizes the fundamentals of knowledge representation, reasoning, expert systems and real-time control systems and then discusses the design, implementation verification and operation of real-time expert systems using G2 as an example. Special tools and techniques applied in intelligent control are also described including qualitative modelling, Petri nets and fuzzy controllers. The material is illlustrated with simple examples taken from the field of intelligent process control.

1. GENERAL The term "diagnostics" refers to the general theory of diagnosis, not to the study of specific diagnoses but to their general framework. It borrows from different sciences and from different philosophies. Traditionally, the general framework of diagnostics was not distinguished from the framework of medicine. It was not taught in special courses in any systematic way; it was not accorded special attention: students absorbed it intuitively. There is almost no comprehensive study of diagnostics. The instruction in diagnosis provided in medical schools is exclusively specific. Clinical instruction includes (in addition to vital background information, such as anatomy and physiology) specific instruction in nosology, the theory and classification of diseases, and this includes information on diagnoses and prognoses of diverse diseases. What is the cause of the neglect of diagnostics, and of its integrated teaching? The main cause may be the prevalence of the view of diagnostics as part-and parcel of nosology. In this book nosology is taken as a given, autonomous field of study, which invites almost no comments; we shall freely borrow from it a few important general theses and a few examples. We attempt to integrate here three studies: ll of the way nosology is used in the diagnostic process; of the diagnostic process as a branch of applied ethics; ~ of the diagnostic process as a branch of social science and social technology.

Previous research in the knowledge management and information systems fields simply define knowledge by a few categories, and then describe knowledge systems and their usage and the difficulties with them. Knowledge and Knowledge Systems: Learning from the Wonders of the Mind starts from the beginning: where and how knowledge is formed and how it can be measured, describing humans and their knowledge path from conception and birth to maturity.

As the world currently subsists as a platform for exchange among complex, intelligent systems that are constantly adapting and evolving to suit the surrounding physical, sociological, emotional, and sensory environment, understanding the theory and emergence of complex adaptive systems is of paramount importance. ""Intelligent Complex Adaptive Systems"" explores the foundation, history, and theory of intelligent adaptive systems, providing scholars, researchers, and practitioners with a fundamental resource on topics such as the emergence of intelligent adaptive systems in social sciences, biologically inspired artificial social systems, sensory information processing, as well as the conceptual and methodological issues and approaches to intelligent adaptive systems.

This practically-focused text presents a hands-on guide to making biometric technology work in real-life scenarios. Extensively revised and updated, this new edition takes a fresh look at what it takes to integrate biometrics into wider applications. An emphasis is placed on the importance of a complete understanding of the broader scenario, covering technical, human and implementation factors. This understanding may then be exercised through interactive chapters dealing with educational software utilities and the BANTAM Program Manager. Features: provides a concise introduction to biometrics; examines both technical issues and human factors; highlights the importance of a broad understanding of biometric technology implementation from both a technical and operational perspective; reviews a selection of freely available utilities including the BANTAM Program Manager; considers the logical next steps on the path from aspiration to implementation, and looks towards the future use of biometrics in context.

Distributed and Parallel Database Object Management brings together in one place important contributions and state-of-the-art research results in this rapidly advancing area of computer science. Distributed and Parallel Database Object Management serves as an excellent reference, providing insights into some of the most important issues in the field.

Air traffic controllers need advanced information and automated systems to provide a safe environment for everyone traveling by plane. One of the primary challenges in developing training for automated systems is to determine how much a trainee will need to know about the underlying technologies to use automation safely and efficiently. To ensure safety and success, task analysis techniques should be used as the basis of the design for training in automated systems in the aviation and aerospace industries. Automated Systems in the Aviation and Aerospace Industries is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the application of underlying technologies used to enforce automation safety and efficiency. While highlighting topics such as expert systems, text mining, and human-machine interface, this publication explores the concept of constructing navigation algorithms, based on the use of video information and the methods of the estimation of the availability and accuracy parameters of satellite navigation. This book is ideal for aviation professionals, researchers, and managers seeking current research on information technology used to reduce the risk involved in aviation.

With continual computer advances in the information technology age, information systems have become an integral part of many disciplines. Business, medicine, geography, aviation, forensics, agriculture, even traffic lights all have one thing in common - computers. ""Utilizing Information Technology Systems Across Disciplines: Advancements in the Application of Computer Science"" provides original material concerned with all aspects of information resources management, managerial and organizational applications, as well as implications of information technology. An advanced reference work in its field, this book is instrumental in the improvement and development of the theory and practice of information resources management, appealing to both practicing managers and academicians.

This book presents the reader with a complete and comprehensive picture of what is happening today in banks and other financial institutions in terms of expert systems implementation. In addition it helps in refining the reader's thoughts on how to build an environment for the successful implementation of expert systems in banking - and how to sell this concept to management including risks and opportunities.

Information granules are fundamental conceptual entities facilitating perception of complex phenomena and contributing to the enhancement of human centricity in intelligent systems. The formal frameworks of information granules and information granulation comprise fuzzy sets, interval analysis, probability, rough sets, and shadowed sets, to name only a few representatives. Among current developments of Granular Computing, interesting options concern information granules of higher order and of higher type. The higher order information granularity is concerned with an effective formation of information granules over the space being originally constructed by information granules of lower order. This construct is directly associated with the concept of hierarchy of systems composed of successive processing layers characterized by the increasing levels of abstraction. This idea of layered, hierarchical realization of models of complex systems has gained a significant level of visibility in fuzzy modeling with the well-established concept of hierarchical fuzzy models where one strives to achieve a sound tradeoff between accuracy and a level of detail captured by the model and its level of interpretability. Higher type information granules emerge when the information granules themselves cannot be fully characterized in a purely numerical fashion but instead it becomes convenient to exploit their realization in the form of other types of information granules such as type-2 fuzzy sets, interval-valued fuzzy sets, or probabilistic fuzzy sets. Higher order and higher type of information granules constitute the focus of the studies on Granular Computing presented in this study. The book elaborates on sound methodologies of Granular Computing, algorithmic pursuits and an array of diverse applications and case studies in environmental studies, option price forecasting, and power engineering.

Cooperating Heterogeneous Systems provides an in-depth introduction to the issues and techniques surrounding the integration and control of diverse and independent software components. Organizations increasingly rely upon diverse computer systems to perform a variety of knowledge-based tasks. This presents technical issues of interoperability and integration, as well as philosophical issues of how cooperation and interaction between computational entities is to be realized. Cooperating systems are systems that work together towards a common end. The concepts of cooperation must be realized in technically sound system architectures, having a uniform meta-layer between knowledge sources and the rest of the system. The layer consists of a family of interpreters, one for each knowledge source, and meta-knowledge. A system architecture to integrate and control diverse knowledge sources is presented. The architecture is based on the meta-level properties of the logic programming language Prolog. An implementation of the architecture is described, a Framework for Logic Programming Systems with Distributed Execution (FLiPSiDE). Knowledge-based systems play an important role in any up-to-date arsenal of decision support tools. The tremendous growth of computer communications infrastructure has made distributed computing a viable option, and often a necessity in geographically distributed organizations. It has become clear that to take knowledge-based systems to their next useful level, it is necessary to get independent knowledge-based systems to work together, much as we put together ad hoc work groups in our organizations to tackle complex problems. The book is for scientists and software engineers who have experience in knowledge-based systems and/or logic programming and seek a hands-on introduction to cooperating systems. Researchers investigating autonomous agents, distributed computation, and cooperating systems will find fresh ideas and new perspectives on well-established approaches to control, organization, and cooperation.

I want to express my sincere thanks to all authors who submitted research papers to support the Third IFIP International Conference on Computer and Computing Te- nologies in Agriculture and the Third Symposium on Development of Rural Infor- tion (CCTA 2009) held in China, during October 14-17, 2009. This conference was hosted by the CICTA (EU-China Centre for Information & Communication Technologies, China Agricultural University), China National En- neering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture, Asian Conf- ence on Precision Agriculture, International Federation for Information Processing, Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering, Beijing Society for Information Te- nology in Agriculture, and the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery. The pla- num sponsor includes the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, Ministry of Agriculture of China, Ministry of Education of China, among others. The CICTA (EU-China Centre for Information & Communication Technologies, China Agricultural University) focuses on research and development of advanced and practical technologies applied in agriculture and on promoting international communi- tion and cooperation. It has successfully held three International Conferences on C- puter and Computing Technologies in Agriculture, namely CCTA 2007, CCTA 2008 and CCTA 2009. Sustainable agriculture is the focus of the whole world currently, and therefore the application of information technology in agriculture is becoming more and more - portant. 'Informatized agriculture' has been sought by many countries recently in order to scientifically manage agriculture to achieve low costs and high incomes.

In 1985 it was 20 years since Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon published: 'THE SHAPE OF AUTOMATION: For Men and Management'. This short but important and still topical book dwells on three subjects: - The Long-Range Economic Effects of Automation; - Will the Corporation be Managed by Machines? - The New Science of Management Decision. In contrast with George Orwell, who was a critic of contemporary political systems rather than a prophet, Simon portrays a far more rosy picture of our 'brave new world'. Simon's work breathes optimism. First, computer technology; looking back it is aoubtful whether even the professor expected the hardware development ~e have wittnessed. Secondly, our ability to 'tame the beast'; there is now not much reason for complacency and satisfaction. Offices and factories can by no means be called automated, at most semi-automated. Thirdly the organizational and social implications of these rapid technological developments; referring to what he then called: 'The Computer and the new decision making techniques ..* ' Concerning this last point, there is little need to emphasize that had been less practical application in organizations than the often impressive theoretical developments would lead one to believe. In Europe this situation is even more accute than in the USA and Japan. The ESPRIT programme of the ECC and many similar national programs intend to bridge the gap.

Initially conceived as a methodology for the representation and manipulation of imprecise and vague information, fuzzy computation has found wide use in problems that fall well beyond its originally intended scope of application. Many scientists and engineers now use the paradigms of fuzzy computation to tackle problems that are either intractable or unrealistically time consuming. The extraordinary growth of fuzzy computation in recent years has led to the development of numerous systems of major practical importance in fields ranging from medical diagnosis and automated learning to image understanding and systems control.
The Handbook of Fuzzy Computation provides information about fundamental aspects of the field and explores the myriad applications of fuzzy logic techniques and methods. Divided into several parts, the handbook presents basic conceptual considerations and case studies of applications of fuzzy computation. It covers the fundamental concepts and techniques for system modeling, information processing, intelligent system design, decision analysis, statistical analysis, pattern recognition, automated learning, and system control and identification. The book also discusses the combination of fuzzy computation techniques with other computational intelligence approaches such as neural and evolutionary computation.
By focusing on the application of fuzzy computation methods to solve problems, this all-encompassing reference work enables scientists and engineers to understand the central aspects of this important computational methodology.

In today's business arena information is one of the most important resources possessed by enterprises. In order to support proper information flow, businesses deploy transactional systems, build decision support systems or launch management information systems. Unfortunately, the majority of information systems do not take advantage of recent developments in knowledge management, thus exposing companies to the risk of missing important information, or what is even worse, leading them to misinterpret information.

Knowledge-Based Information Retrieval and Filtering from the Web contains fifteen chapters, contributed by leading international researchers, addressing the matter of information retrieval, filtering and management of the information on the Internet. The research presented in these chapters deals with the need to find proper solutions for the description of the information found on the Internet, the description of the information consumers need, the algorithms for retrieving documents (and indirectly, the information embedded in them), and the presentation of the information found. The chapters include:
-Ontological representation of knowledge on the WWW;
-Information extraction;
-Information retrieval and administration of distributed documents;
-Hard and soft modeling based knowledge capture;
-Summarization of texts found on the WWW;
-User profiles and personalization for web-based information retrieval system;
-Information retrieval under constricted bandwidth;
-Multilingual WWW;
-Generic hierarchical classification using the single-link clustering;
-Clustering of documents on the basis of text fuzzy similarity;
-Intelligent agents for document categorization and adaptive filtering;
-Multimedia retrieval and data mining for E-commerce and E-business;
-A Web-based approach to competitive intelligence;
-Learning ontologies for domain-specific information retrieval;
-An open, decentralized architecture for searching for, and publishing information in distributed systems.

This book addresses current technology trends and requirements leading towards the next era in mobile communication handsets; and beyond that the book proposes innovative solutions that could be candidate solutions for 5G phones. It adopts a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary stance towards handset design, a necessary ingredient if 5th Generation handset and services are to really take-off. Therefore the scope of the book targets a broad range of subjects, including energy efficiency, RF design, cooperation, context-aware systems, roaming, and short-range networking, all of which working in synergy to provide seamless mobility and high speed connectivity within a HetNet environment. Specifically, the authors investigate how we can exploit the cooperation paradigm and context-aware mechanism working in synergy to provide energy compliant phones that can introduce power savings of up to 50% on state-of-the-art. Going beyond this, a chapter on business modeling approaches is also included, based on incentive mechanisms for cooperation that will provide the necessary leverage to promote the up-take of the proposed technology.

This volume investigates our ability to capture, and then apply, expertise. In recent years, expertise has come to be regarded as an increasingly valuable and surprisingly elusive resource. Experts, who were the sole active dispensers of certain kinds of knowledge in the days before AI, have themselves become the objects of empirical inquiry, in which their knowledge is elicited and studied -- by knowledge engineers, experimental psychologists, applied psychologists, or other experts -- involved in the development of expert systems. This book achieves a marriage between experimentalists, applied scientists, and theoreticians who deal with expertise. It envisions the benefits to society of an advanced technology for capturing and disseminating the knowledge and skills of the best corporate managers, the most seasoned pilots, and the most renowned medical diagnosticians. This book should be of interest to psychologists as well as to knowledge engineers who are "out in the trenches" developing expert systems, and anyone pondering the nature of expertise and the question of how it can be elicited and studied scientifically. The book's scope and the pivotal concepts that it elucidates and appraises, as well as the extensive categorized bibliographies it includes, make this volume a landmark in the field of expert systems and AI as well as the field of applied experimental psychology.

Creating scientific workflow applications is a very challenging task due to the complexity of the distributed computing environments involved, the complex control and data flow requirements of scientific applications, and the lack of high-level languages and tools support. Particularly, sophisticated expertise in distributed computing is commonly required to determine the software entities to perform computations of workflow tasks, the computers on which workflow tasks are to be executed, the actual execution order of workflow tasks, and the data transfer between them. Qin and Fahringer present a novel workflow language called Abstract Workflow Description Language (AWDL) and the corresponding standards-based, knowledge-enabled tool support, which simplifies the development of scientific workflow applications. AWDL is an XML-based language for describing scientific workflow applications at a high level of abstraction. It is designed in a way that allows users to concentrate on specifying such workflow applications without dealing with either the complexity of distributed computing environments or any specific implementation technology. This research monograph is organized into five parts: overview, programming, optimization, synthesis, and conclusion, and is complemented by an appendix and an extensive reference list. The topics covered in this book will be of interest to both computer science researchers (e.g. in distributed programming, grid computing, or large-scale scientific applications) and domain scientists who need to apply workflow technologies in their work, as well as engineers who want to develop distributed and high-throughput workflow applications, languages and tools.

Thiseditedbookispublishedin honorofDr. GeorgeJ. Vachtsevanos, ourDr. V, c- rently Professor Emeritus, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, on the occasion of his 70th birthday and for his more than 30 years of contribution to the discipline of Intelligent Control and its application to a wide spectrum of engineering and bioengineering systems. The book is nothing but a very small token of appreciation from Dr. V's former graduate students, his peers and colleagues in the profession - and not only - to the Scientist, the Engineer, the Professor, the mentor, but most important of all, to the friend and human being. All those who have met Dr. V over the years and haveinteractedwith himin someprofessionaland/orsocial capacityunderstandthis statement: Georgenevermadeanybodyfeelinferiortohim, hehelpedandsupported everybody, and he was there when anybody needed him I was not Dr. V's student. I rst met him and his wife Athena more than 26 years ago during one of their visits to RPI, in the house of my late advisor, Dr. George N. Saridis. Since then, I have been very fortunate to have had and continue to have interactions with him. It is not an exaggeration if I say that we all learned a lot from him.