This book introduces advanced semantic web technologies, illustrating their utility and highlighting their implementation in biological, medical, and clinical scenarios. It covers topics ranging from database, ontology, and visualization to semantic web services and workflows. The volume also details the factors impacting on the establishment of the semantic web in life science and the legal challenges that will impact on its proliferation.

A tutorial approach to using the UML modeling language in system-on-chip design

Based on the DAC 2004 tutorial, applicable for students and professionals

Contributions by top-level international researchers

The best work at the first UML for SoC workshop

Unique combination of both UML capabilities and SoC design issues

Condenses research and development ideas that are only found in multiple conference proceedings and many other books into one place

Will be the seminal reference work for this area for years to come

As computing devices proliferate, demand increases for an understanding of emerging computing paradigms and models based on natural phenomena. Neural networks, evolution-based models, quantum computing, and DNA-based computing and simulations are all a necessary part of modern computing analysis and systems development. Vast literature exists on these new paradigms and their implications for a wide array of applications.

This comprehensive handbook, the first of its kind to address the connection between nature-inspired and traditional computational paradigms, is a repository of case studies dealing with different problems in computing and solutions to these problems based on nature-inspired paradigms. The "Handbook of Nature-Inspired and Innovative Computing: Integrating Classical Models with Emerging Technologies" is an essential compilation of models, methods, and algorithms for researchers, professionals, and advanced-level students working in all areas of computer science, IT, biocomputing, and network engineering.

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.

This book is the latest contribution to the Chip Design Languages series and it consists of selected papers presented at the Forum on Specifications and Design Languages (FDL'07), in September 2007. The book represents the state-of-the-art in research and practice, and it identifies new research directions. It highlights the role of specification and modelling languages, and presents practical experiences with specification and modelling languages

Dynamic System Reconfiguration in Heterogeneous Platforms defines the MORPHEUS platform that can join the performance density advantage of reconfigurable technologies and the easy control capabilities of general purpose processors. It consists of a System-on-Chip made of a scalable system infrastructure hosting heterogeneous reconfigurable accelerators, providing dynamic reconfiguration capabilities and data-stream management capabilities.

The tremendous growth in the availability of inexpensive computing power and easy availability of computers have generated tremendous interest in the design and imp- mentation of Complex Systems. Computer-based solutions offer great support in the design of Complex Systems. Furthermore, Complex Systems are becoming incre- ingly complex themselves. This research book comprises a selection of state-of-the-art contributions to topics dealing with Complex Systems in a Knowledge-based En- ronment. Complex systems are ubiquitous. Examples comprise, but are not limited to System of Systems, Service-oriented Approaches, Agent-based Systems, and Complex Distributed Virtual Systems. These are application domains that require knowledge of engineering and management methods and are beyond the scope of traditional systems. The chapters in this book deal with a selection of topics which range from unc- tainty representation, management and the use of ontological means which support and are large-scale business integration. All contributions were invited and are based on the recognition of the expertise of the contributing authors in the field. By colle- ing these sources together in one volume, the intention was to present a variety of tools to the reader to assist in both study and work. The second intention was to show how the different facets presented in the chapters are complementary and contribute towards this emerging discipline designed to aid in the analysis of complex systems.

The two-volume set LNCS 6852/6853 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Euro-Par Conference held in Bordeaux, France, in August/September 2011. The 81 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 271 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on support tools and environments; performance prediction and evaluation; scheduling and load-balancing; high-performance architectures and compilers; parallel and distributed data management; grid, cluster and cloud computing; peer to peer computing; distributed systems and algorithms; parallel and distributed programming; parallel numerical algorithms; multicore and manycore programming; theory and algorithms for parallel computation; high performance networks and mobile ubiquitous computing.

This book is the latest contribution to the Chip Design Languages series and it consists of selected papers presented at the Forum on Specifications and Design Languages (FDL'06), in September 2006. The book represents the state-of-the-art in research and practice, and it identifies new research directions. It highlights the role of specification and modelling languages, and presents practical experiences with specification and modelling languages.

ESL or "Electronic System Level" is a buzz word these days, in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry, in design houses, and in the academia. Even though numerous trade magazine articles have been written, quite a few books have been published that have attempted to de?ne ESL, it is still not clear what exactly it entails. However, what seems clear to every one is that the "Register Transfer Level" (RTL) languages are not adequate any more to be the design entry point for today's and tomorrow's complex electronic system design. There are multiple reasons for such thoughts. First, the c- tinued progression of the miniaturization of the silicon technology has led to the ability of putting almost a billion transistors on a single chip. Second, applications are becoming more and more complex, and integrated with c- munication, control, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, and hence the need for ever faster, ever more reliable, and more robust electronic systems is pu- ing designers towards a productivity demand that is not sustainable without a fundamental change in the design methodologies. Also, the hardware and software functionalities are getting interchangeable and ability to model and design both in the same manner is gaining importance. Given this context, we assume that any methodology that allows us to model an entire electronic system from a system perspective, rather than just hardware with discrete-event or cycle based semantics is an ESL method- ogy of some kind.

Increasing complexity of modern embedded systems demands system designers to ramp up their design productivity without compromising performance goals. This is promoted by modern Electronic System Level (ESL) techniques. Language-driven Exploration and Implementation of Partially Re-configurable ASIPs addresses an important segment of the ESL area by modeling partially re-configurable processors via high-level Architecture Description Language (ADL). This approach also hints an imminent evolution in the area of re-configurable system design.

This book will attempt to give a first synthesis of recent works con cerning reactive system design. The term "reactive system" has been introduced in order to at'oid the ambiguities often associated with by the term "real-time system," which, although best known and more sugges tive, has been given so many different meanings that it is almost in evitably misunderstood. Industrial process control systems, transporta tion control and supervision systems, signal-processing systems, are ex amples of the systems we have in mind. Although these systems are more and more computerized, it is sur prising to notice that the problem of time in computer science has been studied only recently by "pure" computer scientists. Until the early 1980s, time problems were regarded as the concern of performance evalu ation, or of some (unjustly scorned) "industrial computer engineering," or, at best, of operating systems. A second surprising fact, in contrast, is the growth of research con cerning timed systems during the last decade. The handling of time has suddenly become a fundamental goal for most models of concurrency. In particular, Robin Alilner 's pioneering works about synchronous process algebras gave rise to a school of thought adopting the following abstract point of view: As soon as one admits that a system can instantaneously react to events, i. e."

The papers in this volume comprise the refereed proceedings of the the First International Conference on Computer and Computing Technologies in Ag- culture (CCTA 2007), in Wuyishan, China, 2007. This conference is organized by China Agricultural University, Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and the Beijing Society for Information Technology in Agriculture. The purpose of this conference is to facilitate the communication and cooperation between institutions and researchers on theories, methods and implementation of computer science and information technology. By researching information technology development and the - sources integration in rural areas in China, an innovative and effective approach is expected to be explored to promote the technology application to the development of modern agriculture and contribute to the construction of new countryside. The rapid development of information technology has induced substantial changes and impact on the development of China's rural areas. Western thoughts have exerted great impact on studies of Chinese information technology devel- ment and it helps more Chinese and western scholars to expand their studies in this academic and application area. Thus, this conference, with works by many prominent scholars, has covered computer science and technology and information development in China's rural areas; and probed into all the important issues and the newest research topics, such as Agricultural Decision Support System and Expert System, GIS, GPS, RS and Precision Farming, CT applications in Rural Area, Agricultural System Simulation, Evolutionary Computing, etc.

This book brings Network Calculus closer to the network professional and will also have real appeal for postgraduates studying network performance. It provides valuable analytical tools and uses J as a means of providing a practical treatment of the subject. It builds a bridge between mathematics theory and the practical use of computers in the field of network performance analysis.

This book presents a framework for mobile information systems, focusing on quality of service and adaptability at all architectural levels. These levels range from adaptive applications to e-services, middleware, and infrastructural elements, as developed in the "Multichannel Adaptive Information Systems" (MAIS) project. The design models, methods, and tools developed in the project allow the realization of adaptive mobile information systems in a variety of different architectures.

Most innovations in the car industry are based on software and electronics, and IT will soon constitute the major production cost factor. It seems almost certain that embedded IT security will be crucial for the next generation of applications. Yet whereas software safety has become a relatively well-established field, the protection of automotive IT systems against manipulation or intrusion has only recently started to emerge.

Lemke, Paar, and Wolf collect in this volume a state-of-the-art overview on all aspects relevant for IT security in automotive applications. After an introductory chapter written by the editors themselves, the contributions from experienced experts of different disciplines are structured into three parts. "Security in the Automotive Domain" describes applications for which IT security is crucial, like immobilizers, tachographs, and software updates. "Embedded Security Technologies" details security technologies relevant for automotive applications, e.g., symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, and wireless security. "Business Aspects of IT Systems in Cars" shows the need for embedded security in novel applications like location-based navigation systems and personalization.

The first book in this area of fast-growing economic and scientific importance, it is indispensable for both researchers in software or embedded security and professionals in the automotive industry.

CAD (Computer Aided Design) technology is now crucial for every division of modern industry, from a viewpoint of higher productivity and better products. As technologies advance, the amount of information and knowledge that engineers have to deal with is constantly increasing. This results in seeking more advanced computer technology to achieve higher functionalities, flexibility, and efficient performance of the CAD systems. Knowledge engineering, or more broadly artificial intelligence, is considered a primary candidate technology to build a new generation of CAD systems. Since design is a very intellectual human activity, this approach seems to make sense. The ideas of intelligent CAD systems (ICAD) are now increasingly discussed everywhere. We can observe many conferences and workshops reporting a number of research efforts on this particular subject. Researchers are coming from computer science, artificial intelligence, mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, civil engineering, architectural science, control engineering, etc. But, still we cannot see the direction of this concept, or at least, there is no widely accepted concept of ICAD. What can designers expect from these future generation CAD systems? In which direction must developers proceed? The situation is somewhat confusing.

Avatars at Work and Play brings together contributions from leading social scientists and computer scientists who have conducted research on virtual environments used for collaboration and online gaming. They present a well-rounded and state-of-the-art overview of current applications of multi-user virtual environments, ranging from highly immersive virtual reality systems to internet-based virtual environments on personal computers. The volume is a follow-up to a previous essay collection, The Social Life of Avatars, which explored general issues in this field. This collection goes further, examining uses of shared virtual environments in practical settings such as scientific collaboration, distributed meetings, building models together, and others. It also covers online gaming in virtual environments, which has attracted hundreds of thousands of users and presents an opportunity for studying a myriad of social issues. Covering both work and play, the volume brings together issues common to the two areas, including:

What kind of avatar appearance is suitable for different kinds of interaction? How best to foster collaboration and promote usable shared virtual spaces? What kinds of activities work well in different types of virtual environments and systems?

Avatars at Work and Play will be required reading for computer scientists and social scientists who are researching and developing virtual worlds. It will be useful on courses in New Media and human-computer interaction"

Here is an extremely useful book that provides insight into a number of different flavors of processor architectures and their design, software tool generation, implementation, and verification. After a brief introduction to processor architectures and how processor designers have sometimes failed to deliver what was expected, the authors introduce a generic flow for embedded on-chip processor design and start to explore the vast design space of on-chip processing. The authors cover a number of different types of processor core.

The term Wearable Technology encompasses a wide spectrum of devices, services and systems for wireless communications and the web. This book discusses characteristics and design elements required for wearable devices and systems to be embraced by the mainstream population for use in their everyday lives, introducing concepts such as Operational Inertia. The book discusses social and legal issues that may pose the greatest impediment to adoption of wearables. The book is structured to meet the needs of researchers and practitioners in industry, and can also be used as a secondary text in advanced-level courses in computer science and electrical engineering.

With the rapid advances in technology, the conventional academic and research departments of Electronics engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Instrumentation Engineering over the globe are forced to come together and update their curriculum with few common interdisciplinary courses in order to come out with the engineers and researchers with muli-dimensional capabilities. The gr- ing perception of the 'Hardware becoming Soft' and 'Software becoming Hard' with the emergence of the FPGAs has made its impact on both the hardware and software professionals to change their mindset of working in narrow domains. An interdisciplinary field where 'Hardware meets the Software' for undertaking se- ingly unfeasible tasks is System on Chip (SoC) which has become the basic pl- form of modern electronic appliances. If it wasn't for SoCs, we wouldn't be driving our car with foresight of the traffic congestion before hand using GPS. Without the omnipresence of the SoCs in our every walks of life, the society is wouldn't have evidenced the rich benefits of the convergence of the technologies such as audio, video, mobile, IPTV just to name a few. The growing expectations of the consumers have placed the field of SoC design at the heart of at variance trends. On one hand there are challenges owing to design complexities with the emergence of the new processors, RTOS, software protocol stacks, buses, while the brutal forces of deep submicron effects such as crosstalk, electromigration, timing closures are challe- ing the design metrics.

How do you design personalized user experiences that delight and provide value to the customers of an eCommerce site? Personalization does not guarantee high quality user experience: a personalized user experience has the best chance of success if it is developed using a set of best practices in HCI. In this book 35 experts from academia, industry and government focus on issues in the design of personalized web sites. The topics range from the design and evaluation of user interfaces and tools to information architecture and computer programming related to commercial web sites. The book covers four main areas:
-Theoretical, Conceptual, and Architectural Frameworks of Personalization,
-Research on the Design and Evaluation of Personalized User Experiences in Different Domains,
-Approaches to personalization Through Recommender Systems,
-Lessons Learned and Future Research Questions. This book will be a valuable tool in helping the reader to understand the range of factors to take into consideration in designing and building a personalized user experience. The authors of each of the chapters identify possibilities and alert the reader to issues that can be addressed in the beginning of a project by taking a 'big picture' view of designing personalized user interfaces. For anyone working or studying in the field of HCI, information architecture or eCommerce, this book will provide a solid foundation of knowledge and prepare for the challenges ahead.

Based on the Job Definition Format (JDF) new workflow concepts are developed which will help create integrated workflows in the graphic arts industry. These developments create new business opportunities that will lead to a cost reduction but also will entail risks. Starting with a comprehensive explanation of the new standard, information is offered that enables business executives to make sound decisions on software investments in the graphic arts industry. Available architectures and products are highlighted and benefits are described. The steps relevant for the process integration are discussed.

This book offers up a deep understanding of concepts and practices behind the composition of heterogeneous components. After the analysis of existing computation and execution models used for the specification and validation of different sub-systems, the book introduces a systematic approach to build an execution model for systems composed of heterogeneous components. Mixed continuous/discrete and hardware/software systems are used to illustrate these concepts. The benefit of reading this book is to arrive at a clear vision of the theory and practice of specification and validation of complex modern systems. Numerous examples give designers highly applicable solutions.

This book proposes novel memory hierarchies and software optimization techniques for the optimal utilization of memory hierarchies. It presents a wide range of optimizations, progressively increasing in the complexity of analysis and of memory hierarchies. The final chapter covers optimization techniques for applications consisting of multiple processes found in most modern embedded devices.