The papers in this volume comprise the refereed proceedings of the Second IFIP International Conference on Computer and Computing Technologies in Agriculture (CCTA2008), in Beijing, China, 2008. The conference on the Second IFIP International Conference on Computer and Computing Technologies in Agriculture (CCTA 2008) is cooperatively sponsored and organized by the China Agricultural University (CAU), the National Engineering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture (NERCITA), the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering (CSAE) , International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), Beijing Society for Information Technology in Agriculture, China and Beijing Research Center for Agro-products Test and Farmland Inspection, China. The related departments of China's central government bodies like: Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Education and the Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation, Beijing Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, etc. have greatly contributed and supported to this event. The conference is as good platform to bring together scientists and researchers, agronomists and information engineers, extension servers and entrepreneurs from a range of disciplines concerned with impact of Information technology for sustainable agriculture and rural development. The representatives of all the supporting organizations, a group of invited speakers, experts and researchers from more than 15 countries, such as: the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Germany, Greece, Australia, Estonia, Japan, Korea, India, Iran, Nigeria, Brazil, China, etc.

With the advent of portable and autonomous computing systems, power con sumption has emerged as a focal point in many research projects, commercial systems and DoD platforms. One current research initiative, which drew much attention to this area, is the Power Aware Computing and Communications (PAC/C) program sponsored by DARPA. Many of the chapters in this book include results from work that have been supported by the PACIC program. The performance of computer systems has been tremendously improving while the size and weight of such systems has been constantly shrinking. The capacities of batteries relative to their sizes and weights has been also improv ing but at a rate which is much slower than the rate of improvement in computer performance and the rate of shrinking in computer sizes. The relation between the power consumption of a computer system and it performance and size is a complex one which is very much dependent on the specific system and the technology used to build that system. We do not need a complex argument, however, to be convinced that energy and power, which is the rate of energy consumption, are becoming critical components in computer systems in gen eral, and portable and autonomous systems, in particular. Most of the early research on power consumption in computer systems ad dressed the issue of minimizing power in a given platform, which usually translates into minimizing energy consumption, and thus, longer battery life."

Analog Circuit Design contains the contribution of 18 tutorials of the 20th workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design. Each part discusses a specific to-date topic on new and valuable design ideas in the area of analog circuit design. Each part is presented by six experts in that field and state of the art information is shared and overviewed. This book is number 20 in this successful series of Analog Circuit Design, providing valuable information and excellent overviews of:
Topic 1: Low Voltage Low Power, chairman: Andrea Baschirotto
Topic 2: Short Range Wireless Front-Ends, chairman: Arthur van Roermund
Topic 3: Power Management and DC-DC, chairman: Michiel Steyaert.
Analog Circuit Design is an essential reference source for analog circuit designers and researchers wishing to keep abreast with the latest development in the field. The tutorial coverage also makes it suitable for use in an advanced design course.

This book brings together the research of a number of researchers in the field of knoledge ceation and imparts a sense of order to that field.

Many of the modern applications of microelectronics require hugeamounts of computations. Despite all recent improvements in fabrication technologies, some of these computations have to be performed in hardware in order to meet deadlines. However, controlling computations by software is frequently pre ferred due to the larger flexibility. Hence, in general, modern applications re quire a mix of software-based and hardware-based computations. Applications using this mix can be designed with the help of hardware/software co-design systems. Many such co-design systems have been described so far (references can be found in this book), but many of these are based on heuristics. In this book, Niemann describes a co-design system which is based on sound modeling techniques. This system has the following salient features: * Precise cost and performance figures Design decisions for implementing a certain function in hardware or software are based on 'cost and performance figures for the different design alterna tives. Hence, good designs can only be expected if these figures are accurate. In order to achieve excellent accuracy, Niemann takes a new approach: the cost of software implementations is derived from the data available about the target processors and from knowledge about the code size. the performance of software implement at ions is computed by compiling the given function and then using static analysis for computing worst case execution times. the cost of hardware implementation is estimated by running higher-Ievel synthesis tools. the performance of hardware implementations is again computed by us ing static analysis.

Integrated System-Level Modeling of Network-on-Chip Enabled Multi-Processor Platforms first gives a comprehensive update on recent developments in the area of SoC platforms and ESL design methodologies. The main contribution is the rigorous definition of a framework for modeling at the timing approximate level of abstraction. Subsequently this book presents a set of tools for the creation and exploration of timing approximate SoC platform models.

Event-Triggered and Time-Triggered Control Paradigms presents a valuable survey about existing architectures for safety-critical applications and discusses the issues that must be considered when moving from a federated to an integrated architecture. The book focuses on one key topic - the amalgamation of the event-triggered and the time-triggered control paradigm into a coherent integrated architecture. The architecture provides for the integration of independent distributed application subsystems by introducing multi-criticality nodes and virtual networks of known temporal properties. The feasibility and the tangible advantages of this new architecture are demonstrated with practical examples taken from the automotive industry.

Event-Triggered and Time-Triggered Control Paradigms offers significant insights into the architecture and design of integrated embedded systems, both at the conceptual and at the practical level.

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"

What is exactly "Safety"? A safety system should be defined as a system that will not endanger human life or the environment. A safety-critical system requires utmost care in their specification and design in order to avoid possible errors in their implementation that should result in unexpected system's behavior during his operating "life." An inappropriate method could lead to loss of life, and will almost certainly result in financial penalties in the long run, whether because of loss of business or because the imposition of fines. Risks of this kind are usually managed with the methods and tools of the "safety engineering." A life-critical system is designed to 9 lose less than one life per billion (10 ). Nowadays, computers are used at least an order of magnitude more in safety-critical applications compared to two decades ago. Increasingly electronic devices are being used in applications where their correct operation is vital to ensure the safety of the human life and the environment. These application ranging from the anti-lock braking systems (ABS) in automobiles, to the fly-by-wire aircrafts, to biomedical supports to the human care. Therefore, it is vital that electronic designers be aware of the safety implications of the systems they develop. State of the art electronic systems are increasingly adopting progr- mable devices for electronic applications on earthling system. In particular, the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices are becoming very interesting due to their characteristics in terms of performance, dimensions and cost.

The papers in this volume comprise the refereed proceedings of the First Int- national Conference on Computer and Computing Technologies in Agriculture (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.

Ontology Managememt provides an up-to-date, scientifically correct, concise and easy-to-read reference on this topic. The book includes relevant tasks, practical and theoretical challenges, limitations and methodologies, plus available tooling support. The editors discuss integrating the conceptual and technical dimensions with a business view on using ontologies, stressing the cost dimension of ontology engineering and offering guidance on how to derive ontologies semi-automatically from existing standards and specifications.

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.

Introduction The goal of this book is to introduce XML to a bioinformatics audience. It does so by introducing the fundamentals of XML, Document Type De?nitions (DTDs), XML Namespaces, XML Schema, and XML parsing, and illustrating these concepts with speci?c bioinformatics case studies. The book does not assume any previous knowledge of XML and is geared toward those who want a solid introduction to fundamental XML concepts. The book is divided into nine chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction to XML for Bioinformatics. This chapter provides an introduction to XML and describes the use of XML in biological data exchange. A bird's-eye view of our ?rst case study, the Distributed Annotation System (DAS), is provided and we examine a sample DAS XML document. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the pros and cons of using XML in bioinformatic applications. Chapter 2: Fundamentals of XML and BSML. This chapter introduces the fundamental concepts of XML and the Bioinformatic Sequence Markup Language (BSML). We explore the origins of XML, de?ne basic rules for XML document structure, and introduce XML Na- spaces. We also explore several sample BSML documents and visualize these documents in the TM Rescentris Genomic Workspace Viewer.

Intelligent technologies are the essential factors of innovation, and enable the industry to overcome technological limitations and explore the new frontiers. Therefore it is necessary for scientists and practitioners to cooperate and inspire each other, and use the latest research results in creating new designs and products. The idea of this book came out with the industrial workshop organized at the ISMIS conference in Warsaw, 2011. The book covers several applications of emerging, intelligent technologies in various branches of the industry. The contributions describe modern intelligent tools, algorithms and architectures, which have the potential to solve real problems, experienced by practitioners in various industry sectors. We hope this volume will show new directions for cooperation between science and industry and will facilitate efficient transfer of knowledge in the area of intelligent information systems.

This book synthesizes the results of the seventh in a successful series of workshops that were established by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Technische Universitat Berlin, bringing together researchers from both universities in order to present research results to an international community. Aspects covered here include, among others, Models and specification; Simulation of different properties; Middleware for distributed real-time systems; Signal Analysis; Control methods; Applications in airborne and medical systems."

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.

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.

The building blocks of today's and future embedded systems are complex intellectual property components, or cores, many of which are programmable processors. Traditionally, these embedded processors mostly have been pro grammed in assembly languages due to efficiency reasons. This implies time consuming programming, extensive debugging, and low code portability. The requirements of short time-to-market and dependability of embedded systems are obviously much better met by using high-level language (e.g. C) compil ers instead of assembly. However, the use of C compilers frequently incurs a code quality overhead as compared to manually written assembly programs. Due to the need for efficient embedded systems, this overhead must be very low in order to make compilers useful in practice. In turn, this requires new compiler techniques that take the specific constraints in embedded system de sign into account. An example are the specialized architectures of recent DSP and multimedia processors, which are not yet sufficiently exploited by existing compilers."

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."

Safety-Critical Real-Time Systems brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this fast moving area. Safety-Critical Real-Time Systems serves as an excellent reference, providing insight into some of the most challenging research issues in the field.

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.

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

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.