This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Ubiquitous Computing Systems, UCS 2007, held in Tokyo, Japan, in November 2007.

The 16 revised full papers and 8 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 96 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on security and privacy, context awareness, sensing systems and sensor network, middleware, modeling and social aspects, smart devices, and network.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Hybrid Metaheuristics, HM 2007, held in Dortmund, Germany, in October 2007.

The 14 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. The papers discuss specific aspects of hybridization of metaheuristics, hybrid metaheuristics design, development and testing. With increasing attention to methodological aspects, from both the empirical and theoretical sides, the papers show a representative sample of research in the field of hybrid metaheuristics. Some papers put special emphasis on the experimental analysis and statistical assessment of results, some are also an example of the integration of metaheuristics with mathematical programming, constraint satisfaction or machine learning techniques.

This volume contains contributions from participants in the 2007 International Multiconference of Engineers and Computer Scientists. Topics covered include Automated planning, Expert system, Machine learning, Fuzzy Systems, Knowledge-based systems, Computer systems organization, Computing methodologies, and industrial applications. The book offers the up to date information on advances in intelligent systems and computer engineering and also serve as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working on intelligent systems and computer engineering.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents, CIA 2007, held in Delft, The Netherlands, September 19-21, 2007.

The 19 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on Information Search and Processing, Applications, Rational Cooperation, Interaction and Cooperation and Trust.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning, ICCBR 2007, held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK in August 2007.

The 15 revised full research papers and 18 revised poster papers presented together with 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 64 submissions. The papers address all current aspects of case-based reasoning and feature original theoretical research, applied research, and deployed applications with practical, social, environmental or economic significance.

These three volumes are a collection of the contributions presented to the joint th conferencesofKES2007,the11 InternationalConferenceonKnowledge-Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems, and the WIRN 2007, the th 17 Italian Workshop on Neural Networks, held in Vietri sul Mare, Italy, in September 2007. TheformulabywhichKESconferencesgatherover500peopleeachyearfrom the four corners of the globe to discuss the topic of knowledge-based and int- ligent information and engineering systems is: an open mind with rigor. Within the vastuniverseofthe conferencescenteredaroundthekeywords"information" and "computational intelligence," we encourage in our meetings the o?ering of newideas andtechniques to givesolutions to the never-endingseriesof problems and challenges that our own intelligence poses. As a precious attribute of the human brain, we will never be disturbed by the novelty, and possibly the provocation, of new mental paradigms and h- ardous conjectures, especially if they are raised by fresh research teams. At the same time, we have riddled eachcontribution using the sieve of scienti?c quality, checking the rigor with which the ideas are illustrated, their understandability and the support of the theory or of the experimental evidence. The structure of the conference re?ects this philosophy. In addition to re- lartracksonthemain?eldsofthediscipline,weinvitedscientiststoproposes- sions focused on topics of high interest. Their response was generous and based onallsources,wereceivedsome1203submissions.Fromthisnumberwecollected 11 general track sessions and 47 invited sessions to make a total of 409 papers after a severe referee screening, an acceptance rate of 34%. Thus the reader may havefromthesevolumesanalmostexhaustiveoverviewofresearcher'sandprac- tioner'scurrentworkinthe?eldofinformationextractionandintelligentsystems.

The three volume set LNAI 4692, LNAI 4693, and LNAI 4694, constitute the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems, KES 2007, held in Vietri sul Mare, Italy, September 12-14, 2007.

The 409 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from about 1203 submissions. The papers present a wealth of original research results from the field of intelligent information processing in the broadest sense; topics covered in the first volume are artificial neural networks and connectionists systems, fuzzy and neuro-fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation, machine learning and classical AI, agent systems, knowledge based and expert systems, hybrid intelligent systems, miscellaneous intelligent algorithms, intelligent vision and image processing, knowledge management and ontologies, Web intelligence, multimedia, e-learning and teaching, intelligent signal processing, control and robotics, other intelligent systems applications, papers of the experience management and engineering workshop, industrial applications of intelligent systems, as well as information engineering and applications in ubiquotous computing environments.

th The 13 edition of the International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies (Ada-Europe 2008) marked its arrival in Italy by selecting the splendid venue of Venice. It did so after having been hosted twice in Switzerland, Spain and the UK (Montreux for its inauguration in 1996 and Geneva in 2007; Santander in 1999 and Palma de Mallorca in 2004; London in 1997 and York in 2005), and having visited Sweden (Uppsala, 1998), Germany (Potsdam, 2000), Belgium (Leuven, 2001), Austria (Vienna, 2002), France (Toulouse, 2003) and Portugal (Porto, 2006). It was certainly high time that the conference came to Italy! The conference series, which is run and sponsored by Ada-Europe, chooses its yearly venue following two driving criteria: to celebrate the activity of one of its national member societies in a particular country, and/or to facilitate the formation, or the growth, of a national community around all aspects of reliable software technologies. The success of this year's conference, beside the richness of its technical and social program, will thus be measured by its lasting effects. We can only hope that the latter will be as good and vast as the former! Owing to the absence of a national society associated with Ada-Europe in Italy, the organization of the conference was technically sustained by selected members of the Board of Ada-Europe, its governing body, with some invaluable local support.

Researchers and professionals in the relevant fields will find this book a must-read, as it defines the leading edge of current research into conceptual structures. It constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, held in Sheffield, UK in July 2007. With almost 50 papers contained in its 500 pages, it includes a special focus on the application of conceptual structures in business and technological settings and is organized into topical sections for ease of reference.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods, TABLEAUX 2007, held in Aix en Provence, France in July 2007.

The 14 revised research papers presented together with 2 system descriptions as well as 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 43 submissions. The papers cover many topics in the wide range of logics; from intuitionistic and substructural logics to modal logics (including temporal and dynamic logics), from many-valued logics to nonmonotonic logics, from classical first-order logic to description logics. Some contributions are focused on decision procedures, others on efficient reasoning, as well as on implementation of theorem provers. A few papers explore applications such as model-checking, verification, or knowledge engineering. Finally some contributions make use of tableaux as a tool for theoretical investigation of logics.

The Halden Man-Machine Laboratory (HAMMLAB) has been at the heart of human factors research at the OECD Halden Reactor Project (HRP). The HRP is sponsored by a group of national organizations, representing nuclear power plant regulators, utilities, and research institutions. The HRP is hosted by the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) in Halden, Norway. HAMMLAB comprises three full-scale nuclear power plant control room research simulators. The simulator studies performed in HAMMLAB have traditionally been experimental in nature. In a simulator it is possible to study events as they unfold in real time, in a highly realistic operational environment under partially controlled conditions. This means that a wide range of human factors issues, which would be impossible or highly impracticable to study in real-life settings, can thus be addressed in HAMMLAB. Simulator-based Human Factors Studies Across 25 Years celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of HAMMLAB by reviewing the human factors studies performed in HAMMLAB across this time-span. A range of human factors issues have been addressed, including: * human-system interfaces; * alarm systems; * computerized procedures; * human-automation interaction; * staffing, teamwork and human reliability. The aim of HAMMLAB studies has always been the same: to generate knowledge for solving current and future challenges in nuclear power plant operation to contribute to safety. The outcomes of HAMMLAB studies have been used to support design and assessment of nuclear power plant control rooms.

IMPROVE stands for "Information Technology Support for Collaborative and Distributed Design Processes in Chemical Engineering" and is a large joint project of research institutions at RWTH Aachen University. This volume summarizes the results after 9 years of cooperative research work.

The focus of IMRPOVE is on understanding, formalizing, evaluating, and, consequently, improving design processes in chemical engineering. In particular, IMPROVE focuses on conceptual design and basic engineering, where the fundamental decisions concerning the design or redesign of a chemical plant are undertaken. Design processes are analyzed and evaluated in collaboration with industrial partners.

Embedded and ubiquitous computing systems have considerably increased their scope of application over the past few years, and they now also include missi- and business-critical scenarios. The advances call for a variety of compelling - sues, including dependability, real-time, quality-of-service, autonomy, resource constraints, seamless interaction, middleware support, modeling, veri?cation, validation, etc. The International Workshop on Software Technologies for Future Embedded and Ubiquitous Systems (SEUS) brings together experts in the ?eld of emb- ded and ubiquitous computing systems with the aim of exchanging ideas and advancing the state of the art about the above-mentioned issues. I was honored to chair the sixth edition of the workshop, which continued the tradition of past editions with high-quality research results. I was particularly pleased to host the workshop in the wonderful scenario of Capri, with its stunning views and traditions. The workshop started in 2003 as an IEEE event, and then in 2007 it became a ?agship event of the IFIP Working Group 10.2 on embedded systems. The last few editions, held in Hakodate (Japan), Vienna (Austria), Seattle (USA), Gyeongju (Korea), and Santorini (Greece), were co-located with the IEEE - ternationalSymposiumonObject/Component/Service-OrientedReal-TimeD- tributed Computing (ISORC). This year, SEUS was held as a stand-alone event for the ?rst time, and, - spite the additionalorganizationaldi?culties, it resultedina high-qualityevent, with papers from four continents (from USA, Europe, East Asia and Australia), (co-) authored and presented from senior scientists coming from academia or leading industrial research centers.

The two-volume set LNCS 4527 and LNCS 4528 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Work-Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation, IWINAC 2007, held in La Manga del Mar Menor, Spain in June 2007.

The 126 revised papers presented are thematically divided into two volumes; the first includes all the contributions mainly related with theoretical, conceptual and methodological aspects linking AI and knowledge engineering with neurophysiology, clinics and cognition. The second volume contains all the contributions connected with biologically inspired methods and techniques for solving AI and knowledge engineering problems in different application domains.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Cognition, Spatial Cognition 2006, held in Bremen, Germany, September 24-28, 2006.

The 28 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on Spatial Reasoning, Human-Robot Interaction, Visuo-Spatial Reasoning and Spatial Dynamics, Spatial Concepts, Human Memory, Mental Reasoning and Assistance, Spatial Concepts, Human Memory and Mental Reasoning, Navigation, Wayfinding and Route Instructions as well as Linguistic and Social Issues in Spatial Knowledge Processing.

This book contains a selection of papers presented at the International Seminar "Negotiation and Market Engineering," held at Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, in November 2006.

The 17 revised full papers presented in this volume were carefully selected and reviewed after the seminar. The papers deal with the complexity of negotiations, auctions, and markets as economic, social, and IT systems. The authors give a broad overview on the major issues to be addressed and the methodologies used to approach them, covering highly interdisciplinary research from computer science, economics, business administration, and mathematics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, EKAW 2006, held in Podebrady, Czech Republic in October 2006. The 17 revised full papers and 16 revised short papers presented together with two invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 119 submissions.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning, ECCBR 2004, held in Fethiye, Turkey in September 2006. The book presents 31 revised full papers and 5 revised application papers together with 2 invited papers and 2 abstracts of invited talks. The coverage represents snapshot of current current issues in case-based reasoning, ranging from theoretical and methodological issues to advanced applications in various fields.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents, CIA 2006, held in Edinburgh, UK in September 2006. The 29 revised full papers presented together with four invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections.

Recommended by Bill Gates A thought-provoking and wide-ranging exploration of machine learning and the race to build computer intelligences as flexible as our own In the world's top research labs and universities, the race is on to invent the ultimate learning algorithm: one capable of discovering any knowledge from data, and doing anything we want, before we even ask. In The Master Algorithm, Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th Annual Working Conference on Data and Applications Security held in Sophia Antipolis, France, in July/August 2006.

The 22 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 56 submissions. The papers present theory, technique, applications, and practical experience of data and application security covering a number of diverse research topics such as access control, privacy, and identity management.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, PKDD 2007, held in Warsaw, Poland, in September 2007, co-located with ECML 2007, the 18th European Conference on Machine Learning.

The 28 revised full papers and 35 revised short papers presented together with abstracts of 4 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 592 papers submitted to both, ECML and PKDD. The papers present original results on leading-edge subjects of knowledge discovery from conventional and complex data and address all current issues in the area.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 2006 Pacific Rim Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, PKAW 2006, held in Guilin, China in August 2006 as part of 9th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI 2006.

The 21 revised full papers and 6 revised short papers presented together with 4 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 81 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on ontology and knowledge acquisition, algorithm approaches to knowledge acquisition, incremental knowledge acquisition and RDR, knowledge acquisition and applications, as well as machine learning and data mining.

This book constitutes the post-proceedings of the Third International Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval Symposium, CMMR 2005. The 24 revised full papers address a broad variety of topics, organized in topical sections on sound synthesis; music perception and cognition; interactive music: interface, interaction, gestures and sensors, music composition; music retrieval; music performance, music analysis, music representation; as well as interdisciplinarity and computer music.

The two-volume set LNCS 4527 and LNCS 4528 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Work-Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation, IWINAC 2007, held in La Manga del Mar Menor, Spain in June 2007.

The 126 revised papers presented are thematically divided into two volumes; the first includes all the contributions mainly related with theoretical, conceptual and methodological aspects linking AI and knowledge engineering with neurophysiology, clinics and cognition. The second volume contains all the contributions connected with biologically inspired methods and techniques for solving AI and knowledge engineering problems in different application domains.