There is a tremendous interest in the design and applications of agents in virtually every area including avionics, business, internet, engineering, health sciences and management. There is no agreed one definition of an agent but we can define an agent as a computer program that autonomously or semi-autonomously acts on behalf of the user. In the last five years transition of intelligent systems research in general and agent based research in particular from a laboratory environment into the real world has resulted in the emergence of several phenomenon. These trends can be placed in three catego ries, namely, humanization, architectures and learning and adapta tion. These phenomena are distinct from the traditional logic centered approach associated with the agent paradigm. Humaniza tion of agents can be understood among other aspects, in terms of the semantics quality of design of agents. The need to humanize agents is to allow practitioners and users to make more effective use of this technology. It relates to the semantic quality of the agent design. Further, context-awareness is another aspect which has as sumed importance in the light of ubiquitous computing and ambi ent intelligence. The widespread and varied use of agents on the other hand has cre ated a need for agent-based software development frameworks and design patterns as well architectures for situated interaction, nego tiation, e-commerce, e-business and informational retrieval. Fi- vi Preface nally, traditional agent designs did not incorporate human-like abilities of learning and adaptation."

Computerarchitecturepresentlyfacesanunprecedentedrevolution: Thestep from monolithic processors towards multi-core ICs, motivated by the ever - creasingneedforpowerandenergyef ciencyinnanoelectronics. Whetheryou prefer to call it MPSoC (multi-processor system-on-chip) or CMP (chip mul- processor), no doubt this revolution affects large domains of both computer science and electronics, and it poses many new interdisciplinary challenges. For instance, ef cient programming models and tools for MPSoC are largely an open issue: "Multi-core platforms are a reality - but where is the software support" (R. Lauwereins, IMEC). Solving it will require enormous research efforts as well as the education of a whole new breed of software engineers that bring the results from universities into industrial practice. Atthesametime, thedesignofcomplexMPSoCarchitecturesisanextremely time-consuming task, particularly in the wireless and multimedia application domains, where heterogeneous architectures are predominant. Due to the - ploding NRE and mask costs most companies are now following a platform approach: Invest a large (but one-time) design effort into a proper core - chitecture, and create easy-to-design derivatives for new standards or product features. Needless to say, only the most ef cient MPSoC platforms have a real chance to enjoy a multi-year lifetime on the highly competitive semiconductor market for embedded systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Self-Organizing Systems, IWSOS 2009, held in Zurich, Switzerland, in December 2009.

The 14 revised full papers and 13 revised short papers presented were carefully selected from the 34 full and 27 short paper submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on ad hoc and sensor networks; services, storage, and internet routing; peer-to-peer systems; theory and general approaches; overlay networks; peer-to-peer systems and internet routing; wireless networks; and network topics.

This volume contains the extended papers selected for presentation at the ninth edition of the International Symposium on Web & Wireless Geographical Information Systems 2 (WGIS 2009) hosted by the National Centre for Geocomputation in NUI Maynooth 2 (Ireland). WGIS 2009 was the ninth in a series of successful events beginning with Kyoto 2001, and alternating locations between East Asia and Europe. We invited s- missions that provided an up-to-date review of advances in theoretical, technical, and 2 practical issues of W GIS and Intelligent GeoMedia. Reports on ongoing implemen- tions and real-world applications research were particularly welcome at this symposium. 2 Now in its ninth year, the scope of W GIS has expanded to include continuing - vances in wireless and Internet technologies that generate ever increasing interest in the diffusion, usage, and processing of geo-referenced data of all types - geomedia. Spatially aware wireless and Internet devices offer new ways of accessing and anal- ing geo-spatial information in both real-world and virtual spaces. Consequently, new challenges and opportunities are provided that expand the traditional GIS research scope into the realm of intelligent media - including geomedia with context-aware behaviors for self-adaptive use and delivery. Our common aim is research-based innovation that increases the ease of creating, delivering, and using geomedia across different platforms and application domains that continue to have dramatic effect on today's society.

As future generation information technology (FGIT) becomes specialized and fr- mented, it is easy to lose sight that many topics in FGIT have common threads and, because of this, advances in one discipline may be transmitted to others. Presentation of recent results obtained in different disciplines encourages this interchange for the advancement of FGIT as a whole. Of particular interest are hybrid solutions that c- bine ideas taken from multiple disciplines in order to achieve something more signi- cant than the sum of the individual parts. Through such hybrid philosophy, a new principle can be discovered, which has the propensity to propagate throughout mul- faceted disciplines. FGIT 2009 was the first mega-conference that attempted to follow the above idea of hybridization in FGIT in a form of multiple events related to particular disciplines of IT, conducted by separate scientific committees, but coordinated in order to expose the most important contributions. It included the following international conferences: Advanced Software Engineering and Its Applications (ASEA), Bio-Science and Bio-Technology (BSBT), Control and Automation (CA), Database Theory and Application (DTA), D- aster Recovery and Business Continuity (DRBC; published independently), Future G- eration Communication and Networking (FGCN) that was combined with Advanced Communication and Networking (ACN), Grid and Distributed Computing (GDC), M- timedia, Computer Graphics and Broadcasting (MulGraB), Security Technology (SecTech), Signal Processing, Image Processing and Pattern Recognition (SIP), and- and e-Service, Science and Technology (UNESST).

This volume presents the proceedings of the 6th International ICST Conference on Heterogeneous Networking for Quality, Reliability, Security and Robustness and of the Third International ICST Workshop on Advanced Architectures and Algorithms for Internet DElivery and Applications. Both events were held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in November 2009. To each of these events is devoted a specific part of the volume. The first part is dedicated to the proceedings of ICST QShine 2009. The first four chapters deal with new issues concerning the quality of service in IP-based telephony and multimedia. A second set of four chapters addresses some important research problems in mul- hop wireless networks, with a special emphasis on the problems of routing. The following three papers deal with recent advances in the field of data mana- ment and area coverage in sensor networks, while a fourth set of chapters deals with mobility and context-aware services. The fifth set of chapters contains new works in the area of Internet delivery and switching systems. The following chapters of the QShine part of the volume are devoted to papers in the areas of resource management in wireless networks, overlay, P2P and SOA arc- tectures. Some works also deal with the optimization of quality of service and energy consumption in WLAN and sensor networks and on the design of a mobility support in mesh networks.

As software systems become increasingly ubiquitous, issues of dependability become ever more crucial. Given that solutions to these issues must be considered from the very beginning of the design process, it is reasonable that dependability and security are addressed at the architectural level. This book has originated from an effort to bring together the research communities of software architectures, dependability and security.

This state-of-the-art survey contains expanded and peer-reviewed papers based on the carefully selected contributions to two workshops: the Workshop on Architecting Dependable Systems (WADS 2008), organized at the 2008 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2008), held in Anchorage, Alaska, USA, in June 2008, and the Third International Workshop on Views On Designing Complex Architectures (VODCA 2008) held in Bertinoro, Italy, in August 2008. It also contains invited papers written by recognized experts in the area. The 13 papers are organized in topical sections on dependable service-oriented architectures, fault-tolerance and system evaluation, and architecting security.

LION 3, the Third International Conference on Learning and Intelligent Op- mizatioN, was held during January 14-18 in Trento, Italy. The LION series of conferences provides a platform for researchers who are interested in the int- section of e?cient optimization techniques and learning. It is aimed at exploring the boundaries and uncharted territories between machine learning, arti?cial intelligence, mathematical programming and algorithms for hard optimization problems. The considerable interest in the topics covered by LION was re?ected by the overwhelming number of 86 submissions, which almost doubled the 48 subm- sions received for LION's second edition in December 2007. As in the ?rst two editions, the submissions to LION 3 could be in three formats: (a) original novel and unpublished work for publication in the post-conference proceedings, (b) extended abstracts of work-in-progressor a position statement, and (c) recently submitted or published journal articles for oral presentations. The 86 subm- sions received include 72, ten, and four articles for categories (a), (b), and (c), respectively.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems, SSS 2009, held in Lyon, France, in November 2009.

The 49 revised full papers and 14 brief announcements presented together with three invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 126 submissions. The papers address all safety and security-related aspects of self-stabilizing systems in various areas. The most topics related to self-* systems. The special topics were alternative systems and models, autonomic computational science, cloud computing, embedded systems, fault-tolerance in distributed systems / dependability, formal methods in distributed systems, grid computing, mobility and dynamic networks, multicore computing, peer-to-peer systems, self-organizing systems, sensor networks, stabilization, and system safety and security.

The 2009 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Computational Int- ligence (AICI 2009) was held during November 7-8, 2009 in Shanghai, China. The technical program of the conference reflects the tremendous growth in the fields of artificial intelligence and computational intelligence with contributions from a large number of participants around the world. AICI 2009 received 1,203 submissions from 20 countries and regions. After rig- ous reviews, 79 high-quality papers were selected for this volume, representing an acceptance rate of 6.6%. These selected papers cover many new developments and their applications in the fields of artificial intelligence and computational intelligence. Their publications reflect a sustainable interest from the wide academic community worldwide in tirelessly pursuing new solutions through effective utilizations of arti- cial intelligence and computational intelligence to real-world problems. We would like to specially thank all the committee members and reviewers, without whose timely help it would have been impossible to review all the submitted papers to assemble this program. We also would like take this opportunity to express our heartfelt appreciation for all those who worked together in organizing this conference, establi- ing the technical programs and running the conference meetings. We greatly appreciate the authors, speakers, invited session organizers, session Chairs, and others who made this conference possible. Lastly, we would like to express our gratitude to the Shanghai University of Electric Power for the sponsorship and support of the conference.

Scheduled transportation networks give rise to very complex and large-scale networkoptimization problems requiring innovative solution techniques and ideas from mathematical optimization and theoretical computer science. Examples of scheduled transportation include bus, ferry, airline, and railway networks, with the latter being a prime application domain that provides a fair amount of the most complex and largest instances of such optimization problems. Scheduled transport optimization deals with planning and scheduling problems over several time horizons, and substantial progress has been made for strategic planning and scheduling problems in all transportation domains.

This state-of-the-art survey presents the outcome of an open call for contributions asking for either research papers or state-of-the-art survey articles. We received 24 submissions that underwent two rounds of the standard peer-review process, out of which 18 were finally accepted for publication.

The volume is organized in four parts: Robustness and Recoverability, Robust Timetabling and Route Planning, Robust Planning Under Scarce Resources, and Online Planning: Delay and Disruption Management.

As future generation information technology (FGIT) becomes specialized and fr- mented, it is easy to lose sight that many topics in FGIT have common threads and, because of this, advances in one discipline may be transmitted to others. Presentation of recent results obtained in different disciplines encourages this interchange for the advancement of FGIT as a whole. Of particular interest are hybrid solutions that c- bine ideas taken from multiple disciplines in order to achieve something more signi- cant than the sum of the individual parts. Through such hybrid philosophy, a new principle can be discovered, which has the propensity to propagate throughout mul- faceted disciplines. FGIT 2009 was the first mega-conference that attempted to follow the above idea of hybridization in FGIT in a form of multiple events related to particular disciplines of IT, conducted by separate scientific committees, but coordinated in order to expose the most important contributions. It included the following international conferences: Advanced Software Engineering and Its Applications (ASEA), Bio-Science and Bio-Technology (BSBT), Control and Automation (CA), Database Theory and Application (DTA), D- aster Recovery and Business Continuity (DRBC; published independently), Future G- eration Communication and Networking (FGCN) that was combined with Advanced Communication and Networking (ACN), Grid and Distributed Computing (GDC), M- timedia, Computer Graphics and Broadcasting (MulGraB), Security Technology (SecTech), Signal Processing, Image Processing and Pattern Recognition (SIP), and- and e-Service, Science and Technology (UNESST).

Research and development of autonomics have come a long way, and we are - lighted to present the proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Workshop on Modeling Autonomic Communications Environments (MACE 2009). As in the last three years, this workshop was held as part of Manweek, the International Week on Management of Networks and Services, which took place in the cult- ally rich city of Venice in Italy. Manweek is now an umbrella of ?ve workshops and conferences focusing on di?erent aspects of network and service mana- ment, including MACE, distributed operations and management (DSOM), - basedmanagement(IPOM),towardsmultimediaandmobilenetworks(MMNS), and virtualization and middleware for next generation networks (NGNM). F- ther information of Manweek and the individual workshops and conferences can be found athttp://www.manweek.org. MACE started as an experiment, in 2006, and created a small community that now ?nds itself attracted back each year by a feeling of excitement and anticipation to share new advances and development. Certainly, MACE is not as shiny or practiced as other well-known conferences and workshops, but we consider this a feature of the workshop itself. New ideas, a little rough around theedges(andsometimesmorethanalittle),oftenquiteun?nished,popoutand provoke extensive discussion. Science needs this kind of exploratory adventure, and we have been strongly motivated to continue preserving this atmosphere of exploration and discussion in this year's technical program.

The 7th IFIP Workshop on Software Technologies for Future Embedded and Ubiquitous Systems (SEUS) followed on the success of six previous editions in Capri, Italy (2008), Santorini, Greece (2007), Gyeongju, Korea (2006), Seattle, USA (2005), Vienna, Austria (2004), and Hokodate, Japan (2003), establishing SEUS as one of the emerging workshops in the ?eld of embedded and ubiq- tous systems. SEUS 2009 continued the tradition of fostering cross-community scienti?c excellence and establishing strong links between researchand industry. The ?elds of both embedded computing and ubiquitous systems have seen considerable growth over the past few years. Given the advances in these ?elds, and also those in the areas of distributed computing, sensor networks, midd- ware, etc. , the area of ubiquitous embedded computing is now being envisioned as the wayof the future. The systems and technologies that will arise in support of ubiquitous embedded computing will undoubtedly need to address a variety of issues, including dependability, real-time, human-computer interaction, - tonomy, resource constraints, etc. All of these requirements pose a challenge to the research community. The purpose of SEUS 2009 was to bring together - searchersand practitioners with an interest in advancing the state of the artand the state of practice in this emerging ?eld, with the hope of fostering new ideas, collaborations and technologies. SEUS 2009 would not have been possible without the e?ort of many people.

This book contains the best papers of the Third International Conference on Software and Data Technologies (ICSOFT 2008), held in Porto, Portugal, which was organized by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Communication and Control (INSTICC), co-sponsored by the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), in cooperation with the Interdisciplinary Institute for Collaboration and Research on Enterprise Systems and Technology (IICREST). The purpose of ICSOFT 2008 was to bring together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in information technology and software development. The conference tracks were "Software Engineering", "Information Systems and Data Management", "Programming Languages", "Distributed and Parallel Systems" and "Knowledge Engineering". Being crucial for the development of information systems, software and data te- nologies encompass a large number of research topics and applications: from imp- mentation-related issues to more abstract theoretical aspects of software engineering; from databases and data-warehouses to management information systems and kno- edge-base systems; next to that, distributed systems, pervasive computing, data qu- ity and other related topics are included in the scope of this conference.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Mobile Entity Localization and Tracking in GPS-less Environments (MELT 2009), held in Orlando, Florida on September 30, 2009 in conjunction with the 11th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2009). MELT provides a forum for the presentation of state-of-the-art technologies in mobile localization and tracking and novel applications of location-based s- vices. MELT 2009 continued the success of the ?rst workshop in the series (MELT 2008), which was held is San Francisco, California on September 19, 2008 in conjunction with Mobicom. Location-awareness is a key component for achieving context-awareness. - cent years have witnessed an increasing trend towards location-based services and applications. In most cases, however, location information is limited by the accessibility to GPS, which is unavailable for indoor or underground fac- ities and unreliable in urban environments. Much research has been done, in both the sensor network community and the ubiquitous computing community, to provide techniques for localization and tracking in GPS-less environments. Novel applications based on ad-hoc localization and real-time tracking of - bile entities are growing as a result of these technologies. MELT brings together leaders from both the academic and industrial research communities to discuss challenging and open problems, to evaluate pros and cons of various approaches, to bridge the gap between theory and applications, and to envision new research opportunities.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the International Conference on Personal Satellite Services (PSATS 2009) in Rome, Italy in March 2009.

The 17 papers papers demonstrate recent advances in Internet applications over satellites, satellites technologies, and future satellite location-based systems.

These proceedings contain the papers presented at VoteID 2009, the Second - ternationalConferenceonE-votingandIdentity.TheconferencewasheldinL- embourgduring September 7-8,2009, hostedbythe Universityof Luxembourg. VoteID 2009 built on the success of the 2007 edition held in Bochum. Events have moved on dramatically in the intervening two years: at the time of writing, people are in the streets of Tehran protesting against the claimed outcome of the June12thpresidentialelectionin Iran.Banners bearingthe words"Whereis my vote?" bear testimony to the strength of feeling and the need for elections to be trusted. These events show that the search for high-assurance voting is not a purely academic pursuit but one of very real importance. We hope that VoteID 2009 will help contribute to our understanding of the foundations of democracy. TheProgramCommitteeselected11papersforpresentationattheconference out of a total of 24 submissions. Each submission was reviewed by at least four Program Committee members. The EasyChair conference management system proved instrumental in the reviewing process as well as in the preparation of these proceedings. The selected papers cover a wide range of aspects of voting: proposals for high-assurancevotingsystems, evaluationofexistingsystems, assessmentofp- lic response to electronic voting and legal aspects. The program also included a keynote by Mark Ryan.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 23nd International Symposium on Distributed Computing, DISC 2009, held in Elche, Spain, in September 2009.

The 33 revised full papers, selected from 121 submissions, are presented together with 15 brief announcements of ongoing works; all of them were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers address all aspects of distributed computing, and were organized in topical sections on Michel Raynal and Shmuel Zaks 60th birthday symposium, award nominees, transactional memory, shared memory, distributed and local graph algorithms, modeling issues, game theory, failure detectors, from theory to practice, graph algorithms and routing, consensus and byzantine agreement and radio networks.

The aim of the FMICS workshop series is to provide a forum for researchers who are interested in the development and application of formal methods in industry. In particular, these workshops are intended to bring together scientists and practitioners who are active in the area of formal methods and interested in exchanging their experiences in the industrial usage of these methods. These workshopsalso striveto promoteresearchand developmentfor the improvement of formal methods and tools for industrial applications. The topics for which contributions to FMICS 2008 were solicited included, but were not restricted to, the following: - Design, speci?cation, code generation and testing based on formal methods - Veri?cation and validation of complex, distributed, real-time systems and embedded systems - Veri?cation and validation methods that address shortcomings of existing methods with respect to their industrial applicability (e. g. , scalability and usability issues) - Tools for the development of formal design descriptions - Case studies and experience reports on industrial applications of formal methods, focusing on lessons learned or identi?cation of new research - rections - Impact of the adoption of formal methods on the development process and associated costs - Application of formal methods in standardization and industrial forums The workshop included six sessions of regular contributions in the areas of model checking, testing, software veri?cation, real-time performance, and ind- trial case studies. There were also three invited presentations, given by Steven Miller,Rance Cleaveland,and Werner Damm, coveringthe applicationof formal methods in the avionics and automotive industries.

The two volume set LNCS 5506 and LNCS 5507 constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, ICONIP 2008, held in Auckland, New Zealand, in November 2008.

The 260 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous ordinary paper submissions and 15 special organized sessions. 116 papers are published in the first volume and 112 in the second volume. The contributions deal with topics in the areas of data mining methods for cybersecurity, computational models and their applications to machine learning and pattern recognition, lifelong incremental learning for intelligent systems, application of intelligent methods in ecological informatics, pattern recognition from real-world information by svm and other sophisticated techniques, dynamics of neural networks, recent advances in brain-inspired technologies for robotics, neural information processing in cooperative multi-robot systems.

This year's edition of the international federated conferences on Distributed Computing Techniques took place in Lisbon during June 9-11, 2009. It was hosted by the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon and formally or- nized by Instituto de Telecomunica, c oes. The DisCoTecconferences jointly coverthe completespectrum ofdistributed computing subjects ranging from theoretical foundations to formal speci?cation techniques to practical considerations. The event consisted of the 11th Inter- tional Conference on Coordination Models and Languages(COORDINATION), the 9th IFIP International Conference on Distributed Applications and Inter- erable Systems (DAIS), and the IFIP International Conference on Formal Te- niquesforDistributedSystems(FMOODS/FORTE).COORDINATIONfocused on languages, models, and architectures for concurrentand distributed software. DAIS emphasized methods, techniques, and system infrastructures needed to design, build, operate, evaluate, and manage modern distributed applications in any kind of application environment and scenario. FMOODS (11th Formal MethodsforOpenObject-BasedDistributedSystems)joinedforceswithFORTE (29thFormalTechniquesfor NetworkedandDistributed Systems), creatinga - rum for fundamental researchon theory and applications of distributed systems."

The 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI Inter- tional 2009, was held in San Diego, California, USA, July 19-24, 2009, jointly with the Symposium on Human Interface (Japan) 2009, the 8th International Conference on Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics, the 5th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction, the Third International Conf- ence on Virtual and Mixed Reality, the Third International Conference on Internati- alization, Design and Global Development, the Third International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing, the 5th International Conference on Augmented Cognition, the Second International Conference on Digital Human Mod- ing, and the First International Conference on Human Centered Design. A total of 4,348 individuals from academia, research institutes, industry and gove- mental agencies from 73 countries submitted contributions, and 1,397 papers that were judged to be of high scientific quality were included in the program. These papers - dress the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of the design and use of computing systems. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the entire field of human-computer interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference On Smart Homes and and Health Telematics, ICOST 2009, held in Tours, France, in July 2009. The 27 revised full papers and 20 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on cognitive assistance and chronic diseases management; ambient living systems; service continuity and context awareness; user modeling and human-machine interaction; ambient intelligence modeling and privacy issues, human behavior and activities monitoring.

in the algorithmic and foundational aspects, high-level approaches as well as more applied and technology-related issues regarding tools and applications of wireless sensor networks. June 2009 Jie Wu Viktor K. Prasanna Ivan Stojmenovic Message from the Program Chair This proceedings volume includes the accepted papers of the 5th International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems. This year we int- duced some changes in the composition of the three tracks to increase cro- disciplinary interactions. The Algorithms track was enhanced to include topics pertaining to performance analysis and network optimization and renamed "- gorithms and Analysis. " The Systems and Applications tracks, previously s- arate, were combined into a single track. And a new track was introduced on "Signal Processing and Information Theory. " DCOSS 2009 received 116 submissions for the three tracks. After a thorough reviewprocess, inwhichatleastthreereviewsweresolicitedforallpapers, atotal of 26 papers were accepted. The research contributions in this proceedings span many aspects of sensor systems, including energy-e?cient mechanisms, tracking and surveillance, activity recognition, simulation, query optimization, network coding, localization, application development, data and code dissemination. Basedonthereviews, wealsoidenti?edthebestpaperfromeachtrack, which are as follows: BestpaperintheAlgorithmsandAnalysistrack: "E?cientSensorPlacement for Surveillance Problems" by Pankaj Agarwal, Esther Ezra and Shashidhara Ganjugunte. Best paper in the Applications and Systems track: "Optimal Allocation of Time-Resources for Multihypothesis Activity-Level Detection," by Gautam Thatte, ViktorRozgic, MingLi, SabyasachiGhosh, UrbashiMitra, ShriNarayanan, Murali Annavaram and Donna Spruijt-Metz. Best paper in the Signal Processing and Information Theory track: "D- tributed Computation of Likelihood Maps for Target Tracking" by Jonathan Gallagher, Randolph Moses and Emre Ertin.