This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the Second International Conference, UCMedia 2010, which was held in Palma, Mallorca, Spain, in September 2010, accompanied by the 4th InterMedia Open Forum Workshop (IMOF). After a thorough review process 16 conference and 3 workshop papers were selected for inclusion in the book. The papers are grouped in topical sections on: personalised access to multimedia content; search and retrieval of networked multimedia content; multimedia, AMP, and user experience; video quality perception and user quality of experience; user generated content; content distribution; and content summarisation.

Agent technology has recently become one of the most vibrant and fastest growing areas in information technology. Within this booming area, intelligent information agents are attracting particular attention from the research and development community as well as from industry and user communities interested in everyday private and professional applications. This monographic text is the first systematic state-of-the-art survey on intelligent information agents. Eighteen coherently written chapters by leading authorities provide complementary coverage of the relevant issues organized in four parts: cooperative information systems and agents; rational information agents and electronic commerce; adaptive information agents; mobile agents and security. In addition, the volume editor has provided a detailed introductory survey chapter, motivational introductions to the four parts, and a comprehensive bibliography listing more than 700 entries.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th Industrial Conference on Data Mining, ICDM 2012, held in Berlin, Germany in July 2012. The 22 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 97 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on data mining in medicine and biology; data mining for energy industry; data mining in traffic and logistic; data mining in telecommunication; data mining in engineering; theory in data mining; theory in data mining: clustering; theory in data mining: association rule mining and decision rule mining.

Multimedia Database Management Systems brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this important area. Multimedia Database Management Systems serves as an excellent reference, providing insight into some of the most important research issues in the field.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th Pacific Rim Conference on Multimedia, held in Singapore during December 4-6, 2012. The 59 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 106 submissions for the main conference and are accompanied by 23 presentations of 4 special sessions. The papers are organized in topical sections on multimedia content analysis, image and video processing, video coding and multimedia information processing, image/video processing and analysis, video coding and multimedia system, advanced image and video coding, cross media learning with structural priors, as well as efficient multimedia analysis and utilization.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Multimedia Modeling Conference, MMM 2012, held in Klagenfurt, Austria, in January 2012. The 38 revised regular papers, 12 special session papers, 15 poster session papers, and 6 demo session papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 142 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: annotation, annotation and interactive multimedia applications, event and activity, mining and mobile multimedia applications, search, summarization and visualization, visualization and advanced multimedia systems, and the special sessions: interactive and immersive entertainment and communication, multimedia preservation: how to ensure multimedia access over time, multi-modal and cross-modal search, and video surveillance.

Human Face Recognition Using Third-Order Synthetic Neural Networks explores the viability of the application of High-order synthetic neural network technology to transformation-invariant recognition of complex visual patterns. High-order networks require little training data (hence, short training times) and have been used to perform transformation-invariant recognition of relatively simple visual patterns, achieving very high recognition rates. The successful results of these methods provided inspiration to address more practical problems which have grayscale as opposed to binary patterns (e.g., alphanumeric characters, aircraft silhouettes) and are also more complex in nature as opposed to purely edge-extracted images - human face recognition is such a problem. Human Face Recognition Using Third-Order Synthetic Neural Networks serves as an excellent reference for researchers and professionals working on applying neural network technology to the recognition of complex visual patterns.

Multimedia Database Management Systems presents the issues and the techniques used in building multimedia database management systems. Chapter 1 provides an overview of multimedia databases and underlines the new requirements for these applications. Chapter 2 discusses the techniques used for storing and retrieving multimedia objects. Chapter 3 presents the techniques used for generating metadata for various media objects. Chapter 4 examines the mechanisms used for storing the index information needed for accessing different media objects. Chapter 5 analyzes the approaches for modeling media objects, both their temporal and spatial characteristics. Object-oriented approach, with some additional features, has been widely used to model multimedia information. The book discusses two systems that use object-oriented models: OVID (Object Video Information Database) and Jasmine. The models for representing temporal and spatial requirements of media objects are then studied. The book also describes authoring techniques used for specifying temporal and spatial characteristics of multimedia databases. Chapter 6 explains different types of multimedia queries, the methodologies for processing them and the language features for describing them. The features offered by query languages such as SQL/MM (Structured Query Language for Multimedia), PICQUERY+, and Video SQL are also studied. Chapter 7 deals with the communication requirements for multimedia databases. A client accessing multimedia data over computer networks needs to identify a schedule for retrieving various media objects composing the database. The book identifies possible ways for generating a retrieval schedule. Chapter 8 ties together the techniques discussed in the previous chapters by providing a simple architecture of a distributed multimedia database management system. Multimedia Database Management Systems can be used as a text for graduate students and researchers working in the area of multimedia databases. In addition, the book serves as essential reading material for computer professionals who are in (or moving to) the area of multimedia databases.

Multimedia Information Retrieval: Content-Based Information Retrieval from Large Text and Audio Databases addresses the future need for sophisticated search techniques that will be required to find relevant information in large digital data repositories, such as digital libraries and other multimedia databases. Because of the dramatically increasing amount of multimedia data available, there is a growing need for new search techniques that provide not only fewer bits, but also the most relevant bits, to those searching for multimedia digital data. This book serves to bridge the gap between classic ranking of text documents and modern information retrieval where composite multimedia documents are searched for relevant information. Multimedia Information Retrieval: Content-Based Information Retrieval from Large Text and Audio Databases begins to pave the way for speech retrieval; only recently has the search for information in speech recordings become feasible. This book provides the necessary introduction to speech recognition while discussing probabilistic retrieval and text retrieval, key topics in classic information retrieval. The book then discusses speech retrieval, which is even more challenging than retrieving text documents because word boundaries are difficult to detect, and recognition errors affect the retrieval effectiveness. This book also addresses the problem of integrating information retrieval and database functions, since there is an increasing need for retrieving information from frequently changing data collections which are organized and managed by a database system. Multimedia Information Retrieval: Content-Based Information Retrieval from Large Text and Audio Databases serves as an excellent reference source and may be used as a text for advanced courses on the topic.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 6th International ICST Conference on Mobile Multimedia Communications (MOBIMEDIA 2010) held in Lisbon, Portugal, in September 2010, which was accompanied by the First International Workshop on Cognitive Radio and Cooperative Strategies for POWER Saving (C2POWER 2010), the Workshop on Impact of Scalable Video Coding on Multimedia Provisioning (SVCVision 2010), and the First International Workshop on Energy-efficient and Reconfigurable Transceivers (EERT 2010). The 59 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions and are organized in topical sections on advanced techniques for video transmission; multimedia distribution; modelling of wireless systems; cellular networks; mobility concepts for IMT-advances (MOBILIA); media independent handovers (MIH-4-MEDIA); and IP-based emergency applications and services for next generation networks (PEACE).

Intelligent Broadband Multimedia Networks is a non-mathematical, but highly systems oriented, coverage of modern intelligent information networks. This volume focuses on the convergence of computers and communications technologies. Most of the concepts that are generic to all intelligent networks, and their microscopic and macroscopic functions, are presented. This book includes specific architectures that can be used by network designers and planners, telecommunications managers, computer scientists, and telecommunications professionals. The breadth of this coverage and the systems orientation of this work make the text suitable for use in advanced level courses on intelligent communications networks. The material in this volume ranges from defining intelligent networks to more specific coverage of educational, medical, and knowledge-based networks. Each of the 20 chapters address issues that can help make the transition from computer design, to the underlying concepts of modern telecommunications systems, to considerations necessary for the implementation of intelligent network services. Special and timely coverage of emerging technologies, such as HDSL, ADSL, BISDN, wireless, broadband access, ATM, and other topics, are given expanded treatment. The authors have included design methodologies for installing intelligence into almost any communications systems, and procedures for using such intelligence according to the type of function expected from these networks. Unique features of the book are: a 64-page glossary of key terms (with expanded explanations) used in the field, a 23-page index that makes it easy to search for important information, running headers on each page to help the busy professional use the book as a reference/design tool, complete references including additional reading for more detailed information, and accurate and concise information to help telecommunications professionals understand the intricacies of the field.

Image-based rendering (IBR) refers to a collection of techniques and representations that allow 3D scenes and objects to be visualized in a realistic way without full 3D model reconstruction. IBR uses images as the primary substrate. The potential for photorealistic visualization has tremendous appeal, and it is thus not surprising that IBR has been receiving increasing attention over the years. Applications such as video games, virtual travel, and E-commerce stand to benefit from this technology.

Image-Based Rendering examines the theory, practice, and applications associated with image-based rendering and modeling. The authors bring together their backgrounds and research experiences in computer graphics, computer vision and signal processing to address the multi-disciplinary nature of IBR research. The topics to be covered vary from IBR basic concepts and representations on the theory side, to signal processing and data compression on the practical side. These theoretical and practical issues are further disseminated in several IBR systems built to-date. However, this book will not focus on the geometrical modeling aspect of IBR, since 3D modeling has been extensively treated elsewhere in the vision literature.

One of the only titles devoted exclusively to the area of IBR, this book is intended for researchers, professionals, and general readers interested in the topics of computer graphics, computer vision, image processing, and video processing. Advanced-level students in EECS studying related disciplines will be able to seriously expand their knowledge about image-based rendering.

Multimedia Signals and Systems is primarily a technical introductory level multimedia textbook, including problems, examples, and MATLAB (R) codes. It will be a stepping-stone for readers who want to research in audio processing, image and video processing, and data compression. This book will also be useful to readers who are carrying out research and development in systems areas such as television engineering and storage media. Anyone who seeks to learn the core multimedia signal processing techniques and systems will need Multimedia Signals and Systems. There are many chapters that are generic in nature and provide key concepts of multimedia systems to technical as well as non-technical persons. There are also several chapters that provide a mathematical/ analytical framework for basic multimedia signal processing. The readers are expected to have some prior knowledge about discrete signals and systems, such as Fourier transform and digital filters. However, a brief review of these theories is provided. Additional material for this book, including several MATLAB (R) codes along with a few test data samples; e.g., audio, image and video may be downloaded from http://extras.springer.com.

This volume brings together the advanced research results obtained by the European COST Action 2102 "Cross Modal Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication," primarily discussed at the PINK SSPnet-COST2102 International Conference on Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication and Enactment: The Processing Issues, held in Budapest, Hungary, in September 2010. The 40 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The volume is arranged into two scientific sections. The first section, Multimodal Signals: Analysis, Processing and Computational Issues, deals with conjectural and processing issues of defining models, algorithms, and heuristic strategies for data analysis, coordination of the data flow and optimal encoding of multi-channel verbal and nonverbal features. The second section, Verbal and Nonverbal Social Signals, presents original studies that provide theoretical and practical solutions to the modelling of timing synchronization between linguistic and paralinguistic expressions, actions, body movements, activities in human interaction and on their assistance for an effective human-machine interactions.

During the past few years, we have been witnessing the rapid growth of the ap plications of Interactive Digital Video, Multimedia Computing, Desktop Video Teleconferencing, Virtual Reality, and High Definition Television (HDTV). An other information revolution which is tied to Cyberspace is almost within reach. The information, data, text, graphics, video, sound, etc. , in the form of multi media, can be requested, accessed, distributed, and transmitted to potentially every household. This is changing and will continue to change the way of people doing business, functioning in the society, and entertaining. In the foreseeable future, many personalized, portable information terminals, which can be car ried while traveling, will provide the link to central computer network to allow information exchange including videos from a node to node, from a center to a node, or nodes. Facing this opportunity, the question is what are the major significant technical challenges that people have to solve to push the-state-of-the-art for the realiza tion of the above mentioned technology advancement? From our professional judgement We feel that one of the major technical challenges is in Video Data Compression. Video communications in the form of desktop teleconferencing, videophone, network video delivery on demand, even games, are going to be major media traveling in the information super highway, hopping from one node in the Cyberspace to the other.

Education and Technology for a Better World was the main theme for WCCE 2009. The conference highlights and explores different perspectives of this theme, covering all levels of formal education as well as informal learning and societal aspects of education. The conference was open to everyone involved in education and training. Additionally players from technological, societal, business and political fields outside education were invited to make relevant contributions within the theme: Education and Technology for a Better World. For several years the WCCE (World Conference on Computers in Education) has brought benefits to the fields of computer science and computers and education as well as to their communities. The contributions at WCCE include research projects and good practice presented in different formats from full papers to posters, demonstrations, panels, workshops and symposiums. The focus is not only on presentations of accepted contributions but also on discussions and input from all participants. The main goal of these conferences is to provide a forum for the discussion of ideas in all areas of computer science and human learning. They create a unique environment in which researchers and practitioners in the fields of computer science and human learning can interact, exchanging theories, experiments, techniques, applications and evaluations of initiatives supporting new developments that are potentially relevant for the development of these fields. They intend to serve as reference guidelines for the research community.

The advent of the world-wide web and web-based applications have dramatically changed the nature of computer applications. Computer system design, in the light of these changes, involves understanding these modem workloads, identifying bottlenecks during their execution, and appropriately tailoring microprocessors, memory systems, and the overall system to minimize bottlenecks. This book contains ten chapters dealing with several contemporary programming paradigms including Java, web server and database workloads. The first two chapters concentrate on Java. While Barisone et al.'s characterization in Chapter 1 deals with instruction set usage of Java applications, Kim et al.'s analysis in Chapter 2 focuses on memory referencing behavior of Java workloads. Several applications including the SPECjvm98 suite are studied using interpreter and Just-In-Time (TIT) compilers. Barisone et al.'s work includes an analytical model to compute the utilization of various functional units. Kim et al. present information on locality, live-range of objects, object lifetime distribution, etc. Studying database workloads has been a challenge to research groups, due to the difficulty in accessing standard benchmarks. Configuring hardware and software for database benchmarks such as those from the Transactions Processing Council (TPC) requires extensive effort. In Chapter 3, Keeton and Patterson present a simplified workload (microbenchmark) that approximates the characteristics of complex standardized benchmarks.

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

Although the computer's life has been relatively short, it has brought about an information revolution that is transforming our world on a scale that is still difficult to comprehend. This digital convergence is shaping society, technology and the media for the next millennium. Areas as diverse as home banking and shopping over the Internet; WWW access over mobile phone networks; and television systems such as Web TV which combine on-line services with television. But convergence is not just about technology. It is also about services and new ways of doing business and of interacting with society. Digital convergence heralds the 'Information Revolution'. Edited by John Vince and Rae Earnshaw this important new book on Digital Convergence: The Information Revolution is an edited volume of papers, bringing together state-of-the-art developments in the Internet and World Wide Web and should be compulsory reading for all those interested in and working in those areas.

In the third paper in this chapter, Mike Pratt provides an historical intro duction to solid modeling. He presents the development of the three most freqently used techniques: cellular subdivision, constructive solid modeling and boundary representation. Although each of these techniques devel oped more or less independently, today the designer's needs dictate that a successful system allows access to all of these methods. For example, sculptured surfaces are generally represented using a boundary represen tation. However, the design of a complex vehicle generally dictates that a sculptured surface representation is most efficient for the 'skin' while constructive solid geometry representation is most efficent for the inter nal mechanism. Pratt also discusses the emerging concept of design by 'feature line'. Finally, he addresses the very important problem of data exchange between solid modeling systems and the progress that is being made towards developing an international standard. With the advent of reasonably low cost scientific workstations with rea sonable to outstanding graphics capabilities, scientists and engineers are increasingly turning to computer analysis for answers to fundamental ques tions and to computer graphics for present~tion of those answers. Although the current crop of workstations exhibit quite impressive computational ca pability, they are still not capable of solving many problems in a reasonable time frame, e. g. , executing computational fluid dynamics and finite element codes or generating complex ray traced or radiosity based images. In the sixth chapter Mike Muuss of the U. S.

The two-volume proceedings LNCS 7087 + 7088 constitute the proceedings of the 5th Pacific Rim Symposium, PSIVT 2011, held in Gwangju, Korea, in November 2011. The total of 71 revised papers was carefully reviewed and selected from 168 submissions. The topics covered are: image/video coding and transmission; image/video processing and analysis; imaging and graphics hardware and visualization; image/video retrieval and scene understanding; biomedical image processing and analysis; biometrics and image forensics; and computer vision applications.

The two-volume proceedings LNCS 7087 + LNCS 7088 constitute the proceedings of the 5th Pacific Rim Symposium on Image and Video Technology, PSIVT 2011, held in Gwangju, Korea, in November 2011. The total of 71 revised papers was carefully reviewed and selected from 168 submissions. The topics covered are: image/video coding and transmission; image/video processing and analysis; imaging and graphics hardware and visualization; image/video retrieval and scene understanding; biomedical image processing and analysis; biometrics and image forensics; and computer vision applications.

2 chapter contains examples of intelligent agents, arranged according to their appli cation areas. Chapter 7 closes with a prospective view of the future development of intelligent agents. Everyone concerned with the Internet and the new possibilities of information and communication technology knows that nowadays there is no area that is devel oping faster. The authors are aware of the dynamics of this research area and its effects when they describe such a fast developing area in a slow, traditional me dium like a book. One thing is sure today: when the book appears on the market, new intelligent agents will already exist and some of the hypotheses made by this book will have been shown to be incorrect. Why, despite this, does it make sense to write a classical book on this subject? Is there an alternative? Experience shows that the majority of the people in business and public life who make decisions on the use of new technologies continue to prefer books and articles in periodicals rather than electronic sources such as the Internet. Or is there some other reason for the enormous success of Nicolas Negroponte's book Being Digital, which we thank for multimedia and many concepts of the digital and networked world, and even intelligent agents? Today, a book is still the only way to establish a new area."

KES International (KES) is a worldwide organisation that provides a professional community and association for researchers, originally in the discipline of Knowledge Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems, but now extending into other related areas. Through this, KES provides its members with opportunities for publication and beneficial interaction. The focus of KES is research and technology transfer in the area of Intelligent S- tems, i.e. computer-based software systems that operate in a manner analogous to the human brain, in order to perform advanced tasks. Recently KES has started to extend its area of interest to encompass the contribution that intelligent systems can make to sustainability and renewable energy, and also the knowledge transfer, innovation and enterprise agenda. Involving several thousand researchers, managers and engineers drawn from u- versities and companies world-wide, KES is in an excellent position to facilitate - ternational research co-operation and generate synergy in the area of artificial intel- gence applied to real-world 'Smart' systems and the underlying related theory. The KES annual conference covers a broad spectrum of intelligent systems topics and attracts several hundred delegates from a range of countries round the world. KES also organises symposia on specific technical topics, for example, Agent and Multi Agent Systems, Intelligent Decision Technologies, Intelligent Interactive M- timedia Systems and Services, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings and Innovations through Knowledge Transfer. KES is responsible for two peer-reviewed journals, the International Journal of Knowledge based and Intelligent Engineering Systems, and Intelligent Decision Technologies: an International Journal.

ThisvolumecontainstheProceedingsofthe2ndInternationalSymposiumon Intelligent Interactive Multimedia Systems and Services (KES-IIMSS 2009) This second edition of the KES-IIMSS Symposium was organized by the Department of Information Technologies of University of Milan, Italy in c- junctionwithHanyangUniversity, KoreaandKESInternational. KES-IIMSS is a new series of international scienti?c symposia aimed at presenting novel research in the ?elds of intelligent multimedia systems relevant to the dev- opment of a new generation of interactive, user-centric services. The major theme underlying this year's symposium is the rapid integration of mul- media processing techniques within a new wave of user-centric services and processes. Indeed, pervasive computing has blurred the traditional disti- tion between conventional information technologies and multimedia proce- ing, making multimedia an integral part of a new generation of IT-based interactive systems. The aim of the KES-IIMSS symposium, following the general structure of KES events, is to provide an internationally respected forum for publishing high-quality results of scienti?c research while all- ing for timely dissemination of research breakthroughs and novel ideas via a number of autonomous special sessions and workshops on emerging - sues and topics identi?ed each year. IMSS 2009 co-located events include the International Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction in Knowled- based Environments, and three invited sessions respectively on Intelligent Systems for Healthcare, Design of Intelligent Environments for Supporting Human Interaction and Multimedia Techniques for Device and Ambient - telligence (MTDAI).