This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Grid and Pervasive Computing, GPC 2013, held in Seoul, Korea, in May 2013 and the following colocated workshops: International Workshop on Ubiquitous and Multimedia Application Systems, UMAS 2013; International Workshop DATICS-GPC 2013: Design, Analysis and Tools for Integrated Circuits and Systems; and International Workshop on Future Science Technologies and Applications, FSTA 2013. The 111 revised papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. They have been organized in the following topical sections: cloud, cluster and grid; middleware resource management; mobile peer-to-peer and pervasive computing; multi-core and high-performance computing; parallel and distributed systems; security and privacy; ubiquitous communications, sensor networking, and RFID; ubiquitous and multimedia application systems; design, analysis and tools for integrated circuits and systems; future science technologies and applications; and green and human information technology.

Design is an art form in which the designer selects from a myriad of alternatives to bring an "optimum" choice to a user. In many complex of "optimum" is difficult to define. Indeed, the users systems the notion themselves will not agree, so the "best" system is simply the one in which the designer and the user have a congruent viewpoint. Compounding the design problem are tradeoffs that span a variety of technologies and user requirements. The electronic business system is a classically complex system whose tradeoff criteria and user views are constantly changing with rapidly developing underlying technology. Professor Milutinovic has chosen this area for his capstone contribution to the computer systems design. This book completes his trilogy on design issue in computer systems. His first work, "Surviving the Design of a 200 MHz RISC Microprocessor" (1997) focused on the tradeoffs and design issues within a processor. His second work, "Surviving the Design of Microprocessor and Multiprocessor Systems" (2000) considers the design issues involved with assembling a number of processors into a coherent system. Finally, this book generalizes the system design problem to electronic commerce on the Internet, a global system of immense consequence.

Video technology promises to be the key for the transmission of motion video. A number of video compression techniques and standards have been introduced in the past few years, particularly the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 for interactive multimedia and for digital NTSC and HDTV applications, and H.2611H.263 for video telecommunications. These techniques use motion estimation techniques to reduce the amount of data that is stored and transmitted for each frame. This book is about these motion estimation algorithms, their complexity, implementations, advantages, and drawbacks. First, we present an overview of video compression techniques with an emphasis to techniques that use motion estimation, such as MPEG and H.2611H.263. Then, we give a survey of current motion estimation search algorithms, including the exhaustive search and a number of fast search algorithms. An evaluation of current search algorithms, based on a number of experiments on several test video sequences, is presented as well. The theoretical framework for a new fast search algorithm, Densely-Centered Uniform-P Search (DCUPS), is developed and presented in the book. The complexity of the DCUPS algorithm is comparable to other popular motion estimation techniques, however the algorithm shows superior results in terms of compression ratios and video qUality. We should stress out that these new results, presented in Chapters 4 and 5, have been developed by Joshua Greenberg, as part of his M.Sc. thesis entitled "Densely-Centered Uniform P-Search: A Fast Motion Estimation Algorithm" (FAU, 1996).

In the early 1990s, the establishment of the Internet brought forth a revolutionary viewpoint of information storage, distribution, and processing: the World Wide Web is becoming an enormous and expanding distributed digital library. Along with the development of the Web, image indexing and retrieval have grown into research areas sharing a vision of intelligent agents. Far beyond Web searching, image indexing and retrieval can potentially be applied to many other areas, including biomedicine, space science, biometric identification, digital libraries, the military, education, commerce, culture and entertainment. Machine Learning and Statistical Modeling Approaches to Image Retrieval describes several approaches of integrating machine learning and statistical modeling into an image retrieval and indexing system that demonstrates promising results. The topics of this book reflect authors' experiences of machine learning and statistical modeling based image indexing and retrieval. This book contains detailed references for further reading and research in this field as well.

ICMCCA 2012 is the first International Conference on Multimedia Processing, Communication and Computing Applications and the theme of the Conference is chosen as 'Multimedia Processing and its Applications'. Multimedia processing has been an active research area contributing in many frontiers of today's science and technology. This book presents peer-reviewed quality papers on multimedia processing, which covers a very broad area of science and technology. The prime objective of the book is to familiarize readers with the latest scientific developments that are taking place in various fields of multimedia processing and is widely used in many disciplines such as Medical Diagnosis, Digital Forensic, Object Recognition, Image and Video Analysis, Robotics, Military, Automotive Industries, Surveillance and Security, Quality Inspection, etc. The book will assist the research community to get the insight of the overlapping works which are being carried out across the globe at many medical hospitals and institutions, defense labs, forensic labs, academic institutions, IT companies and security & surveillance domains. It also discusses latest state-of-the-art research problems and techniques and helps to encourage, motivate and introduce the budding researchers to a larger domain of multimedia.

Multimedia data comprising of images, audio and video is becoming increasingly common. The decreasing costs of consumer electronic devices such as digital cameras and digital camcorders, along with the ease of transportation facilitated by the Internet, has lead to a phenomenal rise in the amount of multimedia data generated and distributed. Given that this trend of increased use of multimedia data is likely to accelerate, there is an urgent need for providing a clear means of capturing, storing, indexing, retrieving, analyzing and summarizing such data. Content-based access to multimedia data is of primary importance since it is the natural way by which human beings interact with such information. To facilitate the content-based access of multimedia information, the first step is to derive feature measures from these data so that a feature space representation of the data content can be formed. This can subsequently allow for mapping the feature space to the symbol space (semantics) either automatically or through human intervention. Thus, signal to symbol mapping, useful for any practical system, can be successfully achieved. Perspectives on Content-Based Multimedia Systems provides a comprehensive set of techniques to tackle these important issues. This book offers detailed solutions to a wide range of practical problems in building real systems by providing specifics of three systems built by the authors. While providing a systems focus, it also equips the reader with a keen understanding of the fundamental issues, including a formalism for content-based multimedia database systems, multimedia feature extraction, object-based techniques, signature-based techniques and fuzzy retrieval techniques. The performance evaluation issues of practical systems is also explained. This book brings together essential elements of building a content-based multimedia database system in a way that makes them accessible to practitioners in computer science and electrical engineering. It can also serve as a textbook for graduate-level courses.

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

Foreword by Lars Knudsen Practical Intranet Security focuses on the various ways in which an intranet can be violated and gives a thorough review of the technologies that can be used by an organization to secure its intranet. This includes, for example, the new security architecture SESAME, which builds on the Kerberos authentication system, adding to it both public-key technology and a role-based access control service. Other technologies are also included such as a description of how to program with the GSS-API, and modern security technologies such as PGP, S/MIME, SSH, SSL IPSEC and CDSA. The book concludes with a comparison of the technologies. This book is different from other network security books in that its aim is to identify how to secure an organization's intranet. Previously books have concentrated on the Internet, often neglecting issues relating to securing intranets. However the potential risk to business and the ease by which intranets can be violated is often far greater than via the Internet. The aim is that network administrators and managers can get the information that they require to make informed choices on strategy and solutions for securing their own intranets. The book is an invaluable reference for network managers and network administrators whose responsibility it is to ensure the security of an organization's intranet. The book also contains background reading on networking, network security and cryptography which makes it an excellent research reference and undergraduate/postgraduate text book.

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

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

Advanced Signal Processing for Communication Systems consists of 20 contributions from researchers and experts. The first group of chapters deals with the audio and video processing for communications applications, including topics ranging from multimedia content delivery over the Internet, through the speech processing and recognition to recognition of non-speech sounds that can be attributed to the surrounding environment. The book also includes sections on applications of error control coding, information theory, and digital signal processing for communication systems like modulation, software-defined radio, and channel estimation. Advanced Signal Processing for Communication Systems is written for researchers working on communication systems and signal processing, as well as telecommunications industry professionals.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 35th European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2013, held in Moscow, Russia, in March 2013. The 55 full papers, 38 poster papers and 10 demonstrations presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 287 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: user aspects; multimedia and cross-media IR; data mining; IR theory and formal models; IR system architectures; classification; Web; event detection; temporal IR, and microblog search. Also included are 4 tutorial and 2 workshop presentations.

Co-editors of the volume are:

Federico "Alvarez," Alessandro "Bassi," Michele "Bezzi," Laurent "Ciavaglia," Frances "Cleary," Petros "Daras," Hermann "De Meer," Panagiotis "Demestichas," John "Domingue," Theo G. "Kanter," Stamatis "Karnouskos," Srdjan "Kr"" ""o," Laurent "Lefevre," Jasper "Lentjes," Man-Sze "Li," Paul "Malone," Antonio "Manzalini," Volkmar "Lotz," Henning "Muller," Karsten "Oberle," Noel E. "O'Connor," Nick "Papanikolaou," Dana "Petcu," Rahim "Rahmani," Danny" Raz," Gael "Richards," Elio "Salvadori," Susana "Sargento," Hans "Schaffers," Joan" Serrat," Burkhard "Stiller," Antonio F. "Skarmeta," Kurt "Tutschku," Theodore "Zahariadis"

The Internet is the most vital scientific, technical, economic and societal set of infrastructures in existence and in operation today serving 2.5 billion users. Continuing its developments would secure much of the upcoming innovation and prosperity and it would underpin the sustainable growth in economic values and volumes needed in the future. Future Internet infrastructures research is therefore a must.

The Future Internet Assembly (FIA) is a successful conference that brings together participants of over 150 research projects from several distinct yet interrelated areas in the European Union Framework Programme 7 (FP7). The research projects are grouped as follows: the network of the future as infrastructure connecting and orchestrating the future Internet of people, computers, devices, content, clouds and things; cloud computing, Internet of Services and advanced software engineering; the public-private partnership projects on Future Internet; Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE).

The 26 full papers included in this volume were selected from 45 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: software driven networks, virtualization, programmability and autonomic management; computing and networking clouds; internet of things; and enabling technologies and economic incentives."

This book provides a theoretical and practical explanation of the latest advancements in information retrieval and their application to existing systems. It takes a system approach, discussing all aspects of an Information Retrieval System. The major difference between this book and the first edition is the addition to this text of descriptions of the automated indexing of multimedia documents, as items in information retrieval are now considered to be a combination of text along with graphics, audio, image and video data types. The growth of the Internet and the availability of enormous volumes of data in digital form have necessitated intense interest in techniques to assist the user in locating data. The importance of the Internet and its associated hypertext linked structure are put into perspective as a new type of information retrieval data structure. The total system approach also includes discussion of the human interface and the importance of information visualization for identification of relevant information.With the availability of large quantities of multi-media on the Internet (audio, video, images), Information Retrieval Systems need to address multi-modal retrieval. The primary use of this book is as a college text on Information Retrieval Systems. But in addition to the theoretical aspects, the book maintains a theme of practicality that puts into perspective the importance and utilization of the theory in systems that are being used by anyone on the Internet. The student will gain an understanding of what is achievable using existing technologies and deficient areas that warrant additional research. The text provides coverage of all of the major aspects of information retrieval and has sufficient detail to allow students to implement a simple Information Retrieval System.

Wireless Communication Technologies: New Multimedia Systems is based on a selection of the best papers presented at the recent International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC '99). All of the papers have been extended into full chapters, critiqued, and edited into a unified and structured book. Contributions to this volume are by the leading specialist from their respective fields. The topics represent the newest ideas and research involving wireless multimedia systems and wireless technologies. Part I focuses on key developments and technologies and includes coverage of wireless channel modeling, space-time coding, coding for wireless networks, OFDM, software radio, and spatial and temporal communication theory. Chapters in Part II address many of the new wireless systems currently being standardized; such as, intelligent transport systems, wireless internet, digital TV broadcasting, and IMT-2000. Insights into many of the hot and rapidly developing research topics, such as bluetooth, Mobile IP, GPRS, and others, are discussed.Each chapter includes basic concepts and technical trends in addition to providing extensive technical coverage. Researchers and engineers of wireless communication systems will benefit from insights and results reported in Wireless Communication Technologies: New Multimedia Systems. This work may also be suitable for graduate level courses on Wireless Communication Systems, Cellular Communication Systems, and Mobile Communications.

The purpose of Transporting Compressed Digital Video is to introduce fundamental principles and important technologies used in design and analysis of video transport systems for many video applications in digital networks. In the past two decades, progress in digital video processing, transmission, and storage technologies, such as video compression, digital modulation, and digital storage disk, has proceeded at an astounding pace. Digital video compression is a field in which fundamental technologies were motivated and driven by practical applications so that they often lead to many useful advances. Especially, the digital video-compression standards, developed by the Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), have enabled many successful digital-video applications. These applications range from digital-video disk (DVD) and multimedia CDs on a desktop computer, interactive digital cable television, to digital satellite networks. MPEG has become the most recognized standard for digital video compression. MPEG video is now an integral part of most digital video transmission and storage systems. Nowadays, video compression technologies are being used in almost all modern digital video systems and networks. Not only is video compression equipment being implemented to increase the bandwidth efficiency of communication systems, but video compression also provides innovative solutions to many related vid- networking problems. The subject of Transporting Compressed Digital Video includes several important topics, in particular video buffering, packet scheduling, multiplxing and synchronization.

Many emerging technologies such as video conferencing, video-on-demand, and digital libraries require the efficient delivery of compressed video streams. For applications that require the delivery of compressed stored multimedia streams, the a priori knowledge available about these compressed streams can aid in the allocation of server and network resources. By using a client-side buffer, the resource requirements from the server and network can be minimized. Buffering Techniques for Delivery of Compressed Video in Video-on-Demand Systems presents a comprehensive description of buffering techniques for the delivery of compressed, prerecorded multimedia data. While these techniques can be applied to any compressed data streams, this book focusses primarily on the delivery of video streams because of the large resource requirements that they can consume. The book first describes buffering techniques for the continuous playback of stored video sources. In particular, several bandwidth smoothing (or buffering) algorithms that are provably optimal under certain conditions are presented. To provide a well-rounded discussion, the book then describes extensions that aid in the ability to provide interactive delivery of video across networks. Specifically, reservation techniques that take into account interactive functions such as fast-forward and rewind are described. In addition, extensions to the bandwidth smoothing algorithms presented in the first few chapters are described. These algorithms are designed with interactive, continuous playback of stored video in mind and are also provably optimal under certain constraints. Buffering Techniques for Delivery of Compressed Video in Video-on-Demand Systems serves as an excellent resource for multimedia systems, networking and video-on-demand designers, and may be used as a text for advanced courses on the topic.

Semantic Models for Multimedia Database Searching and Browsing begins with the introduction of multimedia information applications, the need for the development of the multimedia database management systems (MDBMSs), and the important issues and challenges of multimedia systems. The temporal relations, the spatial relations, the spatio-temporal relations, and several semantic models for multimedia information systems are also introduced. In addition, this book discusses recent advances in multimedia database searching and multimedia database browsing. More specifically, issues such as image/video segmentation, motion detection, object tracking, object recognition, knowledge-based event modeling, content-based retrieval, and key frame selections are presented for the first time in a single book. Two case studies consisting of two semantic models are included in the book to illustrate how to use semantic models to design multimedia information systems. Semantic Models for Multimedia Database Searching and Browsing is an excellent reference and can be used in advanced level courses for researchers, scientists, industry professionals, software engineers, students, and general readers who are interested in the issues, challenges, and ideas underlying the current practice of multimedia presentation, multimedia database searching, and multimedia browsing in multimedia information systems.

Testing of Communicating Systems XIV presents the latest international results in both the theory and industrial practice of the testing of communicating systems, ranging from tools and techniques for testing to test standards, frameworks, notations, algorithms, fundamentals of testing, and industrial experiences and issues. The tools and techniques discussed apply to conformance testing, interoperability testing, performance testing, Internet protocols and applications, and multimedia and distributed systems in general.

Usability has become increasingly important as an essential part of the design and development of software and systems for all sectors of society, business, industry, government and education, as well as a topic of research. Today, we can safely say that, in many parts of the world, information technology and communications is or is becoming a central force in revolutionising the way that we all live and how our societies function. IFIP's mission states clearly that it "encourages and assists in the development, exploitation and application of information technology for the benefit of all people". The question that must be considered now is how much attention has been given to the usability of the IT-based systems that we use in our work and daily lives. There is much evidence to indicate that the real interests and needs of people have not yet been embraced in a substantial way by IT decision makers and when developing and implementing the IT systems that shape our lives, both as private individuals and at work. But some headway has been made. Three years ago, the IFIP Technical Committee on Human Computer Interaction (IFIP TC13) gave the subject of usability its top priority for future work in advancing HCI within the international community. This Usability Stream of the IFIP World Computer Congress is a result of this initiative. It provides a showcase on usability involving some practical business solutions and experiences, and some research findings.

A re-working of C.D. Chaffee's previously published The Rewiring of America (Academia, 1988), this professional book describes the fiber optics revolution. There have been many changes in the fiber optics field since the book's first publication. These include advances in optical networking; the additional bandwidth created by the Internet and associated data services; liberalization of the global telecommunications industry; and the rewiring of the world's oceans with fiber optics. Building the Global Fiber Optics Superhighway details all these developments. C.D. Chaffee writes: 'One thing is clear: as our networks become primarily data-driven, they need to be built differently, to be able to handle data first, but also voice. It is a different way of looking at the world.'

Welcome to the third International Conference on Management of Multimedia Networks and Services (MMNS'2000) in Fortaleza (Brazil)! The first MMNS was held in Montreal ( Canada) in july 1997 and the second MMNS was held in Versailles (France) in November 1998. The MMNS conference takes place every year and a half and is aimed to be a truly international event by bringing together researchers and practitioners from all around the world and by organising the conference each time in a different continent/country. Over the past several years, there has been a considerable amount of research within the fields of multimedia networking and network management. Much of that work has taken place within the context of managing Quality-of Service in broadband integrated services digital networks such as the A TM, and more recently in IP-based networks, to respond to the requirements of emerging multimedia applications. A TM networks were designed to support multimedia traffic with diverse characteristics and can be used as the transfer mode for both wired and wireless networks. A new set of Internet protocols is being developed to provide better quality of service, which is a prerequisite for supporting multimedia applications. Multimedia applications have a different set of requirements, which impacts the design of the underlying communication network as well as its management. Several QoS management mechanisms intervening at different layers of the communication network are required including QoS-routing, QoS-based transport, QoS negotiation, QoS adaptation, FCAPS management, and mobility management.

This book is a first sketch of what the overall field of performance could look like as a modern scientific field but not its stylistically differentiated practice, pedagogy, and history. Musical performance is the most complex field of music. It comprises the study of a composition's expression in terms of analysis, emotion, and gesture, and then its transformation into embodied reality, turning formulaic facts into dramatic movements of human cognition. Combining these components in a creative way is a sophisticated mix of knowledge and mastery, which more resembles the cooking of a delicate recipe than a rational procedure. This book is the first one aiming at such comprehensive coverage of the topic, and it does so also as a university text book. We include musicological and philosophical aspects as well as empirical performance research. Presenting analytical tools and case studies turns this project into a demanding enterprise in construction and experimental setups of performances, especially those generated by the music software Rubato. We are happy that this book was written following a course for performance students at the School of Music of the University of Minnesota. Their education should not be restricted to the canonical practice. They must know the rationale for their performance. It is not sufficient to learn performance with the old-fashioned imitation model of the teacher's antetype, this cannot be an exclusive tool since it dramatically lacks the poetical precision asked for by Adorno's and Benjamin's micrologic. Without such alternatives to intuitive imitation, performance risks being disconnected from the audience.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Databases in Networked Information Systems, DNIS 2013, held in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan in March 2013. The 22 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The workshop generally puts the main focus on data semantics and infrastructure for information management and interchange. The papers are organized in topical sections on cloud-based database systems; information and knowledge management; information extraction from data resources; bio-medical information management; and networked information systems: infrastructure.