The Workshop on Self-sustaining Systems (S3) is a forum for the discussion of topics relating to computer systems and languages that are able to bootstrap, implement, modify, and maintain themselves. One property of these systems is that their implementation is based onsmall but powerfulabstractions;examples include (amongst others) Squeak/Smalltalk, COLA, Klein/Self, PyPy/Python, Rubinius/Ruby, andLisp.Suchsystemsaretheenginesoftheirownreplacement, giving researchers and developers great power to experiment with, and explore future directions from within, their own small language kernels. S3 took place on May 15-16, 2008 at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute (HPI) in Potsdam, Germany. It was an exciting opportunity for researchers and prac- tioners interested in self-sustaining systems to meet and share their knowledge, experience, and ideas for future research and development. S3 provided an - portunity for a community to gather and discuss the need for self-sustainability in software systems, and to share and explore thoughts on why such systems are needed and how they can be created and deployed. Analogies were made, for example, with evolutionary cycles, and with urban design and the subsequent inevitable socially-driven change. TheS3participantsleftwithagreatersenseofcommunityandanenthusiasm for probing more deeply into this subject. We see the need for self-sustaining systems becoming critical not only to the developer's community, but to e- users in business, academia, learning and play, and so we hope that this S3 workshop will become the ?rst of many.

The Second International Conference on High-Performance Computing and Appli- tions (HPCA 2009) was a follow-up event of the successful HPCA 2004. It was held in Shanghai, a beautiful, active, and modern city in China, August 10-12, 2009. It served as a forum to present current work by researchers and software developers from around the world as well as to highlight activities in the high-performance c- puting area. It aimed to bring together research scientists, application pioneers, and software developers to discuss problems and solutions and to identify new issues in this area. This conference emphasized the development and study of novel approaches for high-performance computing, the design and analysis of high-performance - merical algorithms, and their scientific, engineering, and industrial applications. It offered the conference participants a great opportunity to exchange the latest research results, heighten international collaboration, and discuss future research ideas in HPCA. In addition to 24 invited presentations, the conference received over 300 contr- uted submissions from over ten countries and regions worldwide, about 70 of which were accepted for presentation at HPCA 2009. The conference proceedings contain some of the invited presentations and contributed submissions, and cover such research areas of interest as numerical algorithms and solutions, high-performance and grid c- puting, novel approaches to high-performance computing, massive data storage and processing, hardware acceleration, and their wide applications.

th We are delighted to present the proceedings of the 11 Asia-Paci?c Network Operations and Management Symposium (APNOMS 2008) which was held in Beijing, China, during October 22-24, 2008. TheOrganizingCommittee(OC)selectedthethemeofthisyear'ssymposium as "Challenges for Next-Generation Network Operations and Service Mana- ment. " Research and development on next-generation networks (NGNs) have been carried out over the last few years and we are already seeing their - ployment and operations in many parts of Asia-Paci?c countries. We are also beginning to experience new and interesting services that utilize these NGNs. We are certain that we will see more deployment of NGNs and NGN services in the next few years. Thus, the operations and management of NGNs and their services are very important to the network operators and service providers. At the same time, they are also concerned about new and more e?ective ways of performing the operations and management. This year, the APNOMS call for papers received 195 paper submissions from 19di?erentcountries, includingcountriesoutsidetheAsia-Paci?cregion(Europe, Middle-East, North and South America). Each paper was carefully reviewed by at least three international experts. Based on review scores, the APNOMS 2008 Technical ProgramCommittee discussed the selection of papers, and selected 43 high-quality papers (22. 1% of submissions) as full papers and 34 papers as short papers. Accepted papers were arrangedinto ten technical sessions and two short paper sessions (poster presentation).

Recent advances in cutting-edge wireless communication and computing te- nologies have paved the way for the proliferation of ubiquitous infrastructure and infrastructureless wireless networks. These emerging networks are enabling a broad spectrum of applications ranging from critical infrastructure prot- tion and security, to environment monitoring, health care, and quality of life. The need to deal with the complexity and rami?cations of the ever-growing mobile users and services, however, is intensifying the interest in the devel- ment of sound fundamental principles, novel algorithmic approaches, rigorous and repeatable design methodologies, and systematic evaluation frameworks for next-generation wireless networks. The Third International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems and Applications (WASA) was held in Dallas, TX, USA during October 26-28. The objective of WASA is to address the research and development e?orts of va- ous issues in the area of algorithms, systems and applications for current and next-generationinfrastructureandinfrastructurelesswirelessnetworks. Thec- ference is structured to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners, from the academic, industrial, and governmental sectors, with a unique opportunity to discussandexpresstheirviews onthe currenttrends, challenges, andstate-- the-artsolutionsaddressingvariousissuesrelatedtocurrentandnext-generation wireless networks. Following a rigorous review process, the Program Committee selected an outstanding set of 35 papers for publication in the proceedings and oral presentations at the conference. The program of WASA 2008 also included three keynote talks by Lionel Ni, Ty Znati, and Jie Wu along with 15 invited paper

Companies and institutions depend more than ever on the availability of their Information Technology, and most mission critical business processes are IT-based. Business Continuity is the ability to do business under any circumstances and is an essential requirement faced by modern companies. Both concepts - High Availability and Disaster Recovery - are realized by redundant systems. This book presents requirements, concepts, and realizations of redundant systems on all abstraction levels, and all given examples refer to UNIX and Linux Systems.

These proceedings contain the papers selected for presentation at the 13th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security--ESORICS 2008--held October 6-8, 2008 in Torremolinos (Malaga), Spain, and hosted by the University of Malaga, C- puter Science Department. ESORICS has become the European research event in computer security. The symposium started in 1990 and has been organized on alternate years in different European countries. From 2002 it has taken place yearly. It attracts an international audience from both the academic and industrial communities. In response to the call for papers, 168 papers were submitted to the symposium. These papers were evaluated on the basis of their significance, novelty, and technical quality. Each paper was reviewed by at least three members of the Program Comm- tee. The Program Committee meeting was held electronically, holding intensive d- cussion over a period of two weeks. Finally, 37 papers were selected for presentation at the symposium, giving an acceptance rate of 22%.

Going beyond isolated research ideas and design experiences, Designing Network On-Chip Architectures in the Nanoscale Era covers the foundations and design methods of network on-chip (NoC) technology. The contributors draw on their own lessons learned to provide strong practical guidance on various design issues. Exploring the design process of the network, the first part of the book focuses on basic aspects of switch architecture and design, topology selection, and routing implementation. In the second part, contributors discuss their experiences in the industry, offering a roadmap to recent products. They describe Tilera's TILE family of multicore processors, novel Intel products and research prototypes, and the TRIPS operand network (OPN). The last part reveals state-of-the-art solutions to hardware-related issues and explains how to efficiently implement the programming model at the network interface. In the appendix, the microarchitectural details of two switch architectures targeting multiprocessor system-on-chips (MPSoCs) and chip multiprocessors (CMPs) can be used as an experimental platform for running tests. A stepping stone to the evolution of future chip architectures, this volume provides a how-to guide for designers of current NoCs as well as designers involved with 2015 computing platforms. It cohesively brings together fundamental design issues, alternative design paradigms and techniques, and the main design tradeoffs-consistently focusing on topics most pertinent to real-world NoC designers.

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 u- and e-Service, Science and Technology (UNESST).

Updated and expanded, Bayesian Artificial Intelligence, Second Edition provides a practical and accessible introduction to the main concepts, foundation, and applications of Bayesian networks. It focuses on both the causal discovery of networks and Bayesian inference procedures. Adopting a causal interpretation of Bayesian networks, the authors discuss the use of Bayesian networks for causal modeling. They also draw on their own applied research to illustrate various applications of the technology. New to the Second Edition New chapter on Bayesian network classifiers New section on object-oriented Bayesian networks New section that addresses foundational problems with causal discovery and Markov blanket discovery New section that covers methods of evaluating causal discovery programs Discussions of many common modeling errors New applications and case studies More coverage on the uses of causal interventions to understand and reason with causal Bayesian networks Illustrated with real case studies, the second edition of this bestseller continues to cover the groundwork of Bayesian networks. It presents the elements of Bayesian network technology, automated causal discovery, and learning probabilities from data and shows how to employ these technologies to develop probabilistic expert systems. Web Resource The book's website at www.csse.monash.edu.au/bai/book/book.html offers a variety of supplemental materials, including example Bayesian networks and data sets. Instructors can email the authors for sample solutions to many of the problems in the text.

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.

Wewelcomeyoutothejointproceedingsofthe8thNEW2AN2008(NextGene- tionTeletra?candWired/WirelessAdvancedNetworking)andthe1struSMART 2008conferencesheldin St. Petersburg, Russia onSeptember 1-5,2008. This year NEW2AN features signi?cant contributions to various aspects of networking. The topics presented encompass several layers of communication networks: from the physical layer to transport protocols. In particular, issues of QoS in wireless and IP-based multi-service networks are dealt with. Cross-layer optimization and tra?c characterization are also addressed within the program. It is also worth mentioning the emphasis on wireless networks, including, but not limited to, cellular networks, wireless local area networks, personal area networks, mobile ad hoc networks, and sensor networks. The NEW2AN 2008 call for papers attracted 60 papers from 19 countries, resulting in an acceptance ratio of 35%. With the help of the excellent Technical Program Committee and a number of associated reviewers, the best 21 hi- quality papers were selected for publication. The conference was organized in 7 single-track sessions. We wish to thank the Technical Program Committee members of each of the conferences and the associated reviewers for their hard work and important contribution to the conference. The ?rst Russian Conference on Smart Spaces, ruSMART 2008, was the ?rst conference in Russia to address this topic. It aimed to attract academic and industrial researchers to an emerging area of Smart Spaces that creates c- pletely new opportunities for making fully-customized applications and services for the users. The conference was a meeting place for leading experts from top a?liationsaroundthe world.Itattractedactiveparticipationanda strongint- estfromRussianattendees, whohaveagoodreputationforhigh-qualityresearch and business in innovative service creation and applications developme

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.

The 14th International Conference on Implementation and Application of - tomata (CIAA 2009) was held in NICTA's Neville Roach Laboratory at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia during July 14-17, 2009. This volume of Lecture Notes in Computer Science contains the papers that were presented at CIAA 2009, as well as abstracts of the posters and short papers that were presented at the conference. The volume also includes papers orextendedabstractsofthethreeinvitedtalkspresentedbyGonzalo Navarro on ImplementationandApplicationofAutomatainStringProcessing, byChristoph Koch on Applications of Automata in XML Processing, and by Helmut Seidl on Program Analysis Through Finite Tree Automata. The 23 regular papers were selected from 42 submissions covering various ?elds in the application, implementation, and theory of automata and related structures. This year, six additional papers were selected as "short papers"; at the conference these were allocated the same presentation length as r- ular papers. Each paper was reviewed by at least three Program Committee members, with the assistance of external referees. Papers were submitted by - thors from the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Republic of - rea, Japan, Latvia, TheNetherlands, Portugal, RussianFederation, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and the USA.

This volume of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series contains all papers accepted for presentation at the 20th IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on Distributed Systems: Operations and Management (DSOM 2009), which was held in Venice, Italy, during October 27-28, 2009. DSOM 2009 was the 20th event in a series of annual workshops. It followed in the footsteps of previous successful meetings, the most recent of which were held on Samos, Greece (DSOM 2008), San Jos e, California, USA (DSOM 2007), Dublin, Ireland (DSOM 2006), Barcelona, Spain (DSOM 2005), and Davis, C- ifornia, USA (DSOM 2004). The goal of the DSOM workshops is to bring - gether researchersfromindustry andacademia workingin the areasofnetworks, systems, and service management, to discuss recent advances and foster future growth. In contrast to the larger management conferences, such as IM (Inter- tional Symposium on Integrated Network Management) and NOMS (Network OperationsandManagementSymposium),DSOMworkshopshaveasingle-track program in order to stimulate more intense interaction among participants.

In view of the incessant growth of data and knowledge and the continued diversifi- tion of information dissemination on a global scale, scalability has become a ma- stream research area in computer science and information systems. The ICST INFO- SCALE conference is one of the premier forums for presenting new and exciting research related to all aspects of scalability, including system architecture, resource management, data management, networking, and performance. As the fourth conf- ence in the series, INFOSCALE 2009 was held in Hong Kong on June 10 and 11, 2009. The articles presented in this volume focus on a wide range of scalability issues and new approaches to tackle problems arising from the ever-growing size and c- plexity of information of all kind. More than 60 manuscripts were submitted, and the Program Committee selected 22 papers for presentation at the conference. Each s- mission was reviewed by three members of the Technical Program Committee.

TheSAMOSworkshopisaninternationalgatheringofhighlyquali?edresearchers from academia and industry, sharing their ideas in a 3-day lively discussion. The workshop meeting is one of two co-located events-the other event being the IC-SAMOS. The workshop is unique in the sense that not only solved research problems are presented and discussed, but also (partly) unsolved problems and in-depth topical reviews can be unleashed in the scienti?c arena. Consequently, the workshopprovidesthe participantswithanenvironmentwherecollaboration rather than competition is fostered. The workshopwas established in 2001 by ProfessorStamatis Vassiliadis with thegoalsoutlinedaboveinmind, andlocatedinoneofthemostbeautifulislands oftheAegean.Therichhistoricalandculturalenvironmentoftheisland, coupled with the intimate atmosphere and the slow pace of a small village by the sea in the middle of the Greek summer, provide a very conducive environment where ideas can be exchangedand sharedfreely. The workshop, since its inception, has emphasized high-quality contributions, and it has grown to accommodate two parallel tracks and a number of invited sessions. This year, the workshopcelebratedits eighthanniversary, and it attracted24 contributionscarefullyselected outof62 submitted worksfor anacceptancerate of 38.7%. Each submission was thoroughly reviewed by at least three reviewers and considered by the international Program Committee during its meeting at Delft in March

MobiSec 2009 was the first ICST conference on security and privacy in mobile information and communication systems. With the the vast area of mobile technology research and application, the intention behind the creation of MobiSec was to make a small, but unique contribution to build a bridge between top-level research and large scale application of novel kinds of information security for mobile devices and communication.

The papers at MobiSec 2009 dealt with a broad variety of subjects ranging from issues of trust in and security of mobile devices and embedded hardware security, over efficient cryptography for resource-restricted platforms, to advanced applications such as wireless sensor networks, user authentication, and privacy in an environment of autonomously communicating objects. With hindsight a leitmotif emerged from these contributions, which corrobarated the idea behind MobiSec; a set of powerful tools have been created in various branches of the security discipline, which await combined application to build trust and security into mobile (that is, all future) networks, autonomous and personal devices, and pervasive applications

We are proud to present the proceedings of NET-COOP 2009, the inter- tionalconferenceonnetworkcontrolandoptimization, co-organizedbyEURAN- DOM/Eindhoven University of Technology and CWI. This year's conference at EURANDOM, held November 23-25, was the third in line after previous e- tions in Avignon (2007) and Paris (2008). NET-COOP 2009 was organized in conjunction with the Euro-NF workshop on "New Trends in Modeling, Quan- tative Methods, and Measurements. " While organized within the framework of Euro-NF, NET-COOP enjoys great interest beyond Euro-NF, as is attested by the geographic origins of the papers in these proceedings. TheNET-COOPconferencefocusesonperformanceanalysis, controland- timization of communication networks, including wired networks, wireless n- works, peer to peer networks and delay tolerant networks. In each of these domains network operators and service providers face the challenging task to e?ciently provide service at their customer's standards in a highly dynamic - vironment. Internet tra?c continues to grow tremendously in terms of volume as well as diversity. This development is fueled by the increasing availability of high-bandwidth access (both wired and wireless) to end users, opening new ground for evolving and newly emerging wide-band applications. The increase in network complexity, as well as the plurality of parties involved in network operation, calls for e?cient distributed control. New models and techniques for the control and optimization of networks are needed to address the challenge of allocating communication resources e?ciently and fairly, while accounting for non-cooperative behavior.

Designing the future internet requires an in-depth consideration of the mana- ment,dimensioningandtra?ccontrolissuesthatwillbe involvedinthe network operations of these networks. The International Workshop on Tra?c Mana- ment and Tra?c Engineering of the Future Internet, FITraMEn2008, organized 1 within the framework of the Network of Excellence Euro-NF,providedanopen forum to present and discuss new ideas in this area in the context of ?xed, wireless and spontaneous (ad hoc and sensor) networks. TheNetworkofExcellenceEuro-NF"AnticipatingtheNetworkoftheFuture - From Theory to Design" is a European project funded by the European Union withintheSeventhFrameworkProgram.ThefocusofEuro-NFistodevelopnew principles and methods to design/dimension/control/manage multi-technology architectures. The emerging networking paradigms raise new challenging sci- ti?c and technological problems embedded in complex policy, governance, and worldwide standards issues. Dealing with the diversity of these scienti?c and social, political and economic challenges requires the integration of a wide range of research capabilities, a role that Euro-NF aims to ful?ll. This proceedings volume contains a selection of the research contributions presented at FITraMEn 2008. The workshop was held December 11-12, 2008 in 2 Porto, Portugal, organized by Instituto de Telecomunica, c" oes .

Human-Systems Integration: From Virtual to Tangible Subject Guide: Ergonomics and Human Factors This book is an attempt to better formalize a systemic approach to human-systems integration (HSI). Good HSI is a matter of maturity... it takes time to mature. It takes time for a human being to become autonomous, and then mature! HSI is a matter of human-machine teaming, where human-machine cooperation and coordination are crucial. We cannot think engineering design without considering people and organizations that go with it. We also cannot think new technology, new organizations, and new jobs without considering change management. More specifically, this book is a follow-up of previous contributions in human-centered design and practice in the development of virtual prototypes that requires progressive operational tangibility toward HSI. The book discusses flexibility in design and operations, tangibility of software-intensive systems, virtual human-centered design, increasingly autonomous complex systems, human factors and ergonomics of sociotechnical systems, systems integration, and changed management in digital organizations. The book will be of interest to industry, academia, those involved with systems engineering, human factors, and the broader public.

1 This volume contains the research papers and invited papers presented at the Third International Conference on Tests and Proofs (TAP 2009) held at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, during July 2-3, 2009. TheTAPconferenceisdevotedtotheconvergenceofproofsandtests. Itc- bines ideasfromboth sidesforthe advancementofsoftwarequality. Toprovethe correctness of a program is to demonstrate, through impeccable mathematical techniques, that it has no bugs; to test a program is to run it with the exp- tation of discovering bugs. The two techniques seem contradictory: if you have proved your program, it is fruitless to comb it for bugs; and if you are testing it, that is surely a sign that you have given up on any hope of proving its corre- ness. Accordingly, proofs and tests have, since the onset of software engineering research, been pursuedby distinct communities using ratherdi?erent techniques and tools. And yet the development of both approaches leads to the discovery of common issues and to the realization that each may need the other. The emergence of model checking has been one of the ?rst signs that contradiction may yield to complementarity, but in the past few years an increasing number of research e?orts have encountered the need for combining proofs and tests, dropping earlier dogmatic views of incompatibility and taking instead the best of what each of these software engineering domains has to o?er

"Safety-Critical Systems: Problems, Process and Practice" contains the papers presented at the seventeenth annual Safety-critical Systems Symposium, held at Brighton, UK, in February 2009.

The Symposium is for engineers, managers and academics in the field of system safety, across all industry sectors, so the papers making up this volume offer a wide-ranging coverage of current safety topics, and a blend of academic research and industrial experience. They include both recent developments in the field and discussion of open issues that will shape future progress.

The first paper reflects a tutorial - on Hazard Analysis - held on the first day of the Symposium. The subsequent 14 papers are presented under the headings of the Symposium's sessions: the Economics of Safety, Transport Safety, Safety in Society, New Challenges, Safety Assessment and Safety Standards.

The book will be of interest to both academics and practitioners working in the safety-critical systems arena.

The PaCT-2009 (Parallel Computing Technologies) conference was a four-day eventheld in Novosibirsk. This was the tenth internationalconference to be held in the PaCT series. The conferences are held in Russia every odd year. The ?rst conference, PaCT 1991, was held in Novosibirsk (Academgorodok), September 7-11, 1991. The next PaCT conferences were held in Obninsk (near Moscow), August 30 to September 4, 1993; in St. Petersburg, September 12-15, 1995; in Yaroslavl, September 9-12, 1997; in Pushkin (near St. Petersburg), September 6-10, 1999; in Academgorodok (Novosibirsk), September 3-7, 2001; in Nizhni Novgorod, September 15-19, 2003; in Krasnoyarsk, September 5-9, 2005; in Pereslavl-Zalessky, September 3-7, 2007. Since 1995 all the PaCT Proceedings have been published by Springer in the LNCS series. PaCT-2009 was jointly organized by the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the State University of Novosibirsk. The purpose of the conference was to bring together scientists working on theory, architecture, software, hardware and the solution of lar- scale problems in order to provide integrated discussions on parallel computing technologies. The conference attracted about 100 participants from around the world. Authors from 17 countries submitted 72 papers. Of those submitted, 34 were selected for the conference as regular papers; there were also 2 invited - pers. In addition there were a number of posters presented. All the papers were internationallyreviewedby at leastthree referees. A demo sessionwasorganized for the participants.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the Second International Conference on Networks for Grid Applications, GridNets 2008, held in Beijing, China in October 2008.

The 19 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited presentations were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. The papers address the whole spectrum of grid networks, ranging from formal approaches for grid management to case studis in optical switching.

"Robust Control for Uncertain Networked Control Systems with Random Delays" addresses the problem of analysis and design of networked control systems when the communication delays are varying in a random fashion. The random nature of the time delays is typical for commercially used networks, such as a DeviceNet (which is a controller area network) and Ethernet network.

The main technique used in this book is based on the Lyapunov-Razumikhin method, which results in delay-dependent controllers. The existence of such controllers and fault estimators are given in terms of the solvability of bilinear matrix inequalities. Iterative algorithms are proposed to change this non-convex problem into quasi-convex optimization problems, which can be solved effectively by available mathematical tools. Finally, to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed design method in the book, numerical examples are given in each designed control system.