- The author is one of the most influential AI reseachers of recent decades. - Written in an accessible language, the book provides a probing account of AI today and proposes a new narrative to connect and make sense of events that happened in the recent tumultuous past and enable us to think soberly about the road ahead. - The book is divided into ten carefully crafted and easily-digestible chapters, each grapples with an important question for AI, ranging from the scientific concepts that underpin the technology to wider implications for society, using real examples wherever possible.

- The author is one of the most influential AI reseachers of recent decades. - Written in an accessible language, the book provides a probing account of AI today and proposes a new narrative to connect and make sense of events that happened in the recent tumultuous past and enable us to think soberly about the road ahead. - The book is divided into ten carefully crafted and easily-digestible chapters, each grapples with an important question for AI, ranging from the scientific concepts that underpin the technology to wider implications for society, using real examples wherever possible.

Where did SARS come from? Have we inherited genes from Neanderthals? How do plants use their internal clock? The genomic revolution in biology enables us to answer such questions. But the revolution would have been impossible without the support of powerful computational and statistical methods that enable us to exploit genomic data. Many universities are introducing courses to train the next generation of bioinformaticians: biologists fluent in mathematics and computer science, and data analysts familiar with biology. This readable and entertaining book, based on successful taught courses, provides a roadmap to navigate entry to this field. It guides the reader through key achievements of bioinformatics, using a hands-on approach. Statistical sequence analysis, sequence alignment, hidden Markov models, gene and motif finding and more, are introduced in a rigorous yet accessible way. A companion website provides the reader with Matlab-related software tools for reproducing the steps demonstrated in the book.

Kernel methods provide a powerful and unified framework for pattern discovery, motivating algorithms that can act on general types of data (e.g. strings, vectors or text) and look for general types of relations (e.g. rankings, classifications, regressions, clusters). The application areas range from neural networks and pattern recognition to machine learning and data mining. This book, developed from lectures and tutorials, fulfils two major roles: firstly it provides practitioners with a large toolkit of algorithms, kernels and solutions ready to use for standard pattern discovery problems in fields such as bioinformatics, text analysis, image analysis. Secondly it provides an easy introduction for students and researchers to the growing field of kernel-based pattern analysis, demonstrating with examples how to handcraft an algorithm or a kernel for a new specific application, and covering all the necessary conceptual and mathematical tools to do so.

This is the first comprehensive introduction to Support Vector Machines (SVMs), a new generation learning system based on recent advances in statistical learning theory. Students will find the book both stimulating and accessible, while practitioners will be guided smoothly through the material required for a good grasp of the theory and its applications. The concepts are introduced gradually in accessible and self-contained stages, while the presentation is rigorous and thorough. Pointers to relevant literature and web sites containing software make it an ideal starting point for further study.

This two-volume set LNAI 7523 and LNAI 7524 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases: ECML PKDD 2012, held in Bristol, UK, in September 2012. The 105 revised research papers presented together with 5 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 443 submissions. The final sections of the proceedings are devoted to Demo and Nectar papers. The Demo track includes 10 papers (from 19 submissions) and the Nectar track includes 4 papers (from 14 submissions). The papers grouped in topical sections on association rules and frequent patterns; Bayesian learning and graphical models; classification; dimensionality reduction, feature selection and extraction; distance-based methods and kernels; ensemble methods; graph and tree mining; large-scale, distributed and parallel mining and learning; multi-relational mining and learning; multi-task learning; natural language processing; online learning and data streams; privacy and security; rankings and recommendations; reinforcement learning and planning; rule mining and subgroup discovery; semi-supervised and transductive learning; sensor data; sequence and string mining; social network mining; spatial and geographical data mining; statistical methods and evaluation; time series and temporal data mining; and transfer learning.

This two-volume set LNAI 7523 and LNAI 7524 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases: ECML PKDD 2012, held in Bristol, UK, in September 2012. The 105 revised research papers presented together with 5 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 443 submissions. The final sections of the proceedings are devoted to Demo and Nectar papers. The Demo track includes 10 papers (from 19 submissions) and the Nectar track includes 4 papers (from 14 submissions). The papers grouped in topical sections on association rules and frequent patterns; Bayesian learning and graphical models; classification; dimensionality reduction, feature selection and extraction; distance-based methods and kernels; ensemble methods; graph and tree mining; large-scale, distributed and parallel mining and learning; multi-relational mining and learning; multi-task learning; natural language processing; online learning and data streams; privacy and security; rankings and recommendations; reinforcement learning and planning; rule mining and subgroup discovery; semi-supervised and transductive learning; sensor data; sequence and string mining; social network mining; spatial and geographical data mining; statistical methods and evaluation; time series and temporal data mining; and transfer learning.

Nell'estate del 1914 l'Austria-Ungheria ha appena imboccato la strada che la condurra alla catastrofe. Nella remota citta turistica di Gorizia la mobilitazione inizia in agosto e coinvolge anche la contessa Lucy Christalnigg, pilota di automobili in missione per conto della Croce Rossa. Durante il viaggio tra Klagenfurt e Gorizia, la contessa incontra un tragico destino. Dopo 100 anni questo racconto riporta alla luce un fatto di cronaca che all'epoca aveva suscitato grande scalpore ma che fu subito dimenticato a causa del disastroso conflitto. Questa e la storia vera della prima vittima sull'Isonzo e degli ultimi giorni di un mondo scomparso.

Where did HIV and SARS come from? Have we inherited genes fromNeanderthals? How do plants use their internal clock? The genomic revolution in biology enables us to answer such questions. But the revolution would have been impossible without the support of powerful computational and statistical methods that enable us to exploit genomic data. Many universities are introducing courses to train the next generation of bioinformaticians: biologists fluent in mathematics and computer science, and data analysts familiar with biology. This readable and entertaining book, based on successful taught courses, provides a roadmap to navigate entry to this field. It guides the reader through key achievements of bioinformatics, using a hands-on approach. Statistical sequence analysis, sequence alignment, hidden Markov models, gene and motif finding and more, are introduced in a rigorous yet accessible way. A companion website provides the reader with Matlab-related software tools for reproducing the steps demonstrated in the book.