Research on Agents and Multi-Agent Systems has matured during the last decade and many effective applications of this technology are now deployed. PAAMS provides an international forum to present and discuss the latest scientific developments and their effective applications, to assess the impact of the approach, and to facilitate technology transfer. PAAMS started as a local initiative, but has since grown to become THE international yearly platform to present, to discuss, and to disseminate the latest developments and the most important outcomes related to real-world applications. It provides a unique opportunity to bring multi-disciplinary experts, academics and practitioners together to exchange their experience in the development and deployment of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. PAAMS intends to bring together researchers and developers from industry and the academic world to report on the latest scientific and technical advances on the application of multi-agent systems, to discuss and debate the major issues, and to showcase the latest systems using agent based technology. It will promote a forum for discussion on how agent-based techniques, methods, and tools help system designers to accomplish the mapping between available agent technology and application needs. Other stakeholders should be rewarded with a better understanding of the potential and challenges of the agent-oriented approach.

This edition of PAAMS special sessions. This symposium is organized by the Bioinformatics, Intelligent System and Educational Technology Research Group (http: //bisite.usal.es/http: //bisite.usal.es/) of the University of Salamanca. The present edition will be held in Salamanca, Spain, from 28th to 30th March 2012.

This edition of PAAMS special sessions. This symposium is organized by the Bioinformatics, Intelligent System and Educational Technology Research Group (http: //bisite.usal.es/http: //bisite.usal.es/) of the University of Salamanca. The present edition will be held in Salamanca, Spain, from 28th to 30th March 2012.

Shortly after the devastating Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938, author Benjamin Hirsch's mother sends him and his four older siblings on a Kindertransport to Paris from Frankfurt, Germany. After almost three years of hiding in France, they escape through Spain to Portugal where they board a ship and arrive in the United States on two separate convoys, eventually settling in Atlanta, Georgia. But Hirsch's parents and his younger siblings are not so fortunate-they perish in Auschwitz at the hands of the Nazis.

Anti-Semitism is at its peak in the United States, and the children must learn to adapt to an America at war. Growing up in the American South as orphaned Jewish emigrants during the 1940s and early 1950s, Hirsch and his four brothers and sisters struggle-each in his or her own way-to hold on to their traditional Jewish values and practices. But in the aftermath of war, the children learn to thrive and excel in their new country.

The prequel to Hirsch's first book, "Hearing a Different Drummer," "Home Is Where You Find It" poignantly chronicles Hirsch's journey from the horrors of Nazism to a new life in America.