Text classification is becoming a crucial task to analysts in different areas. In the last few decades, the production of textual documents in digital form has increased exponentially. Their applications range from web pages to scientific documents, including emails, news and books. Despite the widespread use of digital texts, handling them is inherently difficult - the large amount of data necessary to represent them and the subjectivity of classification complicate matters. This book gives a concise view on how to use kernel approaches for inductive inference in large scale text classification; it presents a series of new techniques to enhance, scale and distribute text classification tasks. It is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art of the whole field of text classification. Its purpose is less ambitious and more practical: to explain and illustrate some of the important methods used in this field, in particular kernel approaches and techniques.

Text classification is becoming a crucial task to analysts in different areas. In the last few decades, the production of textual documents in digital form has increased exponentially. Their applications range from web pages to scientific documents, including emails, news and books. Despite the widespread use of digital texts, handling them is inherently difficult - the large amount of data necessary to represent them and the subjectivity of classification complicate matters. This book gives a concise view on how to use kernel approaches for inductive inference in large scale text classification; it presents a series of new techniques to enhance, scale and distribute text classification tasks. It is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art of the whole field of text classification. Its purpose is less ambitious and more practical: to explain and illustrate some of the important methods used in this field, in particular kernel approaches and techniques.

The two volume set LNCS 4431 and LNCS 4432 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Adaptive and Natural Computing Algorithms, ICANNGA 2007, held in Warsaw, Poland, in April 2007.

The 178 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 474 submissions. The 94 papers of the first volume are organized in topical sections on evolutionary computation, genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization, learning, optimization and games, fuzzy and rough systems, just as classification and clustering. The second volume contains 84 contributions related to neural networks, support vector machines, biomedical signal and image processing, biometrics, computer vision, as well as to control and robotics.

The two volume set LNCS 4431 and LNCS 4432 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Adaptive and Natural Computing Algorithms, ICANNGA 2007, held in Warsaw, Poland, in April 2007.

The 178 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 474 submissions. The 94 papers of the first volume are organized in topical sections on evolutionary computation, genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization, learning, optimization and games, fuzzy and rough systems, just as classification and clustering. The second volume contains 84 contributions related to neural networks, support vector machines, biomedical signal and image processing, biometrics, computer vision, as well as to control and robotics.

The ICANNGA series of Conferences has been organised since 1993 and has a long history of promoting the principles and understanding of computational intelligence paradigms within the scientific community and is a reference for established workers in this area. Starting in Innsbruck, in Austria (1993), then to Ales in Prance (1995), Norwich in England (1997), Portoroz in Slovenia (1999), Prague in the Czech Republic (2001) and finally Roanne, in France (2003), the ICANNGA series has established itself for experienced workers in the field. The series has also been of value to young researchers wishing both to extend their knowledge and experience and also to meet internationally renowned experts. The 2005 Conference, the seventh in the ICANNGA series, will take place at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, drawing on the experience of previous events, and following the same general model, combining technical sessions, including plenary lectures by renowned scientists, with tutorials.