A real book on ethics, as Wittgenstein had it, if one could conceive it in the first place, would be the book to destroy all other books. Yet there is an increasing number of real-world discourses in which ethical values are mobilized as justifications for socio-political action while, in turn, moral problems are becoming a topic of political negotiation. Although it will be difficult to find systematic accounts of an absolute good or of absolute values in these debates, it is equally difficult to imagine them not being deeply informed by such considerations. Rather than merely adding to the corpus of applied ethics on the one hand or remaining in seemingly Wittgensteinian silence about ethics on the other, many contributions to this volume explore the reach of what can be said in ethical terms, while others provide critical discussions of what is being said in various fields of applied ethics and political philosophy under real-world power relations. This volume collects invited contributions from the 35th International Wittgenstein Symposium 2012 in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria. Authors include: Alice Crary, Peter Dabrock, Rom Harre, Agnes Heller, Jaakko Hintikka, Peter Koller, Anton Leist, Chantal Mouffe, Julian Nida-Rumelin, Hans Sluga, David Stern, Gianni Vattimo.

This book constitutes the thoroughly reviewed post-proceedings of the 9th International Workshop, EUMAS 2011, held in Maastricht, The Netherlands, in November 2011. The 16 revised full papers included in the book were carefully revised and selected from 45 submissions. This workshop is primarily intended as a European forum at which researchers and those interested in activities relating to research in the area of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems could meet, present (potentially preliminary) research results, problems, and issues in an open and informal but academic environment. The aim of this workshop was to encourage and support activity in the research and development of multi-agent systems, in academic and industrial efforts.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Agents and Data Mining Interaction, ADMI 2011, held in Taipei, Taiwan, in May 2011 in conjunction with AAMAS 2011, the 10th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.
The 11 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 24 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on agents for data mining; data mining for agents; and agent mining applications.

The2009InternationalWorkshoponAgentsandDataMiningInteraction(ADMI 2009) was a joint event with AAMAS2009. In recentyears,agents and data mining interaction (ADMI), or agent mining forshort,hasemergedasaverypromisingresearch?eld. Followingthesuccessof ADMI 2006 in Hong Kong, ADMI 2007 in San Jose, and ADMI 2008 in Sydney, the ADMI 2009 workshop in Budapest provided a premier forum for sharing research and engineering results, as well as potential challenges and prospects encountered in the synergy between agents and data mining. As usual, the ADMI workshop encouraged and promoted theoretical and applied research and development, which aims at: - Exploitingagent-drivendatamininganddemonstratinghowintelligentagent technology can contribute to critical data mining problems in theory and practice - Improving data mining-driven agents and showing how data mining can strengthen agent intelligence in research and practical applications - Exploring the integration of agents and data mining toward a super-intelligent information processing and systems - Identifying challenges and directions for future research on the synergy between agents and data mining ADMI 2009 featured two invited talks and twelve selected papers. The ?rst invited talk was on "Agents and Data Mining in Bioinformatics," with the s- ond focusing on "Knowledge-Based Reinforcement Learning. " The ten accepted papers are from seven countries. A majority of submissions came from Eu- pean countries, indicating the boom of ADMI research in Europe. In addition the two invited papers, addressed fundamental issues related to agent-driven data mining, data mining-driven agents, and agent mining applications. The proceedings of the ADMI workshops will be published as part of the LNAIseriesbySpringer. WeappreciatethesupportofSpringer,andinparticular Alfred Hofmann.

This volume contains the postproceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Computational Autonomy - Potential, Risks, Solutions (AUTONOMY 2003), held at the 2nd International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agentSystems(AAMAS2003),July14,2003,Melbourne,Australia.Apart from revised versions of the accepted workshop papers, we have included invited contributions from leading experts in the ?eld. With this, the present volume represents the ?rst comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art of research on autonomy, capturing di?erent theories of autonomy, perspectives on autonomy in di?erent kinds of agent-based systems, and practical approaches to dealing with agent autonomy. Agent orientation refers to a software development perspective that has evolved in the past 25 years in the ?elds of computational agents and multiagent systems. The basic notion underlying this perspective is that of a computational agent, that is, an entity whose behavior deserves to be called ?exible, social, and autonomous. As an autonomous entity, an agent possesses action choice and is at least to some extent capable of deciding and acting under self-control. Through its emphasis on autonomy, agent orientation signi?cantly di?ers from traditional engineering perspectives such as structure orientation or object o- entation. These perspectives are targeted on the development of systems whose behavior is fully determined and controlled by external units (e.g., by a p- grammer at design time and/or a user at run time), and thus inherently fail to capture the notion of autonomy.

This state-of-the-art survey examines the credentials of agent-based approaches as a software engineering paradigm. The 15 revised full papers presented together with two invited articles were carefully selected from 49 submissions during two rounds of reviewing and improvement for the Third International Workshop on Agent-Oriented  Software Engineering, AOSE 2002, held in Bologna, Italy, during AAMAS 2002. The papers address all current issues in the field of software agents and multi-agent systems relevant for software engineering; they are organized in topical sections on - modeling, specification, and validation - patterns, architectures, and reuse - UML and agent systems - methodologies and tools - positions and perspectives

Since the 1980s, software agents and multi-agent systems have grown into what is now one of the most active areas of research and development activity in computing generally. One of the most important reasons for the current intensity of interest in the agent-based computing paradigm certainly is that the concept of an agent as an autonomous system, capable of interacting with other agents in order to satisfy its design objectives, is a natural one for software designers. This recognition has led to the growth of interest in agents as a new paradigm for software engineering.This book reflects the state of the art in the field by presenting 14 revised full papers accepted for the second workshop on this topic, AOSE 2001, together with five invited survey articles. The book offers topical sections on societies and organizations, protocols and interaction frameworks, UML and agent systems, agent-oriented requirements capture and specification, and analysis and design.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Cooperative Information Systems, CIA'99, held in Uppsala, Sweden in July/August 1999.
The 16 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 46 submissions. Also included are ten invited contributions by leading experts. The volume is divided in sections on information discovery and management on the Internet; information agents on the Internet-prototypes systems and applications; communication and collaboration, mobile information agents; rational information agents for electronic business; service mediation and negotiation; and adaptive personal assistance.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Cooperative Information Systems, CIA'98, held in cognition with Agents World in July 1998 in Paris.
The book presents nine invited contributions together with 14 revised full papers selected from a total of 54 submissions. The book is divided in parts on systems and applications; issues of design, querying, and communication; rational cooperation and electronic commerce; adaptive and collaborative information gathering; and mobile information agents in the internet.

The complexity of systems studied in distributed artificial intelligence (DAI), such as multi-agent systems, often makes it extremely difficult or even impossible to correctly and completely specify their behavioral repertoires and dynamics. There is broad agreement that such systems should be equipped with the ability to learn in order to improve their future performance autonomously. The interdisciplinary cooperation of researchers from DAI and machine learning (ML) has established a new and very active area of research and development enjoying steadily increasing attention from both communities. This state-of-the-art report documents current and ongoing developments in the area of learning in DAI systems. It is indispensable reading for anybody active in the area and will serve as a valuable source of information.

This book is based on the workshop on Adaptation and Learning in Multi-Agent Systems, held in conjunction with the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI'95, in Montreal, Canada in August 1995.
The 14 thoroughly reviewed revised papers reflect the whole scope of current aspects in the field: they describe and analyze, both experimentally and theoretically, new learning and adaption approaches for situations in which several agents have to cooperate or compete. Also included, and aimed at the novice reader, are a comprehensive introductory survey on the area with 154 references listed and a subject index. As the first book solely devoted to this area, this volume documents the state of the art and is thus indispensable for anyone active or interested in the field.

Die Autoren geben eine Einfuhrung in Methoden und Tools fur die agentenorientierte Softwareentwicklung. Zunachst wird das Konzept der Agentenorientierung erlautert und das junge Gebiet der agentenorientierten Softwareentwicklung im Uberblick vorgestellt. Im Anschluss daran werden mehrere bekannte Methoden (Gaia, MASSIVE, Zeus, Aalaadin, MaSE) und Tools (FIPA-OS, JADE, Zeus-Toolkit, MadKit, agentTool) ausfuhrlich behandelt. Die Methoden und Tools werden allgemein beschrieben, an einem einheitlichen Fallbeispiel illustriert, und unter Verwendung verschiedener anwendungsnaher und agentenspezifischer Kriterien bewertet."

The new edition of an introduction to multiagent systems that captures the state of the art in both theory and practice, suitable as textbook or reference. Multiagent systems are made up of multiple interacting intelligent agents-computational entities to some degree autonomous and able to cooperate, compete, communicate, act flexibly, and exercise control over their behavior within the frame of their objectives. They are the enabling technology for a wide range of advanced applications relying on distributed and parallel processing of data, information, and knowledge relevant in domains ranging from industrial manufacturing to e-commerce to health care. This book offers a state-of-the-art introduction to multiagent systems, covering the field in both breadth and depth, and treating both theory and practice. It is suitable for classroom use or independent study. This second edition has been completely revised, capturing the tremendous developments in multiagent systems since the first edition appeared in 1999. Sixteen of the book's seventeen chapters were written for this edition; all chapters are by leaders in the field, with each author contributing to the broad base of knowledge and experience on which the book rests. The book covers basic concepts of computational agency from the perspective of both individual agents and agent organizations; communication among agents; coordination among agents; distributed cognition; development and engineering of multiagent systems; and background knowledge in logics and game theory. Each chapter includes references, many illustrations and examples, and exercises of varying degrees of difficulty. The chapters and the overall book are designed to be self-contained and understandable without additional material. Supplemental resources are available on the book's Web site. Contributors Rafael Bordini, Felix Brandt, Amit Chopra, Vincent Conitzer, Virginia Dignum, Jurgen Dix, Ed Durfee, Edith Elkind, Ulle Endriss, Alessandro Farinelli, Shaheen Fatima, Michael Fisher, Nicholas R. Jennings, Kevin Leyton-Brown, Evangelos Markakis, Lin Padgham, Julian Padget, Iyad Rahwan, Talal Rahwan, Alex Rogers, Jordi Sabater-Mir, Yoav Shoham, Munindar P. Singh, Kagan Tumer, Karl Tuyls, Wiebe van der Hoek, Laurent Vercouter, Meritxell Vinyals, Michael Winikoff, Michael Wooldridge, Shlomo Zilberstein

Um Erkenntnisse uber Verlauf und Richtung der Automatisierungsprozesse zu gewinnen und um die Voraussetzungen fur eine Gestaltung dieser Prozesse verbessern zu koennen, wurden die technischen Entwicklungslinien sowie die sozialen und oekonomischen Auswirkungen auf die Organisation, auf Arbeitsplatze und private Haushalte untersucht sowie Moeglichkeiten zur sozialvertraglichen Technikgestaltung durch die Kreditinstitute als Anwender und fur die betroffenen Beschaftigten erarbeitet.Fur eine sozialvertragliche Technikgestaltung ist es erforderlich, das Problembewusstsein uber die betrieblichen und sozialen Risiken des Verzichts auf soziale Innovationen bei den kunftigen Automatisierungsprozessen des Zahlungsverkehrs zu entwickeln und einen Verstandigungsprozess zwischen den unterschiedlichen Beteiligten einzuleiten, der zu gemeinsamen Initiativen fur soziale Innovationen fuhrt.

An absolute beginners guitar pedal guide: If you'd like to learn how to make a guitar pedal but have no idea how, then you've picked up the right guide. This book is a great way to get started in discovering a fun and highly rewarding pastime, even if you've no experience in electronics at all; We'll take you through all the steps of building your first guitar pedal from beginning to end including soldering school, case construction, and circuit making. Each section is filled with pictures and diagrams, so it's perfect for beginners. The pedal we'll be making is a killswitch pedal - a simple but ideal first pedal (plus it's cheap!). Worried you won't be able to find the parts? Don't stress: parts have been listed (along with part numbers) from shops based in the UK, USA and Europe.