Like many other incipient technologies, Web services are still surrounded by a substantial level of noise. This noise results from the always dangerous combination of wishful thinking on the part of research and industry and of a lack of clear understanding of how Web services came to be. On the one hand, multiple contradictory interpretations are created by the many attempts to realign existing technology and strategies with Web services. On the other hand, the emphasis on what could be done with Web services in the future often makes us lose track of what can be really done with Web services today and in the short term. These factors make it extremely difficult to get a coherent picture of what Web services are, what they contribute, and where they will be applied.
Alonso and his co-authors deliberately take a step back. Based on their academic and industrial experience with middleware and enterprise application integration systems, they describe the fundamental concepts behind the notion of Web services and present them as the natural evolution of conventional middleware, necessary to meet the challenges of the Web and of B2B application integration.

Rather than providing a reference guide or a "how to write your first Web service" kind of book, they discuss the main objectives of Web services, the challenges that must be faced to achieve them, and the opportunities that this novel technology provides. Established, as well as recently proposed, standards and techniques (e.g., WSDL, UDDI, SOAP, WS-Coordination, WS-Transactions, and BPEL), are then examined in the context of this discussion in order to emphasize their scope, benefits, and shortcomings. Thus, the book is ideally suited both for professionals considering the development of application integration solutions and for research and students interesting in understanding and contributing to the evolution of enterprise application technologies.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Business Process Management, BPM 2007, held in Brisbane, Australia, in September 2007.

The 21 revised full papers, 1 industrial paper, and 8 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 152 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on business process maturity and performance, business process modeling, case studies, compliance and change, process configuration and execution, formal foundations of BPM, business process mining, and semantic issues in BPM.

Today, middleware is a key part of almost any application. Gone are the days when middleware was only used in the IT industry for high-end applications. Rather than middleware being part of the IT world, today IT applications r- resent only one aspect of middleware. With the increase in distribution, network capacity, and widespread deployment of computing devices (in homes, auto- biles, mobile phones, etc.), middleware has surpassed the importance of oper- ing systemsastheplatformwhereapplicationdevelopmentanddeploymenttake place. This makes middleware very exciting as a research area but also a very challenging one since it encompasses many di?erent concepts and techniques from a wide varietyof ?elds: networking,distributed systems, softwareengine- ing, performance analysis, computer architecture, and data management. Middleware 2005 in Grenoble, France, was the 6th edition of an increasingly successfulconference.Thescopeofthe conferencehasbeenslowlywideningwith every edition to accommodate new ?elds and applications. This year we made a considerable e?ort to reach out to other communities who are also active in the general area of middleware - sensor networks, networks in general, databases, software engineering- a fact that is re? ected in the variety of submissions.

Like many other incipient technologies, Web services are still surrounded by a tremendous level of noise. This noise results from the always dangerous combination of wishful thinking on the part of research and industry and of a lack of clear understanding of how Web services came to be. On the one hand, multiple contradictory interpretations are created by the many attempts to realign existing technology and strategies with Web services. On the other hand, the emphasis on what could be done with Web services in the future often makes us lose track of what can be really done with Web services today and in the short term. These factors make it extremely difficult to get a coherent picture of what Web services are, what they contribute, and where they will be applied. Alonso and his co-authors deliberately take a step back. Based on their academic and industrial experience with middleware and enterprise application integration systems, they describe the fundamental concepts behind the notion of Web services and present them as the natural evolution of conventional middleware, necessary to meet the challenges of the Web and of B2B application integration. Rather than providing a reference guide or a "how to write your first Web service" kind of book, they discuss the main objectives of Web services, the challenges that must be faced to achieve them, and the opportunities that this novel technology provides. Established, as well as recently proposed, standards and techniques (e.g., WSDL, UDDI, SOAP, WS-Coordination, WS-Transactions, and BPEL), are then examined in the context of this discussion in order to emphasize their scope, benefits, and shortcomings. Thus, the book is ideally suited both for professionals considering the development of application integration solutions and for research and students interesting in understanding and contributing to the evolution of enterprise application technologies.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Extending Database Technology, EDBT '98, held in Valencia, Spain, in March 1998. The 32 revised full papers presented together with one invited keynote were selected from a total of 191 submissions. The book is divided in sections on similarity search and indexing, query optimization on the Web, Algorithms for data mining, modelling in OLAP, query processing and storage management, aggregation and summary data, object-oriented and active databases, view maintenance and integrity, databases and the Web, workflow and scientific databases.

Low-budget Uruguayan horror. Filmed entirely on a hand-held camera, supposedly in an uninterrupted single take, the film follows a father (Abel Tripaldi) and daughter (Florencia Colucci) who move to a remote house to escape the dark secrets of their past. But no sooner do they arrive than a sequence of mysterious and disturbing noises and events begins to unfold, driving the pair to the brink of madness and beyond.

Desalination in Nuclear Power Plants presents the latest research on a variety of nuclear desalination techniques for different nuclear reactor systems; it includes also several aspects regarding competitiveness, sustainability, safety, and licensing process. Authors Alonso, del Valle, and Ramirez explore the possibilities of the cogeneration of water and electricity using a nuclear reactor. This book consolidates the latest research to provide readers with a clear understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the thermal, membrane, and hybrid desalination processes, along with a comprehensive methodology to guide the reader on how to perform levelized cost analyses for water and electricity. The conditions for the coupling of nuclear reactors and desalination plants are presented, and techniques to maximize water and energy production and to reduce their corresponding costs are provided. Mathematical modeling techniques for different components of the power plant are also included based on mass and energy state equations, as well as different steam currents alternatives for coupling along with a proposed method for their evaluation.

Energy Efficiency in Air Transportation explores the relationship between air transportation and energy use, starting with an analysis of air transport energy sources and their potential development. The book examines how different elements of the air transport system make use of energy, with an analysis of various methods for optimizing energy consumption. The book covers the consequences of energy use in terms of economics, environmental impact and sustainable development, with a review of the existing and proposed regulatory measures addressing those factors. Aeronautical and air transport engineers interested in aerial vehicle systems design, as well as public administrators and regulators concerned with energy efficiency or environmental issues in air transport, will benefit greatly from this comprehensive reference, which captures necessary background information along with the newest developments in the field.

El bajo peso al nacer representa un problema de orden mundial, dado que los recien nacidos con peso deficiente presentan serias limitaciones desde el mismo momento en que nacen y posteriormente, esto incide en su calidad de vida futura. Globalmente se considera al Indice de Bajo Peso al Nacer un indicador de la calidad de los servicios de salud y de valor pronostico en la morbimortalidad neonatal e infantil. Ningun continente escapa a esta realidad hoy en dia, todos se encuentran afectados de una manera o de otra, con variaciones de las cifras en los diferentes paises e inclusive dentro de un mismo pais existen registros sorprendentes en un lugar determinado con respecto a otra region del mismo. El bajo peso al nacer puede obedecer a dos causas fundamentales: haber ocurrido un nacimiento antes del termino de la gestacion (parto pretermino), o que el feto presente una insuficiencia de su peso en relacion con la edad gestacional, retardo del crecimiento intrauterino, incluso en ocasiones puede existir la combinacion de las dos anteriores: un nacimiento antes del termino de la gestacion, con un peso insuficiente a su edad gestacional."