This book contains an introduction to symbolic logic and a thorough discussion of mechanical theorem proving and its applications. The book consists of three major parts. Chapters 2 and 3 constitute an introduction to symbolic logic. Chapters 4-9 introduce several techniques in mechanical theorem proving, and Chapters 10 an 11 show how theorem proving can be applied to various areas such as question answering, problem solving, program analysis, and program synthesis.

This book aims to introduce all aspects of Chinese civilization in a way that is easiest for readers in the Western world to understand. The first chapter of this book introduces the emergence, historical evolution and characteristics of Chinese civilization. The second chapter introduces the knowledge pedigree of Chinese civilization, which is characterized by human-centered and historical and social practice. The third chapter introduces the value pedigree of Chinese civilization with ethics and responsibility as the core and the fourth chapter introduces the national governance system of Chinese civilization in selecting and appointing talents. The fifth chapter introduces China's self-organization of mutual assistance and mutual benefit and the final chapter discusses the relationship between Chinese civilization and world civilization in the new era. Since entering the 21st century, China's economic aggregate and political influence have increased day by day. However, for a long time, the Western world's view of China has been full of various prejudices and misunderstandings which are produced by the ignorance of the history and current situation of Chinese civilization. It is hoped that readers can profoundly change their views on China after reading this book.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing, ICA3PP 2009, held in Taipei, Taiwan, in June 2009.

The 80 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 243 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on bioinformatics in parallel computing; cluster, grid and fault-tolerant computing; cluster distributed parallel operating systems; dependability issues in computer networks and communications; dependability issues in distributed and parallel systems; distributed scheduling and load balancing, industrial applications; information security internet; multi-core programming software tools; multimedia in parallel computing; parallel distributed databases; parallel algorithms; parallel architectures; parallel IO systems and storage systems; performance of parallel ditributed computing systems; scientific applications; self-healing, self-protecting and fault-tolerant systems; tools and environments for parallel and distributed software development; and Web service.