"A First Course in Machine Learning by Simon Rogers and Mark Girolami is the best introductory book for ML currently available. It combines rigor and precision with accessibility, starts from a detailed explanation of the basic foundations of Bayesian analysis in the simplest of settings, and goes all the way to the frontiers of the subject such as infinite mixture models, GPs, and MCMC." -Devdatt Dubhashi, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University, Sweden "This textbook manages to be easier to read than other comparable books in the subject while retaining all the rigorous treatment needed. The new chapters put it at the forefront of the field by covering topics that have become mainstream in machine learning over the last decade." -Daniel Barbara, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA "The new edition of A First Course in Machine Learning by Rogers and Girolami is an excellent introduction to the use of statistical methods in machine learning. The book introduces concepts such as mathematical modeling, inference, and prediction, providing 'just in time' the essential background on linear algebra, calculus, and probability theory that the reader needs to understand these concepts." -Daniel Ortiz-Arroyo, Associate Professor, Aalborg University Esbjerg, Denmark "I was impressed by how closely the material aligns with the needs of an introductory course on machine learning, which is its greatest strength...Overall, this is a pragmatic and helpful book, which is well-aligned to the needs of an introductory course and one that I will be looking at for my own students in coming months." -David Clifton, University of Oxford, UK "The first edition of this book was already an excellent introductory text on machine learning for an advanced undergraduate or taught masters level course, or indeed for anybody who wants to learn about an interesting and important field of computer science. The additional chapters of advanced material on Gaussian process, MCMC and mixture modeling provide an ideal basis for practical projects, without disturbing the very clear and readable exposition of the basics contained in the first part of the book." -Gavin Cawley, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia, UK "This book could be used for junior/senior undergraduate students or first-year graduate students, as well as individuals who want to explore the field of machine learning...The book introduces not only the concepts but the underlying ideas on algorithm implementation from a critical thinking perspective." -Guangzhi Qu, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

This two volume set (LNCS 6791 and LNCS 6792) constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 21th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN 2011, held in Espoo, Finland, in June 2011.
The 106 revised full or poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. ICANN 2011 had two basic tracks: brain-inspired computing and machine learning research, with strong cross-disciplinary interactions and applications.

This two volume set LNCS 6791 and LNCS 6792 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 21th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN 2011, held in Espoo, Finland, in June 2011.
The 106 revised full or poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. ICANN 2011 had two basic tracks: brain-inspired computing and machine learning research, with strong cross-disciplinary interactions and applications.

The Pattern Recognition in Bioinformatics (PRIB) meeting was established in 2006 under the auspices of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) to create a focus for the development and application of pattern recognition techniques in the biological domain. PRIB's aim to explore the full spectrum of pattern recognition application was re?ected in the breadth of techniquesrepresented in this year's subm- sions and in this book. These range from image analysis for biomedical data to systems biology. We werefortunatetohaveinvitedspeakersofthehighestcalibredeliveringkeynotes at the conference. These were Pierre Baldi (UC Irvine), Alvis Brazma (EMBL-EBI), GunnarRats .. ch(MPITubi .. ngen)andMichaelUnser(EPFL).Weacknowledgesupportof theEUFP7NetworkofExcellencePASCAL2forpartiallyfundingtheinvitedspeakers. Immediately prior to the conference, we hosted half day of tutorial lectures, while a special session on "Machine Learningfor IntegrativeGenomics" was held immediately after the main conference.Duringthe conference,a poster session was heldwith further discussion. Wewouldlikeonceagaintothankalltheauthorsforthehighqualityofsubmissions, as well as Yorkshire South and the University of Shef?eld for providing logistical help in organizing the conference. Finally, we would like to thank Springer for their help in assembling this proceedings volume and for the continued support of PRIB.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 24th European Colloquium on Information Retrieval Research, ECIR 2002, held in Glasgow, UK, in March 2002.The 23 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 52 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on multimedia, Web-information retrieval, query modification, soft computing, models, categorization, structured documents, cross-language issues, and interactive systems.

Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is a fast developing area of intense research interest. Following on from Self-Organising Neural Networks: Independent Component Analysis and Blind Signal Separation, this book reviews the significant developments of the past year.It covers topics such as the use of hidden Markov methods, the independence assumption, and topographic ICA, and includes tutorial chapters on Bayesian and variational approaches. It also provides the latest approaches to ICA problems, including an investigation into certain "hard problems" for the very first time.Comprising contributions from the most respected and innovative researchers in the field, this volume will be of interest to students and researchers in computer science and electrical engineering; research and development personnel in disciplines such as statistical modelling and data analysis; bio-informatic workers; and physicists and chemists requiring novel data analysis methods.

This volume presents the theory and applications of self-organising neural network models which perform the Independent Component Analysis (ICA) transformation and Blind Source Separation (BSS). It is largely self-contained, covering the fundamental concepts of information theory, higher order statistics and information geometry. Neural models for instantaneous and temporal BSS and their adaptation algorithms are presented and studied in detail. There is also in-depth coverage of the following application areas; noise reduction, speech enhancement in noisy environments, image enhancement, feature extraction for classification, data analysis and visualisation, data mining and biomedical data analysis. Self-Organising Neural Networks will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers in Connectionist AI, Signal Processing and Neural Networks, research and development workers, and technology development engineers and research engineers.

"A First Course in Machine Learning by Simon Rogers and Mark Girolami is the best introductory book for ML currently available. It combines rigor and precision with accessibility, starts from a detailed explanation of the basic foundations of Bayesian analysis in the simplest of settings, and goes all the way to the frontiers of the subject such as infinite mixture models, GPs, and MCMC." -Devdatt Dubhashi, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University, Sweden "This textbook manages to be easier to read than other comparable books in the subject while retaining all the rigorous treatment needed. The new chapters put it at the forefront of the field by covering topics that have become mainstream in machine learning over the last decade." -Daniel Barbara, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA "The new edition of A First Course in Machine Learning by Rogers and Girolami is an excellent introduction to the use of statistical methods in machine learning. The book introduces concepts such as mathematical modeling, inference, and prediction, providing 'just in time' the essential background on linear algebra, calculus, and probability theory that the reader needs to understand these concepts." -Daniel Ortiz-Arroyo, Associate Professor, Aalborg University Esbjerg, Denmark "I was impressed by how closely the material aligns with the needs of an introductory course on machine learning, which is its greatest strength...Overall, this is a pragmatic and helpful book, which is well-aligned to the needs of an introductory course and one that I will be looking at for my own students in coming months." -David Clifton, University of Oxford, UK "The first edition of this book was already an excellent introductory text on machine learning for an advanced undergraduate or taught masters level course, or indeed for anybody who wants to learn about an interesting and important field of computer science. The additional chapters of advanced material on Gaussian process, MCMC and mixture modeling provide an ideal basis for practical projects, without disturbing the very clear and readable exposition of the basics contained in the first part of the book." -Gavin Cawley, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia, UK "This book could be used for junior/senior undergraduate students or first-year graduate students, as well as individuals who want to explore the field of machine learning...The book introduces not only the concepts but the underlying ideas on algorithm implementation from a critical thinking perspective." -Guangzhi Qu, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA