Buoyant, irrepressible and hot-tempered, John Charles Thomas captivated audiences worldwide with his incredible voice. The son of a farmer, his earliest singing experience was at church revivals. He attended the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and in 1910, as Thomas began his second year of study, he was taken under the tutelage of Adelin Fermin, one of the few voice coaches in America capable of truly training Thomas' voice. This good fortune virtually made Thomas' career. By 1915, he was working on Broadway and less than a decade later he embarked on a trans - Atlantic life with bases in Paris, Brussels, London, New York and Palm Beach. The height of his popularity came from 1934 to 1946. Thomas was always a favorite with his audiences even though critics condemned him for his practice of including popular music in his concerts. By the mid - 1940s, this tendency had earned Thomas a reputation as a popular singer rather than a serious artist. The changing face of the music industry during the early 1950s and the ensuing sharp decline in audiences for concert singers such as Thomas resulted in slow, painful end to his career as he gradually faded into the background of the musical world. This biography details the life and career of John Charles Thomas, from operatic performances to concerts and radio broadcasts. Beginning with his school days at the Peabody, it follows Thomas to his work on Broadway, where he appeared in productions such as ""Alone at Last"" and ""Step This Way"". Additional topics include Thomas' movement to an intercontinental operatic career, his unprecedented success at the Metropolitan Opera, and the lifelong encouragement given him by his voice coach. Thomas' constant challenge of critics through his inclusion of popular music is also discussed. Appendices provide a discography of initial releases, a list of operatic appearances in Brussels and the United States and detailed information on his Westinghouse radio series.

The9thAsianComputingScienceConferencewasheldinChiangMaiinDec- ber 2004. This volume contains papers that were presented at that conference. The conference was dedicated to Jean-Louis Lassez, on the occasion of his ?fth cycle (60th year) birthday. Its theme was "higher-level decision-making". Philippe Flajolet was invited to give the opening keynote address, while Yuzuru Tanaka and Phillip Rogaway were also keynote speakers. In addition to the keynote speakers, distinguished colleagues of Jean-Louis Lassez were - vited to present talks in his honour. Many of those talks are represented by papers in this volume, but I would like to thank all those speakers: Jonathan Bernick Alex Brodsky Vijay Chandru T. Y. Chen Norman Foo Martin Golumbic Richard Helm Claude Kirchner H' el' ene Kirchner Kim Marriott Krishna Palem Kotagiri Ramamohanarao Vijay Saraswat Masahiko Sato R. K. Shyamasundar Nicolas Spyratos Andrew Sung Pascal Van Hentenryck Jean Vuillemin Following a call for papers, 75 papers were submitted, comprising 47 from Asia, 13 from Europe, 8 from Australia, 5 from North America, and 2 from the Middle East. Submissions came from a total of 23 countries. Korea, China and Thailand were the most-represented countries. These papers underwent ano- mous refereeing before the Program Committee selected 17 papers for presen- tion at the conference. I thank the Program Committee for doing an excellent job under severe time pressure. I thank the General Chairs of the conference, Joxan Ja?ar and Kanchana Kanchanasut, for their support.

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