Machinelearningis arapidlymaturing?eldthataims toprovidepracticalme- ods for data discovery, categorization and modelling. The She?eld Machine Learning Workshop, which was held 7-10 September 2004, brought together some of the leading international researchers in the ?eld for a series of talks and posters that represented new developments in machine learning and numerical methods. The workshop was sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Sciences - search Council (EPSRC) and the London Mathematical Society (LMS) through the MathFIT program,whose aim is the encouragementof new interdisciplinary research.AdditionalfundingwasprovidedbythePASCALEuropeanFramework 6 Network of Excellence and the University of She?eld. It was the commitment of these funding bodies that enabled the workshop to have a strong program of invited speakers,and the organizerswish to thank these funding bodies for their ?nancial support. The particular focus for interactions at the workshop was - vanced Research Methods in Machine Learning and Statistical Signal Processing. These proceedings contain work that was presented at the workshop, and ideas that were developed through, or inspired by, attendance at the workshop. The proceedings re?ect this mixture and illustrate the diversity of applications and theoretical work in machine learning. We would like to thank the presenters and attendees at the workshop for the excellent quality of presentation and discussion during the oral and poster sessions. We are also grateful to Gillian Callaghan for her support in the orga- zation of the workshop, and ?nally we wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their help in compiling the proceedings.

"Pictures from Paradise" examines the ways in which contemporary art photography has evolved within the English-speaking Caribbean, rising beyond depictions of idyllic scenes to tackle more complex social, racial, political and gender issues. Within the past few years, regional artists have provided an increasingly searching image of the Caribbean and the people who inhabit it. The only publication on contemporary Caribbean photography, "Pictures from Paradise" features more than 200 images from 18 established and up-and-coming artists, including Ewan Atkinson, Marvin Bartley, Terry Boddie, Holly Bynoe, James Cooper, Renee Cox, Gerard Gaskin, Abigail Hadeed, Gerard Hanson, Nadia Huggins, Marlon James, Roshini Kempadoo, O'Neil Lawrence, Ebony Patterson, Radcliffe Roye, Alex Smailes, Stacey Tyrell and Rodell Warner.