Solving modern biological problems requires advanced computational methods. Bioinformatics evolved from the active interaction of two fast-developing disciplines, biology and information technology. The central issue of this emerging field is the transformation of often distributed and unstructured biological data into meaningful information.

This book describes the application of well-established concepts and techniques from areas like data mining, machine learning, database technologies, and visualization techniques to problems like protein data analysis, genome analysis and sequence databases. Chen has collected contributions from leading researchers in each area. The chapters can be read independently, as each offers a complete overview of its specific area, or, combined, this monograph is a comprehensive treatment that will appeal to students, researchers, and R&D professionals in industry who need a state-of-the-art introduction into this challenging and exciting young field.

This book includes a collection of essays that explore the relationship between Disability Studies and literary ecocriticism, particularly as this relationship plays out in American literature and culture. The contributors to this collection operate from the premise that there is much to be gained for both fields by putting them in conversation, and they do so in a variety of ways. In this manner, the collection contributes to what Joni Adamson and Scott Slovic have referred to as a "third wave of ecocriticism." Adamson and Slovic attribute the rise of this "third wave" to the richly diverse contributions to ecocriticism over the past decade by scholars intent on including postmodernism, ecofeminism, transnationalism, globalization, and postcolonialism into ecocritical discussions. The essays in Toward an Ecosomatic Paradigm extend this approach of this "third wave" by analyzing disability from an "environmental point of view" while simultaneously examining the environmental imagination from a disability studies perspective. More specifically, the goal of the collection is to investigate the role that literary narratives play in fostering the "ecosomatic paradigm." As a theoretical framework, the ecosomatic paradigm underscores the dynamic and inter-relational process wherein human mind-bodies interact with the places, both built and wild, they inhabit. That is, the ecosomatic paradigm proceeds from the assumption that nature and culture are meshed in an ongoing and deep relationship that has implications for both the human subject and the natural world. An ecosomatic approach highlights the profound overlap between embodiment and emplacement, and is therefore enriched by both disability studies and ecocritical insight. By drawing on points of confluence between disability studies and ecological criticism, the various ecosomatic readings in this collection challenge normative (even ableist) constructions of the body-environment dyad by complicating and expanding our understanding of this relationship as it is represented in American literature and culture. Collectively, the essays in this book augment the American environmental imagination by highlighting the relationship between disability and the environment as reflected in American literary texts across multiple periods and genres.

Solving modern biological problems requires advanced computational methods. Bioinformatics evolved from the active interaction of two fast-developing disciplines, biology and information technology. The central issue of this emerging field is the transformation of often distributed and unstructured biological data into meaningful information. This book describes the application of well-established concepts and techniques from areas like data mining, machine learning, database technologies, and visualization techniques to problems like protein data analysis, genome analysis and sequence databases. Chen has collected contributions from leading researchers in each area. The chapters can be read independently, as each offers a complete overview of its specific area, or, combined, this monograph is a comprehensive treatment that will appeal to students, researchers, and R&D professionals in industry who need a state-of-the-art introduction into this challenging and exciting young field.

We would like to welcome you to the proceedings of the workshops held in c- junction with the 27th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2008). While the ER main conference covers a wide spectrum of conceptual modeling research, increasingly complex real-world problems demand new p- spectives and activeresearchin new applications.The ER workshopsattempt to provideresearchers, students, andindustry professionalswitha forumto present and discuss emerging hot topics related to conceptual modeling. We received 13 excellent proposals for workshops to be held with ER 2008. We accepted the following seven based on peer reviews: 1. The Second International Workshop on Conceptual Modeling for Life S- ences Applications (CMLSA 2008), organized by Yi-Ping Phoebe Chen and Sven Hartmann. 2. The 5th International Workshopon Evolution and Change in Data Mana- ment (ECDM 2008), organized by Fabio Grandi. 3. The 4th International Workshop on Foundations and Practices of UML (FP-UML 2008), organized by Juan Trujillo and Andreas L. Opdahl. 4. The First International Workshop on Modeling Mobile Applications and Services (M2AS 2008), organized by Fernando Ferri, Patrizia Grifoni, and Maria Chiara Caschera. 5. The Second International Workshop on Requirements, Intentions and Goals in Conceptual Modeling (RIGiM 2008), organized by Colette Rolland, C- son Woo, and Camille Salinesi. 6. The Second International Workshop on Semantic and Conceptual Issues in Geographic Information Systems (SeCoGIS 2008), organized by Esteban Zim anyi and Christophe Claramunt. 7. The 5th International Workshop on Web Information Systems Modeling (WISM 2008), organized by Flavius Frasincar, Geert-Jan Houben, and Philippe Thiran."

This book constitutes the refereed joint proceedings of six international workshops held in conjunction with the 26th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER 2007, in Auckland, New Zealand, in November 2007.

The 40 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 114 submissions. Topics addressed by the workshops are conceptual modeling for life sciences applications (CMLSA 2007), foundations and practices of UML (FP-UML 2007), ontologies and information systems for the semantic Web (ONISW 2007), quality of information systems (QoIS 2007), requirements, intentions and goals in conceptual modeling (RIGiM 2007), and semantic and conceptual issues in geographic information systems (SeCoGIS 2007).

The 16th international conference on Multimedia Modeling (MMM2010) was held in the famous mountain city Chongqing, China, January 6-8, 2010, and hosted by Southwest University. MMM is a leading international conference for researchersand industry practitioners to share their new ideas, original research results and practicaldevelopment experiences from all multimedia related areas. MMM2010attractedmorethan160regular, specialsession, anddemosession submissions from 21 countries/regions around the world. All submitted papers were reviewed by at least two PC members or external reviewers, and most of them were reviewed by three reviewers. The review process was very selective. From the total of 133 submissions to the main track, 43 (32. 3%) were accepted as regular papers, 22 (16. 5%) as short papers. In all, 15 papers were received for three special sessions, which is by invitation only, and 14 submissions were received for a demo session, with 9 being selected. Authors of accepted papers come from 16 countries/regions. This volume of the proceedings contains the abstracts of three invited talks and all the regular, short, special session and demo papers. The regular papers were categorized into nine sections: 3D mod- ing;advancedvideocodingandadaptation;face, gestureandapplications;image processing;imageretrieval;learningsemanticconcepts;mediaanalysisandm- eling; semantic video concepts; and tracking and motion analysis. Three special sessions were video analysis and event recognition, cross-X multimedia mining in large scale, and mobile computing and applications. The technical programfeatured three invited talks, paralleloral presentation of all the accepted regular and special session papers, and poster sessions for short and demo pape