The IEEE ICDM 2004 workshop on the Foundation of Data Mining and the IEEE ICDM 2005 workshop on the Foundation of Semantic Oriented Data and Web Mining focused on topics ranging from the foundations of data mining to new data mining paradigms. The workshops brought together both data mining researchers and practitioners to discuss these two topics while seeking solutions to long standing data mining problems and stimul- ing new data mining research directions. We feel that the papers presented at these workshops may encourage the study of data mining as a scienti?c ?eld and spark new communications and collaborations between researchers and practitioners. Toexpressthevisionsforgedintheworkshopstoawiderangeofdatam- ing researchers and practitioners and foster active participation in the study of foundations of data mining, we edited this volume by involving extended and updated versions of selected papers presented at those workshops as well as some other relevant contributions. The content of this book includes st- ies of foundations of data mining from theoretical, practical, algorithmical, and managerial perspectives. The following is a brief summary of the papers contained in this book.

"Foundations of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery" contains the latest results and new directions in data mining research. Data mining, which integrates various technologies, including computational intelligence, database and knowledge management, machine learning, soft computing, and statistics, is one of the fastest growing fields in computer science. Although many data mining techniques have been developed, further development of the field requires a close examination of its foundations. This volume presents the results of investigations into the foundations of the discipline, and represents the state of the art for much of the current research. This book will prove extremely valuable and fruitful for data mining researchers, no matter whether they would like to uncover the fundamental principles behind data mining, or apply the theories to practical applications.

With the growing use of information technology and the recent advances in web systems, the amount of data available to users has increased exponentially. Thus, there is a critical need to understand the content of the data. As a result, data-mining has become a popular research topic in recent years for the treatment of the "data rich and information poor" syndrome. In this carefully edited volume a theoretical foundation as well as important new directions for data-mining research are presented. It brings together a set of well respected data mining theoreticians and researchers with practical data mining experiences. The presented theories will give data mining practitioners a scientific perspective in data mining and thus provide more insight into their problems, and the provided new data mining topics can be expected to stimulate further research in these important directions.

During the past few years, data mining has grown rapidly in visibility and importance within information processing and decision analysis. This is par ticularly true in the realm of e-commerce, where data mining is moving from a "nice-to-have" to a "must-have" status. In a different though related context, a new computing methodology called granular computing is emerging as a powerful tool for the conception, analysis and design of information/intelligent systems. In essence, data mining deals with summarization of information which is resident in large data sets, while granular computing plays a key role in the summarization process by draw ing together points (objects) which are related through similarity, proximity or functionality. In this perspective, granular computing has a position of centrality in data mining. Another methodology which has high relevance to data mining and plays a central role in this volume is that of rough set theory. Basically, rough set theory may be viewed as a branch of granular computing. However, its applications to data mining have predated that of granular computing."

Data-mining has become a popular research topic in recent years for the treatment of the "data rich and information poor" syndrome. Currently, application oriented engineers are only concerned with their immediate problems, which results in an ad hoc method of problem solving. Researchers, on the other hand, lack an understanding of the practical issues of data-mining for real-world problems and often concentrate on issues that are of no significance to the practitioners. In this volume, we hope to remedy problems by (1) presenting a theoretical foundation of data-mining, and (2) providing important new directions for data-mining research. A set of well respected data mining theoreticians were invited to present their views on the fundamental science of data mining. We have also called on researchers with practical data mining experiences to present new important data-mining topics.

"Foundations of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery" contains the latest results and new directions in data mining research. Data mining, which integrates various technologies, including computational intelligence, database and knowledge management, machine learning, soft computing, and statistics, is one of the fastest growing fields in computer science. Although many data mining techniques have been developed, further development of the field requires a close examination of its foundations. This volume presents the results of investigations into the foundations of the discipline, and represents the state of the art for much of the current research. This book will prove extremely valuable and fruitful for data mining researchers, no matter whether they would like to uncover the fundamental principles behind data mining, or apply the theories to practical applications.

With the growing use of information technology and the recent advances in web systems, the amount of data available to users has increased exponentially. Thus, there is a critical need to understand the content of the data. As a result, data-mining has become a popular research topic in recent years for the treatment of the "data rich and information poor" syndrome. In this carefully edited volume a theoretical foundation as well as important new directions for data-mining research are presented. It brings together a set of well respected data mining theoreticians and researchers with practical data mining experiences. The presented theories will give data mining practitioners a scientific perspective in data mining and thus provide more insight into their problems, and the provided new data mining topics can be expected to stimulate further research in these important directions.

The IEEE ICDM 2004 workshop on the Foundation of Data Mining and the IEEE ICDM 2005 workshop on the Foundation of Semantic Oriented Data and Web Mining focused on topics ranging from the foundations of data mining to new data mining paradigms. The workshops brought together both data mining researchers and practitioners to discuss these two topics while seeking solutions to long standing data mining problems and stimul- ing new data mining research directions. We feel that the papers presented at these workshops may encourage the study of data mining as a scienti?c ?eld and spark new communications and collaborations between researchers and practitioners. Toexpressthevisionsforgedintheworkshopstoawiderangeofdatam- ing researchers and practitioners and foster active participation in the study of foundations of data mining, we edited this volume by involving extended and updated versions of selected papers presented at those workshops as well as some other relevant contributions. The content of this book includes st- ies of foundations of data mining from theoretical, practical, algorithmical, and managerial perspectives. The following is a brief summary of the papers contained in this book.

Data-mining has become a popular research topic in recent years for the treatment of the "data rich and information poor" syndrome. Currently, application oriented engineers are only concerned with their immediate problems, which results in an ad hoc method of problem solving. Researchers, on the other hand, lack an understanding of the practical issues of data-mining for real-world problems and often concentrate on issues that are of no significance to the practitioners. In this volume, we hope to remedy problems by (1) presenting a theoretical foundation of data-mining, and (2) providing important new directions for data-mining research. A set of well respected data mining theoreticians were invited to present their views on the fundamental science of data mining. We have also called on researchers with practical data mining experiences to present new important data-mining topics.

During the past few years, data mining has grown rapidly in visibility and importance within information processing and decision analysis. This is par ticularly true in the realm of e-commerce, where data mining is moving from a "nice-to-have" to a "must-have" status. In a different though related context, a new computing methodology called granular computing is emerging as a powerful tool for the conception, analysis and design of information/intelligent systems. In essence, data mining deals with summarization of information which is resident in large data sets, while granular computing plays a key role in the summarization process by draw ing together points (objects) which are related through similarity, proximity or functionality. In this perspective, granular computing has a position of centrality in data mining. Another methodology which has high relevance to data mining and plays a central role in this volume is that of rough set theory. Basically, rough set theory may be viewed as a branch of granular computing. However, its applications to data mining have predated that of granular computing."

The LNCS journal Transactions on Computational Systems Biology is devoted to inter- and multidisciplinary research in the fields of computer science and life sciences and supports a paradigmatic shift in the techniques from computer and information science to cope with the new challenges arising from the systems oriented point of view of biological phenomena.

This, the 5th Transactions on Computational Systems Biology volume, edited by Xiaohua Hu, Yi Pan and Tsau Young Lin, features a number of carefully selected and enhanced contributions initially presented at the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Granular Computing held in Beijing, China, in July 2005.

The 9 papers selected for this special issue are devoted to various aspects of computational methods, algorithms and techniques in bioinformatics such as gene expression analysis, biomedical literature mining and natural language processing, protein structure prediction, biological database management and biomedical information retrieval.