This text constitutes the proceedings from the International Workshop on Autonomous Decentralized Systems (IWADS2000) that took place in 2000. Topics covered include flexible and autonomous service replication technique, and information searching in autonomous mobile agent groups.

For the first time, this book sets forth the concept and model for a process neural network. You’ll discover how a process neural network expands the mapping relationship between the input and output of traditional neural networks and greatly enhances the expression capability of artificial neural networks. Detailed illustrations help you visualize information processing flow and the mapping relationship between inputs and outputs.

Computer-supported co-operative work (CSCW) is a research area that aims at integrating the works of several people involved in a common goal, inside a co-operative universe, through the sharing of resources in an efficient way. This report contains the papers presented at a conference on CSCW in design. Topics covered include: techniques, methods, and tools for CSCW in design; social organization of the CSCW process; integration of methods & tools within the work organization; co-operation in virtual enterprises and electronic businesses; CSCW in design & manufacturing; interaction between the CSCW approach and knowledge reuse as found in knowledge management; intelligent agent & multi-agent systems; Internet/World Wide Web and CSCW in design; and applications & test beds.

Intelligent technical systems are networked, embedded systems incorporating real-time capacities that are able to interact with and adapt to their environments. These systems need innovative approaches in order to meet requirements like cost, size, power and memory consumption, as well as real-time compliance and security. Intelligent Technical Systems covers different levels like multimedia systems, embedded programming, middleware platforms, sensor networks and autonomous systems and applications for intelligent engineering. Each level is discussed by a set of original articles summarizing the state of the art and presenting a concrete application; they include a deep discussion of their model and explain all design decisions relevant to obtain a mature solution.

The purpose of the 7th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS) was to bring together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in the advances and business applications of information systems. ICEIS focuses on real world applications, therefore authors were asked to highlight the benefits of Information Technology for industry and services. Papers included in the book are the best papers presented at the conference.

Proceedings of the International Conference on Human-centric Computing and Embedded and Multimedia Computing (HumanCom & EMC 2011) will cover topics of HumanCom and EMC, the current hot topics satisfying the world-wide ever-changing needs. Human-centric computing is to create novel solutions so that the humans are always connected, portable, and available. As with pervasive-computing, human-centric computing requires a variety of devices; however, such devices exist simply to obtain inputs from the human and are embedded in objects that humans interact with on a daily basis. Moreover, during the past couple of decades, Information Science technologies influenced and changed every aspect of our lives and our cultures. Without various Information Science technology-based applications, it would be difficult to keep information stored securely, to process information efficiently, and to communicate conveniently. Embedded computing ranges from portable devices such as digital watches and MP3 players, to large stationary installations like traffic lights, factory controllers, or the systems controlling nuclear power plants. Complexity varies from low, with a single microcontroller chip, to very high with multiple units, peripherals and networks mounted inside a large chassis or enclosure. Multimedia computing covers multimedia I/O devices, OS, storage systems, streaming media middleware, continuous media representations, media coding, media processing, etc., and also includes multimedia communications; real-time protocols, end-to-end streaming media, resource allocation, multicast protocols, and multimedia applications; databases, distributed collaboration, video conferencing, 3D virtual environments.

This volume is an attempt to capture the essence of the state-of-the-art of intelligent agent technology and to identify the new challenges and opportunities that it is or will be facing. The most important feature of the volume is that it emphasizes a multi-faceted, holistic view of this emerging technology, from its computational foundations — in terms of models, methodologies, and tools for developing a variety of embodiments of agent-based systems — to its practical impact on tackling real-world problems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the three confederated conferences CoopIS 2002, DOA 2002, and ODBASE 2002, held in Irvine, CA, USA, in October/November 2002. The 77 revised full papers and 10 posters presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 291 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on interoperability, workflow, mobility, agents, peer-to-peer and ubiquitous, work process, business and transaction, infrastructure, query processing, quality issues, agents and middleware, cooperative systems, ORB enhancements, Web services, distributed object scalability and heterogeneity, dependability and security, reflection and reconfiguration, real-time scheduling, component-based applications, ontology languages, conceptual modeling, ontology management, ontology development and engineering, XML and data integration, and tools for the intelligent Web.