There is increasing interaction among communities with multiple languages, thus we need services that can effectively support multilingual communication. The Language Grid is an initiative to build an infrastructure that allows end users to create composite language services for intercultural collaboration. The aim is to support communities to create customized multilingual environments by using language services to overcome local language barriers. The stakeholders of the Language Grid are the language resource providers, the language service users, and the language grid operators who coordinate the former. This book includes 18 chapters in six parts that summarize various research results and associated development activities on the Language Grid. The chapters in Part I describe the framework of the Language Grid, i.e., service-oriented collective intelligence, used to bridge providers, users and operators. Two kinds of software are introduced, the service grid server software and the Language Grid Toolbox, and code for both is available via open source licenses. Part II describes technologies for service workflows that compose atomic language services. Part III reports on research work and activities relating to sharing and using language services. Part IV describes various applications of language services as applicable to intercultural collaboration. Part V contains reports on applying the Language Grid for translation activities, including localization of industrial documents and Wikipedia articles. Finally, Part VI illustrates how the Language Grid can be connected to other service grids, such as DFKI's Heart of Gold and smart classroom services in Tsinghua University in Beijing. The book will be valuable for researchers in artificial intelligence, natural language processing, services computing and human--computer interaction, particularly those who are interested in bridging technologies and user communities.

This open access book provides an in-depth description of the EU project European Language Grid (ELG). Its motivation lies in the fact that Europe is a multilingual society with 24 official European Union Member State languages and dozens of additional languages including regional and minority languages. The only meaningful way to enable multilingualism and to benefit from this rich linguistic heritage is through Language Technologies (LT) including Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Speech Technologies and language-centric Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications. The European Language Grid provides a single umbrella platform for the European LT community, including research and industry, effectively functioning as a virtual home, marketplace, showroom, and deployment centre for all services, tools, resources, products and organisations active in the field. Today the ELG cloud platform already offers access to more than 13,000 language processing tools and language resources. It enables all stakeholders to deposit, upload and deploy their technologies and datasets. The platform also supports the long-term objective of establishing digital language equality in Europe by 2030 – to create a situation in which all European languages enjoy equal technological support. This is the very first book dedicated to Language Technology and NLP platforms. Cloud technology has only recently matured enough to make the development of a platform like ELG feasible on a larger scale. The book comprehensively describes the results of the ELG project. Following an introduction, the content is divided into four main parts: (I) ELG Cloud Platform; (II) ELG Inventory of Technologies and Resources; (III) ELG Community and Initiative; and (IV) ELG Open Calls and Pilot Projects.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th Pacific Rim International Workshop on Multi-Agents, PRIMA 2006, held in Guilin, China, in August 2006. The book presents 39 revised full papers and 57 revised short papers together with 4 invited talks, addressing subjects from theoretical and methodological issues to applications. Topics include agent models, agent architectures, agent-oriented software engineering, semantic Web service, collaboration, coordination and negotiation, and more.

Although grid systems are the foundation for almost all typographic design, they are often associated with rigid, formulaic solutions. However, the belief that all great design is nonetheless based on grid systems (even if only subverted ones) suggests that few designers truly understand the complexities and potential riches of grid composition.

There’s probably a good chance that you’ve turned on your television, computer, or an appliance without giving much thought about the electric grid. But when there’s a power outage, it’s a different story. Suddenly, you’re asking yourself questions such as: What is the electric grid and who owns it? Who controls the grid and how is it controlled? What causes a grid blackout? What is the future of the grid? William L. Thompson, who retired from Dominion Virginia Power after thirty-eight years in the electric business, answers those questions and many more in this book for anyone curious about the electric grid and how it works. In plain, simple language, he reveals what goes on behind the scenes at grid control centers across the country. He also explains how electricity is generated through renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. He also examines the causes behind the largest blackout in United States history and how global warming and technological developments could permanently change Living on the Grid.

This book approaches the grid computing with a perspective on the latest achievements in the field, providing an insight into the current research trends and advances, and presenting a large range of innovative research papers. The topics covered in this book include resource and data management, grid architectures and development, and grid-enabled applications. New ideas employing heuristic methods from swarm intelligence or genetic algorithm and quantum encryption are considered in order to explain two main aspects of grid computing: resource management and data management. The book addresses also some aspects of grid computing that regard architecture and development, and includes a diverse range of applications for grid computing, including possible human grid computing system, simulation of the fusion reaction, ubiquitous healthcare service provisioning and complex water systems.

A major challenge in grid computing remains the application software development for this new kind of infrastructure. Grid application programmers have to take into account several complicated aspects: distribution of data and computations, parallel computations on different sites and processors, heterogeneity of the involved computers, load balancing, etc. Grid programmers thus demand novel programming methodologies that abstract over such technical details while preserving the beneficial features of modern grid middleware. For this purpose, the authors introduce Higher-Order Components (HOCs). HOCs implement generic parallel/distributed processing patterns, together with the required middleware support, and they are offered to users via a high-level service interface. Users only have to provide the application-specific pieces of their programs as parameters, while low-level implementation details, such as the transfer of data across the grid, are handled by the HOCs. HOCs were developed within the CoreGRID European Network of Excellence and have become an optional extension of the popular Globus middleware. The book provides the reader with hands-on experience, describing a broad collection of example applications from various fields of science and engineering, including biology, physics, etc. The Java code for these examples is provided online, complementing the book. The expected application performance is studied and reported for extensive performance experiments on different testbeds, including grids with worldwide distribution. The book is targeted at graduate students, advanced professionals, and researchers in both academia and industry. Readers can raise their level of knowledge about methodologies for programming contemporary parallel and distributed systems, and, furthermore, they can gain practical experience in using distributed software. Practical examples show how the complementary online material can easily be adopted in various new projects.

"This reference presents a vital compendium of research detailing the latest case studies, architectures, frameworks, methodologies, and research on Grid and Cloud Computing"--