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This volume collects the accepted papers presented at the Learning and Intelligent OptimizatioN conference (LION 2007 II) held December 8-12, 2007, in Trento, Italy. The motivation for the meeting is related to the current explosion in the number and variety of heuristic algorithms for hard optimization problems, which raises - merous interesting and challenging issues. Practitioners are confronted with the b- den of selecting the most appropriate method, in many cases through an expensive algorithm configuration and parameter-tuning process, and subject to a steep learning curve. Scientists seek theoretical insights and demand a sound experimental meth- ology for evaluating algorithms and assessing strengths and weaknesses. A necessary prerequisite for this effort is a clear separation between the algorithm and the expe- menter, who, in too many cases, is "e;in the loop"e; as a crucial intelligent learning c- ponent. Both issues are related to designing and engineering ways of "e;learning"e; about the performance of different techniques, and ways of using memory about algorithm behavior in the past to improve performance in the future. Intelligent learning schemes for mining the knowledge obtained from different runs or during a single run can - prove the algorithm development and design process and simplify the applications of high-performance optimization methods. Combinations of algorithms can further improve the robustness and performance of the individual components provided that sufficient knowledge of the relationship between problem instance characteristics and algorithm performance is obtained.

people volunteer their time and energy and work in a dedicated fashion to pull everything together each year, including our very supportive Steering Comm- tee members led by Sukumar Ghosh. However, the success of ICDCN is mainly due to the hard work of all those people who submit papers and/or attend the conference. We thank you all. January 2009 Prasad Jayanti Andrew T. Campbell Message from the Technical Program Chairs Welcome to the proceedings of the 10thInternationalConferenceon Distributed Computing and Networking (ICDCN) 2009. As ICDCN celebrates its 10th - niversary,ithasbecomeanimportantforumfordisseminatingthelatestresearch results in distributed computing and networking. We received 179 submissions from all over the world, including Algeria, A- tralia, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and the USA, besides India, the host country. The submissions were read and evaluated by the Program Committee, which consisted of 25 members for the Distributed Computing Track and 28 members for the Networking Track, with the ad- tional help of external reviewers. The Program Committee selected 20 regular papers and 32 short papers for inclusion in the proceedings and presentation at the conference. We were fortunate to have several distinguished scientists as keynote speakers. Andrew Campbell (Dartmouth College, USA), Maurice Herlihy (Brown University, USA), and P. R. Kumar (University of of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) delivered the keynote address. Krithi Ramamritham from IIT Bombay, India, delivered the A. K. Choudhury Memorial talk.

The 34th International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG 2008) took place in Van Mildert College at Durham University, UK, 30 June - 2 July 2008. The approximately 80 participants came from va- ous countries all over the world, among them Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary,Israel, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, UK and the USA. WG 2008 continued the series of 33 previous WG conferences. Since 1975, the WG conference has taken place 21 times in Germany, four times in The Netherlands, twice in Austria as well as once in Italy, Slovakia, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, France, Norway and now in the UK. The WG conference traditionally aims at uniting theory and practice by demonstrating how graph-theoretic concepts can be applied to various areas in computer science, or by extracting new problems from applications. The goal is to present recent researchresults and to identify and exploredirections of future research. The continuing interest in the WG conferences was re?ected in the number and quality of submissions; 76 papers were submitted and in an evaluation p- cess with four reports per submission, 30 papers were accepted by the Program Committee for the conference. Due to the high number of submissions and the limited schedule of 3 days, various good papers could not be accepted. Therewereexcellent invited talks by Giuseppe Di Battista(UniversitaRoma Tre,Italy)onalgorithmicaspectsof(un)-stableroutingintheInternet,byLeszek G?sieniec (University of Liverpool, UK) on memory-e?cient graph exploration, andbyMartinGrohe(Humboldt-UniversitatzuBerlin,Germany)onalgorithmic meta theorems.

This volume contains the papers from BIOWIRE 2007, the first in a series of wo- shops on the bio-inspired design of networks, and additional papers contributed from the research area of bio-inspired computing and communication. The workshop took place at the University of Cambridge during April 2-5, 2007 with sponsorship from the US/UK International Technology Alliance in Network and Information Sciences. Its objective was to present, discuss and explore the recent developments in the field of bio-inspired design of networks, with particular regard to wireless networks and the self-organizing properties of biological networks. The workshop was organized by Jon Crowcroft (University of Cambridge), Don Towsley (University of Massachusetts), Dinesh Verma (IBM T. J. Watson Research Center), Vasilis Pappas (IBM T. J. Watson Research Center), Ananthram Swami (ARL), Tom McCutcheon (DSTL) and Pietro Lio (University of Cambridge). The program for BIOWIRE 2007 included 54 speakers covering a diverse range of topics, categorized as follows: 1. Self-organized communication networks in insects 2. Neuronal communications 3. Bio-computing 4. Epidemiology 5. Network theory 6. Wireless and sensorial networks 7. Brain: models of sensorial integration The BIOWIRE workshop focuses on achieving a common ground for knowledge sharing among scientists with expertise in investigating the application domain (e. g. , biological, wireless, data communication and transportation networks) and scientists with relevant expertise in the methodology domain (e. g. , mathematics and statistical physics of networks).

The 8th edition of the International Symposium on Web and Wireless Geograp- cal Information Systems (W2GIS 2008) was held in December 2008, in the vibrant city of Shanghai, China. This annual symposium aims at providing a forum for discussing advances on recent developments and research results in the ?eld of Web and wireless geographical information systems. Promoted from workshop to s- posium in 2005, W2GIS now represents a prestigious event within this dynamic research community. These proceedings contain the papers selected for presen- tion at this international event. For the 2008 edition, we received 38 submissions from 16 countries. All subm- ted papers were related to topics of interest to the symposium. Each paper received three reviews. Based on these reviews, 14 papers were selected for presentation and inclusion in the proceedings. The accepted papers are all of excellent quality and cover topics that range from mobile networks and location-based services, to contextual representation and mapping, to geospatial Web techniques, to object tracking in Web and mobile environments. We wish to thank all authors that contributed to this symposium for the high quality of their papers and presentations. Our sincere thanks go to Springer's LNCS team. We would also like to acknowledge and thank the Program C- mittee members for the quality and timeliness of their reviews. Finally, many thanks to the Steering Committee members for providing continuous support and advice.

Today it is almost impossible to remember what life was like with no computer, no mobile phone, and no Internet for accessing information, performing tra- actions or exchanging emails and data. New technology is bringing wave after wave of new bene?ts to daily life: organisations are doing business with each other via the Internet; people are ?lling in tax declarations online and booking their next vacation through the Internet. In general we are all progressively - ing (and dependent on) software and services running on computers, connecting mobile phones and other devices, and exchanging information on the Internet. People like to shop around and exercise choice. So do businesses and public administrations. Today they can buy a complete software package that best suits their needs, even though they may never use some of the tools it o?ers, or other desirable tools are not available. In the future they may no longer have to compromise on choice. Alternative approaches like "e;Software as a Service"e; and "e;Computing Resources as a Service"e; are emerging. Software is provided on-line as a service when and where it is needed, and the same for computing resources needed to run software. Such an approach allows individuals and organisations totapintoande?ectivelyharnesstheimmensewealthofinformation,knowledge and analytical resources when they need them, paying only for what they use. Customersareboundtobene?twhenthereisasu?cientlyrichchoiceofservices.

This volume contains the proceedings of the International Middleware Con- rence, held in Leuven, Belgium during December 1-4, 2008. This year marked the ninth rendition of this annual conference in its current format initially - opted in 1998, aspiring to serve as the premier venue focusing exclusively on important middleware results. A lot has happened over the intervening 10-year span. Middleware has become pervasive in an increasinglyinterconnected world, with its concepts now securely embedded in the notional architectures driving forward the information age. The conference continues to be a focal point for important new initiatives and results for new generations of middleware. With each succeeding year, it has become an even more competitive publishing venue, further extending its selectivity this year as well. Of the 117 submissions, - ly 21 were able to receive acceptance invitations, for an acceptance rate of less than18%. Competitiveindeed. Additionally,thesesubmissionscontinuetocome from all over the globe, spanning authors from 23 countries. A truly world-wide endeavor. But other things have also changed as we turn the corner on the ?rst decade of this conference. In many ways, middleware has achieved signi?cant success where it really counts: in terms of technical innovations, advanced capabilities, successful ideas, and ?elded systems which permeate society, industry, gov- nment, and academia. With this success comes maturity.

The all pervasive web is influencing all aspects of human endeavour. In order to strengthen the description of web resources, so that they are more meaningful to both humans and machines, web semantics have been proposed. These allow better annotation, understanding, search, interpretation and composition of these - sources. The growing importance of these has brought about a great increase in research into these issues. We propose a series of books that will address key issues in web semantics on an annual basis. This book series can be considered as an extended journal published annually. The series will combine theoretical results, standards, and their realizations in applications and implementations. The series is titled "e;Advances in Web Sem- tics"e; and will be published periodically by Springer to promote emerging Semantic Web technologies. It will contain the cream of the collective contribution of the Int- national Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Web Semantics Working Group; WG 2. 12 & WG 12. 4. This book, addressing the current state of the art, is the first in the series. In subsequent years, books will address a particular theme, topic or issue where the greatest advances are being made. Examples of such topics include: (i) process semantics, (ii) web services, (iii) ontologies, (iv) workflows, (v) trust and reputation, (vi) web applications, etc. Periodically, perhaps every five years, there will be a scene-setting state of the art volume.

Wearepleasedtopresenttheproceedingsofthe14thMontereyWorkshop,which tookplaceSeptember10-13,2007inMonterey,CA,USA. Inthispreface,wegive the reader an overview of what took place at the workshop and introduce the contributions in this Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume. A complete introduction to the theme of the workshop, as well as to the history of the Monterey Workshop series, can be found in Luqi and Kordon's "e;Advances in Requirements Engineering: Bridging the Gap between Stakeholders' Needs and Formal Designs"e; in this volume. This paper also contains the case study that many participants used as a problem to frame their analyses, and a summary of the workshop's results. The workshop consisted of three keynote talks, three panels, presentations of peer-reviewed papers, as well as presentations of various position papers by the participants. The keynote speakers at this year's workshop were Daniel Berry, Aravind Joshi, and Lori Clarke. Each of their talks was used to set the tone for the p- sentations and discussions for that particular day. Daniel Berry presented an overview of the needs and challenges of natural language processing in requi- ments engineering, with a special focus on ambiguity in his talk "e;Ambiguity in Natural Language Requirements. "e; Aravind Joshi provided an overview of current natural language processing research in discourse analysis in the talk "e;Some Recent Developments in Natural Language Processing. "e; Finally, Lori Clarke showed how to combine formal requirements speci?cation with natural language processing to cope with the complex domain of medical information processes in "e;Getting the Details Right.

In 2008 the Workshop on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing left the USA to celebrate its 21st anninversary in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Following its long-established tradition, the workshop focused on topics at the frontierofresearchanddevelopmentinlanguages,optimizingcompilers,appli- tions, and programming models for high-performance computing. While LCPC continues to focus on parallel computing, the 2008 edition included the pres- tation of papers on program analysis that are precursors of high performance in parallel environments. LCPC 2008 received 35 paper submissions. Eachpaper received at least three independent reviews, and then the papers and the referee comments were d- cussed during a Program Committee meeting. The PC decided to accept 18 papers as regular papers and 6 papers as short papers. The short papers appear at the end of this volume. The LCPC 2008 program was fortunate to include two keynote talks. Keshav Pingali's talk titled "e;Amorphous Data Parallelism in Irregular Programs"e; - gued that irregular programs have data parallelism in the iterative processing of worklists. Pingali described the Galois system developed at The University of Texas at Austin to exploit this kind of amorphous data parallelism. The second keynote talk, "e;Generic ParallelAlgorithms in Threading Building Bocks (TBB),"e; presented by Arch Robison from Intel Corporation addressed very practical aspects of using TBB, a production C++ library, for generic p- allel programming and contrasted TBB with the Standard Template Library (STL).

Inthesummerof2008,reinforcementlearningresearchersfromaroundtheworld gathered in the north of France for a week of talks and discussions on reinfor- ment learning, on how it could be made more e?cient, applied to a broader range of applications, and utilized at more abstract and symbolic levels. As a participant in this 8th European Workshop on Reinforcement Learning, I was struck by both the quality and quantity of the presentations. There were four full days of short talks, over 50 in all, far more than there have been at any p- vious meeting on reinforcement learning in Europe, or indeed, anywhere else in the world. There was an air of excitement as substantial progress was reported in many areas including Computer Go, robotics, and ?tted methods. Overall, the work reported seemed to me to be an excellent, broad, and representative sample of cutting-edge reinforcement learning research. Some of the best of it is collected and published in this volume. The workshopandthe paperscollectedhere provideevidence thatthe ?eldof reinforcement learning remains vigorous and varied. It is appropriate to re?ect on some of the reasons for this. One is that the ?eld remains focused on a pr- lem - sequential decision making - without prejudice as to solution methods. Another is the existence of a common terminology and body of theory.

This volume contains scientific papers and case studies presented at Interactive Sto- telling '08: The First Joint International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS), held November 26-29, 2008, in Erfurt, Germany. Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS) is a cross-disciplinary topic, which explores new uses of interactive technologies for creating and experiencing narratives. IDS is also a huge step forward in games and learning. This can be seen through its ability to enrich virtual characters with intelligent behavior, to allow collaboration of humans and machines in the creative process, and to combine narrative knowledge and user activity in interactive artifacts. IDS involves concepts from many aspects of Computer Science, above all from Artificial Intelligence, with topics such as narrative intelligence, automatic dialogue and drama management, and smart graphics. In order to process stories in real time, traditional storytelling needs to be formalized into computable models by drawing from narratological studies. As it is currently hardly accessible for creators and e- users, there is a need for new authoring concepts and tools supporting the creation of such dynamic stories, allowing for rich and meaningful interaction with the content.

Prazise Interventionen zur Forderung von Motivation, Ressourcen und emotionaler NaheDie Intensive psychodynamische Kurzzeittherapie nach Davanloo (IS-TDP) basiert auf 40 Jahren audiovisueller empirischer Forschung und ist eine umfassende, revolutionre Therapiemethode fr alle neurotischen Symptom- und Persnlichkeitsstrungen, einschlielich frher Strungen und schwerer Traumatisierungen.Auf neurobiologisch definierten Bahnen werden bisher verdrngte kindliche Gefhle von Wut, Schuld und Trauer bewusst erlebt und systematisch durchgearbeitet. Gleichzeitig verndert sich die dazu gehrende destruktive Organisation fr unbewusste Abwehr - und Beziehungsmuster.Aus dem Inhalt: - Einfhrung in die Theorie der Technik- Viele Beispiele, die die spezifischen technischen Interventionen der IS-TDP aufzeigen- Anwendung der IS-TDP bei verschiedenen Strungsbildern an Hand von kommentierten Transkripten aus Erstinterviews, Therapieverlufen und Katamnesen.Fr alle Therapeuten, die den Umgang mit den Widerstnden ihrer Patienten und ihren kindlich-intensiven Gefhlen nicht scheuen.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems (SSS), held November 21-23, 2008 in Detroit, Michigan USA. SSS started as the Workshop on Self-Stabilizing Systems (WSS), which was ?rst held at Austin in 1989. From the second WSS in Las Vegas in 1995, the - rum was held biennially, at Santa Barbara(1997),Austin (1999), Lisbon (2001), San Francisco (2003) and Barcelona (2005). The title of the forum changed to the Symposium on Self-Stabilizing Systems (SSS) in 2003. Since 2005, SSS was run annually, and in 2006 (Dallas) the scope of the conference was extended to cover all safety and security-related aspects of self-* systems. This extension followed the demand for self-stabilization in various areas of distributed c- puting including peer-to-peer networks, wireless sensor networks, mobile ad-hoc networks, robotic networks. To re?ect this change, the name of the symposium changed to the International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems (SSS). This year we received 43 submissions from 13 countries. Most submissions were from the USA and France. Each submission was carefully reviewed by three to six Program Committee members with the help of external reviewers. For the ?rst time a rebuttal phase allowed the authors to react to the reviews beforethediscussionofthepaperswithintheProgramCommittee. Outofthe43 submissions,17excellentpaperswereselectedforpresentationatthesymposium, whichcorrespondsto anacceptancerateof40%. Itcanbenotedthatthehighest acceptance rate was for papers with keywordssensor networks (86%),MANETs (67%),andsecurityof sensorandmobile networksprotocols (67%).

The Workshop on Self-sustaining Systems (S3) is a forum for the discussion of topics relating to computer systems and languages that are able to bootstrap, implement, modify, and maintain themselves. One property of these systems is that their implementation is based onsmall but powerfulabstractions;examples include (amongst others) Squeak/Smalltalk, COLA, Klein/Self, PyPy/Python, Rubinius/Ruby,andLisp.Suchsystemsaretheenginesoftheirownreplacement, giving researchers and developers great power to experiment with, and explore future directions from within, their own small language kernels. S3 took place on May 15-16, 2008 at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute (HPI) in Potsdam, Germany. It was an exciting opportunity for researchers and prac- tioners interested in self-sustaining systems to meet and share their knowledge, experience, and ideas for future research and development. S3 provided an - portunity for a community to gather and discuss the need for self-sustainability in software systems, and to share and explore thoughts on why such systems are needed and how they can be created and deployed. Analogies were made, for example, with evolutionary cycles, and with urban design and the subsequent inevitable socially-driven change. TheS3participantsleftwithagreatersenseofcommunityandanenthusiasm for probing more deeply into this subject. We see the need for self-sustaining systems becoming critical not only to the developer's community, but to e- users in business, academia, learning and play, and so we hope that this S3 workshop will become the ?rst of many.

The Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI) is one of the preeminent international conferences on artificial intelligence (AI). PRICAI 2008 (http://www.jaist.ac.jp/PRICAI-08/) was the tenth in this series of biennial int- national conferences highlighting the most significant contributions to the field of AI. The conference was held during December 15-19, 2008, in the beautiful city Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. As in previous years this year's technical program saw very high standards in both the submission and paper review process, resulting in an exciting program that reflects the great variety and depth of modern AI research. This year's contributions covered all traditional areas of AI, including AI foundations, knowledge representation, knowledge acquisition and ontologies, evolutionary computation, etc., as well as va- ous exciting and innovative applications of AI to many different areas. There was particular emphasis in the areas of machine learning and data mining, intelligent agents, language and speech processing, information retrieval and extraction.

These are the proceedings of IPTComm 2008 - the Second Conference on Pr- ciples,Systems andApplications ofIP Telecommunications-heldinHeidelberg, Germany, July 1-2, 2008. The scope of the conference included recent advances in the domains of convergent networks, VoIP security and multimedia service environments for next generation networks. The conference attracted 56 s- missions, of which the Program Committee selected 16 papers for publication. The review process followed strict standards: each paper received at least three reviews. We would like to thank all Program Committee members and external reviewers for their contribution to the review process. The conference attracted attendees from academia and industry. Its excellence is re?ected in the quality of the contributed papers and invited talks. Additional industry talks and - plied demonstrations assured a synergy between academic and applied research. We would also like to acknowledge and thank our sponsors, many of whom s- portedtheconferencegenerously:NEC,AT&T,Codenomicon,IPTEGO,EADS, Cellcrypt, MuDynamics, SIP Forum and EURESCOM, Finally, we would like to thank all the researchers and authors from all over the world who submitted their work to the IPTComm 2008 conference.

This book is the proceedings of the Third Annual Conference on Fuzzy Information and Engineering (ACFIE2008) from Dec. 5-10, 2008 in Haikou, China. The conf- ence proceedingsis published by Springer-Verlag(Advancesin Soft Computing,ISSN: 1615-3871). This year, we have received 155 submissions. Each paper has undergone a rigorous review process. Only high-quality papers are included. The Third Annual Conference on Fuzzy Information and Engineering (ACFIE2008), built on the success of previous conferences,the ACFIE2005 (Guangzhou,China), is a major symposium for scientists, engineers and practitioners in China to present their updated results, ideas, devel- ments and applications in all areas of fuzzy information and engineering. It aims to strengthen relations between industry research laboratoriesand universities, and to c- ate a primary symposium for world scientists in fuzzy ?elds as follows: 1) Fuzzy intelligence, neural networks and optimal; 2) Fuzzy algebra; 3) Fuzzy analysis; 4) Fuzzy systems and logic; 5) Fuzzy topology and measure; 6)Fuzzy probability, control, forecasting and decision-making; 7) Fuzzy clustering and fuzzy algorithms; 8) Application in fuzzy sets; 9) Rough sets and its application; etc. This book contains 80 papers, divided into nine main parts: In Section I, we have 9 papers on "e;fuzzy intelligence, neural networks and optimal"e;. In Section II, we have 11 papers on "e;fuzzy algebra"e;. In Section III, we have 9 papers on "e;fuzzy analysis"e;. In Section IV, we have 9 papers on "e;fuzzy systems and logic"e;. In Section V, we have 9 papers on "e;fuzzy topology and measure"e;.

IDEAL 2008 was the ninth IDEAL conference to take place; earlier editions were held in Hong Kong, the UK, Australia and Spain. This was the first time, though hopefully not the last time, that it took place in Daejeon, South Korea, during November 2-5, 2008. As the name suggests, the conference attracts researchers who are involved in either data engineering or learning or, increasingly, both. The former topic involves such aspects as data mining (or intelligent knowledge discovery from databases), infor- tion retrieval systems, data warehousing, speech/image/video processing, and mul- media data analysis. There has been a traditional strand of data engineering at IDEAL conferences which has been based on financial data management such as fraud det- tion, portfolio analysis, prediction and so on. This has more recently been joined by a strand devoted to bioinformatics, particularly neuroinformatics and gene expression analysis. Learning is the other major topic for these conferences and this is addressed by - searchers in artificial neural networks, machine learning, evolutionary algorithms, artificial immune systems, ant algorithms, probabilistic modelling, fuzzy systems and agent modelling. The core of all these algorithms is adaptation.

Multi-agent systems are communities of problem-solving entities that can exhibit varying degrees of intelligence. They can perceive and react to their environment, they can have individual or joint goals, for which they can plan and execute actions. Work on such systems integrates many technologies and concepts in - ti?cial intelligence and other areas of computing as well as other disciplines. The agent paradigm has become widely popular and widely used in recent years, due to its applicability to a large range of domains, from search engines to edu- tional aids to electronic commerce and trade, e-procurement, recommendation systems, simulation and routing, and ambient intelligence, to cite only some. Computational logic provides a well-de?ned, general, and rigorous framework for studying syntax, semantics, and procedures for various capabilities and fu- tionalities of individual agents, as well as interaction amongst agents in multi-agent systems. It also provides a well-de?ned and rigorous framework for implemen- tions, environments, tools, and standards, and for linking together speci?cation and veri?cation of properties of individual agents and multi-agent systems. The CLIMA workshop series was founded to provide a forum for discussing, presenting, and promoting computational logic-based approaches in the design, development, analysis, and application of multi-agent systems.

The 2008 International Symposium on Rule Interchange and Applications (RuleML th 2008), collocated in Orlando, Florida, with the 11 International Business Rules - rum, was the premier place to meet and to exchange ideas from all fields of rules te- nologies. The aim of RuleML 2008 was both to present new and interesting research results and to show successfully deployed rule-based applications. This annual sym- sium is the flagship event of the Rule Markup and Modeling Initiative (RuleML). The RuleML Initiative (www.ruleml.org) is a non-profit umbrella organization of several technical groups organized by representatives from academia, industry and government working on rule technologies and applications. Its aim is to promote the study, research and application of rules in heterogeneous distributed environments such as the Web. RuleML maintains effective links with other major international societies and acts as intermediary between various 'specialized' rule vendors, appli- tions, industrial and academic research groups, as well as standardization efforts from, for example, W3C, OMG, and OASIS.

It is our pleasure to present the proceedings of Discovery Science 2008, the 11th International Conference on Discovery Science held in Budapest, Hungary, October 13-16, 2008. It was co-located with ALT 2008, the 19th International Conference on Algorithmic Learning Theory, whose proceedings are available in the twin volume LNAI 5254. This combination of DS and ALT conferences has been successfully organized each year since 2002. It provides a forum for the researchersworking on many di?erent aspects of scienti?c discovery. Indeed, ALT/DS 2008 covered both the possibility to automate part of the scienti?c discoveryandthenecessarysupporttothehumanprocessofdiscoveryinscience. Interestingly, this co-location also provided the opportunity for an exciting joint program of tutorials and invited talks. The number of submitted papers was 58, i.e., slightly more than the previous year. The Program Committee members were involved in a rigorous selection process based on three reviews per paper. At the end, we selected 26 long papers thanks to the recommendations of the experts based on relevance, novelty, signi?cance, technical quality, and clarity. Although some short papers were submitted, none of them was selected.

On behalf of the Organizing Committee we are pleased to present the p- ceedings of the 2008 Symposium on Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE). CBSE is concerned with the development of software-intensivesystems from independently developed software-building blocks (components), the - velopment of components, and system maintenance and improvement by means of component replacement and customization. CBSE 2008 was the 11th in a series of events that promote a science and technology foundation for achieving predictable quality in software systems through the use of software component technology and its associated software engineering practices. Wewerefortunateto haveadedicatedProgramCommitteecomprisingmany internationallyrecognizedresearchersandindustrialpractitioners.Wewouldlike to thank the members of the Program Committee and associated reviewers for their contribution in making this conference a success. We received 70 subm- sions and each paper was reviewed by at least three Program Committee m- bers (four for papers with an author on the Program Committee). The entire reviewing process was supported by the Conference Management Toolkit p- vided by Microsoft. In total, 20 submissions were accepted as full papers and 3 submissions were accepted as short papers.

Conceptual modeling has long been recognized as the primary means to enable so- ware development in information systems and data engineering. Conceptual modeling provides languages, methods and tools to understand and represent the application domain; to elicit, conceptualize and formalize system requirements and user needs; to communicate systems designs to all stakeholders; and to formally verify and validate systems design on high levels of abstraction. The International Conference on Conceptual Modeling provides a premiere forum for presenting and discussing current research and applications in which the major emphasis is on conceptual modeling. Topics of interest span the entire spectrum of conceptual modeling including research and practice in areas such as theories of concepts and ontologies underlying conceptual modeling, methods and tools for - veloping and communicating conceptual models, and techniques for transforming conceptual models into effective implementations. The scientific program of ER 2008 featured several activities running in parallel. The core activity was the presentation of the 33 research papers published in this volume, which were selected by a large Program Committee (PC) Co-chaired by Qing Li, Stefano Spaccapietra and Eric Yu. We thank the PC Co-chairs, the PC members and the additional referees for the hard work done, often within a short time. Thanks are also due to Moira Norrie from ETH Zurich, Oscar Pastor from the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, and Amit Sheth from the Wright State Univ- sity for accepting our invitation to present keynotes.

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the proceedings of the second International Castle Meeting on Coding Theory and its Applications, held at La Mota Castle in Medina del Campo. The event provided a forum for the exchange of results and ideas, which we hope will foster future collaboration. The ?rst meeting was held in 1999, and, encouraged by that experience, we now intend to hold the meeting every three years. Springer kindly accepted to publish the proceedings volume you have in your hands in their LNCS series. The topics were selected to cover some of the areas of research in Coding Theory that are currently receiving the most attention. The program consisted of a mixture of invited and submitted talks, with the focus on quality rather than quantity. A total of 34 papers were submitted to themeeting.Afteracarefulreviewprocessconductedbythescienti?ccommittee aided by external reviewers, we selected 14 of these for inclusion in the current volume, along with 5 invited papers. The program was further augmented by the remaining invited papers in addition to papers on recent results, printed in a separate volume. We would like to thank everyone who made this meeting possible by helping with the practical and scienti?c preparations: the organization committee, the scienti?c committee, the invited speakers, and the many external reviewers who shall remain anonymous. I would especially like to mention the General Advisor ofthe meeting, oyvindYtrehus.Finally Iextend mygratitudeto allthe authors and participants who contributed to this meeting.

Research on theoretical aspects of computing has a direct impact on the pr- tice of computer systems development. Over many decades, fundamental t- ories have emerged to describe functionality, temporal behavior and resource consumption. Theories of application domains are beginning to be exploited for modelling and analyzing intended computing systems before the expensive c- mitment is made to real programs and hardware. Recent years have seen major improvements in the cost-e?ectiveness of tools supporting the exploitation of theories through proof, model-checking and testing. Against this encouraging background, we are pleased to present papers that show something of the live- ness and diversity of research in theoretical aspects of computing today. ICTAC 2008, the 5th International Colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing, was held on 1-3 September 2008 in Istanbul, Turkey, hosted by - banc? University. The ICTAC series was founded by the International Institute for SoftwareTechnologyof the United Nations University(UNU-IIST). It brings together practitioners and researchers from academia, industry and government to present results and to exchange ideas and experience addressing challenges in both theoretical aspects of computing and in the exploitation of theory through methodsandtoolsforsystemdevelopment. Theseriesalsopromotescooperation in research and education between participants and their institutions, from - veloping and industrial countries, in accordance with the mandate of the United Nations University. The previous ICTAC colloquia were held in Guiyang, China (2004, LNCS 3407), Hanoi, Vietnam (2005, LNCS 3722), Tunis, Tunisia (2006, LNCS 4281) and Macau SAR, China (2007, LNCS 4711).

This volume contains the best papers presented at the 12th East-European Conference on Advances in Databases and Information Systems (ADBIS 2008) held during S- tember 5-9, 2008, in Pori, Finland. The series of ADBIS conferences is the successor of the annual international workshops with the same title that during 1993-1996 were organized in Russia by the Moscow ACM SIGMOD Chapter. ADBIS 2008 continues the series of ADBIS conferences held in St. Petersburg, Russia (1997), Poznan, Poland (1998), Maribor, Slovenia (1999), Prague, Czech Republic (2000), Vilnius, Lithuania (2001), Bratislava, Slovakia (2002), Dresden, Germany (2003), Budapest, Hungary (2004), Tallinn, Estonia (2005), Thessaloniki, Greece (2006), and Varna, Bulgaria (2007). The conferences are initiated and supervised by an international Steering Committee chaired by professor Leonid Kalinichenko. The ADBIS conferences established an outstanding reputation as a scientific event of high quality serving as an internationally highly visible showcase for research achie- ments in the field of databases and information systems. ADBIS 2008 aimed to create conditions for experienced researchers to impart their knowledge and experience to the young researchers at pre- or post-doctoral level, and to promote interaction and colla- ration between European research communities (especially from Central and East Europe) and the rest of the world. The conference encourages contacts between the p- ticipants who are nationals of, but active outside, the Member States and Associated States and their colleagues in Member States and Associated States. Special attention is paid to collaboration of researchers in Central and East Europe.