Agent Link

Agent Link: The Spy Erased from History examines the life of Willaim Wolfe Weisband. It tells the story of his KGB recruitment and working with codebreakers at the top-secret Army Security Agency. The book reveals his motivations for spying, the extent of America’s losses, how he was caught, and the consequences of his treachery.

"This book shows systems analysts and business analysts how ontological thinking can help them clarify requirements analysis tasks in business systems"--Provided by publisher.

Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), which tackles architecting and design of complex systems through the use of formal models, is emerging as the most critical component of systems engineering. This textbook specifies the two leading conceptual modeling languages, OPM—the new ISO 19450, composed primarily by the author of this book, and OMG SysML. It provides essential insights into a domain-independent, discipline-crossing methodology of developing or researching complex systems of any conceivable kind and size. Combining theory with a host of industrial, biological, and daily life examples, the book explains principles and provides guidelines for architecting complex, multidisciplinary systems, making it an indispensable resource for systems architects and designers, engineers of any discipline, executives at all levels, project managers, IT professional, systems scientists, and engineering students.

This book presents selected tutorial lectures given at the summer school on Multi-Agent Systems and Their Applications held in Prague, Czech Republic, in July 2001 under the sponsorship of ECCAI and Agent Link. The 20 lectures by leading researchers in the field presented in the book give a competent state-of-the-art account of research and development in the field of multi-agent systems and advanced applications. The book offers parts on foundations of MAS; social behaviour, meta-reasoning, and learning; and applications.

It is now no longer necessary to argue the importance of agent technology. Be- des numerous conferences and workshops on speci c aspects of agent technology there are also many companies that are exploring its exploitation possibilities. In the light of these developments and in order to foster the transfer of agent technology from research labs to business, the EU has funded a \network of exc- lence" devoted to agent technology. This network of excellence, called AgentLink (http://www. agentlink. org/), aims at bringing together research groups from d- ferent countries and industrial developers. The ultimate goal is to create synergy among the di erent projects and groups to improve the competence of European industry and the excellence of academia. In order to achieve this goal, Agent- Link organises educational activities (summer schools), builds agent-related - terature repositories, and facilitates collaboration between member nodes. One of the main activities related to the last point are the regular meetings of \S- cial Interest Groups" (SIGs). At this moment six SIGs are functioning, focusing on topics ranging from agent based social simulation to intelligent agents for telecommunications applications and telematics. The current book combines two results from the activities of the SIG on \Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce". This SIG gathers the main research groups and industrial partners interested in the use of agent technology in el- tronic commerce. First and foremost the book contains a roadmap of research and current technological developments in the area of agent-mediated electronic commerce.

Conceptual modeling is about describing the semantics of software applications at a high level of abstraction in terms of structure, behavior, and user interaction. Embley and Thalheim start with a manifesto stating that the dream of developing information systems strictly by conceptual modeling – as expressed in the phrase “the model is the code” – is becoming reality. The subsequent contributions written by leading researchers in the field support the manifesto's assertions, showing not only how to abstractly model complex information systems but also how to formalize abstract specifications in ways that let developers complete programming tasks within the conceptual model itself. They are grouped into sections on programming with conceptual models, structure modeling, process modeling, user interface modeling, and special challenge areas such as conceptual geometric modeling, information integration, and biological conceptual modeling. The Handbook of Conceptual Modeling collects in a single volume many of the best conceptual-modeling ideas, techniques, and practices as well as the challenges that drive research in the field. Thus it is much more than a traditional handbook for advanced professionals, as it also provides both a firm foundation for the field of conceptual modeling, and points researchers and graduate students towards interesting challenges and paths for how to contribute to this fundamental field of computer science.

Designing Distributed Learning Environments with Intelligent Software Agents reports on the most recent advances in agent technologies for distributed learning. Chapters are devoted to the various aspects of intelligent software agents in distributed learning, including the methodological and technical issues on where and how intelligent agents can contribute to meeting distributed learning needs today and tomorrow. This book benefits the AI (artificial intelligence) and educational communities in their research and development, offering new and interesting research issues surrounding the development of distributed learning environments in the Semantic Web age. In addition, the ideas presented in the book are applicable to other domains such as Agent-Supported Web Services, distributed business process and resource integration, computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) and e-Commerce.

Object-Process Methodology (OPM) is an intuitive approach to systems engineering. This book presents the theory and practice of OPM with examples from various industry segments and engineering disciplines, as well as daily life. OPM is a generic, domain independent approach that is applicable almost anywhere in systems engineering.