Sofsem 2002

Forthe29thtime,SOFSEM(SOFtwareSEMinar)washeld.Havingtransformed over the years from a local event to a fully international conference, the c- temporary SOFSEM is a mix of a winter school and a conference striving for multidisciplinarity in computer science, accompaniedby workshops dedicated to a narrow ?eld (this year multimedia and softcomputing) and a student forum. This volume constitutes the proceedings of SOFSEM 2002 held in Milovy, Czech Republic, November 22–29, 2002. This year, 23 papers were submitted from 11 countries. The selection of the 11 best papers accepted by the Program Committee was based on their contribution to the state of the art, technical soundness, clarity of presentation, and relevance of bibliography. The Steering Committee supported by the Advisory Board recommended 12 invited talks focusedonthefollowingkeytopicareas:distributedandparallelsystems,system design and testing, databases and information systems, and fundamentals. SOFSEM is the result of considerable e?ort by a number of people. It is our pleasure to record our thanks to the Advisory Board for its support, to the Steering Committee for its general guidance, and to the Organizing Committee for making SOFSEM 2002 happen. It has been an honor for us to work with the members of the Program Committee and other referees who devoted a lot of e?ort to reviewing the submitted papers.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 5th International Conference on High Performance Computing for Computational Science, VECPAR 2002, held in Porto, Portugal in June 2002. The 45 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited papers were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers are organized in topical sections on fluids and structures, data mining, computing in chemistry and biology, problem solving environments, computational linear and non-linear algebra, cluster computing, imaging, and software tools and environments.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Joint ERCIM/CologNet International Workshop on Constraint Solving and Constraint Logic Programming, held in Cork, Ireland in June 2002. The 14 revised full papers presented were carefully selected for inclusion in the book during two rounds of reviewing and revision. Among the topics addressed are verification and debugging of constraint logic programs, modeling and solving CSPs, explanation generation, inference and inconsistency processing, SAT and 0/1 encodings of CSPs, soft constraints and constraint relaxation, real-world applications, and distributed constraint solving.

The motivation behind the conception of this monograph was to advance scientific knowledge about the design and control of workflow processes. A workflow pr- ess (or workflow for short) is a specific type of business process, a way of or- nizing work and resources. Workflows are commonly found within large admin- trative organizations such as banks, insurance companies, and governmental agencies. Carrying out the tasks of a workflow in a particular order is required to handle one type of case. Examples of cases are mortgage applications, customer complaints, and claims for unemployment benefits. A workflow used in handling mortgage applications may contain tasks for recording the application, specifying a mortgage proposal, and approving the final policy. The monograph concentrates on four workflow-related issues within the area of Business Process Management; the field of designing and controlling business processes. The first issue is how workflows can be adequately modeled. Workflow mod- ing is an indispensable activity to support any reasoning about workflows. Diff- ent purposes of workflow modeling can be distinguished, such as system ena- ment by Workflow Management Systems, knowledge management, costing, and budgeting. The focus of workflow modeling in this monograph is (a) to support simulation and analysis of workflows and (b) to specify a new workflow design. The main formalism used for the modeling of workflows is the Petri net. Many - isting notions to define several relevant properties have been adopted, such as the workflow net and the soundness notion.

The introduction to the 1st International Conference on Computers for Han- cappedPersons(Vienna,1989)byAMinTjoa(UniversityofVienna)andRoland Wagner(UniversityofLinz)?nishedwiththefollowingmissionstatementonthe “Future Direction on Computers for Handicapped Persons”: “The di?erent themes show that a lot of problems are solved by the usage of computer technology for helping handicapped persons, for instance for the blind and visually handicapped. A consequence of the discussed themes there are two directions which should be done in the next years. One direction is obvious. The tools must be improved and research and development work should be extended to all groups of handicapped (even if they are numerically not so large as for instancetheblindorvisuallyhandicappedpersons). Ontheothersideinthearea of social implications there is an increasing demand on social science studies on overall computer use among disabled persons. Because sources are in principle missing today about disabled persons work tasks, research in this ?eld must begin by trying to survey this aspect. Particular attention should be paid to the extent and character of computer use among the handicapped in work life. There are a lot of questions, which should be answered during the next years for reaching the aim of rehabilitation. ” Fifteen years later the 9th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (Paris, 2004) o?ered a comprehensive and deepened view on general awareness,special research and individual applications conce- ing disabled people and their participation in our society.

nd The 2 International Conference on Web-Based Learning (ICWL 2003) took place in Melbourne, Australia. ICWL 2003 followed the tradition of the successful ICWL 2002 held in Hong Kong and aimed at providing an in-depth study of the technical and pedago- cal issues, as well as incorporating management issues of Web-based learning. Additionally, there was a focus on issues of interest to the learner, o?ering the optimal Web based learning environment to achieve high academic results. - akin University organized this conference in conjunction with the Hong Kong WebSociety,toprovideaforumwhichgatherededucators,researchers,techno- gists and implementers of Web-based learning from around the world to discuss, collaborate and advance all relevant issues pertaining to this area of research. The main focus of ICWL 2003 was on the most critical areas of Web-based learning, in particular, Web-based learning environments, virtual universities, pedagogical issues related to Web-based learning, multimedia-based e-learning, interactive e-learning systems, intelligence in on-line education, e-learning so- tions, CSCL, and authoring tools for e-learning. In total, the conference received 118 papers from researchers and practitioners from 13 countries. Each paper was reviewed by at least three internationally renowned referees. Papers were ri- rously examined and selected based on their originality, signi?cance, correctness, relevance, and clarity of presentation. Among the high-quality submissions, 50 papers were accepted and included in the proceedings. Later, the proceedings editors will recommend that some high-quality papers from the conference be published in a special issue of an international journal.

ARIST, published annually since 1966, is a landmark publication within the information science community. It surveys the landscape of information science and technology, providing an analytical, authoritative, and accessible overview of recent trends and significant developments. The range of topics varies considerably, reflecting the dynamism of the discipline and the diversity of theoretical and applied perspectives. While ARIST continues to cover key topics associated with "classical" information science (e.g., bibliometrics, information retrieval), editor Blaise Cronin is selectively expanding its footprint in an effort to connect information science more tightly with cognate academic and professional communities.