Since the first part of the twentieth century, cybernetics and systems research have been developed as scientific disciplines. Investigations, launched in the area of cybernetics, previously dealt with control and information processing. In a more narrow sense, they consisted in the consideration of analogies of the control and the...

Soft Computing (SC) techniques have been recognized nowadays as attractive solutions for modeling highly nonlinear or partially defined complex systems and processes. These techniques resemble biological processes more closely than conventional (more formal) techniques. However, despite its increasing popularity, soft computing lacks...

My journey down the social media road began years ago, and many people have praised me for my foresight and brilliance. They are very kind, but the truth is, what really took me down this road was desperation. A few years ago—perhaps you remember—the economy took a heck of a dip. On its way down, it punched me in the...

It is a great pleasure for me to write this foreword about a book that comes out of one of the first research projects funded by ANR, the French National Research Agency. ANR was established by the French government in 2005 to fund research projects, based on competitive schemes giving researchers the best opportunities to realize...

Information security has become a critical component in the stability and progress of the modern world. With high expectations from the public and stringent regulations from legislative and industry bodies, never have the pressures on corporations, governments and other organizations been so great to protect their own data as well as...

Semantic Web and Knowledge Management has been accepted as a critical enabler aiming to increase knowledge-related performance...

There is no escaping the reality that businesses live on the Web today. From banks to bookstores, from auctions to games, the Web is the place where most businesses ply their trade. For consumers, the Web has become the place where they do the majority of their business as well. For example, nearly 50 percent of all retail music sales in the...

For this project, timing and tone...

In 1999, in The Return of Depression Economics, Paul Krugman surveyed the economic crises that had swept across Asia and Latin America, and pointed out that those crises were a warning for all of us: like diseases that have become resistant to antibiotics, the economic maladies that caused the Great Depression were making a comeback. In...

Distributed computing paradigms for sharing resources such as Clouds, Grids, Peer-to-Peer systems, or voluntary computing are becoming increasingly popular. While there are some success stories such as PlanetLab, OneLab, BOINC, BitTorrent, and SETI@home, a widespread use of these technologies for business applications has not yet been...

"Endowed with strong parents and a bit of luck, Leo Melamed has made a remarkable escape from Nazi occupied Poland to building one of the pinnacles of global finance. Over four decades and more, he was the leading force in bringing his beloved 'Merc' from obscure trading pits for butter...

This conference will discuss issues pertaining to...