Olga Stepankova - Böcker

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applcations, DEXA 2003, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in September 2003.The 91 revised full papers presented together with an invited paper and a position paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 236 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on XML, data modeling, spatial database systems, mobile computing, transactions, bioinformatics, information retrieval, multimedia databases, Web applications, ontologies, object-oriented databases, query optimization, workflow systems, knowledge engineering, and security.

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.

TheAdvanced Course onArti?cial IntelligenceACAI2001, with the subtitle of "Multi- Agent Systems and Their Applications", held in Prague, Czech Republic, represented a joint event of ECCAI (the European Coordinating Committee for Arti?cial Intel- gence) andAgentLink, the European Network of Excellence forAgent-Based Comp- ing. Whereas ECCAI organizes two-weekACAI courses on different topics each second year, AgentLink's European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS) has been an - nual event since 1999. In 2001, both of these important events were merged, giving weight to the fact that multi-agent systems currently represent one of the hottest topics of AI research. The name, ACAI2001 Summer School, was intended to emphasize that this event continued the tradition of regular ECCAI activities (ACAI), as well as that of the EASSS summer schools ofAgentLink. The PragueACAI Summer School was proposed and initiated by both the Gerstner Laboratory, Czech Technical University, Prague (GL-CTU) and the Czech Society for Cybernetics and Informatics (CSKI), with the support of theAustrian Research Institute forArti?cial Intelligence in Vienna (OFAI).One of the most important stimulating factors behind the organization ofACAI2001 wasthesupportprovidedbytheEuropeanCommissiontotheGerstnerLaboratorywithin the frame of the MIRACLE Centre of Excellence project (No. ICA1-CT-2000-70002). Additional support was later provided by both the Commission's AgentLink II project (IST-1999-29003) and ECCAI. The combined ?nancial and conceptual participation of these important international bodies enabled the invitation of a large number of truly world-class lecturers in this ?eld, who added a unique ?avor to the event.

This volume presents the written versions of talks delivered at the symposium "The advent of AI in Higher Education" held in Prague, Czechoslovakia, October 23-25, 1989. Contributions review the current impact of AI on the educational process, stressing the problems and needs of universities. Particular systems, projects and methodologies are de scribed with the aim of gathering and generalizing the experience obtained. The latest developments prove that AI offers interesting methods which could be used with success across a wider range in the domain of education. The nature and spirit of AI forms a new phenomenon which necessitates reconsidering the whole educational process. Papers in this volume describe sophisticated tutoring systems as well as suggestions for new curricula.