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...

The book addresses the problem known in the literature as Open and Distance Learning (ODL). ODL describes new concepts of the process of learning-teaching organization. ODL is becoming very popular at universities that offer education via online and/or distance learning, both in synchronous or asynchronous modes. More precisely, the...

This volume collects the proceedings of two related international conferences on foundations and practical applications of mathematical methods of data analysis, of Formal Concept Analysis and of methods for information extraction from natural language texts. The first conference, named Knowledge - Ontology - Theory 2007 (KONT 2007),...

Indeed, this volume...

The International Symposium on Smart Graphics serves as a scientific forum that attracts researchers and practitioners from the fields of computer graphics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, human–computer interaction, interface design, and information visualization. Initiated by Andreas Butz, Antonio Kr¨uger, and...

On behalf of the Program Committee, it is our pleasure to present to you the proceedings of the 8th Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA 2011). Each year DIMVA brings together international experts from academia, industry and government to present and discuss novel security research....

Welcome to the proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management held in Portland, Oregon, where it celebrated its 30th birthday. The first incarnation of SSDBM (then called the Workshop on Statistical Database Management) took place in Menlo Park, California, in December 1981. Since...

The 16th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems (NLDB 2011) was held during June 28–30, 2011, at the University of Alicante, Spain. Since the first NLDB conference in 1995, the main goal has been to provide a forum for the discussion and dissemination of research on the integration of...

STA 2011 was the first conference after the merger of the...

On behalf of the INTECH 2011 Program Committee and the University of Sao Carlos in Brazil, we welcome you to the proceedings of the First International Conference on Integrated Computing Technology (INTECH 2011). The INTECH 2011 conference explored new advances in computing technology and its applications. It brought together...

In 1862, the gardener James Bateman sent several specimens of the Christmas orchid to Charles Darwin. This orchid was first planted in Britain in 1855 and it did not blossom until 1857. It had been discovered several decades before by the French botanist Louis-Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars in Madagascar in 1822. The most significant...

A book is like a window that allows you to look into the world. The window is shaped by the author and that makes that every window presents a unique view of the world. This is certainly true for this book. It is shaped by the topics and the projects throughout my career. Even more so, this book reflects my own style of working and...