After Eastern Central European countries have opened their gates to the world, they experienced similar changes in the aspects of political, economic and social development as Taiwan did. An opportunity for scholars to exchange their observations, reflections towards the transitional situation in all these countries were provided in this conference.

An international perspective on the latest research, Compound Semiconductors 1999 presents an overview of important developments in all III-V compound semiconductors such as GaAs, InP, and GaN; II-VI compounds such as ZnS, ZnSe, and CdTe; IV-IV compounds such as SiC and SiGe; and IV-VI compounds such as PbTe and SnTe. The book emphasizes piezoelectric (or potentially smart) material heterostructures (Ga, Al, In)N, which will influence future research and development funding. As the preeminent forum for research in compound materials and their applications in devices, this essential library reference is invaluable reading for all researchers in semiconductor physics, and electronic and electrical engineering.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, PKDD'99, held in Prague, Czech Republic in September 1999. The 28 revised full papers and 48 poster presentations were carefully reviewed and selected from 106 full papers submitted. The papers are organized in topical sections on time series, applications, taxonomies and partitions, logic methods, distributed and multirelational databases, text mining and feature selection, rules and induction, and interesting and unusual issues.

"This book will be a valuable addition to the existing literature in the area, appealing to academics and researchers in European and transition studies."--BOOK JACKET.

"Addresses the evolution of database management, technologies and applications along with the progress and endeavors of new research areas."--P. xiii.

The workshop series on Text, Speech and Dialogue originated in 1998 with the ?rst TSD1998 held in Brno, Czech Republic. This year’s TSD2000, already the third in the series, returns to Brno and to its organizers from the Faculty of Informatics at the Masaryk University. As shown by the ever growing interest in TSD series, this annual workshop developed into the prime meeting of speech and language researchers from both sides of the former Iron Curtain, which provides a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the current activities in all aspects of language communication and to witness the amazing vitality of researchers from the former East Block countries. Thanks need to be extended to all who continue to make the TSD workshop series such a success: ?rst, to the authors themselves, without whom TSD2000 would not exist; next, to all organizations that support TSD2000, among them the International Speech Communication Association, the Faculty of Informatics at the Masaryk University in Brno and the Faculty of Applied Sciences, West Bohemia University in Plzen; ? and last but not least,to the organizers and members of the Program Committee who spentmuch effort to make TSD2000 success and who reviewed 131 contributions submitted from all corners of the world and accepted 75 out of them for presentation at the workshop. This book is evidence of the success of all involved.

This book is divided into three parts. The first part, ?Mathematical Tools and New Developments?, provides basic tools to treat fuzzy set theory, rough set theory, fuzzy control, fuzzy modelling, decision support systems, and related applications. The second part, ?Intelligent Engineering Applications?, reports on engineering problems such as man-machine interface, risk analysis, image processing, robotics, knowledge-based engineering, expert systems, process control integration, diagnosis, measurements and interpretation by intelligent techniques and soft computing used for general engineering applications. The third part, ?Nuclear Engineering Applications?, concentrates on nuclear applications and covers several topics such as nuclear energy, nuclear safety assessment, radioactive waste management, nuclear measurements, nuclear safeguards, nuclear reactor operation, reactor controller design, fuel reload pattern design, signal validation, nuclear power plants, and optimizations in nuclear applications.