Many everyday dilemmas existing in the real world are complex and difficult to solve or fix, ranging from tax evasion to dispatching taxis to scheduling patient visits in hospitals, and much more. Within these complicated problems, however, lies the potential to be simplified or solved by intelligent agents and multi-agent systems. Theoretical and Practical Frameworks for Agent-Based Systems tackles these real problems and many more, bringing the theoretical research of intelligent agents to researchers and practitioners in academia, government, and innumerable industries. Professionals and experts in every field ranging from education to healthcare and beyond will find this reference to be essential in the understanding of agents, and researchers currently working in the field of intelligent agents will benefit from this exciting examination of practical applications.

As advances in technology continue to generate the collective knowledge of an organization and its operations, strategic models for information systems are developed in order to arrange business processes and business data. Frameworks for Developing Efficient Information Systems: Models, Theory, and Practice presents research and practices on the advancements in systems analysis and design. These theoretical frameworks and practical solutions are useful for researchers, practitioners, and academicians as this book aims to bridge the communication gap between business managers and system designers.

Low-volume high-variety products like personalized cars or customized engines will be the key issues for manufacturing in the 21st century. The necessary control technology is based on the concept of holons, which are the units of production and behave as autonomous and cooperative agents, providing flexibility, adaptability, agility, and dynamic reconfigurability. This book presents the latest research results in agent-based manufacturing as carried out by researchers in academia and industry within the international "Holonic Manufacturing Systems" project. As this project was driven by industry, the results presented here are of vital interest not just to researchers in agent technologies or distributed artificial intelligence, but also to engineers and professionals in industry who have to respond to rapid changes and new demands in production.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, SOFSEM 2014, held in Nový Smokovec, Slovakia, in January 2014. The 40 revised full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 104 submissions. The book also contains 6 invited talks. The contributions covers topics as: Foundations of Computer Science, Software and Web Engineering, as well as Data, Information and Knowledge Engineering and Cryptography, Security and Verification.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the First International Workshop on Formal Approaches to Agent-Based Systems, FAABS 2000, held in Greenbelt, MD, USA, in April 2000. The 22 revised full papers presented together with 13 posters and two panel discussion reports were carefully reviewed and improved for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on verifying agents' mental states, synthesizing agents initially, frameworks and formalizations, modeling and execution, inter-agent communication, and adaptive agents.

Game Theory And Decision Theory In Agent-Based Systems is a collection of papers from international leading researchers, that offers a broad view of the many ways game theory and decision theory can be applied in agent-based systems, from standard applications of the core elements of the theory to more cutting edge developments. The range of topics discussed in this book provide the reader with the first comprehensive volume that reflects both the depth and breadth of work in applying techniques from game theory and decision theory to design agent-based systems. Chapters include: Selecting Partners; Evolution of Agents with Moral Sentiments in an IPD Exercise; Dynamic Desires; Emotions and Personality; Decision-Theoretic Approach to Game Theory; Shopbot Economics; Finding the Best Way to Join in; Shopbots and Pricebots in Electronic Service Markets; Polynomial Time Mechanisms; Multi-Agent Q-learning and Regression Trees; Satisficing Equilibria; Investigating Commitment Flexibility in Multi-agent Contracts; Pricing in Agent Economies using Multi-agent Q-learning; Using Hypergames to Increase Planned Payoff and Reduce Risk; Bilateral Negotiation with Incomplete and Uncertain Information; Robust Combinatorial Auction Protocol against False-name Bids.

The volume includes a set of selected papers extended and revised from the I2009 Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Software Engineering (KESE 2009) was held on December 19~ 20, 2009, Shenzhen, China. Volume 1 is to provide a forum for researchers, educators, engineers, and government officials involved in the general areas of Computer and Software Engineering to disseminate their latest research results and exchange views on the future research directions of these fields. 140 high-quality papers are included in the volume. Each paper has been peer-reviewed by at least 2 program committee members and selected by the volume editor Prof. Yanwen Wu. On behalf of this volume, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to all of authors and referees for their efforts reviewing the papers. Hoping you can find lots of profound research ideas and results on the related fields of Computer and Software Engineering.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference, TPNC 2013, held in Cáceres, Spain, in December 2013. The 19 revised full papers presented together with one invited talk were carefully reviewed and selected from 47 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on nature-inspired models of computation; synthesizing nature by means of computation; nature-inspired materials and information processing in nature.

With the recent and enormous increase in the amount of available data sets of all kinds, applying effective and efficient techniques for analyzing and extracting information from that data has become a crucial task. Intelligent Data Analysis for Real-Life Applications: Theory and Practice investigates the application of Intelligent Data Analysis (IDA) to these data sets through the design and development of algorithms and techniques to extract knowledge from databases. This pivotal reference explores practical applications of IDA, and it is essential for academic and research libraries as well as students, researchers, and educators in data analysis, application development, and database management.

Overviews manufacturing systems from the ground up, following the same concept as in the first edition. Delves into the fundamental building blocks of manufacturing systems: manufacturing processes and equipment. Discusses all topics from the viewpoint of four fundamental manufacturing attributes: cost, rate, flexibility and quality.