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This book contains the revised and extended versions of selected papers from the 15th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence, ICAART 2023, held in Lisbon, Portugal, during February 22–24, 2023. The 23 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 306 submissions. The conference was organized in 2 tracks as follows: One track focuses on Agents, Multi-Agent Systems and Software Platforms, Distributed Problem Solving and Distributed AI in general. The other track focuses mainly on Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Representation, Planning, Learning, Scheduling, Perception Reactive AI Systems, and Evolutionary Computing and other topics related to Intelligent Systems and Computational Intelligence.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 39th National Conference of Theoretical Computer Science, NCTCS 2021, held in Yinchuan, China, in July 2021. The 67 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 145 submissions, and 14 of them were selected for the volume. The papers present recent research in the areas of information hiding, data detection and recognition, system scheduling, time series prediction, and formal analysis.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 15th Italian Workshop on Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation, WIVACE 2021, held in Winterthur, Switzerland, in September 2022. The 14 full papers and 10 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 25 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Networks; Droplets, Fluids, and Synthetic Biology; Robot Systems; Computer Vision and Computational Creativity; Semantic Search; Artificial Medicine and Pharmacy; Trade and Finance; Ethics in Computational Modelling.Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, 22, and 24 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Bio-Inspired Computing: Theories and Applications, BIC-TA 2022, held in Wuhan, China, during December 16–18, 2022.The 56 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 148 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: evolutionary computation and swarm intelligence; machine learning and deep learning; intelligent control and simulation and molecular computing and nanotechnology.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 41st National Conference on Theoretical Computer Science, NCTCS 2023, held in Guangzhou, China, during July 21–23, 2023.The 16 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: theoretical computer science, algorithm complexity, artificial intelligence, algorithm design, machine learning theory, computational model, formal methods, network security, software and application security.

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 8th International Symposium on Algorithmic Aspects of Cloud Computing, ALGOCLOUD 2023, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on September 5, 2023. The 13 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 24 submissions. They focus on algorithmic aspects of computing and data management in modern cloud-based systems interpreted broadly so as to include edge- and fog-based systems, cloudlets, cloud micro-services, virtualization environments, decentralized systems, as well as dynamic networks.

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Algorithmic Aspects of Cloud Computing, ALGOCLOUD 2022, which took place in Potsdam, Germany, on September 6, 2022.The 6 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 16 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Cloud-Based Urban Mobility Services; New Results in Priority-Based Bin Packing; More Sparking Soundex-based Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage and Privacy Preserving Queries of Shortest Path Distances.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th Italian Workshop on Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation, WIVACE 2022, held in Gaeta, Italy, during September 14–16, 2022. The 21 full papers and 3 short papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 45 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: answer set programming; networks and complex systems, metaheuristics, robotics, and machine learningChapters 7, 8, and 9 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 40th National Conference on Theoretical Computer Science, NCTCS 2022, held in Changchun, China, during July 29–31, 2022.The 13 full papers and 6 short papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: computational theory and model; approximation algorithms; artificial intelligence; and system and resource scheduling.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Andrei P. Ershov Informatics Conference, PSI 2019, held in Novosibirsk, Russia, in July 2019.The 18 full papers and 3 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 submissions. The papers cover various topics related to the Mathematics of Computing, Information Systems, Formal Languages, dependable and fault-tolerant Systems and Network, Automata Theory, and much more.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Algorithmic Aspects of Cloud Computing, ALGOCLOUD 2021, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in September 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held online. The 4 revised full papers and 1 short paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 11 submissions. The aim of the symposium is to present research activities and results on topics related to algorithmic, design, and development aspects of modern cloud-based systems.

This book constitutes revised and selected papers of the First International Conference on Computational Sciences - Modelling, Computing and Soft Computing, held in Kozhikode, Kerala, India, in September 2020. The 15 full papers and 6 short papers presented were thoroughly reviewed and selected from the 150 submissions. They are organized in the topical secions on computing; soft computing; general computing; modelling.

This book contains the revised and extended versions of selected papers from the 12th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence, ICAART 2020, held in Valletta, Malta, in February 2020. Overall, 45 full papers, 74 short papers, and 56 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 276 initial submissions. 23 of the 45 full papers were selected to be included in this volume. These papers deal with topics such as agents and artificial intelligence.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings on Learning and Intelligent Optimization, LION 14, held in Athens, Greece, in May 2020. The 37 full papers presented together with one invited paper have been carefully reviewed and selected from 75 submissions. LION deals with designing and engineering ways of'learning'about the performance of different techniques, and ways of using past experience about the algorithm behavior to improve performance in the future. Intelligent learning schemes for mining the knowledge obtained online or offline can improve the algorithm design process and simplify the applications of high-performance optimization methods. Combinations of different algorithms can further improve the robustness and performance of the individual components. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, LION 14 was not held as a physical meeting.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Formal Techniques for Safety-Critical Systems, FTSCS 2019, held in Shenzhen, China, in November 2019.The 6 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 17 submissions. Additionally, the volume presents 1 invited paper, 1 tool paper, and 1 work in progrerss. The papers are focused on the topics of the use of formal methods for analyzing safety-critical systems; methods, techniques and tools to support automated analysis, certication, debugging, etc., of complex safety/QoS-critical systems; analysis methods that address the limitations of formal methods in industry (usability, scalability, etc.); formal analysis support for modeling languages used in industry; code generation from validated models.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems, MESAS 2017, held in Rome, Italy,, in October 2017. The 33 revised full papers included in the volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: M&S of Intelligent Systems – AI, R&D and Applications; Autonomous Systems in Context of Future Warfare and Security – Concepts, Applications, Standards and Legislation; Future Challenges and Opportunities of Advanced M&S Technology.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Ad Hoc Networks, ADHOCNETS 2014, held in Rhodes, Greece, in August 2014. The 16 regular and invited papers presented were carefully selected and reviewed from numerous submissions and cover a wide range of applications, such as mobile ad hoc networks, sensor networks, vehicular networks, intelligent transportation systems, wireless sensor networks security.

This book constitutes the throughly refereed post-proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Systems Analysis and Modeling, SAM 2010, held in collocation with MODELS 2010 in Oslo, Norway in October 2010. The 15 revised full papers presented went through two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers are organized in topical sections on modularity, composition, choreography, application of SDL and UML; SDL language profiles; code generation and model transformations; verification and analysis; and user requirements notification.

This volume contains the refereed joint proceedings of two initiatives that have been devoted to the formal foundations of complex systems: the workshops WS-FM:FASOCC 2014 and WS-FM/BEAT 2015. The 11th International Workshop on Web Services and Formal Methods: Formal Aspects of Services-Oriented and Cloud Computing, WS-FM 2014, took place in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in September 2014. The 12th International Workshop on Web Services, Formal Methods, and Behavioral Types, WS-FM 2015, took place in Madrid, Spain, in September 2015. The total of 8 papers presented in this volume was carefully reviewed and selected from 18 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: expressiveness of behavioral models; service-oriented systems, and behavioral types.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Algorithms for Sensor Systems, Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, and Autonomous Mobile Entities, ALGOSENSORS 2011, held in Saarbrücken, Germany, in September 2011. The 16 revised full papers presented together with two invited keynote talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 31 submissions. The papers are organized in two tracks: sensor networks, covering topics such as localization, lifetime maximization, interference control, neighbor discovery, self-organization, detection, and aggregation; and ad hoc wireless and mobile systems including the topics: routing, scheduling and capacity optimization in the SINR model, continuous monitoring, and broadcasting.

The two volume set LNCS 5506 and LNCS 5507 constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, ICONIP 2008, held in Auckland, New Zealand, in November 2008. The 260 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous ordinary paper submissions and 15 special organized sessions. 116 papers are published in the first volume and 112 in the second volume. The contributions deal with topics in the areas of data mining methods for cybersecurity, computational models and their applications to machine learning and pattern recognition, lifelong incremental learning for intelligent systems, application of intelligent methods in ecological informatics, pattern recognition from real-world information by svm and other sophisticated techniques, dynamics of neural networks, recent advances in brain-inspired technologies for robotics, neural information processing in cooperative multi-robot systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Integrated Circuit and System Design, PATMOS 2010, held in Grenoble, France, in September 2010. The 24 revised full papers presented and the 9 extended abstracts were carefully reviewed and are organized in topical sections on design flows; circuit techniques; low power circuits; self-timed circuits; process variation; high-level modeling of poweraware heterogeneous designs in SystemC-AMS; and minalogic.

The two volume set LNCS 5506 and LNCS 5507 constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, ICONIP 2008, held in Auckland, New Zealand, in November 2008. The 260 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous ordinary paper submissions and 15 special organized sessions. 116 papers are published in the first volume and 112 in the second volume. The contributions deal with topics in the areas of data mining methods for cybersecurity, computational models and their applications to machine learning and pattern recognition, lifelong incremental learning for intelligent systems, application of intelligent methods in ecological informatics, pattern recognition from real-world information by svm and other sophisticated techniques, dynamics of neural networks, recent advances in brain-inspired technologies for robotics, neural information processing in cooperative multi-robot systems.

Researchers and professionals will find in this text the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Quality of Software Architectures, QoSA 2007, held in Medford, MA, USA, in 2007. It was mounted in conjunction with the 10th International ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on Component-Based Software Engineering, CBSE 2007. The 13 revised full papers presented together with one keynote lecture were carefully reviewed and selected from 42 submissions.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 7th International Conference on High Performance Computing for Computational Science, VECPAR 2006, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2006. The 44 revised full papers presented together with one invited paper and 12 revised workshop papers cover Grid computing, cluster computing, numerical methods, large-scale simulations in Physics, and computing in Biosciences.

The Second International Conference on High-Performance Computing and Appli- tions (HPCA 2009) was a follow-up event of the successful HPCA 2004. It was held in Shanghai, a beautiful, active, and modern city in China, August 10–12, 2009. It served as a forum to present current work by researchers and software developers from around the world as well as to highlight activities in the high-performance c- puting area. It aimed to bring together research scientists, application pioneers, and software developers to discuss problems and solutions and to identify new issues in this area. This conference emphasized the development and study of novel approaches for high-performance computing, the design and analysis of high-performance - merical algorithms, and their scientific, engineering, and industrial applications. It offered the conference participants a great opportunity to exchange the latest research results, heighten international collaboration, and discuss future research ideas in HPCA. In addition to 24 invited presentations, the conference received over 300 contr- uted submissions from over ten countries and regions worldwide, about 70 of which were accepted for presentation at HPCA 2009. The conference proceedings contain some of the invited presentations and contributed submissions, and cover such research areas of interest as numerical algorithms and solutions, high-performance and grid c- puting, novel approaches to high-performance computing, massive data storage and processing, hardware acceleration, and their wide applications.

QUANTUMCOMM 2009––the International Conference on Quantum Communi- tion and Quantum Networking (from satellite to nanoscale)––took place in Vico Equense near Naples, Italy, during October 26–30, 2009. The conference made a significant step toward stimulating direct dialogue between the communities of quantum physics and quantum information researchers who work with photons, atoms, and electrons in pursuit of the common goal of investigating and utilizing the transfer of physical information between quantum systems. This meeting brought together experts in quantum communication, quantum inf- mation processing, quantum nanoscale physics, quantum photonics, and networking. In the light of traditional approaches to quantum information processing, quantum communication mainly deals with encoding and securely distributing quantum states of light in optical fiber or in free space in order to provide the technical means for quantum cryptography applications. Exciting advances in the area of quantum c- munication over the last decade have made the metropolitan quantum network a re- ity. Several papers presented at this meeting have demonstrated that quantum crypt- raphy is approaching the point of becoming a high-tech application rather than a - search subject. The natural distance limitation of quantum cryptography has been significantly augmented using ideas of global quantum communication with stab- orbit satellites. The results presented at this conference demonstrated that practical secure satellite communication is clearly within reach.

The aim of the FMICS workshop series is to provide a forum for researchers who are interested in the development and application of formal methods in industry. In particular, these workshops are intended to bring together scientists and practitioners who are active in the area of formal methods and interested in exchanging their experiences in the industrial usage of these methods. These workshopsalso striveto promoteresearchand developmentfor the improvement of formal methods and tools for industrial applications. The topics for which contributions to FMICS 2008 were solicited included, but were not restricted to, the following: – Design, speci?cation, code generation and testing based on formal methods – Veri?cation and validation of complex, distributed, real-time systems and embedded systems – Veri?cation and validation methods that address shortcomings of existing methods with respect to their industrial applicability (e. g., scalability and usability issues) – Tools for the development of formal design descriptions – Case studies and experience reports on industrial applications of formal methods, focusing on lessons learned or identi?cation of new research - rections – Impact of the adoption of formal methods on the development process and associated costs – Application of formal methods in standardization and industrial forums The workshop included six sessions of regular contributions in the areas of model checking, testing, software veri?cation, real-time performance, and ind- trial case studies. There were also three invited presentations, given by Steven Miller,Rance Cleaveland,and Werner Damm, coveringthe applicationof formal methods in the avionics and automotive industries.

This nine-volume set LNCS 14104 – 14112 constitutes the refereed workshop proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2023, held at Athens, Greece, during July 3–6, 2023.The 350 full papers and 29 short papers and 2 PHD showcase papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 876 submissions. These nine-volumes includes the proceedings of the following workshops: Advances in Artificial Intelligence Learning Technologies: Blended Learning, STEM, Computational Thinking and Coding (AAILT 2023); Advanced Processes of Mathematics and Computing Models in Complex Computational Systems (ACMC 2023); Artificial Intelligence supported Medical data examination (AIM 2023); Advanced and Innovative web Apps (AIWA 2023); Assessing Urban Sustainability (ASUS 2023); Advanced Data Science Techniques with applications in Industry and Environmental Sustainability (ATELIERS 2023); Advances in Web Based Learning (AWBL 2023); Blockchain and Distributed Ledgers: Technologies and Applications (BDLTA 2023); Bio and Neuro inspired Computing and Applications (BIONCA 2023); Choices and Actions for Human Scale Cities: Decision Support Systems (CAHSC-DSS 2023); and Computational and Applied Mathematics (CAM 2023).

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications, and Technologies, PDCAT 2022, which took place in Sendai, Japan, during December 7-9, 2022.The 24 full papers and 16 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 95 submissions. The papers are categorized into the following topical sub-headings: Heterogeneous System (1; HPC & AI; Embedded systems & Communication; Blockchain; Deep Learning; Quantum Computing & Programming Language; Best Papers; Heterogeneous System (2); Equivalence Checking & Model checking; Interconnect; Optimization (1); Optimization (2); Privacy; and Workflow.

VECPAR is a series of international conferences dedicated to the promotion and advancement of all aspects of high-performance computing for computational science, as an industrial technique and academic discipline, extending the fr- tier of both the state of the art and the state of practice. The audience for and participants in VECPAR are seen as researchers in academic departments, g- ernment laboratories and industrial organizations. There is now a permanent website for the series, http://vecpar.fe.up.pt, where the history of the conf- ences is described. ThesixtheditionofVECPARwasthe?rsttimetheconferencewascelebrated outside Porto – at the Universitad Politecnica de Valencia (Spain), June 28–30, 2004. The whole conference programme consisted of 6 invited talks, 61 papers and26posters,outof130contributionsthatwereinitiallysubmitted.Themajor themes were divided into large-scale numerical and non-numerical simulations, parallel and grid computing, biosciences, numerical algorithms, data mining and visualization. This postconference book includes the best 48 papers and 5 invited talks presented during the three days of the conference. The book is organized into 6 chapters, with a prominent position reserved for the invited talks and the Best Student Paper. As a whole it appeals to a wide research community, from those involved in the engineering applications to those interested in the actual details of the hardware or software implementations, in line with what, in these days, tends to be considered as computational science and engineering (CSE).

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications, and Technologies, PDCAT 2021, which took place in Guangzhou, China, during December 17-19, 2021. The 24 full papers and 34 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 97 submissions. The papers are categorized into the following topical sub-headings: networking and architectures, software systems and technologies, algorithms and applications, and security and privacy.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Model-Based Safety and Assessment, IMBSA 2022, held in Munich, Germany, in September 2022. The 15 revised full papers and 3 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 initial submissions. The papers focus on model-based and automated ways of assessing safety and other attributes of dependability of complex systems. They are organized in topical sections on safety analysis automation, MBSA practices, causal models and failure modeling strategies, designing mitigations of faults and attacks, data based safety analysis, dynamic risk assessment.

The 18 revised full papers presented in this book together with an introductory survey were carefully reviewed and constitute the documentation of the Second International Workshop on Self-adaptive Software, IWSAS 2001, held in Balatonfüred, Hungary in May 2001. Self-adaptive software evaluates its own behavior and changes it when the evaluation indicates that the software does not accomplish what it is intended to do or when better functionality or better performance is possible. The self-adaptive approach in software engineering builds on well known dynamic features familiar to Lisp or Java programmes and aims at improving the robustness of software systems by gradually adding new features of self-adaption or autonomy.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the two thematic workshops held jointly with Networking 2002: WEB Engineering and Peer-to-Peer C- puting. Networking 2002 was organized by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and was sponsored by the IFIP working groups WG 6.2 (Network and Intern- work Architectures), WG 6.3 (Performance of Communication Systems), and WG 6.8 (Wireless Communications). The program of the conference covered?ve days and included the main conference (three days), two tutorial days, and one day of thematic workshops. TheInternationalWorkshoponWebEngineeringwasdedicatedtothedisc- sionoftheprincipalissuesthatemergeinthedesignandimplementationoflar- scale, complex, Web-based systems. Scalability issues pose a number of ch- lenging problems to solve for both applications and the underlying web/network infrastructure. On one hand, web services and internet applications must take into account network performance and transport protocol design, to achieve - ceptable performance and robustness. On the other hand, emerging network and Web technologies are determined by the requirements of these applications. Fifteen papers were presented that illustrated the current state of the art in this area. In addition to the authors of these papers, the Workshop on Web Engine- ing was attended by about thirty participants, who contributed to the workshop by stimulating fruitful discussions at the end of each presentation. Thus, this workshop provided a excellent opportunity for researchers, from both industry and academia, to gather, exchange ideas, and discuss recent results in the dev- opment of Web-based systems and emerging Internet applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on System Analysis and Modelling, SAM 2006, held in Kaiserslautern, Germany in May/June 2006. The 14 revised full papers cover language profiles, evolution of development languages, model-driven development, and language implementation.

Software development for the automotive domain has become the enabling te- nologyforalmostallsafety-criticalandcomfortfunctionso?eredtothecustomer. Ninety percentofallinnovations inautomotive systems aredirectly or indirectly enabled by embedded software. The numbers of serious accidents have declined in recent years, despite constantly increasing tra?c; this is correlated with the introduction of advanced, software-enabled functionality for driver assistance, such as electronic stability control. Software contributes signi?cantly to the - tomotive value chain. By 2010 it is estimated that software will make up 40% of the value creation of automotive electrics/electronics. However, with the large number of software-enabled functions, their int- actions, and the corresponding networking and operating infrastructure, come signi?cant complexities both during the automotive systems engineering p- cess and at runtime. A central challenge for automotive systems development is the scattering of functionality across multiple subsystems, such as electronic control units (ECUs) and the associated networks. As an example, consider the central locking systems (CLS), whose functionality is spread out over up to 19 di?erent ECUs in some luxury cars. Of course, this includes advanced functi- ality, such as seat positioning and radio tuning according to driver presets upon entry, as well as unlocking in case of a detected impact or accident. However, thisexampledemonstratesthatmodernautomotivesystemsbridgecomfort-and safety-critical functionality. This induces particular demands on safety and - curity, and, in general, software and systems quality. The resulting challenges and opportunities were discussed, in depth, at the second Automotive Software Workshop San Diego (ASWSD)2006, on whose results we report here.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security, SAFECOMP 2018, held in Västerås, Sweden, in September 2018. The 19 revised full papers and 1 short paper presented together with three abstracts of keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from 63 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on Automotive Safety Standards and Cross-domain Reuse Potential; Autonomous Driving and Safety Analysis; Verification; Multi-concern Assurance; Fault Tolerance; and Safety and Security Risk.

The two-volume set of LNCS 10941 and 10942 constitutes the proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Advances in Swarm Intelligence, ICSI 2018, held in Shanghai, China, in June 2018. The total of 113 papers presented in these volumes was carefully reviewed and selected from 197 submissions. The papers were organized in topical sections as follows: theories and models of swarm intelligence; ant colony optimization; particle swarm optimization; artificial bee colony algorithms; genetic algorithms; differential evolution; fireworks algorithms; bacterial foraging optimization; artificial immune system; hydrologic cycle optimization; other swarm-based optimization algorithms; hybrid optimization algorithms; multi-objective optimization; large-scale global optimization; multi-agent systems; swarm robotics; fuzzy logic approaches; planning and routing problems; recommendation in social media; prediction, classification; finding patterns; image enhancement; deep learning.

To prove the correctness of a program is to demonstrate, through impeccable mathematical techniques, that it has no bugs. To test a program is to run it with the expectation of discovering bugs. These two paths to software reliability seem to diverge from the very start: if you have proved your program correct, it is fruitless to comb it for bugs; and if you are testing it, that surely must be a sign that you have given up on any hope to prove its correctness. Accordingly, proofs and tests have, since the onset of software engineering research, been pursued by distinct communities using different kinds of techniques and tools. Dijkstra's famous pronouncement that tests can only show the presence of errors — in retrospect, perhaps one of the best advertisements one can imagine for testing, as if “only” finding bugs were not already a momentous achievement! — didn't help make testing popular with provers, or proofs attractive to testers. And yet the development of both approaches leads to the discovery of common issues and to the realization that each may need the other. The emergence of model checking was one of the first signs that apparent contradiction may yield to complementarity; in the past few years an increasing number of research efforts have encountered the need for combining proofs and tests, dropping earlier dogmatic views of incompatibility and taking instead the best of what each of these software engineering domains has to offer.

The idea of a FAABS workshop was first conceived in 1998 at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, while the Agent Technology Development Group in the Advanced Architectures and Automation Branch (Code 588) was developing a prototype agent community to automate satellite ground operations. While developing this system, several race conditions arose within and between agents. Due to the complexity of the agents and the communications between them, it was decided that a formal approach was needed to specify the agents and the communications between them, so that the system could be checked for additional errors. A formal model of the inter-agent communications was developed, with the expectation that this would enable us to find more errors. Success in this convinced us of the importance of using formal methods to model agent-based systems. To share our own experiences and to learn how others were approaching these issues, we decided to hold a workshop on formal methods and agent-based systems. The response was overwhelming. The result was the first FAABS workshop, which was held at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Posters, paper presentations, panels, and an invited talk by J Moore stimulated much discussion and subsequent collaboration.

Every year we witness acceleration in the availability, deployment, and use of distributed applications. However building increasingly sophisticated applications for extant and emerging networked systems continues to be challenging for several reasons: – Abstract models of computation used in distributed systems research often do not fully capture the limitations and the unpredictable nature of realistic distributed computing platforms; – Fault-tolerance and ef?ciency of computation are dif?cult to combine when the c- puting medium is subject to changes, asynchrony, and failures; – Middleware used for constructing distributed software does not provide services most suitable for sophisticated distributed applications; – Middleware services are speci?ed informally and without precise guarantees of e- ciency, fault-tolerance, scalability, and compositionality; – Speci?cation of distributed deployment of software systems is often left out of the development process; – Finally, there persists an organizational and cultural gap between engineering groups developing systems in a commercial enterprise, and research groups advancing the scienti?c state-of-the-art in academic and industrial settings. The objectives of this book are: (1) to serve as a motivation for de?ning future research programs in distributed computing, (2) to help identify areas where practitioners and engineers on the one hand and scientists and researchers on the other can improve the state of distributed computing through synergistic efforts, and (3) to motivate graduate students interested in entering the exciting research?eld of distributed computing.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Parallel Processing and Applied Mathematics, PPAM 2002, held in Naleczow, Poland, in September 2001.The 101 papers presented were carefully reviewed and improved during two rounds of reviewing and revision. The book offers topical sections on distributed and grid architectures, scheduling and load balancing, performance analysis and prediction, parallel non-numerical algorithms, parallel programming, tools and environments, parallel numerical algorithms, applications, and evolutionary computing and neural networks.

This 4-volume set of LNCS 14495-14498 constitutes the proceedings of the 40th Computer Graphics International Conference, CGI 2023, held in Shanghai, China, August 28 – September 1, 2023. The 149 papers in this set were carefully reviewed and selected from 385 submissions. They are organized in topical sections as follows: Detection and Recognition; Image Analysis and Processing; Image Restoration and Enhancement; Image Attention and Perception; Reconstruction; Rendering and Animation; Synthesis and Generation; Visual Analytics and Modeling; Graphics and AR/VR; Medical Imaging and Robotics; Theoretical Analysis; Image Analysis and Visualization in Advanced Medical Imaging Technology; Empowering Novel Geometric Algebra for Graphics and Engineering.

Although the quality of a system's software architecture is one of the critical factors in its overall quality, the architecture is simply a means to an end, the end being the implemented system. Thus the ultimate measure of the quality of the software architecture lies in the implemented system, in how well it satis?es the system and project requirements and constraints and whether it can be maintained and evolved successfully. In order to treat design as a science rather thananart,weneedtobeabletoaddressthequalityofthesoftwarearchitecture directly, not simply as it is re?ected in the implemented system. Therefore, QoSA is concerned with software architecture quality directly by addressing the problems of: – Designing software architectures of good quality – De?ning, measuring, evaluating architecture quality – Managing architecture quality, tying it upstream to requirements and do- stream to implementation, and preserving architecture quality throughout the lifetime of the system Cross-cutting these problems is the question of the nature of software archit- ture. Software architecture organizes a system, partitioning it into elements and de?ning relationships among the elements. For this we often use multiple views, each with a di?erent organizing principle.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 26th Brazilian Symposium on Formal Methods, SBMF 2023, held in Manaus, Brazil, during December 4-8, 2023.The 7 full papers and 2 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 16 submissions.The papers are divided into the following topical sections: specification and modeling languages; testing; and verification and validation.