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What makes teamwork tick? Cooperation matters, in daily life and in complex applications. After all, many tasks need more than a single agent to be effectively performed. Therefore, teamwork rules! Teams are social groups of agents dedicated to the fulfilment of particular persistent tasks. In modern multiagent environments, heterogeneous teams often consist of autonomous software agents, various types of robots and human beings. Teamwork in Multi-agent Systems: A Formal Approach explains teamwork rules in terms of agents'attitudes and their complex interplay. It provides the first comprehensive logical theory, TeamLog, underpinning teamwork in dynamic environments. The authors justify design choices by showing TeamLog in action. The book guides the reader through a fascinating discussion of issues essential for teamwork to be successful: What is teamwork, and how can a logical view of it help in designing teams of agents? What is the role of agents'awareness in an uncertain, dynamic environment? How does collective intention constitute a team? How are plan-based collective commitments related to team action? How can one tune collective commitment to the team's organizational structure and its communication abilities? What are the methodological underpinnings for teamwork in a dynamic environment? How does a team and its attitudes adjust to changing circumstances? How do collective intentions and collective commitments arise through dialogue? What is the computational complexity of TeamLog? How can one make TeamLog efficient in applications? This book is an invaluable resource for researchers and graduate students in computer science and artificial intelligence as well as for developers of multi-agent systems. Students and researchers in organizational science, in particular those investigating teamwork, will also find this book insightful. Since the authors made an effort to introduce TeamLog as a conceptual model of teamwork, understanding most of the book requires solely a basic logical background.

'Complex Intelligent Systems and Applications'presents the most up-to-date advances in complex, software intensive and intelligent systems. Each self-contained chapter is the contribution of distinguished experts in areas of research relevant to the study of complex, intelligent, and software intensive systems. These contributions focus on the resolution of complex problems from areas of networking, optimization and artificial intelligence. The book is divided into three parts focusing on complex intelligent network systems, efficient resource management in complex systems, and artificial data mining systems. Through the presentation of these diverse areas of application, the volume provides insights into the multidisciplinary nature of complex problems. Throughout the entire book, special emphasis is placed on optimization and efficiency in resource management, network interaction, and intelligent system design. This book presents the most recent interdisciplinary results in this area of research and can serve as a valuable tool for researchers interested in defining and resolving the types of complex problems that arise in networking, optimization, and artificial intelligence.

'This book covers a comprehensive range of topics in the field of Web Service developments, Multi-Agent Systems, Autonomous Agents and P2P computing'--Provided by publisher.

Research in multi-agent systems offers a promising technology for problems with networks, online trading and negotiations but also social structures and communication. This is a book on agent and multi-agent technology for internet and enterprise systems. The book is a pioneer in the combination of the fields and is based on the concept of developing a platform to share ideas and presents research in technology in the field and application to real problems. The chapters range over both applications, illustrating the possible uses of agents in an enterprise domain, and design and analytic methods, needed to provide the solid foundation required for practical systems.

Automated negotiation might improve negotiation outcomes in e-commerce and allow the coordination of agents in autonomous systems. However, as operative systems do not yet exist, research relies on simulation to evaluate potential system configurations in realistically complex scenarios. This book reviews the latest literature on the simulation of automated negotiation and addresses identified deficiencies by offering novel strategies for software agents and alternative interaction protocols. The method of computer simulation is discussed, with a focus on its specific applications in the domai.

Multi-Agent System (MAS) is an exciting, emerging paradigm expected to play a key role in many society-changing practices. The International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems (PRIMA) is a leading scientific conference for research on intelligent agent systems and multi-agent systems, attracting high quality, state-of-the-art research from all over the world. PRIMA'09 was the 12th in the series of PRIMA conferences and was held in Nagoya, Japan. Beside a single-track main conference, PRIMA'09 also included a number of workshops which were designed to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to present and exchange the latest developments at the MAS frontier. This book constitutes the post-proceedings of workshops under PRIMA'09. Readers will be able to explore a diverse range of topics and detailed discussions related to a number of important themes in our ever changing world. This collection plays an important role in bridging the gap between MAS theory and practice. It emphasizes the importance of MAS in the research and development of smart power grid systems, decision support systems, optimization and analysis systems for road traffic and markets, environmental monitoring and simulation, and in many other real-world applications and publicizes and extends MAS technology to many domains in this fast moving information age.

To aid research in crisis management, we reviewed the literature pertaining to synchronous, non-collocated, cross-organizational, time-sensitive collaboration. We examined the theoretical constructs that researchers have proposed for collaborative systems and determined that several of these, such as common ground and awareness theory, have particular applicability to crisis management. We reviewed collaboration models that were developed to provide frameworks for understanding the multiple facets of technological support to group work. Because teams normally need to come to a common understanding of the situation and the relevant decisions, we examined research in team awareness, sensemaking and decision-making. Types of group tasks affect technology use and adoption, so we considered the literature surrounding these topics, as well, before turning to case studies of new collaboration technologies. We end with our assessment of the findings most relevant to developing new crisis management collaboration approaches, including procedures, needed functionality, and candidate capabilities.

Multi-agent systems are claimed to be especially suited to the development of software systems that are decentralized, can deal flexibly with dynamic conditions, and are open to system components that come and go. This is why they are used in domains such as manufacturing control, automated vehicles, and e-commerce markets. Danny Weyns'book is organized according to the postulate that'developing multi-agent systems is 95% software engineering and 5% multi-agent systems theory.'He presents a software engineering approach for multi-agent systems that is heavily based on software architecture - with, for example, tailored patterns such as'situated agent','virtual environment', and'selective perception'- and on middleware for distributed coordination – with programming abstractions such as'views'and'roles.'Next he shows the feasibility and applicability of this approach with the development of an automated transportation system consisting of a number of automatic guided vehicles transporting loads in an industrial setting. Weyns puts the development of multi-agent systems into a larger perspective with traditional software engineering approaches. With this, he opens up opportunities to exploit the body of knowledge developed in the multi-agent systems community to tackle some of the difficult challenges of modern-day software systems, such as decentralized control, location-awareness, self-adaption, and large-scale. Thus his book is of interest for both researchers and industrial software engineers who develop applications in areas such as distributed control systems and mobile applications where such requirements are of crucial importance.

'This book provides theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings used by medical professionals in the implementation of multi-agent systems'--Provided by publisher

Motivated learning is an emerging research field in artificial intelligence and cognitive modelling. Computational models of motivation extend reinforcement learning to adaptive, multitask learning in complex, dynamic environments – the goal being to understand how machines can develop new skills and achieve goals that were not predefined by human engineers. In particular, this book describes how motivated reinforcement learning agents can be used in computer games for the design of non-player characters that can adapt their behaviour in response to unexpected changes in their environment. This book covers the design, application and evaluation of computational models of motivation in reinforcement learning. The authors start with overviews of motivation and reinforcement learning, then describe models for motivated reinforcement learning. The performance of these models is demonstrated by applications in simulated game scenarios and a live, open-ended virtual world. Researchers in artificial intelligence, machine learning and artificial life will benefit from this book, as will practitioners working on complex, dynamic systems – in particular multiuser, online games.

Multiagent systems combine multiple autonomous entities, each having diverging interests or different information. This overview of the field offers a computer science perspective, but also draws on ideas from game theory, economics, operations research, logic, philosophy and linguistics. It will serve as a reference for researchers in each of these fields, and be used as a text for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses. The authors emphasize foundations to create a broad and rigorous treatment of their subject, with thorough presentations of distributed problem solving, game theory, multiagent communication and learning, social choice, mechanism design, auctions, cooperative game theory, and modal logics of knowledge and belief. For each topic, basic concepts are introduced, examples are given, proofs of key results are offered, and algorithmic considerations are examined. An appendix covers background material in probability theory, classical logic, Markov decision processes and mathematical programming.

'This book investigates the effects of the evolution of comparison-shopping techniques and processes with the ready availability of online resources over the past few years'--Provided by publisher.

'This volume addresses a variety of issues, in particular the emergence of societal phenomena in the interactions of systems of agents (software, robot or human)'--Provided by publisher.

'This book lays the foundations for understanding the concepts and technologies behind the Semantic Web'--Provided by publisher.

Research on multi-agent systems has provided a promising technology for implementing cognitive intelligent non-playing characters. However, the technologies used in game engines and multi-agent platforms are not readily compatible due to some inherent differences in concerns. Where game engines focus on real-time aspects and thus propagate efficiency and central control, multi-agent platforms assume autonomy of the agents. Increased autonomy and intelligence may offer benefits for a more compelling gameplay and may even be necessary for serious games. However, problems occur when current game design techniques are used to incorporate state-of-the-art multi-agent system technology. A very similar argument can be given for agent-based (social) simulation. This volume contains the papers presented at AGS 2009, the First International Workshop on Agents for Games and Simulations, held in Budapest on May 11, 2009. The focus of the workshop was on the particular challenges facing those using agent technology for games and simulations, with topics covering the technical, conceptual and design aspects of the field.

The main objective of pervasive computing systems is to create environments where computers become invisible by being seamlessly integrated and connected into our everyday environment, where such embedded computers can then provide inf- mation and exercise intelligent control when needed, but without being obtrusive. Pervasive computing and intelligent multimedia technologies are becoming incre- ingly important to the modern way of living. However, many of their potential applications have not yet been fully realized. Intelligent multimedia allows dynamic selection, composition and presentation of the most appropriate multimedia content based on user preferences. A variety of applications of pervasive computing and - telligent multimedia are being developed for all walks of personal and business life. Pervasive computing (often synonymously called ubiquitous computing, palpable computing or ambient intelligence) is an emerging?eld of research that brings in revolutionary paradigms for computing models in the 21st century. Pervasive c- puting is the trend towards increasingly ubiquitous connected computing devices in the environment, a trend being brought about by a convergence of advanced el- tronic – and particularly, wireless – technologies and the Internet. Recent advances in pervasive computers, networks, telecommunications and information technology, along with the proliferation of multimedia mobile devices – such as laptops, iPods, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cellular telephones – have further stimulated the development of intelligent pervasive multimedia applications. These key te- nologiesarecreatingamultimediarevolutionthatwillhavesigni?cantimpactacross a wide spectrum of consumer, business, healthcare and governmental domains.

A new approach for conceptualizing and modeling multi-agent systems that consist of people, devices, and software agents.Today, when computing is pervasive and deployed over a range of devices by a multiplicity of users, we need to develop computer software to interact with both the ever-increasing complexity of the technical world and the growing fluidity of social organizations. The Art of Agent-Oriented Modeling presents a new conceptual model for developing software systems that are open, intelligent, and adaptive. It describes an approach for modeling complex systems that consist of people, devices, and software agents in a changing environment (sometimes known as distributed sociotechnical systems). The authors take an agent-oriented view, as opposed to the more common object-oriented approach. Thinking in terms of agents (which they define as the human and man-made components of a system), they argue, can change the way people think of software and the tasks it can perform. The book offers an integrated and coherent set of concepts and models, presenting the models at three levels of abstraction corresponding to a motivation layer (where the purpose, goals, and requirements of the system are described), a design layer, and an implementation layer. It compares platforms by implementing the same models in four different languages; compares methodologies by using a common example; includes extensive case studies; and offers exercises suitable for either class use or independent study.

Multi-Agent Systems are a promising technology to develop the next generation open distributed complex software systems. The main focus of the research community has been on the development of concepts (concerning both mental and social attitudes), architectures, techniques, and general approaches to the analysis and specification of multi-agent systems. This contribution has been fragmented, without any clear way of “putting it all together”, rendering it inaccessible to students and young researchers, non-experts, and practitioners. Successful multi-agent systems development is guaranteed only if we can bridge the gap from analysis and design to effective implementation. Multi-Agent Programming: Languages, Tools and Applications presents a number of mature and influential multi-agent programming languages, platforms, development tools and methodologies, and realistic applications, summarizing the state of the art in an accessible manner for professionals and computer science students at all levels.

'This book covers a broad range of intelligence integration approaches in distributed knowledge systems, from Web-based systems through multi-agent and grid systems, ontology management to fuzzy approaches'--Provided by publisher

Distributed Intelligent Systems: A Coordination Perspective comprehensively answers commonly asked questions about coordination in agent-oriented distributed systems. Characterizing the state-of-the-art research in the field of coordination with regard to the development of distributed agent-oriented systems is a particularly complex endeavour; while existing books deal with specific aspects of coordination, the major contribution of this book lies in the attempt to provide an in-depth review covering a wide range of issues regarding multi-agent coordination in Distributed Artificial Intelligence. Key features: Unveils the lack of coherence and order that characterizes the area of research pertaining to coordination of distributed intelligent systems Examines coordination models, frameworks, strategies and techniques to enable the development of distributed intelligent agent-oriented systems Provides specific recommendations to realize more widespread deployment of agent-based systems

This book is broadly organized in three parts. The first section ('Enhancing and Managing Customer Value') focuses on presenting the state-of-knowledge in managing and enhancing customer value through extraction of consumer-centric knowledge from mountains of data that modern interactive applications generate. The extracted information can then be used to provide more personalized information to customers, provide more relevant information or products, and even to create innovative business processes to enhance overall value to customers. The second section in the book ('Computational Approaches for Business Processes') focuses on presenting several specific innovative computing artifacts and tools developed by researchers that are not yet commercially used. These represent cutting-edge thought and advances in business computing research that should soon find utility in real-world applications or as a tool to analyze real-world scenarios. The final section in the book ('Supporting Knowledge Enterprise') presents approaches and frameworks that focus on ability of an enterprise to analyze, build, and protect computing infrastructure that supports value-added dimensions to the enterprise's existing business processes.

Dialogue management technology has developed rapidly over the years resulting in real-time applications like telephony directories, timetable enquiries, and in-car applications. However, the current technology is still largely based on models that use rigid command language type interactions, and the users need to adapt their human communication strategies to the needs of the technology. As an increasing number of interactive ubiquitous applications will appear, challenges for interaction technology concern especially natural, more human-friendly communication. Recent research has focused on developing speech-based interactive systems that aim to increase the system's communicative competence. By including aspects of interaction beyond simple speech recognition and question-answer based interaction, applications with more conversational interfaces have become possible. New dialogue management technology needs to address the challenges in human-technology interaction, so that smart environments should not only enable user-controlled command interfaces but equip applications with a capability that affords easy and friendly interactions with the user. Dialogue Modelling: Speech Interaction and Rational Agents provides an overview of the current dialogue technology and research trends in spoken dialogue systems, presenting a coherent perspective of AI-based cooperative interaction management. The book complements existing research regarding human-computer interfaces, speech and language technology, and communication studies in general, bringing different view-points together and integrating them into a single point of reference. Constructive Dialogue Modelling: Presents a guide to spoken dialogue technology and current research trends. Provides an overview of human factors in dialogue systems and delivers a new metaphor for human-computer interaction and computer as agent. Explains the architecture of dialogue systems using examples from systems such as Interact and DUMAS Offers a comprehensive overview of original research into the new trends in speech dialogue technology in light of innovations such as ubiquitous computing. This book will provide essential reading for industrial designers and interface engineers, university researchers and teachers, computer scientists, human communication researchers, speech and language technologists, cognitive engineers/cognitive scientists, as well as social and media researchers, and psychologists. Advanced students and researchers in computer science, speech and language technologies, psychology and communication research will find this text of interest.

Methodological Guidelines for Modeling and Developing MAS-Based SimulationsThe intersection of agents, modeling, simulation, and application domains has been the subject of active research for over two decades. Although agents and simulation have been used effectively in a variety of application domains, much of the supporting research remains scattered in the literature, too often leaving scientists to develop multi-agent system (MAS) models and simulations from scratch. Multi-Agent Systems: Simulation and Applications provides an overdue review of the wide ranging facets of MAS simulation, including methodological and application-oriented guidelines. This comprehensive resource reviews two decades of research in the intersection of MAS, simulation, and different application domains. It provides scientists and developers with disciplined engineering approaches to modeling and developing MAS-based simulations. After providing an overview of the field's history and its basic principles, as well as cataloging the various simulation engines for MAS, the book devotes three sections to current and emerging approaches and applications.Simulation for MAS — explains simulation support for agent decision making, the use of simulation for the design of self-organizing systems, the role of software architecture in simulating MAS, and the use of simulation for studying learning and stigmergic interaction.MAS for Simulation — discusses an agent-based framework for symbiotic simulation, the use of country databases and expert systems for agent-based modeling of social systems, crowd-behavior modeling, agent-based modeling and simulation of adult stem cells, and agents for traffic simulation. Tools — presents a number of representative platforms and tools for MAS and simulation, including Jason, James II, SeSAm, and RoboCup Rescue.Complete with over 200 figures and formulas, this reference book provides the necessary overview of experiences with MAS simulation and the tools needed to exploit simulation in MAS for future research in a vast array of applications including home security, computational systems biology, and traffic management.

'This book aims at giving a complete panorama of the active and promising crossing area between traffic engineering and multi-agent system addressing both current status and challenging new ideas'--Provided by publisher.

During the last two decades, the idea of Semantic Web has received a great deal of attention. An extensive body of knowledge has emerged to describe technologies that seek to help us create and use aspects of the Semantic Web. Ontology and agent-based technologies are understood to be the two important technologies here. A large number of articles and a number of books exist to describe the use individually of the two technologies and the design of systems that use each of these technologies individually, but little focus has been given on how one can - sign systems that carryout integrated use of the two different technologies. In this book we describe ontology and agent-based systems individually, and highlight advantages of integration of the two different and complementary te- nologies. We also present a methodology that will guide us in the design of the - tegrated ontology-based multi-agent systems and illustrate this methodology on two use cases from the health and software engineering domain. This book is organized as follows: • Chapter I, Current issues and the need for ontologies and agents, describes existing problems associated with uncontrollable information overload and explains how ontologies and agent-based systems can help address these - sues. • Chapter II, Introduction to multi-agent systems, defines agents and their main characteristics and features including mobility, communications and collaboration between different agents. It also presents different types of agents on the basis of classifications done by different authors.

'This book presents various applications of the growing perspective of agent technologies as they apply the web engineering'--Provided by publisher.

In the early 1990s, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center started researching and developing autonomous and autonomic ground and spacecraft control systems for future NASA missions. This research started by experimenting with and developing expert systems to automate ground station software and reduce the number of people needed to control a spacecraft. This was followed by research into agent-based technology to develop autonomous ground c- trol and spacecraft. Research into this area has now evolved into using the concepts of autonomic systems to make future space missions self-managing and giving them a high degree of survivability in the harsh environments in which they operate. This book describes much of the results of this research. In addition, it aimstodiscusstheneededsoftwaretomakefutureNASAspacemissionsmore completelyautonomousandautonomic.Thecoreofthesoftwareforthesenew missions has been written for other applications or is being applied gradually in current missions, or is in current development. It is intended that this book should document how NASA missions are becoming more autonomous and autonomic and should point to the way of making future missions highly - tonomous and autonomic. What is not covered is the supporting hardware of these missions or the intricate software that implements orbit and at- tude determination, on-board resource allocation, or planning and scheduling (though we refer to these technologies and give references for the interested reader).

The only book to present the synergy between modeling and simulation, systems engineering, and agent technologies expands the notion of agent-based simulation to also deal with agent simulation and agent-supported simulation. Accessible to both practitioners and managers, it systematically addresses designing and building agent systems from a systems engineering perspective.

Title from PDF title page (viewed on Jan. 26, 2010).

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, where the personal computing era appears when technologyrecedesinto the backgroundof our lives. The widespread use of new mobile technology implementing wireless communicationssuch as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smart phones enables a new type of advanced applications. In the pastyears,themainfocusofresearchinmobileserviceshasaimedattheanytime-anywhere principle (ubiquitous computing). However, there is more to it. The increasing demand for distributed problem solving led to the development of multi-agent systems. The latter are formed from a collection of independent software entities whose collective skills can be applied in complex and real-time domains. The target of such systems is to demonstrate howgoaldirected,robustandoptimalbehaviorcanarise frominteractionsbetweenindiv- ual autonomous intelligent software agents. These software entities exhibit characteristics like autonomy, responsiveness, pro-activeness and social ability. Their functionality and effectiveness has proven to be highly depended on the design and development and the - plication domain. In fact, in several cases, the design and developmentof effective services shouldtakeintoaccountthecharacteristicsofthecontextfromwhichaserviceisrequested. Contextis the set of suitable environmentalstates and settings concerninga user, which are relevant for a situation sensitive application in the process of adapting the services and - formation offered to the user. Agent technology seems to be the right technology to offer the possibility of exploringthe dynamic context of the user in order to provideadded-value services or to execute more and complex tasks.

Agent systems are being used to model complex systems like societies, markets and biological systems. In this book we investigate issues of agent systems related to convergence and interactivity using techniques from agent based modelling to simulate complex systems, and demonstrate that interactivity/exchange and convergence in multi-agent systems are issues that are significantly interrelated. Topic and features: - Introduces the state of the art in multi-agent systems, with an emphasis on agent-based computational economics. - Sheds light on the fundamental concepts behind the stability of multi-agent systems. - Investigates knowledge exchange among agents, the rationale behind it and its effects on the ecosystem. - Explores how information provided through interaction with the system can be used to optimise its performance. - Describes a pricing strategy for a realistic large-scale distributed system. This book supplies a comprehensive resource and will be invaluable reading for researchers and postgraduates studying this topic.

Distributed search by agents is an important topic of distributed AI and has not been treated thoroughly as such. While the scope of work on multi-agent systems has grown steadily over the last decade, very little of it has spilled into distributed search. In conrast, the constraints processing community has produced a sizable body of work on distributed constrained search. Parado- cally, a community that concentrates on search algorithms and heuristics has created a distributed model for agents that cooperate on solving hard search problems. Traditionally, this?eld has been named Ditributed Constraints S- isfaction and lately also distributed constraints optimization. The present book attempts to prompt deeper response from the MAS community and hopefully to give rise to cooperative work on distributed search by agents. In order to achieve this high goal, the book presents the large body of work on distributed search by constrained agents. The presentation emphasizes many aspects of distributed computation that connect naturally to multi-agent systems, - pecially measures of performance for distributed search algorithms and the impact of delays in communication. Distributed Constraints Satisfaction Problems (DisCSPs) have been st- ied over the last decade, starting with the pioneering proposal by Makoto Yokoo [18]. The?rst distributed search algorithm for DisCSPs - As- chronous Backtracking (ABT) - was?rst published in complete format in 1998 [64]. The?rst book on Distributed Constraints Satisfaction Problems has appeared as early as 2000 [61].

The tremendous growth in the availability of inexpensive computing power and easy availability of computers have generated tremendous interest in the design and imp- mentation of Complex Systems. Computer-based solutions offer great support in the design of Complex Systems. Furthermore, Complex Systems are becoming incre- ingly complex themselves. This research book comprises a selection of state-of-the-art contributions to topics dealing with Complex Systems in a Knowledge-based En- ronment. Complex systems are ubiquitous. Examples comprise, but are not limited to System of Systems, Service-oriented Approaches, Agent-based Systems, and Complex Distributed Virtual Systems. These are application domains that require knowledge of engineering and management methods and are beyond the scope of traditional systems. The chapters in this book deal with a selection of topics which range from unc- tainty representation, management and the use of ontological means which support and are large-scale business integration. All contributions were invited and are based on the recognition of the expertise of the contributing authors in the field. By colle- ing these sources together in one volume, the intention was to present a variety of tools to the reader to assist in both study and work. The second intention was to show how the different facets presented in the chapters are complementary and contribute towards this emerging discipline designed to aid in the analysis of complex systems.

Knowledge processing and decision making in agent-based systems constitute the key components of intelligent machines. The contributions included in the book are: Innovations in Knowledge Processing and Decision Making in Agent-Based Systems Towards Real-World HTN Planning Agents Mobile Agent-Based System for Distributed Software Maintenance Software Agents in New Generation Networks: Towards the Automation of Telecom Processes Multi-agent Systems and Paraconsistent Knowledge An Agent-based Negotiation Platform for Collaborative Decision-Making in Construction Supply Chain An Event-Driven Algorithm for Agents at the Web A Generic Mobile Agent Framework Toward Ambient Intelligence Developing Actionable Trading Strategies Agent Uncertainty Model and Quantum Mechanics Representation Agent Transportation Layer Adaptation System Software Agents to Enable Service Composition through Negotiation Advanced Technology Towards Developing Decentralized Autonomous Flexible Manufacturing Systems

For the last 50 years, the power of integrated circuits has continued to grow. However, this performance will end up reaching its physical limit. What new ways will then be available to develop even more powerful and up-to-date systems? This book introduces the principles of quantic computing, the use of nano-tubes in molecular transistors and ADN computing. It suggests new fabrication methods for the 21st century and introduces new architecture models, ranging from the most conventional to the most radical. Using a chronological theme, it explains our unavoidable entry in the nano-device world: from the 1948 transistor to the microchip. It concludes by anticipating the changes in daily living: investments, impact on coding activities, nanocomputing systems implementation and IT job mutation.

'This book delivers definitive research on the use of agent technologies to advance the practice of electronic business in today's organizations, targeting the needs of enterprises in open and dynamic business opportunities to incorporate skilled use of multiple independent information systems. It clearly articulates the stages involved in developing agent-based e-business systems'--Provided by publisher.