Conference Service Mandl

abstract: Pervasive services are emerging as the next paradigm for distributed and mobile computing, in which services built out of pervasive infrastructure and information, and are seamlessly available anywhere, anytime, and in any format. This exciting new paradigm is the result of recent research and technological advances in wireless & sensor networks, distributed systems, Grid computing, mobile & agent computing and autonomic computing & services.

abstract: The Almende Summer School 2008 offers graduate students, PhD students & postdoctoral fellows as well as researchers from academia and industry an intensive four-day course of lectures and workshops on coordination techniques for self-organizing human-agent networks.

In self-organizing networks, the interactions between the network elements will increase the order and organization of the network, without explicit guidance from a network designer. Furthermore, emergent (hierarchical) properties – which cannot merely be explained by the aggregation of the agents' actions – will enable the network as a whole to perform complex tasks. In human-agent networks, the role of the human is often to provide feedback that allows the (non-human) agents to learn and to evolve.

The focus of this summer school will be on coordination techniques that can be used by different kinds of self-organizing human-agent networks.

abstract: From early human history, diagrams have been pervasive in human communication. The recent rise of multimedia technology that has turned advanced visual communication into an integral part of our everyday reality makes a better understanding of the role of diagrams and sketches in communication, cognition, creative thought, and problem-solving a necessity. These developments have triggered a new surge of interest in the study of diagrammatic notations, which is driven by several different scientific disciplines concerned with cognition, computation and communication.

abstract: The objective of the SAPA2008 workshop is to bring together researchers considering perceptually-motivated problems in sound and speech analysis and understanding, employing statistical and machine learning tools.