The papers in this volume comprise the refereed proceedings of the conference ‘ Artificial Intelligence in Theory and Practice’ (IFIP AI 2008), which formed part of the 20th World Computer Congress of IFIP, the International Federation for Information Processing (WCC-2008), in Milan, Italy in September 2008. The conference is organised by the IFIP Technical Committee on Artificial Intelligence (Technical Committee 12) and its Working Group 12.5 (Artificial Intelligence Applications). All papers were reviewed by at least two members of our Program Committee. Final decisions were made by the Executive Program Committee, which comprised John Debenham (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia), Ilias Maglogiannis (University of Aegean, Samos, Greece), Eunika Mercier-Laurent (KIM, France) and myself. The best papers were selected for the conference, either as long papers (maximum 10 pages) or as short papers (maximum 5 pages) and are included in this volume. The international nature of IFIP is amply reflected in the large number of countries represented here. The conference also featured invited talks by Prof. Nikola Kasabov (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand) and Prof. Lorenza Saitta (University of Piemonte Orientale, Italy). I should like to thank the conference chair, John Debenham for all his efforts and the members of our program committee for reviewing papers to a very tight deadline.
International Federation for Information Processing
The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication. The scope of the series includes: foundations of computer science; software theory and practice; education; computer applications in technology; communication systems; systems modeling and optimization; information systems; computers and society; computer systems technology; security and protection in information processing systems; artificial intelligence; and human-computer interaction. Proceedings and post-proceedings of refereed international conferences in computer science and interdisciplinary fields are featured. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing.
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