<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">CALL FOR CHAPTERS</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Proposals Submission Deadline: 30 APRIL 2008 <one week left></font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Full Chapters Due: 15 JULY 2008</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Nature-Inspired Algorithms for Optimisation</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">A volume edited by Raymond Chiong, to be published by Springer-Verlag in the series Studies in Computational Intelligence (SCI)</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Book Objectives & Mission:</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Nature has always been a source of inspiration. In recent years, new concepts, techniques and computational applications stimulated by nature are being continually proposed and exploited to solve a wide range of optimisation problems in diverse fields. Various kinds of nature-inspired algorithms have been designed and applied, and many of them are producing high quality solutions to a variety of real-world applications and optimisation problems, including scheduling, manufacturing, logistics, space allocation, stock cutting, anomaly detection, engineering design, software testing, bioinformatics and data mining, etc. The success of these algorithms has led to competitive advantages and cost savings not only to the industry but also the society at large.</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">The use of nature-inspired algorithms stands out to be promising due to the fact that many real-world problems have become increasingly complex. The size and complexity of the optimisation problems nowadays require the development of methods and solutions whose efficiency is measured by their ability to find acceptable results within a reasonable amount of time. Despite there is no guarantee of finding the optimal solution, approaches based on the influence of biology and life sciences such as evolutionary algorithms, neural networks, ant systems, swarm intelligence, artificial immune systems, and many others have been shown to be highly practical and provided state-of-the-art solutions to various optimisation problems.</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">The aim of this book is to provide a central source of reference by collecting and disseminating the progressive body of knowledge on nature-inspired algorithms and their applications. The main focus will be the implementation of nature-inspired solutions for optimisation based on empirical studies.</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Methods:<span style="FONT-FAMILY: Batang; mso-bidi-font-family: Batang"></span></font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-evolutionary algorithms</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-memetic algorithms</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-neural networks </font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-artificial life </font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-particle swarm optimisation </font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-ant colony optimisation </font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-artificial immune systems</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-membrane, molecular, cellular and DNA computing</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-tabu search, simulated annealing, etc</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-hybrid methods with metaheuristics, machine learning, game theory, mathematical programming, constraint programming, co-evolutionary learning, etc</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Applications:<span style="FONT-FAMILY: Batang; mso-bidi-font-family: Batang"></span></font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-evolutionary games</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-evolutionary economics</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-production, logistics and transportation</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-telecommunications and engineering design</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-planning, scheduling and timetabling</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-bioinformatics and data mining</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-cooperative decision support systems</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-grid computing and computer security</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-software testing and software self assembly</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-numerical and combinatorial optimisation</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-multi-objective optimisation, dynamic optimisation, problems with uncertainty, etc</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-integration of natural computing techniques in intelligent systems </font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-implementation issues of natural computing techniques </font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-optimisation strategies in robotics path planning, task allocation and coordination</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-optimisation and control of highly nonlinear, large scale or networked engineering</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-empirical comparison of optimisation problems</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">-successful optimisations in the fields of business, science and engineering</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Submission Procedure: </font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before April 30, 2008 an extended abstract to <a href="mailto:rchiong@swinburne.edu.my">rchiong@swinburne.edu.my</a> clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified in 2 weeks time about the status of their proposals. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by July 15, 2008. All submitted chapters will be reviewed by at least three reviewers.</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Important Dates: </font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Deadline for chapter proposals<span style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2"> </span>April 30, 2008</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Deadline for full chapters<span style="mso-tab-count: 4"> </span>July 15, 2008</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Notification of acceptance/rejection of chapters<span style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </span>September 15, 2008</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Deadline for submission of final chapters<span style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </span>October 10, 2008</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Publication of book<span style="mso-tab-count: 5"> </span>Second half of 2009</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">About the series Studies in Computational Intelligence:</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">The series Studies in Computational Intelligence (SCI) publishes new developments and advances in the various areas of computational intelligence - quickly and with a high quality. The intent is to cover the theory, applications, and design methods of computational intelligence, as embedded in the fields of engineering, computer science, physics and life science, as well as the methodologies behind them. The series contains monographs, lecture notes and edited volumes in computational intelligence spanning the areas of neural networks, connectionist systems, genetic algorithms, evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence, cellular automata, self-organising systems, soft computing, fuzzy systems, and hybrid intelligent systems. Critical to both contributors and readers are the short publication time and world-wide distribution - this permits a rapid and broad dissemination of research results.</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically or by mail to:</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Raymond Chiong</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">School of Information Technology</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Swinburne University of Technology (Sarawak Campus) </font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">State Complex, 93576 Kuching</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Sarawak, Malaysia</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Tel.: +60 82 416 353 • Fax: +60 82 423 594</font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">E-mail: <a href="mailto:rchiong@swinburne.edu.my">rchiong@swinburne.edu.my</a> </font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p>