A global information revolution has begun. Converging communications and computing technologies are forming information superhighways, linking people and information interactively, at any time, in any place, via a combination of multimedia, digital video, sound, graphics, and text.
The challenge now is to understand the needs of people as the users of information superhighways and develop products and services that use the technological advances to positive effect. This is the first book to examine these issues. It shows that by focusing on users, a range of multimedia applications emerge...

This, the 4th Transactions on Computational Systems Biology volume, contains carefully selected and enhanced contributions presented at the first Converging Science conference held at the University of Trento, Italy, in December 2004.

Dedicated especially to models and metaphors from biology to bioinformatics tools, the 11 papers selected for the special issue cover a wide range of bioinformatics research, such as foundations of global computing, interdisciplinarity in innovation initiatives, biodiversity, and more.