It took many decades for Peirce's coneept of a relation to find its way into the microelectronic innards of control systems of eement kilns, subway trains, and tunnel-digging machinery. But what is amazing is that the more we leam about the basically simple coneept of a relation, the more aware we become of its fundamental importanee and wide ranging ramifications. The work by Di Nola, Pedrycz, Sanchez, and Sessa takes us a long distanee in this direction by opening new vistas on both the theory and applications of fuzzy relations - relations which serve to model the imprecise coneepts which...

In the existing literature the intersection of agent technology with soft computing is a very recent and attractive issue. The book is devoted to a unifying perspective of this topic. In contains contributions by well-known authors whose expertise is universally recognized in these crossing areas. Particular emphasis is devoted to advanced research projects involved with Web-related technologies.
Fundamental topics explored in this volume are: - formal theories and logics to represent and handle imprecise communication acts among communities of agents; - soft-computing approaches to define...