In 2009, for the second time in a row, Jena hosted an extraordinary event. In th 2008, Jena celebrated the 450 birthday of the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena with the motto "Lichtgedanken" - "?ashes of brilliance. " This year, for almost one week, Jena became the center for the pattern recognition research st community of the German-speaking countries in Europe by hosting the 31 Annual Symposium of the Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur ] Mustererkennung (DAGM). Jena is a special place for this event for several reasons. Firstly, it is the ?rst time that the university of Jena has been...