Many business decisions are made in the absence of complete information about the decision consequences. Credit lines are approved without knowing the future behavior of the customers; stocks are bought and sold without knowing their future prices; parts are manufactured without knowing all the factors affecting their final quality; etc. All these cases can be categorized as decision making under uncertainty. Decision makers (human or automated) can handle uncertainty in different ways. Deferring the decision due to the lack of sufficient information may not be an option, especially in...

A sharp increase in the computing power of modern computers has triggered the development of powerful algorithms that can analyze complex patterns in large amounts of data within a short time period. Consequently, it has become possible to apply pattern recognition techniques to new tasks. The main goal of this book is to cover some of the latest application domains of pattern recognition while presenting novel techniques that have been developed or customized in those domains.

Today, in the middle of the ?rst decade of the 21st century, the Internet has become a major communication medium, where virtually any kind of content can be transferred instantly and reliably between individual users and entire - ganizations located in any part of the globe. The World Wide Web (WWW) has a tremendous e?ect on our daily activities at work and at home. Consequently, more e?ective and e?cient methods and technologies are needed to make the most of the Web's nearly unlimited potential. The new Web-related research directions include intelligent methods usually associated with the...