Computerscientistscreatemodelsofaperceivedreality.ThroughAItechniques, these models aim at providing the basic support for emulating cognitive - havior such as reasoning and learning, which is one of the main goals of the AI research e?ort. Such computer models are formed through the interaction of various acquisition and inference mechanisms: perception, concept learning, conceptual clustering, hypothesis testing, probabilistic inference, etc., and are represented using di?erent paradigms tightly linked to the processes that use them. Among these paradigms let us cite: biological models (neural nets, genetic programming), logic-based models (?rst-order logic, modal logic, rule-based s- tems), virtual reality models (object systems, agent systems), probabilistic m- els(Bayesiannets,fuzzylogic),linguisticmodels(conceptualdependencygraphs, language-based representations), etc. OneofthestrengthsoftheConceptualGraph(CG)theoryisitsversatilityin terms of the representation paradigms under which it falls. It can be viewed and therefore used, under di?erent representation paradigms, which makes it a p- ular choice for a wealth of applications. Its full coupling with di?erent cognitive processes lead to the opening of the ?eld toward related research communities such as the Description Logic, Formal Concept Analysis, and Computational Linguistic communities. We now see more and more research results from one community enrich the other, laying the foundations of common philosophical grounds from which a successful synergy can emerge.

This volume contains the proceedings of ICCS 2003, the 11th International C- ferenceonConceptualStructures. Thisconferenceseriescontinuestobethemain forum for the presentation and discussion of state-of-the-art research on conc- tualstructures. Thetheories,methodologies,andtechniquespresentedherehave grown considerably in scope in recent years. On the other hand, solid bridges spanning the boundaries between such diverse ?elds as Conceptual Graphs, F- mal Concept Analysis, and others are increasingly being built in our community. The theme of this year’s conference was “Conceptual Structures for Kno- edge Creation and Communication”. In our increasingly (Inter)networked world, the potential support of information technology for the creation and commu- cation of quality knowledge is almost boundless. However, in reality, many c- ceptual barriers prevent the use of this potential. The main problem is no longer in the technological infrastructure, but in how to navigate, use, and manage the wealth of available data resources. Thus, the question is: how to create and communicate from data the information and ultimately the knowledge required by an ever more complex and dynamic society? Conceptual structures research focuses on what is behind and between the data glut and the information ov- load that need to be overcome in answering this question. In this way, our ?eld contributes important ideas on how to actually realize some of the many still ambitious visions. All regular papers were reviewed in a thorough and open process by at least two reviewers and one editor.

We are pleased to bring you this collection of papers for the Ninth International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS), representing continued excellence in conceptual structures research. We have adopted the title \Broadening the Base," acknowledging the importance of contributions from scholars in many research areas. The rst ICCS meetings focused primarily on Sowa’s conceptual graphs; in recent years, however, the ICCS conference series has intentionally widened its scope to stimulate research across domain boundaries. We hope that this stimulation is further enhanced by ICCS 2001 continuing the long tradition of lively conferences about Conceptual Structures. We wish to express our appreciation to all the authors of submitted papers, to the general chair, to the members of the editorial board and the program committee, and to the additional reviewers for making ICCS 2001 a valuable contribution to the knowledge processing research eld. We would also like to acknowledge the leadership of Guy Mineau and Bernhard Ganter in providing a solid framework for an open and e ective reviewing process. Very special thanks go to the local organizers for making the conference possible and, furthermore, an enjoyable and inspiring event. We are grateful to the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the University of Karlsruhe for their generous support.

This volume contains selected papers presented at the 12th International C- ference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2004, held in Huntsville Alabama, July 19–23, 2004. The main theme of the conference, “Conceptual Structures at Work”, was chosen to express our intention of applying conceptual structures for hum- centered practical purposes. That invites us to develop not only clear conceptual theories,butalsomethodstosupporthumansintheapplicationofthesetheories in their societies. Some promising steps in this direction are being taken, but the gap between the researchers working on a highly sophisticated level on one side and the practitioners in many ?elds of applications on the other side is usually di?culttobridge.Someofushaveexperiencesinsuchpracticalcooperation,but we need more members of our community to be engaged in “real life problems”. We all know that solutions of complex problems in practice require not only a well-developed formal theory, but also an understanding of the whole context of the given problems. To support our understanding we need general philo- phical methods as well as formal theories for the representation of fundamental structures in practice. We believe that our community has powerful tools and methodsforsuccessfulapplicationsinpractice,butthatwemustdevelopaforum to present our results to a broader audience. First we must understand the s- ni?cant developments in our own group, which has activities in many directions of research.

This volume contains the Proceedings of ICFCA 2004, the 2nd International Conference on Formal Concept Analysis. The ICFCA conference series aims to be the premier forum for the publication of advances in applied lattice and order theory and in particular scienti?c advances related to formal concept analysis. Formal concept analysis emerged in the 1980s from e?orts to restructure lattice theory to promote better communication between lattice theorists and potentialusersoflatticetheory.Sincethen,the?eldhasdevelopedintoagrowing research area in its own right with a thriving theoretical community and an increasing number of applications in data and knowledge processing including data visualization, information retrieval, machine learning, data analysis and knowledge management. In terms of theory, formal concept analysis has been extended into attribute exploration, Boolean judgment, contextual logic and so on to create a powerful general framework for knowledge representation and reasoning. This conference aims to unify theoretical and applied practitioners who use formal concept an- ysis, drawing on the ?elds of mathematics, computer and library sciences and software engineering. The theme of the 2004 conference was ‘Concept Lattices” to acknowledge the colloquial term used for the line diagrams that appear in almost every paper in this volume. ICFCA 2004 included tutorial sessions, demonstrating the practical bene?ts of formal concept analysis, and highlighted developments in the foundational theory and standards. The conference showcased the increasing variety of formal concept analysis software and included eight invited lectures from distinguished speakersinthe?eld.Sevenoftheeightinvitedspeakerssubmittedaccompanying papers and these were reviewed and appear in this volume.

Formal concept analysis has been developed as a field of applied mathematics based on the mathematization of concept and concept hierarchy. It thereby allows us to mathematically represent, analyze, and construct conceptual structures. The formal concept analysis approach has been proven successful in a wide range of application fields. This book constitutes a comprehensive and systematic presentation of the state of the art of formal concept analysis and its applications. The first part of the book is devoted to foundational and methodological topics. The contributions in the second part demonstrate how formal concept analysis is successfully used outside of mathematics, in linguistics, text retrieval, association rule mining, data analysis, and economics. The third part presents applications in software engineering.