A first attempt to develop a standardized agent communication language (ACL) resulted in KQML, probably the most widely used such language. However, a lot of technical work remains to be done. Even worse, so far, there seems to be little consensus on the basics of agent communication and there is no clear understanding of the semantics of individual speech acts or even of the basic concepts that should be used to define the semantics. This book documents two workshops on communication in MAS held in 1999, one on Specifying and Implementing Conversation Policies (SICP) and the other in Agent Communication Languages and presents the current state of the art of research in the field. A detailed introductory overview by the volume editors highlights a number of issues that play an important role in agent communication.

A first attempt to develop a standardized agent communication language (ACL) resulted in KQML, probably the most widely used such language. However, a lot of technical work remains to be done. Even worse, so far, there seems to be little consensus on the basics of agent communication and there is no clear understanding of the semantics of individual speech acts or even of the basic concepts that should be used to define the semantics. This book documents two workshops on communication in MAS held in 1999, one on Specifying and Implementing Conversation Policies (SICP) and the other in Agent Communication Languages and presents the current state of the art of research in the field. A detailed introductory overview by the volume editors highlights a number of issues that play an important role in agent communication.

Mobile technologies have become a staple in society for their accessibility and diverse range of applications that are continually growing and advancing. Users are increasingly using these devices for activities beyond simple communication including gaming and e-commerce and to access confidential information including banking accounts and medical records. While mobile devices are being so widely used and accepted in daily life, and subsequently housing more and more personal data, it is evident that the security of these devices is paramount. As mobile applications now create easy access to personal information, they can incorporate location tracking services, and data collection can happen discreetly behind the scenes. Hence, there needs to be more security and privacy measures enacted to ensure that mobile technologies can be used safely. Advancements in trust and privacy, defensive strategies, and steps for securing the device are important foci as mobile technologies are highly popular and rapidly developing. The Research Anthology on Securing Mobile Technologies and Applications discusses the strategies, methods, and technologies being employed for security amongst mobile devices and applications. This comprehensive book explores the security support that needs to be required on mobile devices to avoid application damage, hacking, security breaches and attacks, or unauthorized accesses to personal data. The chapters cover the latest technologies that are being used such as cryptography, verification systems, security policies and contracts, and general network security procedures along with a look into cybercrime and forensics. This book is essential for software engineers, app developers, computer scientists, security and IT professionals, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in how mobile technologies and applications are implementing security protocols and tactics amongst devices.

InthisbookwepresentacollectionofpapersaroundthetopicofAgentCom- nication. The communication between agents has been one of the major topics of research in multi-agent systems. The current work can therefore build on a number of previous workshops, the proceedings of which have been published in earlier volumes in this series. The basis of this collection is the accepted s- missions of the workshop on Agent Communication Languages which was held in conjunction with the AAMAS conference in July 2003 in Melbourne. The workshop received 15 submissions of which 12 were selected for publication in this volume. Although the number of submissions was less than expected for an important area like Agent Communication there is no reason to worry that this area does not get enough attention from the agent community. First of all, the 12 selected papers are all of high quality. The high acceptance rate is only due to this high quality and not to the necessity to select a certain number of papers. Besides the high-quality workshop papers, we noticed that many papers on Agent Communication found their way to the main conference. We decided therefore to invite a number of authors to revise and extend their papers from this conference and to combine them with the workshop papers. We believe that the current collection comprises a very good and quite complete overview of the state of the art in this area of research and gives a good indication of the topics that are of major interest at the moment.

In this book, we present a collection of papers around the topic of agent com- nication. The communication between agents has been one of the major topics of research in multiagent systems. The current work can therefore build on a number of previous Workshops of which the proceedings have been published in earlier volumes in this series. The basis of this collection is formed by the accepted submissions of the Workshop on Agent Communication held in c- junction with the AAMAS Conference in July 2004 in New York. The workshop received 26 submissions of which 14 were selected for publication in this v- ume. Besides the high-quality workshop papers we noticed that many papers on agent communication found their way to the main conference. We decided therefore to invite a number of authors to revise and extend their papers from this conference and to combine them with the workshop papers. We believe that the current collection comprises a very good and quite complete overview of the state of the art in this area of research and gives a good indication of the topics that are of major interest at the moment. The papers can roughly be divided over the following ?ve themes: – social commitments – multiparty communication – content languages – dialogues and conversations – speech acts Although these themes are of course not mutually exclusive they indicate some main directions of research. We therefore have arranged the papers in the book according to the topics indicated above.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the two International Workshops on Agent Communication, AC 2005 and AC 2006, held in Utrecht, Netherlands in July 2005 and in Hakodate, Japan in May 2006 as associated events of AAMAS 2005/2006. The 20 revised full papers cover semantics of agent communication, commitments in agent communication, protocols and strategies, as well as reliability and overhearing.

These arethe proceedingsof the Fourth InternationalWorkshopon Cooperative Information Agents, held in Boston Massachusetts, USA, July 7-9, 2000. Cooperative information agent research and development focused originally onaccessingmultiple,heterogeneous,anddistributedinformationsources. Ga- ingaccesstothesesystems,throughInternetsearchengines,applicationprogram interfaces, wrappers, and web-based screens has been an important focus of - operative intelligent agents. Research has also focused on the integration of this information into a coherent model that combined data and knowledge from the multiple sources. Finally, this information is disseminated to a wide audience, giving rise to issues such as data quality, information pedigree, source reliability, information security, personal privacy, and information value. Research in - operative information agents has expanded to include agent negotiation, agent communities, agent mobility, as well as agent collaboration for information d- covery in constrained environments. TheinterdisciplinaryCIAworkshopseriesencompassesa widevarietyoft- ics dealing with cooperative information agents. All workshop proceedings have been published by Springer as Lecture Notes in Arti?cial Intelligence, Volumes 1202 (1997), 1435 (1998), and 1652 (1999), respectively. This year, the theme of the CIA workshop was ”’The Future of Information Agents in Cyberspace”, a very ?tting topic as the use of agents for information gathering, negotiation, correlation, fusion, and dissemination becomes ever more prevalent. We noted a marked trend in CIA 2000 towards addressing issues related to communities of agents that: (1) negotiate for information resources, (2) build robust ontologies to enhance search capabilities, (3) communicate for planning and problem so- ing, (4) learn and evolve based on their experiences, and (5) assume increasing degrees of autonomy in the control of complex systems.