Pete Greig, the acclaimed author of Red Moon Rising, has written his most intensely personal and honest account yet in God on Mute, a book born out of his wife Samie's fight for her life and diagnosis of a debilitating brain tumor. Greig asks the timeless questions of what it means to suffer and to pray and to suffer through the silence because your prayers seem unanswered. This silence, Greig relates, is the hardest thing. The world collapses. Then all goes quiet. Words can't explain, don't fit, won't work. People avoid you and don't know what to say. So you turn to Him and you pray. You need Him more than ever before. But somehow . . . even God Himself seems on mute. In this heart-searching, honest, and deeply profound book, Pete Greig looks at the hard side of prayer, how to respond when there seem to be no answers, and how to cope with those who seek to interpret our experience for us. Here is a story of faith, hope, and love beyond all understanding.

This book of LNNS contains accepted papers presented at DCAI conference in the Special Session on Intelligent Systems Applications (ISA), Guimarães (Portugal), July 2023. ISA is a major forum for presentation of development and applications of innovative techniques in the fields of building management, assistive technologies, the applied engineering, and industry. The scientific committee of the ISA has selected 8 full papers for its publication. This year ISA Special Session has teamed up with “Logic Journal of the IGPL” (Oxford University Press) for one special issue including selected papers from ISA Special Session 2023. We would like to thank all the contributing authors, the members of the Program Committee, the Organizing Committee of the Universities of Minho, and Salamanca for their hard and highly valuable work, which has been essential for the success of ISA 2023.

This book addresses a broad range of topics, from newly proposed techniques in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning to various applications such as decision-making, pattern classification for data, image and signals, robotics, and control systems. Big data applications are discussed, while improved methods and wholly new methods for using deep learning technologies are also presented. The topics covered are comprehensive and reflect a wide range of technologies in the area. In particular, the latest methods in deep learning approaches and applications are discussed in many parts of the book, providing a better understanding of these new technologies. The book’s general scope includes the latest methods in the areas of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for use in distributed computing as well as decision support systems. As the book covers a rather wide area, its intended readership ranges from those working in AI and machine learning technologies to those working on applications utilizing these technologies, researchers new to these areas who need background information on the technologies and applications, and more experienced researchers looking for new methods and applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy, ACISP 2012, held in Wollongong, Australia, in July 2012. The 30 revised full papers presented together with 5 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 89 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on fundamentals; cryptanalysis; message authentication codes and hash functions; public key cryptography; digital signatures; identity-based and attribute-based cryptography; lattice-based cryptography; lightweight cryptography.