(Apologies for cross postings and duplication)

Call for Book Chapters


Meta-heuristics for Scheduling in Emergent Computational Systems

http://www.softcomputing.net/mhs.html

Series in Studies in Computational Intelligence --SPRINGER



INTRODUCTION

With the rapid development of Internet and other new technologies, different
kinds of network, distributed computing paradigms and platforms are emerging
as the new wave in computing of the new millennium. Examples of such
emergent computational systems are Grid and P2P systems, which are currently
being used for solving many complex problems from science and engineering. 
A broad range of issues are being addressed nowadays, from theory to
practical development and fast advances are made and reported by researchers
from both academia and industry. One such important issue is the scheduling
problem, that is, the efficient allocations of jobs to geographically
distributed resources, which is indispensable for the development of High
Performance Distributed Applications.

Despite of the family of scheduling problems being one of the must studied 
by the optimization research community, the available approaches do not
apply in a straightforward way to the Job Scheduling in Computational Grids
and P2P systems as it significantly differs from conventional scheduling on
LANs or parallel computers. Indeed, scheduling in grid systems adds new
features not present in conventional scheduling due to proper
characteristics of the large-scale distributed environments. Regarding the
optimization criteria, besides typical optimization criteria such as
minimization of makespan and flowtime, other important criteria are to be
considered such as maximizing resource utilization, resource owner's
benefits, etc. Thus, the problem is multi-objective in its
general formulation. On the other hand, scheduling must take into account
possible local policies on resources (e.g. access and cost), the existence
of local schedulers, etc.

Current research efforts are addressing new techniques for dealing in
practice with the complexity of the problem, among them, we distinguish the
meta-heuristic techniques--the de facto approach for hard combinatorial
optimization problems.

THE OVERALL OBJECTIVE OF THE BOOK

To give a comprehensive view of most recent advances from theory and
practice of the job scheduling problem in large-scale distributed systems.
The book aims to provide relevant theoretical frameworks and latest
empirical research findings in this regard. Readers can benefit from this
book in understanding the basics and current techniques applied for solving
the scheduling problem in emergent computational systems, as well as its use
in developing large-scale distributed applications.


RECOMMENDED TOPICS INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO THE FOLLOWING:

* Single heuristic approaches (Local-search based techniques,
population-based techniques,
  swarm optimization and ACO techniques)
* Hybrid heuristic approaches (Hybridization of different heuristics)
* Parallel implementations of single/hybrid heuristic approaches
* Ad hoc approaches used in combination with heuristic approaches
* Economic based approaches used in combination with heuristic approaches

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE & SCHEDULE

The book will be published in the Springer Verlag, Series - 'Studies in
Computational Intelligence'.

Please prepare the manuscript using the author guidelines and format given
in the following link:
http://www.softcomputing.net/cec06/author-kit.zip

* PROPOSAL: Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before
January 15, 2007       a 2-5 page manuscript proposal clearly explaining the
mission and concerns of the proposed chapter.

Authors will be notified about the suitability of the chapters within 2
weeks of the submission date.

* Full CHAPTER SUBMISSION: March 30, 2007. Chapters have to be no more than
40 pages length and will be peer-reviewed by at least three referees.

* NOTIFICATION: Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by  May 30,
2007, about the status of their proposals and sent chapter organizational
guidelines. Full accepted chapters are expected to be submitted by 31 July,
2007.


The book is scheduled to be published by Springer-Verlag by end of 2007. 
Inquiries and Submissions can be forwarded electronically (as a PDF file) to
one of the Volume editors:

Volume Editors:

Fatos Xhafa, Ph.D.

Department of Languages and Informatics Systems
Polytechnic University of Catalonia
Campus Nord, Ed. Omega, C/Jordi Girona 1-3,
08034 Barcelona, SPAIN
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: +34 93-413-7880
Fax:+34 93-413-7833


Ajith Abraham, Ph.D.

School of Computer Science,
Yonsei University,
134 Shinchon-dong, Sudaemoon-ku,
Seoul 120-749, Republic of Korea

Email: [log in to unmask]
WWW: http://www.softcomputing.net