Author Description

The natural mission of Computational Science is to tackle all sorts of human problems and to work out intelligent automata aimed at alleviating the b- den of working out suitable tools for solving complex problems. For this reason ComputationalScience,thoughoriginatingfromtheneedtosolvethemostch- lenging problems in science and engineering (computational science is the key player in the?ght to gain fundamental advances in astronomy, biology, che- stry, environmental science, physics and several other scienti?c and engineering disciplines) is increasingly turning its attention to all?elds of human activity. In all activities, in fact, intensive computation, information handling, kn- ledge synthesis, the use of ad-hoc devices, etc. increasingly need to be exploited and coordinated regardless of the location of both the users and the (various and heterogeneous) computing platforms. As a result the key to understanding the explosive growth of this discipline lies in two adjectives that more and more appropriately refer to Computational Science and its applications: interoperable and ubiquitous. Numerous examples of ubiquitous and interoperable tools and applicationsaregiveninthepresentfourLNCSvolumescontainingthecontri- tions delivered at the 2004 International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications (ICCSA 2004) held in Assisi, Italy, May 14–17, 2004.