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Nicola Guarino is widely recognized as one of the founders of applied ontology. His deep interest in the subtlest details of theoretical analysis and his vision of ontology as the Rosetta Stone for semantic interoperability guided the development and understanding of this domain. His motivations in research stem from the conviction that all science must be for the benefit of society at large, and his motto has always been that ontologies are not just for making information systems interoperable, but – more importantly – for ensuring that systems'users understand each other. He was among the first to recognize that applied ontology must be an interdisciplinary enterprise if it is to capture the intended meaning of the terms used by an information system. This book is a collection of essays written in homage to Nicola Guarino; a tribute to his many scientific contributions to the discipline of applied ontology. The papers presented here reflect the wide variety of research topics that marked Nicola's impact on the applied ontology community. They are grouped according to the five general areas addressed by Nicola in his career: what is an ontology; knowledge engineering; ontologies and language; ontological categories and relationships; and ontologies and applications. Nicola Guarino's work and dedication will undoubtedly continue to influence the applied ontology community, and this book will be of interest to the many researchers aiming to establish ontologically sound bases for their research areas.

Context a?ects a wide range of activities in humans and animals as well as in arti?cialagentsandothersystems.Theimportanceofcontextiswidelyackno- edged, and “context” has become an area of study in its own right, as evidenced bynumerousworkshops,symposia,seminars,andconferencesonthisarea.CON- TEXT,theoldestconferenceseriesfocusing oncontext,is unique inits emphasis on interdisciplinary research. Previous CONTEXT conferences have been held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (CONTEXT'97), Trento, Italy (CONTEXT'99, LNCS 1688), Dundee, UK (CONTEXT 2001, LNCS 2116), Palo Alto, USA (CON- TEXT 2003, LNCS 2680), and Paris, France (CONTEXT 2005, LNCS 3554). Each of these brought together researchers and practitioners from a large range of?elds to discuss and report on context-related research and projects. The CONTEXT 2007 conference was held at Roskilde University, Denmark. The?rst two days were devoted to workshops on speci?c areas of interest to the context community and, in parallel, the doctoralconsortium. The remaining three days featured invited talks, presentations, and posters on both theoretical and applied context research. This volume contains the papers presented at CONTEXT 2007, the Sixth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context. There were 121 submissions to the conference. The committee decided to accept 42 papers on the basis of a thorough and highly selective review process. We believe that the papers of this volume represent a snapshot of current work and contribute to both theoretical and applied aspects of research.