Dear Readers:

This issue contains again a wide spectrum of papers, as is typical for J.UCS - should you want to make a comment on any of them, just make use of the 'Write' button in the abstract of the paper or in the paper itself!

Also, I'm pleased to inform you about a few new technical features that we have implemented recently. The header of each abstract/paper has now two new icons:'Similar Docs' and 'BibTeX'. With 'Similar Docs', similar documents to the one you are looking at can be searched throughout J.UCS. The result is then displayed in a list. In this list, the similarity percentage of each entry is displayed on the right hand side. You may also limit the scope of the search to a specific volume of J.UCS as well as specify the number of objects to be displayed in the list. This feature makes it possible to find the context of a paper additionally to its classification by categories.

The other icon ('BibTeX') opens a window with the BibTeX-entry of the displayed paper. The BibTeX-system, which is well known to the TeX/LaTeX users, makes the citing of papers published in J.UCS considerably easier. Authors not using TeX/LaTeX may convert the entry to the prefered format using available tools (see e.g. http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~jacobsd/bib/tools/index.html.

Finally, do have a look at the special issues announcement page (http://www.jucs.org/jucs_special_issues/in_preparation) to check on forthcoming special issues: in June and July, proceedings from the I-KNOW '02, the international conference on Knowledge Management in Graz, Austria, will be published as a special issue, followed by Spatial and Temporal Reasoning in September and a special issue with a selection of papers from the 5th International Workshops on Tools for System Design and Verification in December. Should you be interested in editing and publishing a special issue yourself, please contact me at hmaurer@iicm.edu.

Do continue to support J.UCS by submitting good papers and drawing the attention of your friends, colleagues and students to the journal!

Cordially,
Hermann Maurer