Computational Science and Its Applications - ICCSA 2004 : Springer : 9783540220572 : 3540220577 : 07 May 2004 : 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 platf