The book is a collection of selected papers from the 18th WIRN workshopthe annual meeting of the Italian Neural Networks Society (SIREN). As 18 marks the year young people come of age in Italy, the Society invited two generations of researchers to participate in a common discussion: those new to the field and those with extensive familiarity with the neural paradigm. The challenge lay in understanding what remains of the revolutionary ideas from which neural networks stemmed in the eighties, how these networks have evolved and influenced other research fields, and ultimately what are the new conceptual/methodological frontiers to trespass for a better exploitation of the information carried by data.

From this discussion we selected 27 papers which have been gathered under two general headings, “Models” and “Applications,” plus two specific ones, “Economy and Complexity” and “Remote Sensing Image Processing.” The editors would like to thank the invited speakers as well as all those who contributed to the success of the workshops with papers of outstanding quality. Finally, special thanks go to the referees for their valuable input.

We are also pleased that non-SIREN member researchers joined us both at the meeting and in this editorial venture, bearing witness to a wide sphere of interest in the debate. We hope, moreover, that the book will serve in making a scientific contribution to the discovery of new forms of cooperative work – so necessary today for the invention of efficient computational systems and new social paradigms too.

November 2008

Bruno Apolloni, Simone Bassis, Maria Marinaro