Final CFP: Constraints Journal, Special Issue on Constraint based methods for Bioinformatics

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Please note that the submission deadline is extended.

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                        FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

                         CONSTRAINTS Journal

    Special Issue on Constraint based methods for Bioinformatics

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INTRODUCTION

Bioinformatics   is   a   challenging   and   fast  growing  area  of
research,  which  is  of  utmost  importance  for  our  understanding
of   life.   Major  contributions  to  this  discipline  can  provide
significant  benefits  in  medicine,  agriculture,  and  industry. To
pick  out  only  a  few  examples,  Bioinformatics  tackles  problems
related to:

 * Recognition,   analysis,   and  organization   of   DNA  sequences
 * Biological  systems  simulations  (for  metabolic   or  regulatory
   networks)
 * Prediction  of  the  spatial  conformations  and  interactions  of
   biological polymers (e.g., proteins, RNA)

Recently,  these  problems  have  been  formalized  and studied using
constraints  (often  over  finite  domains  or  intervals  of reals).
Biology  is  a  source  of  extremely interesting and computationally
expensive  tasks,  that  can  be  encoded  exploiting the application
of  recent  and  more  general  techniques of constraint programming.

As  evidence  of  this  trend,  various  workshops  (Constraints  and
Bioinformatics/Biocomputing   at  CP97,  CP98  and  Constraint  based
methods  for  Bioinformatics  at  ICLP2005  and CP2006) witnessed the
interest  and  the  importance  of research in the topic and moreover
presented  new  developments  of  constraint  technology  (see, e.g.,
details in http://www.dimi.uniud.it/dovier/WCB06).

We   believe  that  is  valuable  to  gather  papers  addressing  the
application  of constraints to biological problems. With this special
issue,  we  desire to reflect the state of the art of this field, and
thus  we seek for papers that report new ideas, advances and results.
The  submission  of  papers  is  opened to anyone who developed ideas
and/or  obtained  results  in  the  bioinformatics area making use of
constraint programming.

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                          PAPER SUBMISSION
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Researchers  are  invited  to submit original or survey papers to all
the   editors   (addresses   below).  The  editors  would  appreciate
receiving  a  tentative  short  abstract  (may  be  partial)  at  the
beginning  of  January. In the first email, please specify the title,
keywords,  abstract  and  the  author's  email  addresses. Receipt of
submissions  will be acknowledged. All final submissions should be in
.pdf  format,  and  must adhere to the Constraints Journal guidelines
http://ai.uwaterloo.ca/~vanbeek/Constraints/Instructions_for_Authors.html
(Note   that   the   usual   on-line  submission  procedure  for  the
Constraints  Journal  will  not be followed initially for the Special
Issue)

We  expect  papers  no longer than 25 pages, but this is not a strict
constraint.  Submissions  will be reviewed by at least two reviewers.
All  accepted  papers  will  meet the usual high-quality standards of
the Constraints Journal.

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                           Important Dates
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 Abstract submission:               January  10th, 2007
 Submission Deadline:               February 14th, 2007
 Notification of acceptance:        May      14th, 2007
 Final versions of accepted papers: July     14th, 2007

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                            Guest Editors
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 Alessandro Dal Palu', Parma University, Italy.
        Email alessandro.dalpalu AT unipr.it

 Agostino Dovier, Udine University, Italy.
        Email dovier AT dimi.uniud.it

 Sebastian Will, Freiburg University, Germany.
        Email will AT informatik.uni-freiburg.de


 See: http://www.dimi.uniud.it/dovier/WCBSI/

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-- 
Sebastian Will, Dr. rer. nat.
Bioinformatics - Inst. of Computer Science
Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg
Tel: +49 (0761) 203 8246
http://www.bioinf.uni-freiburg.de/~will