Computer scientists, electronic engineers, and physicists explore a technology for making use of idle time on networked computers. In sections on principles of grid infrastructures, grid network designs, and applications for grid computing, they consider such aspects as desktop grids and volunteer computing systems, grid data handling, grid access control models and architectures, applying grid computing for meteorological assessment of wind and solar resources in sub-Saharan Africa countries, and enhancing the grid with multi-agent and semantic capabilities. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)