Date: Tue, 17 Jun 86 20:15:38 edt From: vtisr1!irlistrq To: fox Subject: IRList Digest V2 #28 Status: R IRList Digest Tuesday, 17 June 1986 Volume 2 : Issue 28 Today's Topics: Email - Summer Slowdown Abstract - Connection Machine and IR Newsletter - Centre for the New OED, May Issue Announcement - FJCC'86 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From fox Tue Jun 17 18:46 EDT 1986 Subject: summer slowdown Not much has been reported, so this will be a short issue. Please send news from conferences, talks, etc. to the next issue (scheduled late June or beginning of July). Regards, Ed ------------------------------ >From fox Tue Jun 17 19:00 EDT 1986 Subject: "Parallel Free Text Search on the Connection Machine System" Authors: Craig Stanfill, Brewster Kahle of Thinking Machines Corp. Abstract: A new parallel computer, the Connection Machine (Trademark) System, has been applied to the free text search of large databases. In one benchmark, the time to evaluate a 20,000 term boolean query on a 15 gigabyte database was projected to be 3 minutes. The method has been adapted to implement Simple Queries, in which documents are assigned scores based on the presence or absence of various words, and the documents with the highest scores are retrieved first. These capabilities have been applied to create an experimental document retrieval system. Simple queries are used to locate a small number of possibly relevant documents. The user then has the option of marking some of these documents as good or bad. Words contained in good documents are given positive weights; words in bad documents are given negative weights. This yields a new query, which is used to search the database a second time. This process of iteratively refining queries based on marking documents as good or bad is called Relevance Feedback, and is a significant improvement over boolean queries, measured both by ease of use and quality of results. [Note: The paper this goes along was given to me but I have only heard by rumor that the paper may appear in CACM. The 1st part, about using the CM, is interesting. The experimental part is rather brief - only 2 queries were considered. The paper has 9 references, so it is clear that the authors have not had extensive experience with information retrieval work. But, the use of a connectionistic type of machine is clearly of interest! - Ed] ------------------------------ >From fox Tue Jun 17 19:10 EDT 1986 Subject: UW Centre for the New OED - Newsletter 10 May 1986 [Extracts are severely edited - Ed] Lexicon Workshop: was held in Pisa May 19-23. Sponsored by EEC, Univ. of Pisa, and the Istituto de Linguistica Computazionale del CNR, and gave special emphasis to lexical knowledge bases and practices in a multi- lingual environment. Visiting Fellowship: awarded for 1 month to Dr. Lise Winer of Dept. of Linguistics at Southern Illinois Univ. During her June visit she will continue work on a Dictionary of Trinidadian English. Advances in Lexicology: Call for Papers for 2nd Annual Conference issued. Deadline 15 June; conference will run 9-11 November in Waterloo. Report from OUP: Vol. Iv of the Supplement, Se-Z, was published this month. The fourth volume is the achievement of Dr. Robert Burchfield and his editorial team, marking one of the great milestones in historical scholarship. John Simpson, who worked on the Supplement and who is now turning his attention to the New English Words Series (NEWS), has been appointed Co-Editor of the New OED. John spent 4 months at the UW Centre last fall. Research Fellowships: Several will be awarded for period July 1, 1986 to June 30, 1987. Letters of application and requests for additional information should be addressed to: The Administrative Director, The UW Centre for the New OED, Univ. of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA, N2L 3G1. ------------------------------ >From fox Tue Jun 17 18:47 EDT 1986 Subject: Fall Joint Computer Conference [Extract from News Release from ACM - Ed] Program Set for ACM/IEEE Computer Society 1986 Fall Joint Computer Conference "World's Largest Computer Organizations Join Forces for New Conference at Infomart in Dallas, Nov. 2-6, 1986" The ACM and the IEEE Computer Society, the world's largest volunteer computer organizations, have announced the program for their 1986 Fall Joint Computer Conference (FJCC) to be held Nov. 2-6 in Dallas, Texas. According to Dr. Stanley Winkler, FJCC'86 General Chairman, "The time is ripe to inaugurate a forum to provide the richest, most potent opportunity for computer professions to share concepts and insights on how and where we should apply computers today and into the 1990's." Dr. Harold Stone, FJCC'86 Program Chairman, has assembled an array of more than eighty sessions in thirty tracks covering the major arenas of concern to computer professionals, including artificial intelligence, supercomputing, software systems, data bases, operating systems, and computer design. Also scheduled for FJCC'86 is a Professional Education Program consisting of twenty-four one and two day tutorials on Nov. 2-3. These in-depth sessions with hands-on capabilities, will cover such topics as robotics, network management, VLSI circuit layout, fault-tolerant computing and RISC architecture. ... For further information ... call INFOMART at 1-800-722-FJCC ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************