Date: Sun, 8 Jun 86 17:21:53 edt From: vtisr1!irlistrq To: fox Subject: IRList Digest V2 #26 Status: R IRList Digest Sunday, 8 June 1986 Volume 2 : Issue 26 Today's Topics: Email - IRList Reaches 200 Mark! Query - References for MS Thesis on Representing Natural Language Announcement - MS Thesis Defense about CODER Project Call for Papers - IJCAI-87 Call for Nominations - IJCAI Awards ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From fox Sat Jun 7 10:46 EDT 1986 Subject: size of list Congratulations, folks! We now have 200 entries in our mailing list! Some of these are redistribution lists, so the set of readers is even larger. I will be sending out notes to selected individuals to ask that more local redistributions be set up; please think about doing so even if I don't ask since it is possible that there are other people at your site who might be interested if they new a msg was already being received. Thank you all for your continuing support of IRList! - Ed Fox (BITNET[cheapest]:foxea@vtvax3 or foxea%vtvax3.bitnet@wiscvm.arpa; CSNET:fox@vt;Internet:fox%vtisr1.uucp@seismo.css.gov;UUCP:seismo!vtisr1!fox) Dr. Edward A. Fox; Dept. of Computer Science; 562 McBryde Hall Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA 24061; (703) 961-5113 or 6931 ------------------------------ From: seismo!nwc-143b.ARPA!sefai Date: 2 Jun 86 16:56:00 PST Subject: References on Natural Language??? I am investigating literature that will hopefully help me on my master's thesis. Without being too specific, the topic centers around schemes for representing natural language in a computer system. So far, my list of references includes: 1. Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, Barr and Feigenbaum 2. NETL: A System for Representing and Using Real-World Knowledge, Fahlman 3. Human Information Processing, Lindsay and Norman 4. A Theory of Syntactic Recognition for Natural Language, Marcus 5. Principles of Artificial Intelligence, Nilsson 6. Basic English (series), Ogden 7. The Cognitive Computer on Language, Schank with Childers 8. Computer Models of Thought and Language, Schank and Colby 9. Artificial Intelligence, Winston 10. A Handbook of English Grammar, Zandvoort I'd appreciate any good references others have come across and I'd be more than happy to send out the list afterwards. Gene Guglielmo sefai@nwc-143b [Note: Thank you for the offer of collecting references. You have quite an unusual assortment of works! I encourage you to look at "Introduction to Modern Information Retrieval" by Salton and McGill and "Information Retrieval, 2nd ed." by C.J. VanRijsbergen for a rather different perspective. Let us know more details of your plans when you become more focused. - Ed] references ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 May 86 10:31:37 edt From: vtcs1::fox Subject: Thesis defense on CODER system The M.S. defense of Robert K. France will be held at 10am Monday June 2 in Norris 301. The title of his thesis is "An Artificial Intelligence Environment for Information Retrieval Research." Abstract: The CODER (COmposite Document Expert/extended/effective Retrieval) project is a multi-year effort to investigate how best to apply artificial intelligence methods to increase the effectiveness of information retrieval systems. Particular attention is being given to analysis and representation of hetero- geneous documents, such as electronic mail digests or messages, which vary widely in style, length, topic, and structure. In order to ensure system adaptability and to allow reconfiguration for controlled experimentation, the project has been designed as a moderated expert system. This thesis covers the design problems involved in providing a unified architecture and knowledge representation scheme for such a system, and the solutions chosen for CODER. An overall object-oriented environment is constructed using a set of message-passing primitives based on a modified Prolog call paradigm. Within this environment is embedded the skeleton of a flexible expert system, where task decomposition is performed in a knowledge-oriented fashion and where subtask managers are implemented as members of a community of experts. A three-level knowledge representation formalism of elementary data types, frames, and relations is provided, and can be used to construct knowledge structures such as terms, meaning structures, and document interpretations. The use of individually tailored specialist experts coupled with standardized blackboard modules for communication and control and external knowledge bases for maintenance of factual world knowledge allows for rapid prototyping, incre- mental development, and flexibility under change. The system as a whole is structured as a set of communicating modules, defined functionally and imple- mented under UNIX using sockets and the TCP/IP protocol for communication. Inferential modules are being coded in MU-Prolog; non-inferential modules are being prototyped in MU-Prolog and will be re-implemented as needed in C++. Host: Dr. Edward A. Fox, Dept. of Computer Science ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Jun 86 06:53:33 edt From: walker@MOUTON.ARPA Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS for IJCAI-87 [Edited - Ed] CALL FOR PAPERS: IJCAI-87 Tenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence August 23-28, 1987 Milan, Italy The IJCAI conferences are the main forums for the presentation of artificial intelligence research to an international audience. The goal of IJCAI-87 is to promote scientific interchange, within and between all subfields of AI, among researchers from all over the world. The conference is sponsored by the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence, Inc. (IJCAII). In response to the growing interest in engineering issues within the AI community, IJCAI-87's Technical Program will have two distinct tracks: science and engineering. The science papers, presented Sunday through Wednesday (August 23-26), will stress the computational principles underlying cognition and perception in man and machine. The engineering papers, presented Tuesday through Friday (August 25-28), will highlight pragmatic issues that arise in applying these computational principles. Tutorials will be presented on Sunday and Monday in parallel with the first two days of the science paper presentations. Meetings or workshops focussed on specific research issues might most appropriately be held on Thursday or Friday. TOPICS OF INTEREST Authors are invited to submit papers to either the science or engineering tracks within one of the following topic areas: - Architectures and Languages (including logic programming, user interface technology) - Reasoning (including theorem proving, planning, explaining) - Knowledge Acquisition and Learning (including knowledge-base maintenance) - Knowledge Representation (including task domain analysis) - Cognitive Modeling - Natural Language Understanding - Perception and Signal Understanding (including speech, vision, data interpretation) - Robotics REQUIREMENTS FOR SUBMISSION: Authors are requested to prepare full papers, no more than 7 proceedings' pages (approximately 5600 words), or short papers, no more than 3 proceedings' pages (approximately 2400 words). The full-paper classification is intended for well-developed ideas, with significant demonstration of validity, while the short-paper classification is intended for descriptions of research in progress. Authors must ensure that their papers describe original contributions to or novel applications of AI, regardless of length classification, and that the research is properly compared and contrasted with relevant literature. DETAILS OF SUBMISSION: Authors should submit six (6) copies of their papers (hard copy only -- we cannot accept on-line files) to the Program Chair no later than Monday, January 5, 1987. The following information must be included on the title page: - Author's name, address, telephone number and computer mail address (if applicable) - Paper type (full-paper or short-paper), topic area, track (science or engineering), and a few keywords for further classification within the topic area - An abstract of 100-200 words The timetable is as follows: - Submission deadline: 5 January 1987 (papers received after January 5 will be returned unopened) - Notification of acceptance or rejection: 17 March 1987 - Camera ready copy due: 10 April 1987 The language of the conference is English; all papers submitted should be written in English. REVIEW CRITERIA: Each paper will be reviewed by at least two experts. Acceptance will be based on the overall merit and significance of the reported research, as well as on the quality of the presentation. A paper may be reviewed by experts responsible for an area or track other than the one to which it was submitted if, in the opinion of a program committee member, it can thereby be more fairly reviewed. Papers submitted to the science track should make an original and significant contribution to knowledge in the field of artificial intelligence. Papers submitted to the engineering track should focus on pragmatic issues that arise in reducing AI principles and techniques to practice. Such papers could identify the critical features of some successful application system's approach to reasoning or knowledge acquisition or natural language understanding. Of particular interest are papers that demonstrate insightful analysis of a task domain motivating the selection of a computational and representational approach. CONTACT POINTS: Submissions and inquiries about the program should be sent to the Program Chair: John McDermott Department of Computer Science Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA 1-412-268-2599 McDermott@cmu-cs-a.arpa Inquiries about registration, tutorials, exhibits, and other local arrangements should be sent to the Local Arrangements Chair: Marco Somalvico Dipartimento di Elettronica Politecnico di Milano Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci N.32 I-20133 Milano ITALY 39-2-236-7241 somalvic!prlb2@seismo Other inquiries should be directed to the General Chair: Alan Bundy Department of Artificial Intelligence University of Edinburgh 80 South Bridge Edinburgh EH1 1HN UK 44-31-225-7774 ext 242 Bundy%edinburgh.ac.uk@ucl-cs.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Jun 86 06:53:20 edt From: bundy%aiva.edinburgh.ac.uk@CS.UCL.AC.UK Subject: IJCAI AWARDS CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR IJCAI AWARDS The IJCAI Award for Research Excellence The IJCAI Award for Research Excellence is given at each International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, to a scientist who has carried out a program of research of consistently high quality yielding several substantial results. If the research program has been carried out col- laboratively the award may be made jointly to the research team. The first recipient of this award was John McCarthy in 1985. The Award carries with it a certificate and the sum of $1,000 plus travel and living expenses for the IJCAI. The researcher(s) will be invited to deliver an address on the nature and significance of the results achieved and write a paper for the conference prodeedings. Primarily, however, the award carries the honour of having one's work selected by one's peers as an exemplar of sustained research in the maturing science of Artificial Intelligence. We hereby call for nominations for The IJCAI Award for Research Excellence to be made at IJCAI-87 in Milan. The accompanying note on Selection Procedures for IJCAI Awards provides the relevant details. The Computers and Thought Award The Computers and Thought Lecture is given at each International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence by an outstanding young scientist in the field of artificial intelligence. The Award carries with it a certificate and the sum of $1,000 plus travel and subsistence expenses for the IJCAI. The Lecture is one evening during the Conferen- ce, and the public is invited to attend. The Lecturer is in- vited to publish the Lecture in the conference proceedings. The Lectureship was established with royalties received from the book Computers and Thought, edited by Feigenbaum and Feldman; it is currently supported by income from IJCAI funds. Past recipients of this honour have been Terry Winograd (1971), Patrick Winston (1973), Chuck Rieger (1975), Douglas Lenat (1977), David Marr (1979), Gerald Sussman (1981), Tom Mitchell (1983) and Hector Levesque (1985). Nominations are invited for The Computers and Thought Award to be made at IJCAI-87 in Milan. The note on Selection Procedures for IJCAI Awards covers the nomination procedures to be followed. Selection Procedures for IJCAI Awards Nominations for The Computers and Thought Award and The IJCAI Award for Research Excellence are invited from all in the Artificial Intelligence international community. The procedures are the same for both awards. There should be a nominator and a seconder, at least one of whom should not have been in the same institution as the nominee. The nominee must agree to be nominated. There are no other restrictions on nominees, nominators or second- ers. The nominators should prepare a short submission less than 2,000 words for the voters, outlining the nominee's qualifications with respect to the criteria for the parti- cular award. The award selection committee is the union of the Pro- gram, Conference and Advisory Committees of the upcoming IJCAI and the Board of Trustees of IJCAII, with nominees excluded. Nominations should be submitted before December 1st, 1986 to the Conference Chair for IJCAI-87: Dr Alan Bundy, IJCAI-87 Conference Chair, Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh, 80 South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 IHN, Scotland. tel 44-31-225-7774 ext 242 ArpaNet: bundy@rutgers.arpa JANet: bundy@uk.ac.edinburgh ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************