IRList Digest Sunday, 28 February 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 10 Today's Topics: Query - Engineering data modelling information - Word frequency comparisons Reply - AI in chemistry: references Announcement - IR for Expert Systems in Government Conference - Hyperties CSLI - Higher-Order Logic in Computational Linguistics News addresses are Internet or CSNET: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1988 23:57:25 EST From: Deeptendu Majumder Subject: Engineering Data Modelling Info I am working in the area of Engineering Databases, here at Georgia Tech, and looking for information on Enginnering Data Modeling. Can anybody provide me with a list of good references in this area. Information on software packages for data modeling and names and address of people actively involved in this area will be also very helpful. The stress is on Engineering Data. I would really appreciate any help. Thanx in advance Deeptendu Majumder MEIBMDM@GITVM2 Box 30963 Georgia Tech Atlanta, GA 30332 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Jan 88 14:30 EDT From: LEWIS@UMass Subject: query for IRLIST : word frequency in technical prose Does anyone know of refs to analyses comparing word frequencies in scientific and engineering text with frequencies in other sorts of text? Thanks, David D. Lewis CSNET: lewis@cs.umass.edu COINS Dept. BITNET: lewis@umass University of Massachusetts, Amherst Amherst, MA 01003 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Jan 88 09:22:22 EST From: "David K. Johnson, Exxon Research & Engineering Co." Subject: AI in Chemistry "Artificial Intelligence Applications in Chemisty" American Chemical Society Symposium Series #306; ISBN 0-8412-0966-9; 190th ACS Meeting, Chicago, 1985; Editors: T. H. Pierce, B. A. Hohne; American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C. 1986. I would also suggest that you check the ACS Abstracts of Papers for the twice-a-year ACS meetings. There have been a number of papers and symposia on AI and Expert Systems in Chemistry--particularly in the Divisions of Chemical Information and Computers in Chemistry. The ACS journal Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Science may also be useful. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Feb 88 17:19:01 est From: fox (Ed Fox) Subject: ESIG involvement Reminder! The 4th Annual Expert Systems in Government Conference will be held Oct 1988 in Washington, with theme Intelligent Systems - Realizing the Payoff for Today & Tomorrow I am the technical proponent for information retrieval for that conference and so am urging that people contribute 3 copies of a paper by April 4 to ESIG '88, MS W418, The Mitre Corporation, 7525 Colshire Dr., McLean VA 22102 The 1st page should contain the author's name, affiliation, address, electronic address if available, phone number, and 100 word abstract. Accepted papers will be allocated up to 6 manuscript pages, approximately 4800 words in the proceedings. Acceptance/rejection notice will be by 1 July and camera ready copy is needed by August 1. Topics of interest include knowledge representations knowledge acquisiton reasoning under uncertainty natural language and intelligent interfaces expert system development environments I encourage some IR papers - each year there has been at least one session on IR work. Hope some of you can contribute and will come to the conference as well. - Ed ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Jan 88 21:17:35 EST From: Ben Shneiderman Subject: Hyperties Hi...we are having great fun with Hyperties (below is a brief description). The stuff on the SUN is very exciting and there are many intriguing concepts of multiple window browsing that were are exploring. The current issue of IEEE Computer has an article and the proceedings of the Hypertext87 workshop has another. The commercial version is beginning to get exciting too. In addition we will be putting two machines in the Smithsonian with an archaeology exhibit March 22. You can order Hyperties from Cognetics for $249, please do and let us know how it turns out. Greg Kearsley an I are writing a Hyperbook called HYPERTEXT HANDS-ON that will be published as a disk (with a paper version too) by Addison Wesley by May or June...it will use Hyperties, of course! -- Ben _____________________________ Hyperties: Hypertext based on The Interactive Encyclopedia System Ben Shneiderman Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 Introduction Hyperties (Hypertext based on The Interactive Encyclopedia System) enables users to easily traverse a database of articles and pictures by merely point- ing at highlighted words in context. This embedded menus approach and the simple user interface enables users to tap the substantial power of hypertext systems for browsing and information search tasks. Applications Hyperties can be used to scan organizational policy manuals, a tool for diag- nostic problem solving, an environment for novels or mysteries, an online help strategy, a browser for computer program text and documentation, an addition to a museum exhibit, cookbooks or self-help manuals, or a way to explore cross referenced materials such as legal documents or an annotated Bible. Hyperties allows users to explore information resources in an easy and appeal- ing manner. They merely touch (or use arrow keys to move a light bar onto) topics that interest them and a brief definition appears at the bottom of the screen. The users may continue reading or ask for details about the selected topic. An article about a topic may be one or more screens long and contain several pictures. As users traverse articles, Hyperties keeps the path and allows easy reversal, building confidence and a sense of control. Users can also select articles and pictures from an index. Authoring tool Hyperties authoring software guides the author in writing a title, brief definition (5-35 words), text (50-1000 words, typically), and synonyms for each article title. Authors mark references in the text by surrounding them with a pair of tildes. Hyperties collects all references, prompts the user for synonym relationships, maintains lists of articles and pictures, and allows editing, addition, and deletion of articles and pictures. The author tool displays TO/FROM citations for each article and allows authors to keep notes on each article. A simple word processor is embedded in the authoring software, but users can create articles on their own word processor, if they wish. Command menus reduce memorization, eliminate typing errors, and speed work. Authors create pictures with editors such as PC Paint and then can specify links from the articles to the pictures. Hardware requirements Hyperties runs on a standard PC (256K, monochrome or color, color required if pictures are used) and on PCs, XTs, or ATs. History Hyperties has been under development since 1983 in the Human-Computer Interac- tion Laboratory. It was first written in APL and has been rewritten in the C programming language twice. Dan Ostroff, a graduate student in computer sci- ence, did the implementation and a major portion of the user interface design. Dr. Janis Morariu of the Center for Instructional Development and Evaluation and Charles Kreitzberg of Cognetics Corporation contributed substantially to the user interface design. Jacob Lifshitz, Susan Flynn, Richard Potter, Bill Weiland, and Catherine Plaisant-Schwenn have maintained and improved the sys- tem. Manual A 120 page users manual is available to describe the authoring process. It shows extensive browser and author sessions. Availability The University of Maryland has made a contract for commercial distribution and development with Cognetics Corporation (Charles Kreitzberg, President), 55 Princeton-Hightstown Road, Princeton Junction, NJ 08550, Phone (609) 799-5005. Continuing development Current development efforts focus on improved touchscreens, touchable graph- ics, inclusion of videodisk access, and alternate indexing strategies. runs on the SUN 3/50 workstation. An exploratory advanced browser with multiple windows and touchable graphics is being implemented on the PCs. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jan 88 17:08:31 PST From: Emma Pease Subject: CSLI Calendar, January 28, 3:15 [Extract - Ed] Reading: "Some Uses of Higher-Order Logic in Computational Linguistics" by Dale A. Miller and Gopalan Nadathur from "24th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Proceedings of the Conference" (1986) Discussion led by Douglas Edwards (edwards@warbucks.ai.sri.com) 4 February 1988 Miller and Nadathur present a system of higher-order logic (typed lambda-calculus) as a suitable formalism for the representation of syntactic and semantic information in computational linguistics. They argue that such a formalism is clearer and more natural than available alternatives. They also reply point by point to certain standard criticisms of the computational use of higher-order logic. In particular, they argue that: (1) Theoretical linguistics is often heavily committed to higher-order logic anyway (Montague Semantics, for example) and it will be easier to design working systems to fit a theory if the computational formalism mirrors the ontology of the theory. (2) Even if a first-order formalism is used to represent the semantics of sentences, *reasoning* about semantics is an inherently higher-order process and cannot be represented with full naturalness in the same formalism. This fact leads to the use of ad hoc procedures for semantics and to the development of separate semantic and syntactic formalisms. The use of higher-order logic allows easier integration of semantic and syntactic processing. (3) The formalization of semantic processing in first-order formalisms like Prolog is bedevilled by the need to consider explicitly the intricate processes of substitution and variable binding. A logic programming language for higher-order logic, like Miller and Nadathur's LambdaProlog, obviates this need through the use of beta-conversion in the language itself. (4) The difficulty of theorem-proving in higher-order logic is evaded by confining attention to a restricted set of formulas (analogous to Horn clauses in first-order logic) and lowering sights from full theorem-proving to logic programming, using a highly restricted proof procedure. If more is needed, restricted theorem-provers can easily be designed *within* LambdaProlog. It would also appear that much ordinary reasoning even outside of linguistic semantics is higher-order. Are Miller and Nadathur right in thinking that their formalism can help to bridge the gap between linguistic theory and computational practice? ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************