LAWS@SRI-AI.ARPA (05/19/85)
From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws <AIList-REQUEST@SRI-AI> AIList Digest Saturday, 18 May 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 65 Today's Topics: Administrivia - Seminar and Conference Notices, Seminars - A Procedural Logic (CSLI) & Planning and Scheduling (SU) & Modal Temporal Logics (SU) & Representations, Information, and the Physical World (CSLI) & Logical Query Languages for Databases (IBM-SJ), Conference - Symbolics Lisp Machine Users' Meeting ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri 17 May 85 21:51:31-PDT From: Ken Laws <Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA> Subject: Seminar and Conference Notices The number of seminar notices varies with the academic season, but clearly AIList is now carrying far more seminar and conference announcements than two years ago. Many readers have expressed enthusiasm for the "clipping service" I have been providing, but this material is now so overwhelming that it swamps other functions of the discussion list. A couple of weeks ago I asked for volunteers to forward bboard messages from the major universities. No one has volunteered. I shall continue scanning the bboards for the present, but this service will be dropped if either AIList or my professional duties demand more of my time. Steve Crocker has suggested to me that a separate list be split off for seminar notices and [perhaps] conference announcements. Then people could subscribe to the lists separately, and could more easily archive and search just the data stream that they find relevant. I was originally opposed to such a split, but I have come to favor it -- as long as someone else takes over distribution of the seminar list. I would provide the current distribution list, and the new moderator could handle deletions and modifications without much trouble. New readers to either list would receive a welcome message mentioning the companion list. The new moderator would be free to set his/her own policies about what to include in the list. Do I hear any volunteers? -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: Wed 15 May 85 16:59:50-PDT From: Emma Pease <Emma@SU-CSLI.ARPA> Subject: Seminar - A Procedural Logic (CSLI) [Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] THURSDAY, May 23, 1985 12 noon TINLunch Ventura Hall ``A Procedural Logic'' Conference Room Michael Georgeff (SRI and CSLI), Amy Lansky (SRI), and Pierre Bessiere (SRI) Much of our commonsense knowledge about the real world is concerned with the way things are done. This knowledge is often in the form of `procedures' or `sequences' of actions for achieving particular goals. In this paper, a formalism is presented for representing such knowledge based on the notion of `process'. A declarative semantics for the representation is given, which allows a user to state `facts' about the effects of doing things in the problem domain of interest. An operational semantics is also provided, which shows `how' this knowledge can be used to achieve given goals or to form intentions regarding their achievement. The formalism also serves as an executable program specification language suitable for constructing complex systems. --Michael Georgeff and Amy Lansky ------------------------------ Date: Wed 15 May 85 14:32:11-PDT From: Elliott Levinthal <LEVINTHAL@SU-SIERRA.ARPA> Subject: Seminar - Planning and Scheduling (SU) SIMA`s final Seminar on AI in Manufacturing and Design will take place next Wedneday, May 29th, at 2:l5 in Terman, Room 2l7. Dr. Karl Kempf McDonnell Douglas Research Laboratories Principal scientist, Artificial Intelligence Group The scheduling of tasks to be executed in the real world is difficult because the world contains an inescapable element of unpredictability. However much effort has been expended in preparing a schedule prior to execution, surprises are virtually inevitable once execution commences. Additional difficulties are often encountered through the unnecessary confounding of planning and scheduling. Planning requires knowledge of the capabilities of classes of resources while scheduling uses knowledge of the availability of individual resources. It is generally not possible for the planner to have, at plan time, the timely data necessary for efficient scheduling. The objective of the research described here is the clarification of the differences between planning and scheduling, and the development of a representation for schedules which is robust in the face of real world unpredictability. Examples are given for the off-line construction of schedules using both domain-independent and domain-dependent knowledge, and for the on-line real-time knowledge-based execution of schedules. The examples are drawn from robotic machine tending and robotic assembly. ------------------------------ Date: 1 Jun 85 0100 PDT From: Arthur Keller <ARK@SU-AI.ARPA> Subject: Seminar - Modal Temporal Logics (SU) CS Colloquium, June 4, 4:15pm, Terman Auditorium MODAL TEMPORAL LOGICS: A SURVEY OF RECENT RESULTS Daniel Lehmann Hebrew University (visiting Brandeis University) In a joint work with S. Shelah, some extensions of the propositional temporal logic of discrete time were advocated as useful for stating and proving properties of probabilistic concurrent programs. Deductive completeness theorems were proved. In a joint work with S. Kraus corresponding decision procedures were investigated. Recently a system for describing time and knowledge has been proposed. All those systems can be characterized as two-dimensional modal logics, i.e. they involve two essentially orthogonal modalities, one of them being time, that satisfy some interchange law. The techniques involved in studying such systems and some open problems will be described. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 15 May 85 16:59:50-PDT From: Emma Pease <Emma@SU-CSLI.ARPA> Subject: Seminar - Representations, Information, and the Physical World (CSLI) [Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] THURSDAY, May 23, 1985 2:15 p.m. CSLI Seminar Redwood Hall ``Representations, Information, and the Room G-19 Physical World'' by Ivan Blair Discussion led by Meg Withgott The notions of representation and information have been much used in recent cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind, yet much remains to be done to determine more precisely what is meant by these notions, particularly in elucidating the basis of their intentionality. I think that the place to start with an investigation of these matters is the analysis proposed by Howard Pattee. Pattee has for a long time wrestled with the question of how symbols are related to their referents, and has tried to establish some general principles of the symbol-referent or symbol-matter relation. I shall attempt to do two things in this presentation. Firstly, I want to explain as briefly as possible Pattee's view of symbolic information (information carried by a symbol or string of symbols) and the relation of symbolic information to the physical world. Secondly, I shall consider a prominent theory of information -- Dretske's, as presented in his book, ``Knowledge and the Flow of Information'' (1981), -- in the light of various results about the nature of symbols and information that emerge from Pattee's analysis. --Ivan Blair ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 May 85 13:12:18 PDT From: IBM San Jose Research Laboratory Calendar <calendar%ibm-sj.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa> Reply-to: IBM-SJ Calendar <CALENDAR%ibm-sj.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa> Subject: Seminar - Logical Query Languages for Databases (IBM-SJ) [Excerpted by Laws@SRI-AI.] IBM San Jose Research Lab 5600 Cottle Road San Jose, CA 95193 Mon., May 20 Computer Science Seminar 10:30 A.M. LOGICAL QUERY LANGUAGES FOR DATABASE SYSTEMS Audit. A In an advanced form of relational database system, a collection of rules, probably Horn clauses, will stand between the user's query and the database. Because these rules may involve recursion, straightforward methods of query evaluation may not work, and a variety of strategies have been proposed to handle subsets of recursive queries. We shall express such query evaluation techniques as "capture rules" on a graph whose nodes represent the rules and the terms in those rules. Nodes may be "adorned" by codes for a limited number of special cases, such as an indication of which variables or arguments are free and which are bound. One essential property of capture rules is that they can be applied independently, thus providing a clean interface for query-evaluation systems that use several different strategies in different situations. Another important property is that we be able to test in polynomial time whether a capture rule applies, so that we can plan queries in less time than it takes to execute them. We show how rules suggested previously can be fit into this framework, and we propose some new capture rules and generalizations of old ones. In particular, a result with Y. Sagiv characterizes exactly the sets of rules for which a simple top-down query-evaluation algorithm with "sideways" passing of variable binding works. L. Naish gave an exponential algorithm to test whether this query-evaluation strategy works, but our theory provides a polynomial algorithm for the case when the number of arguments in predicates is bounded. We also show that the problem is NP-hard if the number of arguments is part of the problem instance. To apply top-down capture rules, we need to be able to prove convergence of certain iterations. We therefore consider "unique" (logical) rules and the way that testing their convergence can be reduced to linear programming. An algorithm developed with A. Van Gelder provides an even more efficient test for applicability of the top-down capture rule in the case of unique rules. Prof. J. D. Ullman, Computer Science Department, Stanford University Host: P. Lucas (LUCAS@IBM-SJ.CSNET) ------------------------------ Date: Tue 14 May 85 00:33:14-PDT From: Mabry Tyson <Tyson@SRI-AI.ARPA> Subject: Conference - Symbolics Lisp Machine Users' Meeting Early next month there will be a national Symbolics Lisp machine users group in SF. Details are in the two messages below. Return-Path: <CMP.COHEN@UTEXAS-20.ARPA> Date: Mon 13 May 85 22:44:20-CDT From: Rich Cohen <CMP.COHEN@UTEXAS-20.ARPA> Subject: Info on National Meeting A complete agenda of the 1985 National SLUG meeting follows in a separate message. Printed copies of the agenda and registration form were mailed out to people for who we had US Mail addresses. Copies were also sent to all SLUG leaders and to all Symbolics sales offices. So, everyone interested should be able to get a copy of the printed announcement and registration form from one of those sources. Summary: The 1985 National Meeting of SLUG will be held Monday, June 3, and Tuesday, June 4, at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco. There will be sessions all day Monday and Tuesday, and round table discussions both Monday and Tuesday evenings. Symbolics will host a wine & cheese reception at their San Francisco Training Center Sunday evening. The hotel has agreed to hold open a block of rooms for SLUG until Friday May 17th. There is still time to call for a reservation. The rate is $75/single, $85/double. Please tell them you are with the Symbolics Users Group. There is no registration fee. No meals or proceedings are included. (There is no free lunch.) However, please to register so that we can estimate attendence and coordinate arrangemens with the hotel. If possible, try to get a copy of the registraion form, and mail it in. If you can't get a form, just send a letter or post card stating your intent to: SLUG '85 c/o Tom Fall GTE Western Division M/S B 212 100 Furgeson Drive P.O. Box 7188 Mountain View, California 94039 See you in San Francisco! Return-Path: <CMP.COHEN@UTEXAS-20.ARPA> Date: Mon 13 May 85 22:45:23-CDT From: Rich Cohen <CMP.COHEN@UTEXAS-20.ARPA> Subject: Agenda for National Meeting SLUG '85 THE 1985 SYMBOLICS LISP USERS GROUP NATIONAL SYMPOSIUM Monday, June 3 & Tuesday, June 4, 1985 Cathedral Hill Hotel San Francisco This is the planned agenda for the 1985 National Symposium of the Symbolics Lisp Users Group (SLUG). The purpose of SLUG is to promote communications among users of Symbolics Lisp Machines, and between the users and Symbolics. Non-technical sessions: - Corporate directions. - Company organization ... or "who to contact about what." - Field Service & Hardware Maintenance ... or "where the spares are." - Software Support ... including HOSS, FOSS, and source distribution policies. - Questions for Symbolics Sales/Service/Management. General Question & Answer session with Symbolics managers from Software Products, Documentation, Field Service, Software Support, Education Services, Sales, and Marketing. Technical Sessions: - Living with Release 6.0. Jon Balgley (Symbolics). Now that you've gotten the tape, what do you do with it? Discussion to include new features (such as Dialnet, the Mailer, the Document Examiner, the Command Processor), and effects on user code (e.g., coping with lexical scoping). - Technical Q&A. - Performance measurement and program tuning. Dave Moon & Dave Plummer (Symbolics). - The Symbolics Window System: a conceptual model with practical applications. Rich Bryan & Jon Balgley (Symbolics). - 3600 Hardware Architecture. Dave Stryker & Linda Birch (Symbolics). - Networks. Charlie Hornig & Scott Matsumoto (Symbolics). Chaosnet support under VMS, Berkeley UNIX; 3600 support for various network protocols, such as TCP/IP, DECNet, Symbolics Namespace Protocol. - Common Lisp. Dave Moon, Dan Weinreb, and Bob Kerns (Symbolics). Discussion of the Common Lisp language definition, and how Symbolics Zetalisp, and Symbolics Common Lisp relate to it. (LISP in a changing world.) - Prolog and the 3600. Bob Cassels (Symbolics). The chief implementor of Symbolics Prolog talks about Prolog, LISP, and the 3600. Round Table Discussions: - Tools for Building Expert Systems -- Some Practical Experience. Tom Fall (GTE), chairman. A discussion of users' experience building expert systems on the 3600; how they chose among the available tools, and their experience in trying to use the tools effectively. - Dealing with Symbolics: What we really do in the field. Ken Olum (Fairchild), chairman. An open discussion with general users and a panel of people who manage and support large sites. Possible topics to be discussed: * User experience with hardware maintenance, * Service contracts vs. time-and-materials. * Installing new Symbolics releases -- how well does it work, what do you need to know besides what's in the installation guides. * Management of worlds, tapes, and disk space. * Installing larger disk drives. * Maintaining multiple releases at one time & migrating from one release to the next. * Sending bug reports and getting fixes from Symbolics. * Maintaining local patches and modifications to worlds. SLUG Business Meeting: - SLUG Charter. - Election of officers - Establishing a program library. - Menu of our concerns & suggestions to be presented to Symbolics. There will be a wine & cheese reception Sunday evening at the San Francisco Symbolics Training Center (a few blocks from the hotel). The session schedule is not complete, but we expect to hold sessions both Monday and Tuesday evening. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************