nl-kr-request@CS.RPI.EDU (NL-KR Moderator Chris Welty) (04/11/91)
NL-KR Digest (Thu Apr 11 11:16:43 1991) Volume 8 No. 15 Today's Topics: Commercial Natural Language Data base faces? IJCAI CFP: Objects and AI IJCAI SYMPOSIUM ON AI, REASONING AND CREATIVITY Open House and Seminars, BKL, Northeastern U, Boston CILS Calender Submissions: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu Requests, policy: nl-kr-request@cs.rpi.edu Back issues are available from host archive.cs.rpi.edu [128.213.10.18] in the files nl-kr/Vxx/Nyy (ie nl-kr/V01/N01 for V1#1), mail requests will not be promptly satisfied. If you can't reach `cs.rpi.edu' you may want to use `turing.cs.rpi.edu' instead. BITNET subscribers: we now have a LISTSERVer for nl-kr. You may send submissions to NL-KR@RPIECS and any listserv-style administrative requests to LISTSERV@RPIECS. ----------------------------------------------------------------- To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu >From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: comp.ai.nlang-know-rep,comp.databases Subject: Commercial Natural Language Data base faces? Date: 4 Apr 91 05:03:50 GMT Followup-To: poster Can anyone supply me with names and addresses of companies supplying natural language data base interfaces commercially? I'm posting this on behalf of someone not on the net who would like to buy something "off the shelf" and plug in a dictionary to use it with a data base they have. Please reply by E-mail to ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au - - It is indeed manifest that dead men are formed from living ones; but it does not follow from that, that living men are formed from dead ones. -- Tertullian, on reincarnation. ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu >From: mhi@edsews.eds.com (Mamdouh H. Ibrahim) Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.object,comp.ai.nlang-know-rep,comp.lang.clos,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.c++ Subject: IJCAI CFP: Objects and AI Keywords: AI, objects, object-oriented programming Date: 3 Apr 91 02:48:16 GMT CALL FOR PARTICIPATION IJCAI-91 Workshop on OBJECTS AND AI Sunday, August 25, 1991 Sydney, Australia Recently, object-oriented programming has gained tremendous recognition as a powerful paradigm for structuring and programming complex systems. At the same time, AI researchers are still striving for new representational and software engineering advances for developing complex AI applications. Cooperation between Objects and AI can be an important step toward achieving advances in both fields. This workshop will provide a forum for researchers in AI and OOP to exchange ideas and discuss issues related to the two fields and the potential cooperation between them. The focus of the presentations and discussions will be on both the theoretical foundations and practical applications and implementations of object-oriented programming in AI. Tentatively, the workshop will be divided into four main sessions, each moderated by one of the workshop organizers. 1) Objects and AI: Concepts and potential cooperation. 2) Object-oriented knowledge representations: Theory, formalisms and practical issues. 3) Object-oriented environments and architectures for AI. 4) Object-oriented AI applications. In the first session, participants will discuss how they view objects, and identify their impact on AI. For example, objects may be viewed as modules of knowledge or activities--agents. From this view, the discussion should focus on identifying how these agents can contribute to advances in AI research. From a different perspective, concepts and methodologies of programming with objects that are applicable, and could potentially contribute, to AI may be addressed and debated as part of this session. This discussion should also identify those concepts that are fundamentally different and may cause problems if the two areas are combined. Examples for such discussion are objects vs. frames, AI classification vs. class inheritance hierarchies, and the suitability of object-oriented methodologies in dealing with ill- defined domains. The second session will focus on issues related to knowledge representation using objects. Participants should discuss the advantages and/or limitations of concepts such as encapsulation and information hiding when applied to knowledge representation. Also, objects have often been criticized for lacking formalisms and semantics for object-oriented knowledge representation. The discussions in this session should address these theoretical issues and identify the potential problems associated with such lack of formalisms. The third session is intended to explore existing and future object- oriented architectures as they may apply to the development of AI tasks. The discussion should identify the advantages and disadvantages of using class-based vs. delegation-based systems, concurrent and distributed object-oriented architectures, communicating and intelligent agents, reflective systems, and integrated programming environments. The last session will be devoted to presentations and discussions of object-oriented AI applications. Discussions should focus on and emphasize the aspects of OOP that contribute to the success of these systems. Examples of such systems are object-oriented expert system shells, natural language processing systems, learning systems, simulation, scheduling and planning systems, and constraint satisfaction systems. Workshop attendance will be by invitation only and is limited to 30 participants. Invitations will be issued on the basis of extended abstracts or position papers. Appropriate papers should not be less than 3 single spaced pages and should state clearly their authors' position and supporting arguments for issues relevant to the workshop theme. Relevant topics include (but are not limited to): o Formalisms and semantics for object-oriented knowledge representations. o Object-oriented methodologies for handling ill-defined domains. o Object class hierarchies vs. AI classification hierarchies. o Objects vs. frames: similarities and differences. o Objects in distributed AI. o Intelligent and communicating agents. o Reflective object-oriented languages for AI development. o Pattern matching with objects: problems and solutions o object-oriented tools for designing and developing AI systems. o Object-oriented protocols for AI tasks. o Integration of object-oriented and AI programming paradigms. The papers will be reviewed by members of the workshop committee and acceptance will be based on both the relevance of the work to the workshop theme and the quality and clarity of the papers. Accepted papers will be distributed to the participants at the workshop, and based on the workshop outcome, we may elect to generate some form of formal publication that will include longer versions of the accepted submissions. IJCAI policy this year requires successful workshop applicants to register for both the conference and the workshop. Workshop registration fee is $US65.00. Send five copies of extended abstract before April 30, 1991 to: - -------------------------------------------------------------- Mamdouh H. Ibrahim EDS/Artificial Intelligence Services 5555 New King Street, 4th. Floor Troy, MI 48057 USA Phone: (313) 696-7129 e-mail: mhi@edsdrd.eds.com or mhi@ais.tsd.eds.com Fax: (313) 696-2325 Important Dates: - --------------- April 30, 1991 Deadline for receiving extended abstracts. June 1, 1991 Notification of invitation or rejection. June 30, 1991 Deadline for receiving revised papers. July 15, 1991 IJCAI to receive participants registration forms and fees. For further information, contact any of the workshop organizers. Workshop organizers: - ------------------- Daniel Bobrow Systems Science Laboratory Xerox PARC 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94304 USA bobrow@xerox.com Jacques Ferber LAFORIA - Universite Paris 6 T. 46, 4 place Jussieu 75252 Paris Cedex 05 France ferber@laforia.ibp.fr Mamdouh H. Ibrahim (Chair) EDS/Artificial Intelligence Services 5555 New King Street, 4th. Floor Troy, MI 48057 USA Phone: (313) 696-7129 USA mhi@edsdrd.eds.com or mhi@ais.tsd.eds.com Mario Tokoro Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Inc./Keio University 3-14-13, Higashigotanda Shinagawa, Tokyo, 141 Japan mario@csl.sony.co.jp ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu Newsgroups: aus.ai,comp.ai,comp.ai.edu,comp.ai.nlang-know-rep,comp.edu,news.announce.conferences,sci.logic,sci.psychology,sci.psychology.digest >From: fay@chomsky.arch.su.oz.au () Subject: IJCAI SYMPOSIUM ON AI, REASONING AND CREATIVITY Nntp-Posting-Host: chomsky.arch.su.oz.au Reply-To: fay@chomsky.arch.su.oz.au () Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 09:46:23 GMT * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * SYMPOSIUM ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, REASONING AND CREATIVITY 20-23 AUGUST 1991 immediately preceding the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'91) organised by GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA to be held at LAMINGTON NATIONAL PARK, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA AIM Creativity is one of the least understood aspects of intelligence. It is commonly regarded as 'intuitive' and not susceptible to rational enquiry. However, there is now considerable work in artificial intelligence and cognitive science which addresses creativity. This symposium will provide a forum for exploring and discussing these ideas, and for suggesting directions for future research. It aims to attract practitioners of both 'cognitive' and 'technological' artificial intelligence. KEYNOTE SPEAKER - PROFESSOR MARGARET BODEN Margaret Boden, in her talk on `Creativity and Computers', will discuss how computational concepts drawn from artificial intelligence can explore creativity. Computers can sometimes do apparently creative things; more to the point, they can suggest how we manage to do so. Computational ideas are therefore helping us to understand how human originality is possible. Margaret Boden is Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, and Founding Dean of the School of Cognitive Sciences, at the University of Sussex, UK. Her recent publications include `Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man' (1987), `Artificial Intelligence in Psychology' (1989) and `The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms (1991). INVITED SPEAKERS include Ernest Edmonds, Loughborough University of Technology, UK John Gero, University of Sydney, Australia Graham Priest, University of Queensland, Australia Roger Wales, University of Melbourne, Australia TOPICS FOR PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION The symposium calls for extended abstracts of 750-1,000 words. The following are suggested areas only: - Models of creativity - Modelling creative processes - Creative reasoning, e.g theory generation in science - Analogical reasoning - Case-based reasoning - Nonmonotonic reasoning - Thought experiments All abstracts will be refereed. Accepted papers will be subjected to a further refereeing process for publication by Kluwer Academic Press. The symposium will be structured to provide adequate time for both presentation and discussion. SUBMISSION Three copies of extended abstracts are required by 31 May 1991. Abstracts may be submitted electronically as LaTeX or plain ASCII files via email but hard copies must also be submitted. Two hard copies of final versions of accepted papers, and an electronic version on Macintosh disk or via email are required at the time of registration on 20 August 1991. Authors of accepted papers will be expected to sign a copyright release form to allow publication of the proceedings. At least one author of each paper is expected to present the paper at the symposium. PREPRINTS AND PROCEEDINGS Accepted extended abstracts will be printed in the form of Preprints and be available for distribution at the time of registration. Full papers will be published subsequently by Kluwer Academic Press. LOCATION The symposium is being held at O'Reillys Lodge in Lamington National Park, Queensland - a rainforest 120 km south of Brisbane. Rainforests vary from the temperate beech forest of the higher altitudes to the warm subtropical rainforest of the valleys. There is an abundance of rare and spectacular plants (orchids, ferns, giant epiphytes, mosses, luminous fungi) and a diverse community of birds and animals (crimson rosellas, king parrots, bower birds, miniature kangaroos, brush turkeys) all coexisting beneath the lofty rainforest canopy. On the final day of the symposium there will be ample time for guided or independent bush walks, 4WD bus trips, barbeques and evening entertainment. FACILITIES O'Reillys is a mountain resort of modern units. The seminar facilities are highly professional, including lecture theatre, audiovisual equipment and library. TIMETABLE Extended abstracts (750-1000 words) - 3 hard copies 31 May 1991 Notification of acceptances 17 June 1991 Full formatted papers due 20 August 1991 Symposium 20-23 August 1991 COSTS in Australian dollars (US$1 = ~A$1.28; PStg 1 = ~A$2.33) Registration fee (including one copy of Preprints): Full fee $250 Authors (1 per paper) $150 Accommodation (including all meals): Bethongabel units (private bath, balcony, view) $119 pp/pn Elabana units (private bath, limited availability) $105 pp/pn Bus to Lamington National Park from Griffith University: Round trip $25 INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE Chair Terry Dartnall, Griffith University, Australia Conference Organiser Fay Sudweeks, University of Sydney, Australia Advisory Board Margaret Boden, Sussex University, UK Andy Clarke, Sussex University, UK Marilyn Ford, Griffith University, Australia John Gero, University of Sydney, Australia Rod Girle, Griffith University; Australian National University Graham Priest, University of Queensland, Australia Simon Ross, University College of London, UK; Kluwer Academic Press Aaron Sloman, Sussex University, UK Roger Wales, University of Melbourne, Australia Janet Wiles, University of Queensland, Australia CONFERENCE CONTACTS Correspondence and queries: Dr Terry Dartnall School of Computing and Information Technology Griffith University Nathan Qld 4111 Australia Tel: +61-7-875 5020 Fax: +61-7-875 5198 Email: terryd@gucis.sct.gu.edu.au Abstracts and papers: Ms Fay Sudweeks Department of Architectural and Design Science University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Tel: +61-2-692 2328 Fax: +61-2-692 3031 Email: fay@archsci.arch.su.oz.au Registration: Ms Denise Vercoe School of Computing and Information Technology Griffith University Nathan Qld 4111 Australia Tel: +61-7-875 5002 Fax: +61-7-875 5198 Fay Sudweeks VOICE: +61-2-692-2328 Architectural and Design Science FAX: +61-2-692-3031 University of Sydney NSW 2006 fay@archsci.arch.su.oz.au Australia fay%archsci.arch.su.oz.au@uunet.uu.net ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 12:54:38 -0400 >From: futrell@corwin.ccs.northeastern.edu (robert futrelle) Subject: Open House and Seminars, BKL, Northeastern U, Boston The Biological Knowledge Laboratory (BKL) College of Computer Science Northeastern University, Boston Presents an Open House on April 17 and 18, 1991 Program for Wednesday, April 17th: 12:00 - 1:00 pm, Room 455 Ell Center General lecture by Professor R. P. Futrelle "The BKL: Goals, strategies and current status" 1:00 - 5:00 pm: Lab tours, 149 Cullinane Hall Program for Thursday, April 18th: 12:00 - 1:00 pm, Room 107 Cullinane Hall Computer Science lecture by Professor R. P. Futrelle "Semantics of natural language and diagrams" 1:00 - 5:00 pm: Lab tours, 149 Cullinane Hall The Biological Knowledge Laboratory is a basic research and development group. Its goal is to develop techniques to automatically capture knowledge from the full text and diagrams in biological research articles and make it available to research scientists and students. The research includes computational linguistics, computer vision, knowledge representation and reasoning and human-computer interaction. The Lab is supported by a major four-year grant from the National Science Foundation. The Lab tours include presentations and computer demonstrations. If you have questions, email futrelle@corwin.ccs.northeastern.edu or call the lab at 617-437-2076. Abstract for seminar on April 17: The Biological Knowledge Laboratory is dedicated to the development of techniques and computer systems for dealing with scientific knowledge. This talk, intended for a general audience, will review the Lab's progress in the first two years, including: The application field of bacterial chemotaxis; the encoding/entry of a large corpus of research articles; lexicon development and attempts to parse the full text of the articles; image analysis and computer vision techniques for analyzing the diagrams in the articles. We also describe our first steps towards knowledge representation and the development of an intelligent interactive system called the Scientist's Assistant. We point out some of the interesting issues that arise when one attempts to represent the leading edge of scientific knowledge in the computer because such knowledge is often tentative and incomplete and must be revised as time passes. Abstract for seminar on April 18: In order to build a Scientist's Assistant that will allow conceptual retrieval of scientific knowledge from a large knowledge base, it is necessary to analyze and index knowledge of the full text and graphics of research papers. This talk discusses our recent work on this topic, covering both conceptual and implementation issues. We first describe the coupling of syntax and semantics embodied in the Montague approach to semantics. We explain how it is implemented in the Alvey Natural Language Parser that we use. We then describe a novel use of the Alvey parser and its semantics to generate a token stream translator that builds structures for specialized scientific text entities such as numbers in scientific notation, bibliographic references and the like. The bulk of the talk is given over to diagram understanding, which is far less developed than natural language understanding, but no less important in scientific document analysis. In our approach diagrams are modeled by a collection of constituent productions with accompanying constraints. Many of the constraints involve Generalized Equivalence Relations (GERs) which are analogous to unification constraints in modern grammars. The implementation of this approach is aided by the GOSSAMER spatially associative data structure for graphic objects which allows efficient implementation of the GERs. ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu Subject: CILS Calender X-Mailer: MH 6.6 #5[UCI] Date: Wed, 03 Apr 91 15:23:21 -0600 >From: colleen@tira.uchicago.edu _________________ T H E C I L S C A L E N D A R ________________ The Center for Information and Language Studies Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 Subscription requests to: cils@tira.uchicago.edu ____________________________________________________________________ Vol. 1, No. 21 April 1, 1991 ~*~ Upcoming events: 4/8 16:00 Wb 130 Workshop Ronald McClamrock, Philosophy 4/22 14:30 Ry 276 Lecture Lisa Rau, GE Research and Development - ------------------------------ MONDAY, APRIL 8 4:00 Workshop Wb 130 The Pragmatics of Language Ron McClamrock (gjem@midway) Dept. of Philosophy "EXISTENTIAL SEMANTICS, or LIFE WITHOUT MEANING" Copies of background reading ("Methodological Individualism Considered as a Constitutive Principle of Scientific Inquiry") are available in the Departments of Philosophy (Cl 17), Linguistics (Cl 304), and Computer Science (Ry 152) and at the Center for Information and Language Studies (JRL S-112). The next speaker will be Greg Ward, Northwestern University, on April 22. For more information, please contact Jerrold Sadock, Department of Linguistics (2-8524, sadock@sapir) or Josef Stern, Department of Philosophy (2-8594). __________ MONDAY, APRIL 22 Ry 276 Guest Lecture 2:30 p.m. Lisa Rau (rau@sol.crd.ge.com) (518) 387-5059; FAX: (518) 387-6845 Artificial Intelligence Laboratory GE Research and Development Center "CONCEPTUAL INFORMATION EXTRACTION AND RETRIEVAL" Abstract In this talk, I will cover three interacting areas of active research here at GE R&D. First, I will give the history and status of our work in the area of data extraction---extracting fixed-field information from free-form text in constrained domains. Our approach to natural language data extraction centers on a custom lexicon design, innovative methods of parser control, and integrating strategies for language analysis---statistical, syntactic, semantic, phrasal and domain-driven. Second, I will describe the uses we have put our natural language processing software to in improving traditional keyword-based information retrieval applications. Our primary methods have been to disambiguate keywords by the use of separate text database segments, and to extract conceptual relationships in addition to simple words meant to represent concepts. Finally, I will give an overview of a conceptual information retrieval mechanism that has the properties of a distributed representation, but is implemented with a localist representation system. In particular, this method of retrieval uses a modified form of spreading activation and intersection search to support (1) contents addressability, (2) partial and incorrect matching and (3) automatic analysis of the similarities and differences between the input query and the retrieved representations. - ----------- End of CILS Calendar ------------------------------ End of NL-KR Digest *******************