[comp.ai.nlang-know-rep] NL-KR Digest, Volume 6 No. 25

nl-kr-request@cs.rpi.edu (NL-KR Moderator Chris Welty) (05/05/89)

NL-KR Digest      (Thu May  4 16:26:44 1989)      Volume 6 No. 25

Today's Topics:

	 CALL FOR IJCAI-89 STUDENT VOLUNTEERS
	 IJCAI-89 Blackboard Workshop (Revised dates, please post)
	 CSLI Calendar, 4 May, 4:25
	 Roger Ratcliff AI Seminar

Submissions: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Requests, policy: nl-kr-request@cs.rpi.edu
Back issues are available from host archive.cs.rpi.edu [128.213.1.10] 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.

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To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Date: Thu, 4 May 89 10:46:58 EDT
>From: Robert_Lindsay@ub.cc.umich.edu
Subject:  CALL FOR IJCAI-89 STUDENT VOLUNTEERS

      CALL FOR IJCAI-89 STUDENT VOLUNTEERS
 
 The 1989 International Joint Conference on Artificial
 Intelligence will be held in Detroit, Michigan USA from
 Saturday, August 19 to Friday August 25.  Student
 volunteers are being sought to assist with a variety
 of tasks at the conference site, such as registration,
 ticket taking, messages, and answering questions.
 Each volunteer will be expected to work 12 hours, and
 will be provided with free conference registration
 and Proceedings.
 
 If you are interested in volunteering you will need to
 supply the following information:
 
 (1) Name and address
 (2) An e-mail address if available
 (3) Name of your university and department, and your
     level of study
 (4) The days you prefer to work, jobs desired, or
     sessions you prefer to assist with
 (5) Identify any language other than English in which
     you can converse.
 
 Send this information to Robert_Lindsay@UB.CC.UMICH.EDU
 
 (Note the underline character between names)
 
 E-mail will be acknowledged and further details supplied.
 If you do not receive a reply within one week, or if you
 do not have access to e-mail, send the information by
 regular mail to
     Prof. Robert Lindsay
     MHRI
     University of Michigan
     205 Washtenaw Place
     Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109

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To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Date: Mon, 1 May 89 13:00 EST
>From: "Dan Corkill, COINS, UMass 413/545-0156" <CORK@cs.umass.EDU>
Subject: IJCAI-89 Blackboard Workshop (Revised dates, please post)

- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
                           CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
  
                   IJCAI-89 Workshop on Blackboard Systems
  
                              Sponsored by AAAI
  
                         Wednesday, August 23, 1989
                          Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.
  

              **** PLEASE NOTE NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE ****

  Description
  -----------
  
  The blackboard paradigm is a powerful technique for implementing
  today's ambitious AI applications and for integrating diverse problem
  solving expertise into a common framework. 
  
  The Third Annual Workshop on Blackboard Systems, like its
  predecessors, provides an informal forum where researchers in
  blackboard technology and developers of blackboard-based applications
  exchange ideas, experiences, problems, and inspirations.  The aims of
  the workshop include: allowing participants to share the latest
  results of their research in an informal setting, informing
  participants of other researchers working on similar problems or using
  similar approaches, and identifying common unsolved research issues.
  
  
  Topics
  ------
  
  Topics of interest for the workshop include:
  
      * blackboard systems/shells;
      * blackboard control mechanisms/techniques;
      * real-time, parallel, and distributed blackboard approaches;
      * performance measures for blackboard systems/applications;
      * user interfaces/explanation facilities for blackboard systems;
      * application development/debugging facilities for blackboard
        systems;
      * problems associated with fielding a blackboard-based
        application;
      * novel blackboard-based applications.
  
  Submissions presenting comparison data between blackboard technology
  and other AI methodologies or among alternate blackboard-based
  approaches are particularly encouraged.
  
  
  Format
  ------
  
  The workshop is one-day long and will take place on Wednesday, August
  23.  Accepted papers will be grouped into three panels based on
  content.  Each panel will consist of a series of informal paper
  presentations followed by a general discussion period.  A chair for
  each panel will be selected from members of the Workshop Committee.
  As with previous years, a proceedings containing complete versions of
  the accepted papers will be distributed at the workshop.
  

  Submission Information
  ----------------------
  
  Workshop invitations will be issued on the basis of extended abstracts
  10 pages or less in length.  Each extended abstract will be reviewed
  by members of the Workshop Committee.  At most, 2 invitations will be
  issued for each accepted abstract.  In keeping with an informal
  workshop, the total number of invitations will be limited to 30--35
  people.
  

  Workshop Committee
  ------------------
  
  Larry Baum, Boeing ATC           Kevin Gallagher, UMass (co-chair)
  Roberto Bisiani, CMU             Barbara Hayes-Roth, Stanford
  Daniel Corkill, UMass (chair)    V. Jagannathan, American Cimflex
  Raj Dodhiawala, FMC              Victor Lesser, UMass
  Robert Engelmore, Stanford       Penny Nii, Stanford
  Lee Erman,Teknowledge
  
  
  Important Dates
  ---------------
  
  May 31, 1989     Extended abstracts must be received
  July 17, 1989    Notification of invitation or rejection
  August 8, 1989   Completed papers must be received
  August 23, 1989  Workshop date
  
  
  Send four copies of extended abstracts to:
  ------------------------------------------
  
  Daniel D. Corkill
  Department of Computer and Information Science
  University of Massachusetts
  Amherst, Massachusetts 01003
  U.S.A.
  
  Internet: Cork@CS.UMass.Edu
  
  Phone: 413/545-0156
  FAX: 413/545-1249
  

- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Date: Wed, 3 May 89 17:16:46 PDT
>From: emma@csli.Stanford.EDU (Emma Pease)
Subject: CSLI Calendar, 4 May, 4:25

       C S L I   C A L E N D A R   O F   P U B L I C   E V E N T S
_____________________________________________________________________________
4 May 1989                       Stanford                      Vol. 4, No. 25
_____________________________________________________________________________

     A weekly publication of The Center for the Study of Language and
     Information, Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
			      ____________
	      CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR THIS THURSDAY, 4 May 1989

   12:00 p.m.		TINLunch
     Cordura Hall       Machine Translation
     Conference Room    Annie Zaenen
			(zaenen.pa@xerox.com)
			Abstract in last week's Calendar

   2:15 p.m.		CSLI Seminar
     Cordura Hall	Varieties of Context: Session 5
     Conference Room	Language Use in Context:  How Does it Work?
 		        (or What's Context Good For, Anyway?)
			Susan Stucky
			(stucky.pa@xerox.com)
			Respondent: Herb Clark
			Abstract in last week's Calendar
			
   3:30 p.m.		Tea
     Ventura Hall

   4:00 p.m.		STASS Seminar
     Cordura Hall	Beyond Formality: Progress Report on the
     Conference Room	Foundations of Computation
			Brian Smith
			(briansmith.pa@xerox.com)
			No abstract

                              ____________
	     CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR NEXT THURSDAY, 11 May 1989

   12:00 p.m.		TINLunch
     Cordura Hall       Information Theory, Statistical Inference,
     Conference Room    and the Boot Strap
			Brad Efron, Department of Statistics, Stanford
			Abstract in next week's Calendar

   2:15 p.m.		CSLI Seminar
     Cordura Hall	Varieties of Context: Session 6
     Conference Room	Indexicality in the Substrate
			Brian Smith
			(briansmith.pa@xerox.com)
			Respondent: John Perry
			Abstract below
			
   3:30 p.m.		Tea
     Ventura Hall

   4:00 p.m.		STASS Seminar
     Cordura Hall	Kris Halvorsen
     Conference Room	(halvorse@arisia.xerox.com)
			Abstract in next week's Calendar
                              ____________
			NEXT WEEK'S CSLI SEMINAR
		     Varieties of Context: Session 6
		      Indexicality in the Substrate
			       Brian Smith
			(briansmith.pa@xerox.com)
			 Respondent: John Perry
				 May 10

   It is sometimes thought that indexicality and context-dependence are
   complicating features of language and mind---that constants or fixed
   names are simpler, and in that sense a more elementary case.
      In this talk I will argue for almost exactly the opposite
   conclusion.  In particular, I will attempt to demonstrate that a
   certain kind of proto-indexicality "comes for free" from the physical
   substrate, and should therefore be treated as the base case.  From
   this point of view, it looks as if the real semantic phenomenon that
   needs explaining is the rise of context-"independence".
                              ____________
		    LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
		 Discrepancies between Comprehension and
		       Production Implications for
	     Acquiring and Representing Linguistic Knowledge
				Eve Clark
		       (eclark@psych.stanford.edu)
			  Friday, 5 May, 3:30
			 Cordura Conference Room
                              ____________
			 SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
	 The Interface between the Symbolic and the Subsymbolic
			     David Rumelhart
			(der@psych.stanford.edu)
		      Friday, 12 May, 3:15, 60:62N
		    Abstract in next week's Calendar

	       Looking for a Theory of Information Content
			      Keith Devlin
		       (devlin@csli.stanford.edu)
		       Friday, 5 May, 3:15, 60:62N
		    Abstract in last week's Calendar
                              ____________
			      CSLI VISITOR

   CSLI welcomes its first Industrial Affiliate researcher, Ryo Ochitani,
   from Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Japan.  Mr. Ochitani will be here
   until April 1990.
      For the past five years, he has helped develope the machine
   translation system ATLAS2 at Fujitsu Laboratories.
      During the last year, he and several other people started a new
   study on a quicker and easier system to classify sentences based on
   semantic view.  As a start, they collected two million Japanese text
   samples, and classified several hundred sentences manually.  Mr.
   Ochitani is interested in studying what kind of system would utilize
   this information most efficiently.
      If you wish to contact him, his email address is
   ochitani@csli.stanford.edu.

------------------------------

To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Subject: Roger Ratcliff AI Seminar
Reply-To: wsalter@BBN.COM
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 89 18:20:52 EDT
>From: wsalter@BBN.COM

                           AI SEMINAR 

                WEDS, MAY 3, 1:30 PM  (NOTE ODD TIME)

        SECOND FLOOR LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM, BBN, 10 MOULTON ST.

            ROGER RATCLIFF, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

    CONNECTIONIST MODELS OF MEMORY AND FACTS ABOUT HUMAN MEMORY

In this talk, connectionist models of memory are proposed and
evaluated.  The main class of models uses variants of the multilayer
encoder model with the backpropagation delta rule for learning.  The
autoassociative model with the delta rule for learning is also
evaluated in a much less exhaustive fashion.  The models are applied to
standard list learning procedures in which items are studied in a
learning phase and then tested for retention.  In contrast to most
implementations of connectionist models, items or vectors are presented
for learning one at a time (or in small groups of items within a
rehearsal buffer) and an item is not trained further during the
remainder of the list.  This scheme mimics learning in many traditional
memory experiments in which long lists of words are presented without
repetition.  

This sequential learning scheme leads to two serious and central
problems for the multilayer model.  First, well learned information is
forgotten rapidly as new information is learned.  Second,
discrimination between studied items and new items either decreases or
is nonmonotonic as a function of the amount of rehearsal or number of
learning trials each studied item receives.  Both these results
provide problems for the model because both predictions are
inconsistent with large bodies of data from memory research.  To
address the first problem, manipulations of the network within the
multilayer model were examined (for example holding some of the
network weights constant and adding extra hidden units) but none of
these significantly affected the forgetting functions.  To address the
second problem, several variants on the multilayer model were examined
including learning as increments on a prelearned memory system,
modifications only to a context portion of an item vector, and
training an additional node to represent old items when turned on at
test.  None of these modifications produced adequate discrimination
between studied and new items as a function of the amount of learning.
The constraints demonstrated by these studies are important because
they provide limitations on the scope and role of connectionist models
in learning and forgetting in human memory and more generally in
situations in which the whole set of information to be learned is not
all available throughout learning.

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End of NL-KR Digest
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