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Neuron Digest Volume 07 Number 06
Neuron Digest Saturday, 2 Feb 1991 Volume 7 : Issue 6
Today's Topics:
Workshop, "NNs for Stat. & Econ. Data"
neural sessions /13th IMACS World Congress
Neural Net Course and Conference
CFP Constructive Induction Workshop, Due March 1st
CALL FOR PAPERS: CONNECTIONIST MODELS IN BIOMEDICINE
Call for Papers 7. OGAI Meeting
AISB call for participation
[[ Editor's Note: This issue has only "call for papers" and conference/
course announcements. -PM ]]
Send submissions, questions, address maintenance and requests for old issues to
"neuron-request@hplabs.hp.com" or "{any backbone,uunet}!hplabs!neuron-request"
Use "ftp" to get old issues from hplpm.hpl.hp.com (15.255.176.205).
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Workshop, "NNs for Stat. & Econ. Data"
From: MURTAGH@SCIVAX.STSCI.EDU
Date: Wed, 09 Jan 91 13:34:54 -0500
Workshop on "Neural Networks for Statistical and Economic Data"
This workshop, organized by Munotec Systems, and funded by the
Statistical Office of the European Communities, Luxembourg, was held in
Dublin, Ireland, on December 10-11, 1990. A proceedings, including
abstracts and in many instances papers, will be reproduced and sent to
all on the mailing list of the DOSES funding program in the near future.
DOSES ("Design of Statistical Expert Systems") is one of the European
Community funding programs, and is administered by the Statistical
Office. Requests to be included on this mailing list should be addressed
to: DOSES, Statistical Office of the European Communities, Batiment Jean
Monnet, B.P. 1907, Plateau du Kirchberg, L-2920 Luxembourg.
F. Murtagh (murtagh@scivax.stsci.edu, fionn@dgaeso51.bitnet)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following were the talks given at the Dublin meeting:
M. Perremans (Stat. Office of EC, Luxembourg)
"The European Community statistical research programs."
H.-G. Zimmermann (Siemens, Munich)
"Neural network features in economics."
J. Frain (Central Bank of Ireland, Dublin)
"Complex questions in economics and economic statistics."
M.B. Priestley (UMIST, Manchester)
"Non-linear time series analysis: overview."
R. Rohwer (CSTR, Edinburgh)
"Neural networks for time-varying data."
P. Ormerod and T. Walker (Henley Centre, London)
"Neural networks and the monetary base in Switzerland."
S. Openshaw and C. Wymer (Univ. of Newcastle upon Tyne)
"A neural net classifier system for handling census data."
F. Murtagh (Munotec, Dublin; ST-ECF, Munich)
"A short survey of neural network approaches for forecasting."
D. Wuertz and C. de Groot (ETH, Zrich)
"Modeling and forecasting of univariate time series by parsimonious
feedforward connectionist nets."
J.-C. Fort (Univ. de Paris 1)
"Kohonen algorithm and the traveling salesman problem."
H.-G. Zimmermann (Siemens, Munich)
"Completion of incomplete data."
R. Hoptroff and M.J. Bramson (London)
"Forecasting the economic cycle."
A. Varfis and C. Versino (JRC, Ispra)
"Neural networks for economic time series forecasting."
D. Mitzman and R. Giovannini (Cerved SpA, Padua)
"ActivityNets: A neural classifier of natural language descriptions of
economic activities." (Also: demonstration on 386-PC.)
C. Doherty (ERC, Dublin)
"A comparison between the recurrent cascade-correlation architecture
and the Box and Jenkins method on forecasting univariate time series."
M. Eaton and B.J. Collins (Univ. of Limerick, Limerick)
"Neural network front end to an expert system for decision taking in
an uncertain environment."
R.J. Henery (Univ. of Strathclyde, Glasgow)
"StatLog: Comparative testing of statistical and logical learning
algorithms."
Ah Chung Tsoi (Univ. of Queensland)
"FIR and IIR synapses, a neural network architecture for time series
modelling."
A. Singer (Thinking Machines, Munich)
"Focusing on feature extraction in pattern recognition."
R. Rohwer (CSTR, Univ. of Edinburgh)
"The 'Moving Targets' algorithm for difficult temporal credit
assignment problems."
------------------------------
Subject: neural sessions /13th IMACS World Congress
From: Khalid Choukri <choukri@capsogeti.fr>
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 91 14:26:23 +0000
[[ Editor's Note: Remember the 15 February deadline! -PM ]]
13th IMACS World Congress on
Computation and Applied Mathematics
July 22-26,1991, Trinity college, Dublin, Ireland
Neural Computing sessions
Preliminary announcement and call for papers
-----------------------------------------------------
In the scope of the 13th IMACS World Congress on Computation and Applied
Mathematics that will be held on July 22-26, 1991 at Trinity college,
Dublin, Ireland, several sessions will be devoted to Neural computing and
Applied Mathematics. A typical session consists of six 20-minutes
papers. Invited papers (tutorials ~ 1-hour) are welcome.
Contributions from all fields related to neuro-computing techniques are
welcome. Including applications to pattern recognition and
classification, optimization problems, etc.
Information and a non-exclusive list of topics may be obtained from the
session organizer or the Congress Secretariat.
Proceedings will be available at the Congress. A more formal
Transactions will be available at a later date.
Submission procedure :
- ---------------------
Authors are solicited to submit proposals consisting of an abstract (one
page, 500 words maximum) which must clearly state the purpose of the
work, the specific original results obtained and their significance.
The final paper length is two pages (IEEE two-column format).
A first page of the proposal should contain the following information in
the order shown:
- Title.
- Authors' names and affiliation.
- Contact information (name, postal address, phone, fax and email address)
- Domain area and key words: one or more terms describing the problem
domain area.
AUTHORS ARE ENCOURAGED to submit a preliminary version of the complete
paper in addition to the abstract.
Calendar:
- --------
Deadline for submission : February, 15, 1990
Notification of acceptance : March , 15 , 1991
Camera ready paper : April, 5, 1991
Three copies should be sent directly to the
technical chairman of these sessions at the following address:
Dr. Khalid Choukri
Cap GEMINI Innovation
118, Rue de Tocqueville
75017, Paris, France
Phone: (+33-1) 40 54 66 28
Fax: (+33-1) 42 67 41 39
e-mail choukri@capsogeti.fr
For further information about the IMACS Congress in general, contact
Post: IMACS '91 Congress Secretariat
26 Temple Lane
Dublin 2
IRELAND
Fax: (+353-1) 451739
Phone: (+353-1) 452081
------------------------------
Subject: Neural Net Course and Conference
From: mike@park.bu.edu
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 91 12:20:13 -0500
NEURAL NETWORKS COURSE AND CONFERENCE AT
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
NEURAL NETWORKS: FROM FOUNDATIONS TO APPLICATIONS
May 5-10, 1991
This self-contained 5-day course is sponsored by the Boston University
Wang Institute, Center for Adaptive Systems, and Graduate Program in
Cognitive and Neural Systems. The course provides a systematic
interdisciplinary introduction to the biology, computation, mathematics,
and technology of neural networks. Boston University tutors are Stephen
Grossberg, Gail Carpenter, Ennio Mingolla, Michael Cohen, Dan Bullock,
and John Merrill. Guest tutors are Federico Faggin, Robert
Hecht-Nielsen, Michael Jordan, Andy Barto, and Alex Waibel. Registration
fee: $985 (professional) and $275 (student). Fee includes lectures,
course notebooks, receptions, meals, coffee services, and evening
discussion sessions.
NEURAL NETWORKS FOR VISION AND IMAGE PROCESSING
May 10-12, 1991
This research conference at the Wang Institute will present invited
lectures and contributed posters, herewith solicited, ranging from visual
neurobiology and psychophysics through computational modelling to
technological applications. Invited speakers include: Stuart Anstis,
Jacob Beck, Gail A. Carpenter, David Casasent, John Daugman, Robert
Desimone, Stephen Grossberg, Robert Hecht-Nielsen, Ralph Linsker, Ennio
Mingolla, Alex Pentland, V.S. Ramachandran, Eric Schwartz, George
Sperling, James Todd, and Alex Waxman. A featured Poster Session will be
held on May 11. To present a poster, submit 3 copies of an abstract (1
single-spaced page), postmarked by March 1, 1991, for refereeing.
Include with the abstract the author's name, address, and telephone
number. Mail to VIP Poster Session, Neural Networks Conference, Wang
Institute of Boston University, 72 Tyng Road, Tyngsboro, MA 01879.
Authors will be informed of abstract acceptance by March 31, 1991.
Registration fee: $95 (professionals) and $75 (student). Fee includes
lectures and poster session, abstract book, reception, meals, and coffee
services.
TO REGISTER: For one or both events by phone, call (508) 649-9731 with
VISA or MasterCard between 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. (EST). For a meeting
brochure, call as above or write: Neural Networks, Wang Institute of
Boston University, 72 Tyng Road, Tyngsboro, MA 01879.
------------------------------
Subject: CFP Constructive Induction Workshop, Due March 1st
From: charles anderson <andercha@grieg.CS.ColoState.EDU>
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 91 15:06:28 -0700
CALL FOR PAPERS
1991 MACHINE LEARNING WORKSHOP
Northwestern University June 27-29, 1991
CONSTRUCTIVE INDUCTION
Selection of an appropriate representation is critical to the
success of most learning systems. In difficult learning problems (e.g.,
protein folding, word pronunciation, relation learning), considerable
human effort is often required to identify the basic terms of the
representation language. Constructive induction offers a partial
solution to this problem by automatically introducing new terms into the
representation as needed. Automatically constructing new terms is
difficult because the environment or teacher usually provides only
indirect feedback, thus raising the issue of credit assignment. However,
as learning systems face tasks of greater autonomy and complexity,
effective methods for constructive induction are becoming increasingly
important.
The objective of this workshop is to provide a forum for the
interchange of ideas among researchers actively working on constructive
induction issues. It is intended to identify commonalities and
differences among various existing and emerging approaches such as
knowledge-based term construction, relation learning, theory revision in
analytic systems, learning of hidden-units in multi-layer neural
networks, rule-creation in classifier systems, inverse resolution, and
qualitative-law discovery.
Submissions are encouraged in the following topic areas:
o Empirical approaches and the use of inductive biases
o Use of domain knowledge in the construction and evaluation of
new terms
o Construction of or from relational predicates
o Theory revision in analytic-learning systems
o Unsupervised learning and credit assignment in constructive
induction
o Interpreting hidden units as constructed features
o Constructive induction in human learning
o Techniques for handling noise and uncertainty
o Experimental studies of constructive induction systems
o Theoretical proofs, frameworks, and comparative analyses
o Comparison of techniques from empirical learning, analytical
learning, classifier systems, and neural networks
Send six copies of paper submissions (4000 word maximum) to
Christopher Matheus, GTE Laboratories, 40 Sylvan Road, MS-45, Waltham MA
02254 (matheus@gte.com). Submissions must be received by March 1, 1991.
Include a cover page with authors' names, addresses, phone numbers,
electronic mail addresses, paper title, and a 300 (maximum) word
abstract. Do not indicate or allude to authorship anywhere within the
paper. Acceptance notification will be mailed by April 30, 1991.
Accepted papers will be allotted four two-column pages for publication in
the Proceedings of the 1991 Machine Learning Workshop.
Organizing Committee: Program Committee:
Christopher Matheus, GTE Laboratories Chuck Anderson, Colorado State
George Drastal, Siemens Corp. Research Gunar Liepins, Oak Ridge National Lab.
Larry Rendell, University of Illinois Douglas Medin, University of Michigan
Paul Utgoff, University of Massachusetts
------------------------------
Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS: CONNECTIONIST MODELS IN BIOMEDICINE
From: reggia@cs.UMD.EDU (James A. Reggia)
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 91 10:56:57 -0500
CALL FOR PAPERS:
The 15th Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care will
include a Program Area Track on Connectionism, Simulation and Modeling.
Submission of papers is welcomed. Papers are solicited which report on
original research, system development or survey the state of the art in
an aspect of this wide- ranging field. Papers in previous years have
addressed such topics as modelling invertebrate nervous systems,
modelling disorders of higher cortical functions, development of
high-level languages for building connectionist models, and systems for
medical diagnosis, among other topics.
Deadline for receipt of manuscripts is April 1, 1991. The conference
will be held November 17-20, 1991 in Washington, DC. For submittal forms
please write:
Paul D. Clayton, PhD
SCAMC Program Chair, 1991
AMIA
11140 Rockville Pike
Box 324
Rockville, MD 20852
or contact Gail Mutnik at mutnik@lhc.nlm.nih.gov by email. If you have
questions about whether your paper would be appropriate for this
conference please contact me at:
Stan Tuhrim
SSTMS@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
------------------------------
Subject: Call for Papers 7. OGAI Meeting
From: Holger G Ziegeler <hgz@siegud.siemens.co.at>
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 91 09:53:42 +0100
7. OESTERREICHISCHE
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
TAGUNG 1991
24.-27. Sept. 1991
Technische Universitaet Wien
Call for Papers
AUSTRIAN MEETING ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
September 24-27, 1991
Technische Universitaet Wien
Given the success of the previous meetings held annually since 1985, the
Austrian Society for Artificial Intelligence (OGAI) will organize its
seventh meeting in 1991.
The scientific program will present research in all aspects of AI, including,
but not limited to:
AI Hypertext AI Tools AI Project Management
Automated Reasoning Cognitive Modeling Connectionism
Education using AI Impacts of AI Knowledge Representation
Knowledge-Based Systems Machine Learning Natural Language
Philosophical Foundations Planning and Search Qualitative Reasoning
Robotics and Control Vision
Invited papers will be presented by Georg Gottlob (Vienna) and Wolfgang
Wahlster (Saarbruecken).
Authors should submit long papers (max. 10 pages) on completed research,
or short papers (max. 4 pages) on work in progress, 4 copies each. The
accepted papers will be published in conference proceedings, which will
be available for every participant (included in the conference fee).
The conference languages are English and German.
In addition to the scientific program, tutorials on specific AI-related
topics of interest will be held at the beginning of the meeting
(Coordination: W. Horn, Vienna).
During the whole meeting, there will be the possibility for exhibitions.
Those interested are expected to contact J. Retti (Vienna) as soon as
possible.
Chairman: Hermann Kaindl Vienna
Program Committee:
W. Bibel Darmstadt J. Diederich St. Augustin / Davis
G. Goerz Hamburg J. Hertzberg St. Augustin
H. Horacek Bielefeld W. Horn Vienna
A. Leitsch Vienna W. Nejdl Vienna
B. Neumann Hamburg J. Retti Vienna
G. Strube Bochum R. Trappl Vienna
St. Wrobel St. Augustin H. Ziegeler Vienna
Workshops: (Coordination: E. Buchberger, Vienna)
To support discussions on specific topics also workshops will be held.
Proposals should be discussed with E. Buchberger. Publication of separate
proceedings is a possibility. Excellent contributions presented at
workshops may also be included in the proceedings of the main conference.
Important Dates:
- Submission deadline for complete papers (4 copies) March 15, 1991
- Notification of acceptance or rejection May 1, 1991
- Camera-ready copies of accepted papers July 1, 1991
Conference Fees:
by July 15, 1991 AS 1,500.- (AS 750.- for students under 26)
after July 15, 1991 AS 1,900.- (AS 950.- for students under 26)
OGAI members may subtract AS 100.-. On-site registration for students
will not be possible.
Bank account number: Die Erste oesterreichische Spar-Casse-Bank Wien
Konto-Nr. 004-71186, BLZ 20111
Submitted papers as well as inquiries should be sent to the following
address:
Dr. Hermann Kaindl
Siemens AG Oesterreich, PSE 13
Gudrunstrasse 11, A-1100 Vienna, Austria, Europe
Fax: + 43-1-60171-6112 or -5913 (not for submission of papers)
Tx: + 47-61-32233615 siegud a Ttx: +232-32233615 siegud a
Mr. E. Buchberger, Dr. W. Horn, and Dr. J. Retti can be contacted at
Oesterreichische Gesellschaft fuer Artificial Intelligence, "OGAI-Tagung
1991" Postfach 177, A-1014 Vienna, Austria, Europe
------------------------------
Subject: AISB call for participation
From: B M Smith <bms@dcs.leeds.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 91 14:36:57 +0000
PRELIMINARY CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
==================================
AISB91
University of Leeds
16-19 April 1991
Interested to know what is happening at the forefront of current AI
research?
Tired of going to AI conferences where you hear nothing but talk about
applications?
Bored at big AI conferences where there are so many parallel sessions
that you don't know where to go?
Saturated with small workshops that focus only on one narrow topic in
AI?
==> the 1991 AISB conference may be just the thing for you !
AISB91 is organized by the Society for the Study of Artificial
Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour. It is not only the oldest
regular conference in Europe on AI - which spawned the ECAI
conferences in 1982 - but it is also the conference that has a
tradition of focusing on research as opposed to applications.
The 1991 edition of the conference is no different in this respect.
The conference has a single session and covers the full spectrum of AI
work, from robotics to knowledge systems. It is designed for
researchers active in AI who want to follow the complete field. Papers
were selected that are representative for ongoing research,
particularly for research topics that promise new exciting avenues
into a deeper understanding of intelligence.
There will be a tutorial programme on Tuesday 16 April, followed by
the technical programme from Wednesday 17 to Friday 19 April.
The conference will be held at Bodington Hall, University of Leeds, a
large student residence and conference centre. Bodington Hall is 4
miles from the centre of Leeds and set in 14 acres of private grounds.
Leeds/Bradford airport is 6 miles away, with frequent flights from
London Heathrow, Amsterdam and Paris. Leeds itself is easily
accessible by rail (2 and a half hours from London) and the motorway
network. The Yorkshire Dales National Park is close by, and the
historic city of York is only 30 minutes away by rail.
TECHNICAL PROGRAMME Wednesday 17 - Friday 19 April 1991
========================================================
The technical programme sessions are organized around problem areas,
not around approaches. This means sessions show how different schools
of AI - knowledge-based approaches, logic based approaches, and neural
networks - address the fundamental problems of AI.
The technical programme lasts 2 and a half days. Each day has a
morning session focusing on a particular area of AI. The first day
this area is distributed AI, the second day new modes of reasoning,
and the third day theorem proving and machine learning. The afternoon
is devoted to research topics which are at the forefront of current
research. On the first afternoon this topic is emergent functionality
and autonomous agents. It presents the new stream of ideas for
building autonomous agents featuring concepts like situatedness,
physical symbol grounding, reactive systems, and emergence. On the
second day the topic is knowledge level expert systems research. It
reflects the paradigm shift currently experienced in knowledge based
systems away from the symbol level and towards the knowledge level,
both for design and knowledge acquisition. Each session has first a
series of accepted papers, then two papers which treat the main theme
from a principled point of view, and finally a panel.
In addition the conference features three exciting invited speakers:
Andy Clark who talks about the philosophical foundations of AI, Rolf
Pfeifer who reflects on AI and emotion, and Tony Cohn who looks at the
formal modeling of common sense. The conference is closed by the
Programme Chairman, Luc Steels, who speculates on the role of
consciousness in Artificial Intelligence.
Here is a more detailed description of the various sessions and the
papers contained in them:
Distributed Intelligent Agents
==============================
Research in distributed AI is concerned with the problem of how
multiple agents and societies of agents can be organized to co-operate
and collectively solve a problem. The first paper by Chakravarty (MIT)
focuses on the problem of evolving agents in the context of Minsky's
society of mind theory. It addresses the question how new agents can
be formed by transforming existing ones and illustrates the theory
with an example from game playing. Smieja (GMD, Germany) focuses on
the problem of organizing networks of agents which consist internally
of neural networks. Smieja builds upon the seminal work of Selfridge
in the late fifties on the Pandemonium system. Bond (University of
California) addresses the problem of regulating co-operation between
agents. He seeks inspiration in sociological theory and proposes a
framework based on negotiation. Finally Mamede and Martins (Technical
University of Lisbon) address the problem of resource-bounded
reasoning within the context of logical inference.
Situatedness and emergence in autonomous agents
===============================================
Research on robots and autonomous agents used to be focused strongly
on low level mechanisms. As such there were few connections with the
core problems of AI. Recently, there has been a shift of emphasis
towards the construction of complete agents. This has lead to a review
of some traditional concepts, such as the hierarchical decomposition
of an agent into a perception module, a decision module and an action
module and it has returned robotics research to the front of the AI
stage. This session testifies to the renewed interest in the area.
It starts with a paper by Bersini (Free University of Brussels) which
is strongly within the new perspective of emphasizing situatedness and
non-symbolic relations between perception and action. It discusses the
trade-offs between reactive systems and goal-oriented systems. Seel
(STC Technology, Harlow, UK) provides some of the formal foundations
for understanding and building reactive systems. Jackson and Sharkey
(University of Exeter) address the problem of symbol grounding: how
signals can be related to concepts. They use a connectionist mechanism
to relate spatial descriptions with results from perception. Cliff
(University of Sussex) discusses an experiment in computational
neuroethology.
The next paper is from the Edinburgh Really Useful Robot project which
has built up a strong tradition in building autonomous mobile robots.
The paper will be given by Hallam (University of Edinburgh) and
discusses an experiment in real-time control using toy cars. The final
paper is by Kaelbling (Teleos Research, Palo Alto, California) who
elaborates her proposals for principled programming of autonomous
agents based on logical specifications.
The panel which ends the session tries to put the current work on
autonomous agents into the broader perspective of AI. The panel
includes Smithers (University of Edinburgh), Kaelbling, Connah
(Philips Research, UK), and Agre (University of Sussex).
Following this session, on Wednesday evening, the conference dinner
will be held at the National Museum of Photography, film and
Television at Bradford. The evening will include a special showing in
the IMAX auditorium, which has the largest cinema screen in Britain.
New modes of reasoning
======================
Reasoning remains one of the core topics of AI. This session explores
some of the current work to find new forms of reasoning. The first
paper by Hendler and Dickens (University of Maryland) looks at the
integration of neural networks and symbolic AI in the context of a
concrete example involving an underwater robot. Euzenat and Maesano
(CEDIAG/Bull, Louveciennes, France) address the problem of forgetting.
Pfahringer (University of Vienna) builds further on research in
constraint propagation in qualitative modelling. He proposes a
mechanism to improve efficiency through domain variables. Ghassem-Sani
and Steel (University of Essex) extend the arsenal of methods for
non-recursive planning by introducing a method derived from
mathematical induction.
The knowledge level perspective
===============================
Knowledge systems (also known as expert systems or knowledge-based
systems) continue to be the most successful area of AI application.
The conference does not focus on applications but on foundational
principles for building knowledge systems. Recently there has been an
important shift of emphasis from symbol level considerations (which
focus on the formalism in which a system is implemented) to knowledge
level considerations. The session highlights this shift in emphasis.
The first paper by Pierret-Golbreich and Delouis (Universite Paris
Sud) is related to work on the generic task architectures. It proposes
a framework including support tools for performing analysis of the
task structure of the knowledge system. Reichgelt and Shadbolt
(University of Nottingham) apply the knowledge level perspective to
the problem of knowledge acquisition. Wetter and Schmidt (IBM Germany)
focus on the formalization of the KADS interpretation models which is
one of the major frameworks for doing knowledge level design. Finally
Lackinger and Haselbock (University of Vienna) focus on domain models
in knowledge systems, particularly qualitative models for simulation
and control of dynamic systems.
Then there are two papers which directly address foundational issues.
The first one by Van de Velde (VUB AI Lab, Brussels) clarifies the
(difficult) concepts involved in knowledge level discussions of expert
systems, particularly the principle of rationality. Schreiber,
Akkermans and Wielinga (University of Amsterdam) critically examine
the suitability of the knowledge level for expert system design.
The panel involves Leitch (Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh),
Wielinga, Van de Velde, Sticklen (Michigan State University), and
Pfeifer (University of Zurich).
Theorem proving and Machine learning
=============== ================
The final set of papers focuses on recent work in theorem proving and
in machine learning. The first paper by Giunchiglia (IRST Trento,
Italy) and Walsh (University of Edinburgh) discusses how abstraction
can be used in theorem proving and presents solid evidence to show
that it is useful. Steel (University of Essex) proposes a new
inference scheme for modal logic.
Then there are two papers which represent current work on machine
learning. The first one by Churchill and Young (University of
Cambridge) reports on an experiment using SOAR concerned with
modelling representations of device knowledge. The second paper by
Elliott and Scott (University of Essex) compares instance-based and
generalization-based learning procedures.
TUTORIAL PROGRAMME - Tuesday 16 April 1991
==========================================
Six full-day tutorials will be offered on 16 April (subject to sufficient
registrations for each.)
Tutorial 1 Knowledge Base Coherence Checking
- ----------
Professor Jean-Pierre LAURENT
University of Savoie
FRANCE
Like conventional software, AI Systems also need validation tools.
Some of these tools must be specific, especially for validating
Knowledge-Based Systems, and in particular for checking the coherence
of a Knowledge Base (KB). In the introduction to this tutorial we
will clarify the distinctions to be made between Validation,
Verification, Static Analysis and Testing.
We will present methods which try to check exhaustively for the
coherence of a knowledge Base. Then we will present a pragmatic
approach in which, instead of trying to assert the global coherence of
a KB, it is proposed to check heuristically whether it contains
incoherences. This approach is illustrated by the SACCO System,
dealing with KBs which contain classes and objects, and furthermore
rules with variables.
Tutorial 2 Advanced Constraint Techniques
- ----------
Dr. Hans Werner Guesgen and Dr. Joachim Hertzberg
German National Centre for Computer Science (GMD)
Sankt Augustin,
GERMANY
This tutorial will present a coherent overview of the more recent
concepts and approaches to constraint reasoning. It presents the
concept of dynamic constraints as a formalism subsuming classical
constraint satisfaction, constraint manipulation and relaxation,
bearing a relationship to reflective systems; moreover, the tutorial
presents approaches to parallel implementations of constraint
satisfaction in general and dynamic constraints in particular.
Tutorial 3 Functional Representation and Modeling
- ----------
Prof. Jon Sticklen and Dr. Dean Allemang*
Michigan State University
USA
* Universitaet Zurich, SWITZERLAND
A growing body of AI research centres on using the known functions of
a device as indices to causal understanding of how the device "works".
The results of functional representation and modeling have typically
used this organization of causal understanding to produce tractable
solutions to inherently complex modelling problems.
In this tutorial, the fundamentals of functional representation and
reasoning will be explained. Liberal use of examples throughout will
illustrate the representational concepts underlying the functional
approach. Contacts with other model based reasoning (MBR) techniques
will be made whenever appropriate.
Sufficient background will be covered to make this suitable for both
those unacquainted with the MBR field, and for more experienced
individuals who may be working now in MBR research. A general
familiarity with AI is assumed.
Participants should send in with their registration materials a one
page description of a modeling problem which they face in their
domain.
Tutorial 4 Intelligent Pattern Recognition and Applications
- ----------
Prof. Patrick Wang M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and
Northeastern University, Boston USA
The core of pattern recognition, including "learning techniques" and
"inference" plays an important and central role in AI. On the other
hand, the methods in AI such as knowledge representation, semantic
networks, and heuristic searching algorithms can also be applied to
improve the pattern representation and matching techniques in many
pattern recognition problems - leading to "smart" pattern recognition.
Moreover, the recognition and understanding of sensory data like
speech or images, which are major concerns in pattern recognition,
have always been considered as important subfields of AI.
This tutorial includes overviews of pattern recognition and
articifical intelligence; including recent developments at MIT. The
focus of the tutorial will be on the overlap and interplay between
these fields.
Tutorial 5 SILICON SOULS - Philosophical foundations of computing and AI
- ----------
Prof. Aaron Sloman
University of Birmingham
This will not be a technical tutorial. Rather the tutor will introduce
a collection of philosophical questions about the nature of
computation, the aims of AI, connectionist and non-connectionist
approaches to AI, the relevance of computation to the study of mind,
varieties of mechanism, consciousness, and the nature of emotions and
other affective states. Considerable time will be provided for
discussion by participants.
Prof. Sloman has provided a list of pertinent questions, these will be
sent to participants upon registration.
Tutorial 6 Knowledge Acquisition
- --------
Dr. Nigel Shadbolt
Nottingham University
Practical methods for acquiring knowledge from experts. The methods
described have been shown to be effective through the pioneering
research at Nottingham which compared common and less common methods
for eliciting knowledge from experts.
This tutorial is an updated version of the knowledge acquisition
tutorial given at AISB'89 which was well-attended and enthusiastically
received.
========================================================================
For further information on the tutorials, mail tutorials@hplb.hpl.hp.com or
tutorials@hplb.lb.hp.co.uk or tutorials%hplb.uucp@ukc.ac.uk
For a conference programme and registration form, or general information
about the conference, mail aisb91@ai.leeds.ac.uk or write to:
Barbara Smith
AISB91 Local Organizer
School of Computer Studies
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
U.K.
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End of Neuron Digest [Volume 7 Issue 6]
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