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IRList Digest Volume 2 Number 64
IRList Digest Monday, 1 December 1986 Volume 2 : Issue 64
Today's Topics:
Abstracts - NSF IST Awards for Fiscal Year 1986 - Part 2 of 5
News addresses are ARPANET: fox%vt@csnet-relay.arpa BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet
CSNET: fox@vt UUCPNET: seismo!vtisr1!irlistrq
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Date: Fri, 21 Nov 86 18:38:14 est
From: vtopus!fox (Ed Fox)
Subject: Information on NSF awards, sent by J. Deken at NSF
Fiscal Year 1986 Research Projects
Funded by the Information Science Program
(now Knowledge and Database Systems Program)
Part 2 of 5
IST-8609441
$20,205 - 6 mos.
Michael L. Dertouzos
Massachusetts Inst. Tech.
Conference on Cellular Automata: Parallel Information Processing for
Mathematics and Science
- - -
A radically new approach to computing and scientific models emerging today is
based on parallel computing systems. In these systems vast numbers of simple
computing elements act simultaneously like the billions of living cells in a
complex biological creature. This "cellular automata" conference is organized by
one of the nation's leading research groups in building and analyzing such
parallel computer models. It provides an opportunity for researchers in the
diverse fields of computer science, mathematics, physics, and biology to
interact and keep pace with the rapidly changing state of the art in cellular
automata hardware and systems. In the highly communicative conference setting,
new scientific problems which can be investigated are identified, and new tools
are provided to researchers for building parallel cellular models in each of
their own diverse fields. It is likely that the ideas now developing around
cellular automata and other parallel systems will play a key part in
revolutionizing computer and mathematical modeling over the next few decades.
_____
IST-8519926
$73,460 - 12 mos.
Thomas G. Dietterich
Oregon State University
Learning by Experimentation
- - -
Current automated learning systems only learn passively; the systems learn new
members of categories when the new members are presented. There is no active
information seeking. In this project, Dietterich adds an active experimentation
component. An automated learning system uses a computer "experimentally" to
test out its hypotheses about how the computer functions. The system
experiments by giving the computer commands and looking at the effects of
these commands. The issue of experimentation expands the problem of automated
learning to allow it to more closely mirror learning in the real world. The way
the system performs when it is experimenting is then considered as an
automated learning system is developed. In order to be practical, automated
systems need to be able to deal with a wide range of situations, many of which
will be unexpected when first encountered. In order to deal successfully with
unexpected situations, these systems will need to be able to learn. This
research addresses an issue which is important in the development of automated
learning systems.
_____
IST-8519924
$43,489 - 12 mos.
John W. DuBois
University of California at Los Angeles
Information Transfer Constraints and Strategies in Natural
Language Communication
- - -
The goal of this project is to study patterns of information flow during narra-
tion and spontaneous conversation. This goal is achieved by investigating how
much information is conveyed in single units of speech and how large amounts of
information are conveyed by speakers, given that each unit conveys only a
limited amount. Recordings of narration and conversation are analyzed to
identify the speech units and to identify the limits on the units and the
strategies used as a result. The research is relevant to the development of
computer systems which can produce good synthetic speech. In order to produce
synthetic speech systems which produce understandable speech, how humans
turn complex thoughts into spoken statements has to be understood. This project
addresses questions which underlie this issue.
_____
DCR-8602385
$25,000 - 12 mos.
Wayne Dyksen and Mikhail Atallah
Purdue University
High Level Systems for Scientific Computing
- - -
The size and complexity of feasible scientific computations have increased
dramatically in the last twenty-five years as a result of both technological and
algorithmic progress. Yet, over the same time, the process by which scientists
and engineers do scientific computing has changed relatively little. For a given
scientific computing problem, the selection of the "best" solution algorithms is
difficult for the average nonexpert. The need for confidence in results thus
dictates electing inferior "known" algorithms over superior "unknown" ones. As
a step toward the solution of this problem, this project will investigate the
use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to make powerful scientific com-
puting techniques usable by nonexperts. The investigators will design, imple-
ment, and test an expert system for scientific computing. As a case study, work
has begun on Elliptic- Expert, an expert system for solving elliptic partial
differential equations (PDEs).
_____
IST-8609123
$93,156 - 24 mos.
Andrew U. Frank
University of Maine at Orono
A Formal Model for Representation and Manipulation of Spatial Subdivisions in
Information Systems
- - -
This research develops a set of mathematical concepts and approaches to
representing information about space. Spatial concepts play a role in computer
systems which must reason about maps and geography, as well as systems which
work in three-dimensional space for computer assisted design and
manufacturing. The mathematical concepts explored are those of "nearness" and
"distance" (metric concepts) and those of "connectedness" (topology.) The
significance of this work is that it generates a new set of mathematical
approaches to spatial reasoning. Any successful mathematical approach may
lead to entire families of knowledge representation and expert reasoning
systems.
_____
IST-8611673
$18,000 - 3 mos.
Thomas Gay
University of Connecticut Health Center
Travel Grant: U.S. - U.S.S.R. Symposium on Information Coding and
Transmission in Biological Systems, October 3-13, 1986
- - -
This award supports travel funds for approximately 15 U.S. participants in a
joint U.S. - U.S.S.R. Symposium on Information Coding and Transmission in
Biological Systems. The symposium is being convened and sponsored by the
Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., which will invite all of the U.S. partici-
pants as official guests. The conference is significant, both for the caliber
of the U.S. and Soviet participants, the multidisciplinary approach to informa-
tion processing taken, and the effort to consider systems from the level of
molecular chemistry to multicellular organization. The participants will be
working in a productive cross disciplinary environment, to which the Soviet
Union will commit its own world class biologists and mathematicians.
_____
IST-8512419
$70,867 - 12 mos.
Richard Granger
University of California, Irvine
Unification of Lexical, Syntactic, and Pragmatic Inference in Understanding
- - -
Research on artificial intelligence methods for automated text understanding
systems suggests that the understanding of ambiguous statements is a pervasive
and therefore central problem. One powerful way to overcome the difficulty
created by ambiguous statements is to use lexical, syntactic and pragmatic
sources of information during the disambiguation process. Psychological data is
being collected on the disambiguation strategies used by humans to accomplish
this integration. These strategies will then be implemented in computer models.
The research will further understanding of natural language comprehension
processes and of natural language understanding systems.
_____
IST-8509860
$73,479 - 12 mos.
Robert M. Gray
Stanford University
The Application of Information Theory to Pattern Recognition and the Design of
Decision Tree Classifiers
- - -
This research develops the connection of automated pattern recognition systems
with established work in information theory. Major results in source coding and
channel coding theory are applied and extended to the problems of pattern
recognition. Applying source coding theory, automated pattern recognition is
treated as a form of data compression, where essential information is captured,
but the amount of data transmitted is significantly reduced. Using channel
coding theory, the automated pattern recognition system can be designed to
perform with minimum "cost," where cost is measured as a combination of
computational complexity and average accuracy of the system. New pattern
recognition systems based on decision trees are designed using this approach.
The performance of these systems is analyzed and optimized using mathematical
results from information theory which prove limits on the best possible
performance of source coding and channel coding algorithms. The fundamental
significance of this research is to break ground in extending and developing
techniques of source coding and channel coding theory to influence pattern
recognition research.
_____
IST-8603943
$134,694 - 18 mos.
Max Henrion
Carnegie Mellon University
A Comparison of Methods for Representing Uncertainty in Expert Systems
- - -
This research brings together for direct comparison all of the major systems
now proposed for use by computers to represent uncertain information and to
reason with such information to draw valid and useful conclusions. The
advantage of this comparison, using real data to judge various approaches'
performance, is that the strengths and weaknesses of different uncertainty
models relative to each other are clearly shown. In addition, practical
comparison serves as a basis for the development of an overall framework for
integrating the best features of many approaches to uncertainty in knowledge
based systems of the future. The project is significant in that it recognizes
the potential of various approaches to uncertainty in different circumstances,
and allows previously incomparable systems to be brought together for systematic
evaluation.
_____
DCR-8608311
$45,000 - 12 mos.
Lawrence J. Henschen
Northwestern University
Logic and Databases
- - -
The purpose of this research is to enhance the information retrieval capabili-
ties of data bases by incorporating first- order logic into the data base. The
relational data model is being used in which the relations themselves already
are of the form of elementary logical statements. With this model, it is only
necessary to supply the appropriate logical mechanisms for integrating more
general logical formulas into the data storage and retrieval processes. It has
been shown such a model can be used when the logical formulas represent
definitions of new relations, even when such definitions are recursive. This
allows the possibility of greatly reducing storage because such defined rela-
tions need not be stored; rather, their information content can easily and
efficiently be generated when needed. This can be accomplished at data base
creation time, a major step forward. In this study other types of formulas
(e.g. constraints) are being examined to determine whether they can be
"compiled" at data base creation time. The research is also looking into how
functions, which normally lead to infinite deduction paths, can be handled in
the specialized domain of data bases.
_____
IST-8645349
$153,289 - 12 mos.
Richard J. Herrnstein
Harvard University
A Comparative Approach to Natural and Artificial Visual Information Processing
- - -
Many animals classify wide varieties of shapes, textures, and colors seemingly
without effort, and yet this ability has proven exceedingly difficult to program
into a computer. This project takes a dual approach to understanding the
information processing involved in visual classification abilities: experiments
on human and pigeon subjects categorizing natural and artificial stimuli are
coordinated with the simulation and analysis of their performances by computer.
The stimulation model is used to generate artificial stimuli and, to the extent
possible, to analyze natural stimuli. The human and animal performances are
used to test and, when necessary, to modify the simulation model. Theoretical
and empirical results therefore interact iteratively, with the goal of conver-
ging on a small number of visual classification algorithms. Concurrent experi-
ments with humans and pigeons classifying the same stimuli should indicate the
extent to which these two species share common categorization principles, and
also the respects in which they do not. For many practical applications, it may
be more appropriate to try to model the pigeon-like classification device,
rather than to aim for the far more challenging and perhaps needlessly complex
categorizing capacities of the human system.
_____
IST-8520359
$70,735 - 12 mos.
Geoffrey Hinton
Carnegie-Mellon University
Search Methods for Massively Parallel Networks
- - -
The purpose of this research is to study how parallel computers can search for
solutions to problems. One problem is recognizing the identity of objects.
This problem is studied here by studying how objects can be represented in para-
llel computers and by studying how the representation effects the search for an
answer to the question of object recognition. The most efficient object
recognition techniques are sought here in order to allow computers to recognize
objects which have been either translated or rotated in the visual field.
Computer systems need to be able to recognize objects in order to behave
flexibly. Looking for effective, efficient solution methods for object recogni-
tion problems will lead to better parallel computational systems.
_____
IST-8511541
$69,815 - 12 mos.
Richard B. Hull
University of Southern California
Investigation of Practical and Theoretical Aspects of Semantic Database Models
- - -
This research seeks to develop the principal investigator's framework for
designing databases. This design framework has been developed to allow many
different architectures for databases to be compared and synthesized. Initial
work concentrates on a graphics-based system, SNAP (Semantic Navigation and
Perusal). By developing the SNAP interface within the new database design
framework, it is possible to develop database structures and to compare these
designs, as well as to add and extract information from the resulting databases.
The principal investigator's design framework is semantically rich enough to
encompass semantic databases with a wide variety of structures. The proposed
research is significant in developing a foundation for the comparison and
integration of diverse database models. The initial work, which develops an
effective graphic interface not just for interacting with database systems in
conventional fashion but for rebuilding and redesigning their structure as well,
is also fundamental.
_____
IST-8643740
$98,507 - 12 mos.
Ray Jackendoff and Jane Grimshaw
Brandeis University
Syntactic and Semantic Information in a Natural Language Lexicon
- - -
Information about words can be represented both semantically and syntactically;
the nature of the relationships between these two modes of representation is
examined. Specific questions addressed include the semantic structure of
lexical items, the encoding of syntactically complex lexical items, and the
systematic relations among uses of the same lexical item in different
environments. An existing catalog of information about English verbs provides
the major source of data for the research effort. The results of the research
provide insight into the nature of information as represented in natural lan-
guage. Such results will be useful in the construction of automated systems
which can handle natural language.
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END OF IRList Digest
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