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IRList Digest Volume 4 Number 32
IRList Digest Tuesday, 7 May 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 32
Today's Topics:
Query - Public domain IR collections
Call for Papers - Algorithms and data structures for IR
Abstract - Tools for Designing&Implementing User-Computer Interfaces
CSLI - The Algebra of Events
- Representation versus Interpretation
COGSCI - Abstraction in symbolic planning;
Software, imagination, education conference
News addresses are
Internet or CSNET: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu
BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2 Jun 88 15:41 PDT
From: Pedersen.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Public-domain corpora
Prof. Fox,
I'm a member of a group at Xerox PARC investigating some aspects of
Information Retrieval. One of the major stumbling blocks we've come
across is the relative scarcity of public-domain corpora which may be
used for empirical studies of retrieval effectiveness and general
experimentation. It is evident from the literature that a number of
standard reference corpora with queries are available (eg. CACM,
MEDLARS, CISI, etc.). Is there a recognized source for these corpora?
I noticed a message on the IR-list referring to a CDROM containing
various IR collections (Virginia Disk One?). Is there any more
information available on this project, in particular, a list of the
included collections?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Jan Pedersen
[Note: Virginia Disk One is now being tested and I hope to have it
out in a month or so. We will send you a copy and can make others -
I have some requests but can accept more. The CD-ROM will have over
6000 files, and will include the collections you mentioned above.
We will have a hypertext system used to access vegetable gardening
data, Personal Librarian (whose ancestor was SIRE) accessing a
number of collections, TOPIC (whose ancestor was RUBRIC) accessing
one collection, etc. The 1st 3 years of IRList will be searchable.
But be aware that I believe we need more controlled realistic
studies with human-computer interaction, and that collaboration
between corporations, funding sources, and universities has been
sorely lacking in the area of studying the effectiveness of retrieval
systems. I am pleased to see a group at Xerox working on this!
I hope that many new evaluation studies will be carried out! - Ed.]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 May 88 23:25:10 PDT
From: likewise!hoqas!thor!wbf@uunet.UU.NET (Bill Frakes)
Subject: Call for Papers for SIGIR Forum
Call for papers on algorithms and data
structures for information retrieval
Papers are solicited on data structures and algorithms for
information retrieval. Accepted papers will be published in
SIGIR Forum. Papers should survey the topic and be tutorial.
The papers should begin with an introduction to the topic,
and then present a discussion of the data structures and
algorithms in a standard language. C is preferred, but other
languages such as PASCAL are OK. Papers should include
references to relevant literature, and should be evaluative
as well as descriptive. Some possible topics are given
below. If a sufficient number of quality papers are
submitted, we will try to publish them in book form.
o Stoplists
o Stemming
o String Search
o P-norm algorithms
o Parsing
o Boolean operations
o Inverted lists
o File structures
o Ranking Algorithms
o Clustering algorithms
Send papers to:
Bill Frakes
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Room. 2J-502
Crawfords Corner Rd.
Holmdel, N.J. 07733
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 May 88 11:05:50 EDT
From: Una Smith <Q2813@pucc.princeton.edu>
Subject: James Foley at JvNC, Tuesday 5/24, 4:00 pm
Tuesday, May 24, at 4:00 pm.
Tools for Designing and Implementing User-Computer Interfaces
=============================================================
James Foley
George Washington University
The engineering of the human-computer interface defines "usability,"
yet user interface software has not improved historically as much as
computers or display/sensor hardware. Systematic methods and design
environments now permit formal specification of a user interface in
terms of objects, actions, attributes, preconditions, and effects.
The specification can then be transformed into functionally equivalent
interfaces, to measure or optimize speed-in-use, default conditions,
scope, or the need for assistance. This talk explores the issues that
arise in theory and practice when designing interfaces.
James Foley is professor and chairman-elect in Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science at the George Washington University, and a fellow
of the IEEE. His cover article for the October 1987 issue of
_Scientific_American_, "Interfaces for Advanced Computing," touches on
many of the issues that will be developed in this talk. Foley has
written the standard text in computer graphics, "Fundamentals of
Interactive Computer Graphics," with Andries van Dam, and is currently
building UIDE, the User Interface Design Environment.
The talk is open to the public. Refreshments will be served at 3:40
pm. The John von Neumann National Supercomputer Center is located at
665 College Road East, Princeton Forrestal Center, Plainsboro NJ. For
more information, call (609) 520-2000.
Una Smith Q2813@PUCC.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 May 88 17:14:44 PDT
From: Emma Pease <emma@RUSSELL.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: CSLI Calendar, May 19, 3:29 [Extract - Ed.]
Reading: "The Algebra of Events"
by Emmon Bach
Discussion led by Bob Carpenter
(carp@drifters.stanford.edu)
May 26
Emmon Bach claims that the "basic aim of this paper is to try and
elucidate this proportion: events:processes :: things:stuff." He
exploits the structural parallels between the domain of individuals
and events to propose a semantics for verbal aspect, and in particular
the progressive, identical to Godehard Link's semantics for mass and
count nominals.
We'll concentrate on the "Puzzles and Problems" section, which
deals with three unresolved issues. The first is the general
mechanism of languages for "packaging" objects into new objects and
"grinding" existing objects into their constituents. The second deals
with the relation between the partitive and the progressive and their
admission of real, but incomplete complements as in "part of a bridge"
and "was building a bridge" where the bridge was never built. The
final puzzle is the key, where the general ontological question of
object individuation and its relation to the attunement of agents is
brought out of the closet.
Time permitting, we can discuss some comments of Fred Landman's (in
"Groups," UMass ms) pertaining to the general topic of collectivity
and individuation, which is closely related to the notions of "actual"
situation in situation semantics.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 May 88 16:31:02 PDT
From: Emma Pease <emma@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: CSLI Calendar addition
CSLI COLLOQUIUM
Representation versus Interpretation
J. E. Fenstad
University of Oslo, Norway
Cordura Conference Room, 4:15, May 26
One basic assumption of the Montague approach is the compositionality
principle, i.e., the existence of a homomorphism from the "syntactic"
algebra to the "semantic" algebra. But various problematic aspects of
the "pull-back" from interpretation to linguistic forms argue for an
independent representational level. Another problematic aspect of the
Montague model is the extreme "constructionalism" of the approach,
i.e., everything is constructed by abstraction from individuals and
truth-values. In the talk I will give a survey of some recent work in
Oslo related to these problems.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 27 May 88 09:30:44 EDT
From: Peter de Jong <dejong@WHEATIES.AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Cognitive Science Calendar
Date: Thu 26 May 88 14:21:38-EDT
From: Marc Vilain <MVILAIN@g.bbn.com>
Subject: BBN AI Seminar: Josh Tennenberg
BBN Science Development Program
AI Seminar Series Lecture
ABSTRACTION IN SYMBOLIC PLANNING
Josh Tennenberg
University of Rochester
(josh@cs.rochester.edu)
BBN Labs
10 Moulton Street
2nd floor large conference room
10:30 am, Tuesday May 31
The use of abstraction in planning is explored in order to simplify the
task of reasoning about the effects of an agent's actions within a complex
world. Two representational issues emerge which form the basis of this
research. First, the abstract views must sanction plan construction for
frequently occurring problems, yet never sanction the deduction of
contradictory assertions. Second, a correspondence between the abstract
and concrete views must be maintained so that abstract solutions bear a
precise relationship to the concrete level solutions derived from them.
These issues are explored within two different settings. In the first, an
abstraction hierarchy is induced by relaxing some of the constraints on the
application of actions. In the second, a predicate mapping function is
defined which extends the notion of inheritance from object types to
arbitrary relations and actions.
______________________________
Date: Thu, 26 May 88 15:17:08 EDT
From: adelson%cs.tufts.edu@relay.cs.net
Subject: please post
SOFTWARE, IMAGINATION, EDUCATION:
Educationally Effective Curricular Software in Higher Education
SPEAKERS:
Jon Barwise John Kemeny
John Seely Brown Seymour Papert
Marc H. Brown Judah L. Schwartz
Daniel C. Dennett George Smith
Mitchell Kapor Edwin Taylor
Alan Kay
Effective educational software is rare indeed--hard to create, and hard
to recognize. This conference will address the difficult questions:
What software actually works with students, and why? Leading thinkers
will explore the possibilities and limitations of computers in higher
education, and discuss demonstrations of the best existing software.
CONFERENCE HELD MAY 31 THROUGH JUNE 3, 1988
For reservations and information
about fees and location phone or mail:
Judy Medler
617-628-5000 X 5209
CSNET: BARNEY%CC.TUFTS.EDU
BITNET: JCMEDLER@TUFTS
Sponsored by the Curricular Software Studio,
with major funding by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
------------------------------
END OF IRList Digest
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