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IRList Digest Volume 5 Number 03
IRList Digest Saturday, 7 January 1989 Volume 5 : Issue 3
Today's Topics:
Query - Hypertext systems and ACM
- Personal Consultant Plus
Reply - SuperBook person to contact
- Bibliographic records and LCSH
Discussion - CD-ROMs for lawyers and accountants
Announcement - NSF Program in knowledge models and cognitive systems
News addresses are
Internet: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu
BITNET: foxea@vtcc1.bitnet (replaces foxea@vtvax3)
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Date: Thu, 05 Jan 89 18:52:22 EST
From: "Bernard Rous (Associate Director of Publications)" <ROUS-CR@ACMVM>
Subject: ACM and Hypertext
ACM has produced its first hypertext publication called
"Hypertext on Hypertext." (It is available from ACM for
IBM pcs, Macs, Suns and Apollos. For more information call
1-800-342-6626.)
ACM is now planning to produce a series of hypertext publications.
ACM is looking for vendors who are interested in working with ACM
in a hypertext publishing venture. An rfp has been prepared and is
being mailed out. If you are such a vendor or know of one who would
like to receive the rfp, please let ACM know immediately.
Bernard Rous
Associate Director of Publications
ACM
11 West 42 Street
New York, NY 10036
e-mail: Rous-CR at ACMVM.bitnet
[Note: It would be interesting to find out what commercially
available hypertext systems are out there or under
development - has anyone done a survey recently? - Ed.]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Dec 88 10:20:09 CST
From: Tung-Ying Chang <EU6B0001@TWNMOE10>
Subject: Personal Consultant Plus
...
I had read some materials about Personal Consultant Plus, a Texas
Instrument's expert system development shell. Westinghouse has four or
five expert systems in various stages of development, and a sixth one
is planned. All the systems are being developmented via Personal
Consult..... (Personal Computing Nov. 1985)
In Personal Consultant Plus Ver. 3.02, TI provides PC IMages and PC
Online. They claim PC IMages enables developers to create Knowledge-based
applications that incorporate complex graphical "active images" User-
interactive dials, gauges, forms.... PC Online allows the developer to
design expert systems which interact directly with process data, as
opposed to input from a human operator. Designed for intelligent process
monitoring applications, this optional package helps deliver expertise
that is "online all the time".
Recently, I have the chance to review the manual of Personal
Consult Plus and find that it is an EMYCIN-like rule-based system shell.
There are several features in the shell, such as PC SCHEME compiler,
frame, forward-chaining, backward-chaining, meta-level function, graphic
and external data interface, user-defined lisp function call etc.
In general, it sounds powerful and flexible, but I suppose it is
still lack of automatic learning and feedback tools. However, I decided
to build an experimental system of disease diagnosis. Before I get
deeply into this effort through, I want to get opinions of others.
My questions are below. Any advice you have about this subject will
be greatly appreciated.
1. Is there any non-commercial evaluation report on Personal
Consultant Plus ?
2. What kind of expertise or hueristic decision could be "cooked"
effectively by expert system shell ?
3. Is it a good idea to build tutoring system with knowledge-based
system ? How about apply expert system in mental or linguistic
simulation ?
Thanks in advance. Tung-Ying Chang
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 02 Jan 89 19:02 PST
From: Christine Borgman <IIN4CLB@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: IRList Digest V5 #2
CC: Dennis Egan <egan@BELLCORE.COM>,
furuta@BRILLIG.UMD.EDU
Ed, on Rick Furuta's inquiry about the "Bell Labs SuperBook" project
in V5, #2: one person to contact is Dennis Egan at Bellcore, who
made an excellent presentation about it at ASIS in October. Dennis
is at EGAN@BELLCORE.COM and I am copying him and Furuta with this
message.
Christine Borgman, UCLA
BITNET: IIN4CLB@UCLAMVS
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 03 Jan 89 12:15:01 EST
From: "Jerry Caswell, Univ. of Vermont" <JCASWELL@UVMVM>
Subject: Re: IRList Digest V5 #2 query by H. Chen
I sent this message to the IRL, but the LISTSERV replied that I was not
authorized to contribute.
[Note: Please be sure to send all IRList news to me directly
at the news address given at the top of each message. This
is a moderated digest and so I need to receive all submissions. - Ed]
In response to Hsinchun Chen's request for machine readable bibliographic
records and Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):
The Cataloging Distribution Service of the Library of Congress sells
tapes of both the bibliographic records and the LC Subject Headings.
The data on both tapes comes in the MARC communications format and
must be converted for use in a local system. I believe the subject
headings are, or will be available soon, on compact disc with
special retrieval software.
[Note: Does anyone have address and price information? - Ed]
------------------------------
Date: 3 Dec 88 23:31:10 EST (Sat)
From: lsuc!dave@uunet.UU.NET (David Sherman)
Subject: CD-ROM with bilateral tax treaties- re IRList Digest V4 #56
Newsgroups: comp.theory.info-retrieval
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Re CD-ROMs: I understand that there is a CD-ROM with all
of the world's bilateral tax treaties available. (This
stuff is important for lawyers and accountants who do international
tax work; the set of treaties between any one country and the rest
of the world fills a largish binder, so the treaties between every
pair of countries that has treaties is pretty big.) I don't
know how widely it's used. It's available from the International
Bureau of Fiscal Documentation.
Many law publishers are looking at CD-ROM for publishing case
reports and the like. I don't know yet if any of the U.S. firms
have done so yet; the Canadian publishers are still as the
looking stage.
David Sherman
The Law Society of Upper Canada
Toronto
Moderator, mail.yiddish
{ uunet!attcan att pyramid!utai utzoo } !lsuc!dave
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 88 11:26 EST
From: Henry J. Hamburger <hhamburg@note.nsf.gov>
Subject: NSF Program in Knowledge Models and Cognitive Systems
[Forwarded from NL-KR Digest V5 No.30 11/30/88, thanks to R. France - Ed.]
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
PROGRAM in
KNOWLEDGE MODELS and COGNITIVE SYSTEMS
Knowledge Models and Cognitive Systems is a relatively new name
at NSF, but the Program has significant continuity with earlier
related programs. This holds for its scientific subject matter
and also with regard to its researchers, who come principally
from computer science and the cognitive sciences, each of these
emphatically including important parts of artificial intelligence.
Many such individuals are also interested in areas supported by
other NSF programs, especially in this division -- the Division
of Information, Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) -- and in
the Division of Behavioral and Neural Sciences.
This unofficial message has two parts. The first is a top-down
description of the major areas of current Program support. There
follows a list of some particular topics in which there is strong
current activity in the Program and/or perceived future
opportunity. Anyone needing further information can contact the
Program Director, Henry Hamburger, who is also the sender of this
item. Please use e-mail if you can: hhamburg@b.nsf.gov or else
phone: 202-357-9569. To get a copy of the Summary of Awards for
this division (IRIS), call 202-357-9572
Many of you will be hearing from me with requests to review
proposals. To be sure they are of interest to you, feel free to
send me a list of topics or subfields.
MAJOR AREAS of CURRENT SUPPORT
The Program in Knowledge Models and Cognitive Systems supports
research fundamental to the general understanding of knowledge
and cognition, whether in humans, computers or, in principle,
other entities. Major areas currently receiving support include
(i) formal models of knowledge and information, (ii) natural
language processing and (iii) cognitive systems. Each of these
areas is described and subcategorized below.
Applicants do not classify their proposals in any official way.
Indeed their work may be relevant to two or all three of the
categories (or conceivably to none of them). In particular, it
is recognized that language is intertwined with (or part of)
cognition and that formality is a matter of degree. For work
that falls only partly within the program, the program director
may conduct the evaluation jointly with another program, within
or outside the division. Descriptions of the three areas follow.
FORMAL MODELS of KNOWLEDGE and INFORMATION:
Recent work supported under the category Formal Models of
Knowledge and Information divides into formal models of three
things: (i) knowledge, (ii) information, and (iii) imperfections
in the two. In each case, the models may encompass both
representation and manipulation. For example, formal models of
both knowledge representation and inference are part of the
knowledge area.
The distinction between knowledge and information is that a piece
of knowledge tends to be more structured and/or comprehensive
than a piece of information. Imperfections may include
uncertainty, vagueness, incompleteness and abductive rules. Many
investigations contribute to two or all three categories, yet
emphasize one.
COGNITIVE SYSTEMS
Four recognized areas currently receive support within Cognitive
Systems: (i) knowledge representation and inference, (ii)
highly parallel approaches, (iii) machine learning, and (iv)
computational characterization of human cognition.
The first area is characterized by symbolic representations and a
high degree of structure imposed by the programmer, in an attempt
to represent complex entities and carry out complex tasks
involving planning and reasoning. The second area may have
similar long-term goals but takes a very different approach. It
includes studies based on a high degree of parallelism among
relatively simple processing units connected according to various
patterns. The third area, machine learning, has emerged as a
distinct area of study, though the choice between symbolic and
connectionist approaches is clearly relevant. In all of the
first three areas, the research may be informed to a greater or
lesser degree by scientific knowledge of the nature of high-
level human cognition. Characterizing such knowledge in
computational form is the objective of the fourth area.
NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING
Recent work supported under the category Natural Language
Processing is in three overlapping areas: (i) computational
aspects of syntax, semantics and the lexicon, (ii) discourse,
dialog and generation, and (iii) systems issues. The distinction
between the first two often involves such intersentential
concerns as topic, plan, and situation. Systems issues include
the interaction and unified treatment of various kinds of
modules.
TOPICS of STRONG CURRENT ACTIVITY and
OPPORTUNITY for FUTURE RESEARCH
Comments on this list are welcome. It has no official status,
is subject to change, and, most important, is intended to be
suggestive, not prescriptive. The astute reader will notice that
many of these topics transcend the neat categorization above.
Reasoning and planning in the face of
imperfect information and a changing world
- reasoning about reasoning itself: the time
and resources taken, and the consequences
- use and formal understanding of
temporal and nonmonotonic logic
- integration of numerical and symbolic approaches
to uncertainty, imprecision and justification
- multi-agent planning, reasoning,
communication and coordination
Interplay of human and computational languages
- commonalities in the semantic formalisms
for human and computer languages
- extending knowledge representation systems to
support formal principles of human language
- principles of extended dialog between humans
and complex software systems, including
those of the new computational sciences
Machine Learning of Classification,
Problem-Solving and Scientific Laws
- formal analysis of what features and parameter
settings of both method and domain are
responsible for successes.
- reconciling and combining the benefits of
connectionist, genetic and symbolic approaches
- evaluating the relevance to learning of AI
tools: planning, search, and learning itself
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END OF IRList Digest
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