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AIList Digest Volume 3 Issue 015
AIList Digest Wednesday, 6 Feb 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 15
Today's Topics:
AI Tools - LOOP Macro under CommonLisp & Relational Database System,
Games - Cubic,
Math - Inverse Laplace Transform Problem,
News - Recent Articles,
Report - Conditionals in Logic,
AI Tools - Chez Scheme,
Seminar - The Digital Orrery (Boston SICPLAN)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 05 Feb 85 14:00:37 PST (Tue)
From: Steve Smith <ssmith%NRTC@USC-ECL.ARPA>
Subject: LOOP macro under CommonLisp
Has anybody hacked up the old MIT Loop macro to work under
vanilla CommonLisp (eg. DEC's CommonLisp)?
--Steve Smith (ssmith%nrtc@usc-ecl)
------------------------------
Date: 5 Feb 15:02:33 1985
From: des.allegra.btl@csnet-relay.arpa
Subject: Relational Database System
Does anyone have or know where to find a relational database
management system written in Zetalisp for the Symbolics 3600
Lisp Machine?
Thanks,
Douglas Stumberger
U.S. Post: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Room 3C-438
600 Mountain Ave.
Murray Hill, N.J. 07974
csnet: allegra!des%ucb-vax@csnet-relay.arpa
uucp: allegra!des
Phone: 201.582.5251
------------------------------
Date: 4 February 1985 1232-EST
From: Hans Berliner@CMU-CS-A
Subject: The game Cubic
[Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
A few years ago someone proved that the game Cubic (4x4x4) tic-tac-toe
is a win for the first player. If anyone has a reference to this
paper I would very much appreciate getting it.
------------------------------
Date: Monday, 4-Feb-85 13:49:53-GMT
From: GORDON JOLY (on ERCC DEC-10) <GCJ%edxa@ucl-cs.arpa>
Subject: Points Arising.
Two points from Vol 3 # 11. The Symbolics stock price reminds me
on the Britsh Telecom share issue, where the price went from
50 pence to around 130 pence in the space of about two months.
(Bob Beckman is reported to be using a dog to figure the market,
`one bark for buy, two barks for sell'.)
Secondly, the transform in Vol 3 # 10 is not a Laplace transform
at all! It is really a Carson-Heaviside transform. (Thanks to all
the guys in 201 for pointing this out).
From Vol 3 #9 & 10, I believe requests for addition to the
net.math.symbolic mailing list should be sent to lseward@randgr.
Gordon Joly.
------------------------------
Date: Mon 4 Feb 85 20:39:49-PST
From: Douglas Galbraith <GALBRAITH@SU-SIERRA.ARPA>
Subject: answer to Inverse Laplace Transform problem
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
Several people have asked for the answer to the transform problem I put on
the bboard about a week ago. So here's the solution for all of those who
asked. (Sorry about the delay. I'm only here two days a week. So I
don't get to my mail very often.) Just to remind everyone, the original
problem was:
1 1
F(S) = --- * ----------------------------------
S exp[-A*sqrt(S)] + exp[A*sqrt(S)]
The inverse Laplace transform of this equation is:
+infinity
-- (-1)^N
f(t) = 1 + PI/4 * > -------- * exp[-(2N-1)^2*t*PI^2/(4*A^2)]
-- 2N-1
N=1
I solved it with the help of the "Mathematical Handbook of Formulas and
Tables" by Murray R. Speigel from the Schaum's outline series. The inverse
transform is number 32.153 on page 171.
For those who want to try it on their own, here are three hints.
HINT #1: Convert to infinite series and infinite products.
HINT #2: The original equation is also equal to:
1 1
F(S) = --- * -----------------
S cosh[A*sqrt(S)]
G[sqrt(S)]
HINT #3: The inverse Laplace Transform of ---------- is:
S
infinity
/
1 |
---------- | exp[-u^2/(4*t)]*g(u)*du
sqrt[pi*t] |
/
0
where g(u) is the inverse transform of G(S).
The original problem is a simplified version of a general equation I'm
working on:
1 1 cosh[B*sqrt(S)]
F(S) = --- - --- * ---------------------------------------------
S S cosh[A*sqrt(S)] + C*sqrt(S)*sinh[A*sqrt(S)]
where "A", "B", and "C" are real constants, and "S" is the variable. I've
solved it for C=0, and I'm now working on the non-zero case. The
general case looks like it's going to keep me busy a while.
Good luck,
Douglas Galbraith
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 85 04:59:13 cst
From: Laurence Leff <leff%smu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Recent Articles
Electronic News Monday January 28, 1985 Page 11
The European Economic Community Commission approved 104 projects submitted
to the Euyropean Strategic Program for Research and Development in Information
Technology (Esprit).
Although, they probably approved several projects of interest to AIer's,
the only such project mentioned was a contract for "a cognitive simulator
for user interface design" involving ITT of Great Britain, Logos Projetti of
Italy and the Applied Psychology Unit of Cambridge University in Britain.
The DEC Professional, January 1985, Page 82
Shape of Machines to Come
Discusses clustering, pipelines, parallel processors, dataflow architecture,
symbolic manipulation, the Japanese ICOT effort, the MCC and DARPA.
Although most of this material would be known by most, if not all of
this audience; of particular interest is a list of some projects at
DEC and IBM.
AT DEC, they have 35 separate AI/expert system projects. XSITE helps
site planners prepare customer sites for new VAX installations. AI SPEAR
helps DEC Field Service Engineers diagnose and prevent TU-78 tape drive
failures. They also have an intelligent DCL interpreter and cDx which helps
VAX managers diagnose system crashes.
Dec is working on an 'AI Engine,' a high speed RISC system. It is rumored
that DEC will be unveiling a parallel processor or AI machine based on the
single chip MICRO-VAX II 'in the 1988 timeframe.'
IBM alledgedly is marketing Epistle which reads electronic mail and summarizes
messages. IBM is rumored to be soon announceing PROLOG.
Also mentions the National Bureau of Standards Center for Manufacturing
Engineering which has a 5000 square foot fully automated machine shop.
Computer, December 1984
"Top-Down Construction of 3-D Mechanical Object Shapes from Engineering
Drawings.", page 32
Discusses a natural language interface which assists with disambiguating
conventional orthographic projections which are being converted into
Constructive Solid Geometry representations.
"Alvey reconsiders complexity of Expert Systems" Page 106
In the report of Alex d'Agapeyeff to the British Alvey
many expert systems were developed at low cost by people
not trained in Artificial Intelligence. Often they were developed without
benefit of expert system development tools and even in such languages as
FORTRAN and BASIC.
Examples are:
A system to analyze crash dumps (developed by two knowledge engineers and
one domain expert in 20 calendar weeks). It fully analyzed 91 per cent
of the dumps that the expert was able to fully analyze and partially
analyzed 57% of those that the expert was able to partially analyze.
British Telecom developed a system in MICRO-PROLOG on a Z-80 system
for analyzing PABX power supply problems.
------------------------------
Date: Wed 30 Jan 85 17:26:40-PST
From: Emma Pease <Emma@SU-CSLI.ARPA>
Subject: Report - Conditionals in Logic
[Extracted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.]
A new CSLI Report by Jon Barwise, ``The Situation in Logic--II:
Conditionals and Conditional Information'' (Report No. CSLI--85--21), has
been published. To obtain a copy of this report write to Dikran
Karagueuzian, CSLI, Ventura Hall, Stanford 94305 or send net mail to Dikran
at SU-CSLI.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 85 00:24:27 est
From: Kent Dybvig <dyb%unc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Chez Scheme
=> Chez Scheme
Chez Scheme is an implementation of Scheme for Vaxes
running 4.2 Bsd Unix. Chez Scheme supports all required and
most optional features of the anticipated Scheme standard.
The first Chez Scheme release will include an extensive
reference manual. A Chez Scheme tutorial is in preparation
for later releases.
Features of Scheme:
o Clean, concise dialect of Lisp
o Lexically scoped (as is Common Lisp)
o Full function closures (first-class, full funarg)
o Tail-recursion reliably translated into iteration
o Full upward/downward continuations
Features of Chez Scheme:
o Incremental native-code (Vax object code) compiler
o Flexible user interface
o Fast-loading compiled files
o Very fast arbitrary precision integer and rational
arithmetic
o Programmable exception handlers
o Support for multi-tasking (timer interrupts,
continuations)
o String and vector operations
o Macros and structures
o Engines (a process abstraction)
Application programs distributed with the first release
of Chez Scheme include a set operation package, a logic
programming subsystem, a lazy-cons facility, and a generic
matrix, vector and scalar multiplication package.
Faster than many Lisp systems, Chez Scheme may be the
fastest Scheme available. On the Vax 11/780, Chez Scheme is
competitive with benchmarks reported for Franz Lisp and
Digital Common Lisp at last summer's AAAI conference in
Austin, TX. For example, Chez Scheme runs the "Tak"
benchmark in 3.4 cpu seconds and the "Deriv" benchmark in
21.9 cpu seconds. The code tested contained no
declarations, used generic arithmetic, and had no inlined
calls. No separate compilation phase is necessary: all code
loaded into Chez Scheme is compiled incrementally.
Chez Scheme is available for mid-March distribution to
US educational institutions only. We will send a license
agreement to interested parties. There is a $400
distribution fee. We are not yet able to do foreign or
commercial distributions, but contact us if you are
interested.
Write for a copy of the license agreement and ordering
information to:
R. Kent Dybvig
Department of Computer Science
New West Hall (035-A)
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
USA
decvax!mcnc!unc!dyb (usenet)
dyb.unc@Csnet-Relay (ARPANET)
------------------------------
Date: 4 Feb 1985 08:06:17-EST
From: psm@Mitre-Bedford
Subject: Boston SICPLAN seminar
Boston SICPLAN (Special Interest Committee on Programming Languages) is
a local affiliate of the ACM SIGPLAN group and vaguely associated with and
chartered by the Greater Boston area chapter of the ACM. It normally meets
once a month, usually on the first Thursday, almost always at 8 p.m., and
normally at either BBN or Intermetrics. Its talks are often of interest
to people working in the fields of programming languages and compilers,
environments, artificial intelligence, and data/knowledge base management.
Past speakers over the last 16 months have included Marvin Minsky, Seymour
Pappert, Bob Morgan, Pam Zave, Doug Hofstadter, Richard LeBlanc, Barry Boehm,
Adele Goldberg, Mahadevan Ganapathi, Frank Belz, Norm DeLisle, Mark Miller,
Richard Gabriel, Maurice Wilkes, Tom Love, and Ray Buhr.
Its next talk is scheduled for this Thursday, February 7:
ACM GREATER BOSTON CHAPTER SICPLAN
Thursday, February 7, 1985
8 P.M.
Bolt Beranek and Newman, new auditorium
70 Fawcett St., Cambridge
The Design of the Digital Orrery
by Gerald Jay Sussman
MIT
I will talk about the Orrery, a special computer for high-speed,
high-precision, orbital mechanics computations. The people who were
involved in the design and construction of the Orrery are James H.
Applegate, Michael R. Douglas, Yekta Gursel, Peter Hunter, Charles L.
Seitz and Gerald Jay Sussman. On the problems the Orrery was designed
to solve, it achieves approximately 10 Mflops in about one cubic foot
of space while consuming 150 watts of power. The specialized parallel
architecture of the Orrery, which is well matched to orbital mechanics
problems, is the key to obtaining such high performance.
In this talk I will explain the scientific reasons for building the
Orrery. I will discuss the design, construction, and programming of
the Orrery. I will show how the design of a computer is really a
problem of software engineering. I will also show a few preliminary
results of a 110 million year integration of the outer planets using
the Orrery.
ACM GREATER BOSTON CHAPTER SICPLAN
Dear Colleague,
Our February speaker, Gerry Sussman, is a professor at MIT,
where he is very active in AI research. He is probably best
known for his work on the Scheme dialect of Lisp and for the book
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, which he
coauthored with Harold Abelson and is now using for what has
become a fairly famous programming course for incoming MIT
freshmen. The Orrery system that he will describe in his talk is
an attempt to investigate the extent to which massively parallel
computer architectures and algorithms can be used to help solve
hard scientific problems.
Mitch Wand, who is currently visiting Brandeis, has agreed to
give our March talk. The talk on his Semantic Prototyping System
is tentatively scheduled for March 7 in the Intermetrics atrium.
Our group customarily meets informally for dinner at Joyce
Chen's restaurant, 390 Rindge Ave., Cambridge at 6:00 P.M. (just
before the meeting). If you wish to come, please call Carolyn
Elson at Intermetrics 661-1840 as early as possible so we can
make the appropriate dinner reservation.
Peter Mager
chairperson, Boston SICPLAN
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End of AIList Digest
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