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AIList Digest Volume 3 Issue 065
AIList Digest Saturday, 18 May 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 65
Today's Topics:
Administrivia - Seminar and Conference Notices,
Seminars - A Procedural Logic (CSLI) &
Planning and Scheduling (SU) &
Modal Temporal Logics (SU) &
Representations, Information, and the Physical World (CSLI) &
Logical Query Languages for Databases (IBM-SJ),
Conference - Symbolics Lisp Machine Users' Meeting
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Date: Fri 17 May 85 21:51:31-PDT
From: Ken Laws <Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar and Conference Notices
The number of seminar notices varies with the academic season, but
clearly AIList is now carrying far more seminar and conference
announcements than two years ago. Many readers have expressed
enthusiasm for the "clipping service" I have been providing, but
this material is now so overwhelming that it swamps other functions
of the discussion list.
A couple of weeks ago I asked for volunteers to forward bboard
messages from the major universities. No one has volunteered.
I shall continue scanning the bboards for the present, but this
service will be dropped if either AIList or my professional
duties demand more of my time.
Steve Crocker has suggested to me that a separate list be split
off for seminar notices and [perhaps] conference announcements.
Then people could subscribe to the lists separately, and could
more easily archive and search just the data stream that they
find relevant.
I was originally opposed to such a split, but I have come to favor
it -- as long as someone else takes over distribution of the
seminar list. I would provide the current distribution list,
and the new moderator could handle deletions and modifications
without much trouble. New readers to either list would receive
a welcome message mentioning the companion list. The new moderator
would be free to set his/her own policies about what to include
in the list. Do I hear any volunteers?
-- Ken Laws
------------------------------
Date: Wed 15 May 85 16:59:50-PDT
From: Emma Pease <Emma@SU-CSLI.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - A Procedural Logic (CSLI)
[Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.]
THURSDAY, May 23, 1985
12 noon TINLunch
Ventura Hall ``A Procedural Logic''
Conference Room Michael Georgeff (SRI and CSLI), Amy Lansky (SRI),
and Pierre Bessiere (SRI)
Much of our commonsense knowledge about the real world is concerned
with the way things are done. This knowledge is often in the form of
`procedures' or `sequences' of actions for achieving particular goals.
In this paper, a formalism is presented for representing such
knowledge based on the notion of `process'. A declarative semantics
for the representation is given, which allows a user to state `facts'
about the effects of doing things in the problem domain of interest.
An operational semantics is also provided, which shows `how' this
knowledge can be used to achieve given goals or to form intentions
regarding their achievement. The formalism also serves as an
executable program specification language suitable for constructing
complex systems. --Michael Georgeff and Amy Lansky
------------------------------
Date: Wed 15 May 85 14:32:11-PDT
From: Elliott Levinthal <LEVINTHAL@SU-SIERRA.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Planning and Scheduling (SU)
SIMA`s final Seminar on AI in Manufacturing and Design will take
place next Wedneday, May 29th, at 2:l5 in Terman, Room 2l7.
Dr. Karl Kempf
McDonnell Douglas Research Laboratories
Principal scientist, Artificial Intelligence Group
The scheduling of tasks to be executed in the real world is difficult
because the world contains an inescapable element of unpredictability.
However much effort has been expended in preparing a schedule prior
to execution, surprises are virtually inevitable once execution
commences. Additional difficulties are often encountered through
the unnecessary confounding of planning and scheduling. Planning
requires knowledge of the capabilities of classes of resources while
scheduling uses knowledge of the availability of individual resources.
It is generally not possible for the planner to have, at plan time,
the timely data necessary for efficient scheduling. The objective
of the research described here is the clarification of the differences
between planning and scheduling, and the development of a representation
for schedules which is robust in the face of real world unpredictability.
Examples are given for the off-line construction of schedules using both
domain-independent and domain-dependent knowledge, and for the
on-line real-time knowledge-based execution of schedules. The examples
are drawn from robotic machine tending and robotic assembly.
------------------------------
Date: 1 Jun 85 0100 PDT
From: Arthur Keller <ARK@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Modal Temporal Logics (SU)
CS Colloquium, June 4, 4:15pm, Terman Auditorium
MODAL TEMPORAL LOGICS: A SURVEY OF RECENT RESULTS
Daniel Lehmann
Hebrew University
(visiting Brandeis University)
In a joint work with S. Shelah, some extensions of the propositional
temporal logic of discrete time were advocated as useful for stating and
proving properties of probabilistic concurrent programs. Deductive
completeness theorems were proved. In a joint work with S. Kraus
corresponding decision procedures were investigated. Recently a system for
describing time and knowledge has been proposed. All those systems can be
characterized as two-dimensional modal logics, i.e. they involve two
essentially orthogonal modalities, one of them being time, that satisfy
some interchange law. The techniques involved in studying such systems
and some open problems will be described.
------------------------------
Date: Wed 15 May 85 16:59:50-PDT
From: Emma Pease <Emma@SU-CSLI.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Representations, Information, and the Physical
World (CSLI)
[Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.]
THURSDAY, May 23, 1985
2:15 p.m. CSLI Seminar
Redwood Hall ``Representations, Information, and the
Room G-19 Physical World'' by Ivan Blair
Discussion led by Meg Withgott
The notions of representation and information have been much used
in recent cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind, yet much
remains to be done to determine more precisely what is meant by these
notions, particularly in elucidating the basis of their
intentionality. I think that the place to start with an investigation
of these matters is the analysis proposed by Howard Pattee. Pattee
has for a long time wrestled with the question of how symbols are
related to their referents, and has tried to establish some general
principles of the symbol-referent or symbol-matter relation.
I shall attempt to do two things in this presentation. Firstly, I
want to explain as briefly as possible Pattee's view of symbolic
information (information carried by a symbol or string of symbols) and
the relation of symbolic information to the physical world. Secondly,
I shall consider a prominent theory of information -- Dretske's, as
presented in his book, ``Knowledge and the Flow of Information''
(1981), -- in the light of various results about the nature of symbols
and information that emerge from Pattee's analysis. --Ivan Blair
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 May 85 13:12:18 PDT
From: IBM San Jose Research Laboratory Calendar
<calendar%ibm-sj.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Reply-to: IBM-SJ Calendar <CALENDAR%ibm-sj.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Seminar - Logical Query Languages for Databases (IBM-SJ)
[Excerpted by Laws@SRI-AI.]
IBM San Jose Research Lab
5600 Cottle Road
San Jose, CA 95193
Mon., May 20 Computer Science Seminar
10:30 A.M. LOGICAL QUERY LANGUAGES FOR DATABASE SYSTEMS
Audit. A In an advanced form of relational database system, a
collection of rules, probably Horn clauses, will
stand between the user's query and the database.
Because these rules may involve recursion,
straightforward methods of query evaluation may not
work, and a variety of strategies have been proposed
to handle subsets of recursive queries. We shall
express such query evaluation techniques as "capture
rules" on a graph whose nodes represent the rules and
the terms in those rules. Nodes may be "adorned" by
codes for a limited number of special cases, such as
an indication of which variables or arguments are
free and which are bound. One essential property of
capture rules is that they can be applied
independently, thus providing a clean interface for
query-evaluation systems that use several different
strategies in different situations. Another
important property is that we be able to test in
polynomial time whether a capture rule applies, so
that we can plan queries in less time than it takes
to execute them. We show how rules suggested
previously can be fit into this framework, and we
propose some new capture rules and generalizations of
old ones. In particular, a result with Y. Sagiv
characterizes exactly the sets of rules for which a
simple top-down query-evaluation algorithm with
"sideways" passing of variable binding works.
L. Naish gave an exponential algorithm to test
whether this query-evaluation strategy works, but our
theory provides a polynomial algorithm for the case
when the number of arguments in predicates is
bounded. We also show that the problem is NP-hard if
the number of arguments is part of the problem
instance. To apply top-down capture rules, we need
to be able to prove convergence of certain
iterations. We therefore consider "unique" (logical)
rules and the way that testing their convergence can
be reduced to linear programming. An algorithm
developed with A. Van Gelder provides an even more
efficient test for applicability of the top-down
capture rule in the case of unique rules.
Prof. J. D. Ullman, Computer Science Department,
Stanford University
Host: P. Lucas (LUCAS@IBM-SJ.CSNET)
------------------------------
Date: Tue 14 May 85 00:33:14-PDT
From: Mabry Tyson <Tyson@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Conference - Symbolics Lisp Machine Users' Meeting
Early next month there will be a national Symbolics Lisp machine users
group in SF. Details are in the two messages below.
Return-Path: <CMP.COHEN@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Date: Mon 13 May 85 22:44:20-CDT
From: Rich Cohen <CMP.COHEN@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Subject: Info on National Meeting
A complete agenda of the 1985 National SLUG meeting follows in a separate
message. Printed copies of the agenda and registration form were mailed out
to people for who we had US Mail addresses. Copies were also sent to all SLUG
leaders and to all Symbolics sales offices. So, everyone interested should be
able to get a copy of the printed announcement and registration form from one
of those sources.
Summary:
The 1985 National Meeting of SLUG will be held Monday, June 3, and Tuesday,
June 4, at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco. There will be sessions
all day Monday and Tuesday, and round table discussions both Monday and
Tuesday evenings.
Symbolics will host a wine & cheese reception at their San Francisco Training
Center Sunday evening.
The hotel has agreed to hold open a block of rooms for SLUG until Friday May
17th. There is still time to call for a reservation. The rate is $75/single,
$85/double. Please tell them you are with the Symbolics Users Group.
There is no registration fee. No meals or proceedings are included. (There
is no free lunch.) However, please to register so that we can estimate
attendence and coordinate arrangemens with the hotel. If possible, try to get
a copy of the registraion form, and mail it in. If you can't get a form, just
send a letter or post card stating your intent to:
SLUG '85
c/o Tom Fall
GTE Western Division
M/S B 212
100 Furgeson Drive
P.O. Box 7188
Mountain View, California 94039
See you in San Francisco!
Return-Path: <CMP.COHEN@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Date: Mon 13 May 85 22:45:23-CDT
From: Rich Cohen <CMP.COHEN@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Subject: Agenda for National Meeting
SLUG '85
THE 1985 SYMBOLICS LISP USERS GROUP NATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
Monday, June 3 & Tuesday, June 4, 1985
Cathedral Hill Hotel
San Francisco
This is the planned agenda for the 1985 National Symposium of the Symbolics
Lisp Users Group (SLUG). The purpose of SLUG is to promote communications
among users of Symbolics Lisp Machines, and between the users and Symbolics.
Non-technical sessions:
- Corporate directions.
- Company organization ... or "who to contact about what."
- Field Service & Hardware Maintenance ... or "where the spares are."
- Software Support ... including HOSS, FOSS, and source distribution
policies.
- Questions for Symbolics Sales/Service/Management.
General Question & Answer session with Symbolics managers from
Software Products, Documentation, Field Service, Software Support,
Education Services, Sales, and Marketing.
Technical Sessions:
- Living with Release 6.0. Jon Balgley (Symbolics). Now that you've
gotten the tape, what do you do with it? Discussion to include new
features (such as Dialnet, the Mailer, the Document Examiner, the
Command Processor), and effects on user code (e.g., coping with
lexical scoping).
- Technical Q&A.
- Performance measurement and program tuning. Dave Moon & Dave Plummer
(Symbolics).
- The Symbolics Window System: a conceptual model with practical
applications. Rich Bryan & Jon Balgley (Symbolics).
- 3600 Hardware Architecture. Dave Stryker & Linda Birch (Symbolics).
- Networks. Charlie Hornig & Scott Matsumoto (Symbolics). Chaosnet
support under VMS, Berkeley UNIX; 3600 support for various network
protocols, such as TCP/IP, DECNet, Symbolics Namespace Protocol.
- Common Lisp. Dave Moon, Dan Weinreb, and Bob Kerns (Symbolics).
Discussion of the Common Lisp language definition, and how Symbolics
Zetalisp, and Symbolics Common Lisp relate to it. (LISP in a changing
world.)
- Prolog and the 3600. Bob Cassels (Symbolics). The chief implementor
of Symbolics Prolog talks about Prolog, LISP, and the 3600.
Round Table Discussions:
- Tools for Building Expert Systems -- Some Practical Experience. Tom
Fall (GTE), chairman. A discussion of users' experience building
expert systems on the 3600; how they chose among the available tools,
and their experience in trying to use the tools effectively.
- Dealing with Symbolics: What we really do in the field. Ken Olum
(Fairchild), chairman. An open discussion with general users and a
panel of people who manage and support large sites.
Possible topics to be discussed:
* User experience with hardware maintenance,
* Service contracts vs. time-and-materials.
* Installing new Symbolics releases -- how well does it work, what
do you need to know besides what's in the installation guides.
* Management of worlds, tapes, and disk space.
* Installing larger disk drives.
* Maintaining multiple releases at one time & migrating from one
release to the next.
* Sending bug reports and getting fixes from Symbolics.
* Maintaining local patches and modifications to worlds.
SLUG Business Meeting:
- SLUG Charter.
- Election of officers
- Establishing a program library.
- Menu of our concerns & suggestions to be presented to Symbolics.
There will be a wine & cheese reception Sunday evening at the San Francisco
Symbolics Training Center (a few blocks from the hotel). The session schedule
is not complete, but we expect to hold sessions both Monday and Tuesday
evening.
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
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