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AIList Digest Volume 3 Issue 163
AIList Digest Wednesday, 6 Nov 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 163
Today's Topics:
Seminars - CommonLoops (SU) &
The Boyer-Moore Theorem Prover (UTexas SIGART) &
IEEE Seminar on AI (SMU) &
Mental Representations (UCB) &
AI in Design and Manufacture (UPenn) &
Predicting the Effects of a Therapy (MIT) &
Tools for Building Expert Systems (Rutgers) &
Very High-Level Programming Environment (CSLI),
Conference - ACL 1986 Annual Meeting
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Date: Fri 1 Nov 85 16:42:00-PST
From: Susan M. Gere
Reply-to: m.susan@sierra
Subject: Seminar - CommonLoops (SU)
EE380--Seminar on Computer Systems
Title: CommonLoops--A Graceful Merger of Lisp
and Object Oriented Programming
Speaker: Daniel G. Bobrow
From: Xerox PARC
Time: Wednesday, November 6 at 4:15 p.m.
Place: Terman Auditorium
CommonLoops merges the facilities of object oriented programming and
Lisp. This talk will briefly describe the relevant features of the two
styles of programming, and describe the unique properties of this merge.
These include a uniform syntax for function calling and sending
messages; a merger of the type space of Lisp and the class hierarchy of
objects; a generalization of method specification that includes ordinary
Lisp functions at one extreme, and fully type specified functions at the
other; and a "metaclass" mechanism that allows tradeoffs between early
binding and ease of exploratory programming in the implementation of
objects.
Short Biography:
Daniel Bobrow is a Research Fellow in the Intelligent Systems Laboratory
at Xerox PARC. His research interests include programming languages,
expert systems, artificial intelligence, and cooperative computing. He
received his PhD from MIT, started the Artificial Intelligence
Department at Bolt Beranek and Newman, and since at Xerox has helped to
develop a number of systems, including KRL, GUS, PIE, LOOPS, COLAB, and
CommonLoops.
------------------------------
Date: Tue 5 Nov 85 15:21:35-CST
From: David Throop <AI.THROOP@R20.UTEXAS.EDU>
Subject: Seminar - The Boyer-Moore Theorem Prover (UTexas SIGART)
SIGART, the Special Interest Group on ARTificial Intelligence, has its
monthly program meeting WEDNESDAY, 6 Nov, at JIMS restaurant at I-35 and
183 (Anderson).
We meet for drinks at 6:30 and dinner to start at 7:00. Charge is $2 for
members and $5 for non members (plus food and drinks).
The speaker will be Dr J S Moore, speaking on:
Applications of the Boyer-Moore Theorem Prover to
the Verification of Computer Hardware and Software
J Strother Moore
The Boyer-Moore Theorem Prover is computer program that
proves theorems about recursive functions. The primary
application of the program is to prove formulas that
establish the correctness, reliability, or security of
computer hardware and software.
The proof techniques used by the system include rule driven
simplification, generalization of the conjecture to be
proved, and mathematical induction. Each time a formula is
proved the theorem-prover builds it into an evolving
knowledge base which is used to structure subsequent proofs.
Thus, the human user of the system can improve the system's
performance by having it prove key lemmas first. As the
theorems get harder the user's role in the process more and
more resembles that of the mathematician who sketches proofs
before an assistant who fills in the often large gaps.
In this talk I will informally explain how the system works
and how it is used. I will also discuss some applications
of the system, including its use in finding security flaws
in the formal specifications of computer software, its proof
of the invertibility of the RSA public key encryption
algorithm, and the correctness proofs for a general purpose
microcoded CPU.
------------------------------
Date: 31 Oct 1985 09:12-CST
From: leff%smu.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
Subject: IEEE Seminar on AI (SMU)
The following is the program for the
Special Event of the Dallas IEEE Computer Society and Dallas Section of
the ACM
Artificial Intelligence Satellite Symposium
Knowledge-Based Systems and Their Applications
presented by Texas Instruments Incorporated
Date: Wednesday, November 13, 1985 8:30 am - 4:00 pm
Place: Infomart, 1950 Stemmons Freeway Room 7011
Agenda:
Welcome and Opening Remarks 8:30 - 8:45 am
o Edward E. Feigenbaum Stanford 8:45 - 9:45
AI: An Overview. Knoweldge Engineering & Expert Systems
o RAndall Davis MIT 10:00 - 11:00 am
Problem Solutions with Expert Systems:
Approach, Tools Available, How to Begin
o Bruce G. Buchanan Stanford 11:00 - 12:00 pm
Knowledge Based Systems:
Problem Selection, Knowledge Acquisition, Validation
o Mark Fox CMU 1:00 - 2:00 pm
Knowledge-Based Systems: Applications in the Induatrial Environment
o Harry Tennant, Host TI Inc. 2:00 - 3:00 pm
Applications Abstracts by Representatives from AErospace,.
Manufacturing, Military, Industrial Control Engineering, and Education
o Harry Tennant, Moderator 3:00 - 4:00 pm
Presenter's Roundtable - Live
Closing Remarks 4:00
[TI is also sponsoring a satellite presentation at Stanford. -- KIL]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 85 12:05:18 PST
From: admin%cogsci@BERKELEY.EDU (Cognitive Science Program)
Subject: Seminar - Mental Representations (UCB)
BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM
Fall 1985
Cognitive Science Seminar - IDS 237A
Tuesday, November 5, 11:00 - 12:30
240 Bechtel Engineering Center
Discussion: 12:30 - 1:30 in 200 Building T-4
``On the Intentional Contents of Mental States About Fictions''
Edward Zalta
Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at C.S.L.I.
Acting Asst. Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University
In this seminar, I present a theory of intentional objects
some of which seem to serve nicely as the contents of mental
states about stories and dreams (no matter how bizarre they may
be). The theory yields a way of understanding utterances about
particular fictional characters and particular dream objects.
For the purposes of the talk, it will make no difference
whether one construes the theory ontologically as a theory
about what the world has to be like or has to have in it in
order for us to characterize properly such mental states, or
whether one construes the theory as just a canonical notation
for specifying the contents of (or mental representations
involved in) such states. Either way, one is left with a
domain over which operations may be defined to explain how we
get from one state to the next, and so the theory should be of
interest to cognitive scientists. The philosophical basis of
my work lies in a theoretical compromise between the views of
Edmund Husserl and Alexius Meinong, and it is consistent with
classical logic.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 85 15:24 EST
From: Tim Finin <Tim%upenn.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - AI in Design and Manufacture (UPenn)
Professor Robin Popplestone
Department of AI at Edinburgh University
will give a lecture on
Applying AI Techniques to Design and Manufacturing
Today: Monday, November 4 at NOON in Towne Building, Room 303
I discuss the representation of mechanical engineering designs in a logic
programming context, and the exploration of a space of different possible
designs. Designs are represented in terms of modules, which are basic
concrete engineering entities (eg. motor, keyway, shaft). Modules interact
via ports, and have an internal structure expressed by the part predicate. A
taxonomic organisation of modules is used as the basis for making design
decisions. Subsystems employed by the design system include the spatial
relational inference mechanism employed in the RAPT robot Language, the Noname
geometric modeller developed at Leeds Univeristy and the Press symbolic
equation solver. The system is being implemented in the POPLOG system. An
assumption based truth maintenance system based on the work of de Kleer is
being implemented to support the exploration of design space.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 16:49 EST
From: Brian C. Williams <WILLIAMS@OZ>
Subject: Seminar - Predicting the Effects of a Therapy (MIT)
Thursday 7, November 4:00pm Room: NE43- 8th floor Playroom
The Artificial Intelligence Lab
Revolving Seminar Series
"Predicting the Effects of a Therapy in a Physiological Network"
Bill Long
Clinical Decision Making Group, LCS
If the physician gives Inderol to the patient to decrease angina, what
will happen to the blood pressure? Or more generally, is there anything
the physician should watch out for when giving drug X to this patient?
An important aspect of the Heart Failure Program is helping the user
answer such questions. The program assists in diagnosis by using the
patient information to constrain a physiological model to represent the
state of knowledge about the patient. That model can then be used to
find likely therapies to correct dangerous states and to reason about
the possible effects of those therapies.
The problems with predicting the effects of the therapies include
accounting for multiple causal pathways, accounting for the effects of
feedback, reasoning about pathways that take widely differing amounts of
time, reasoning when there is uncertainty about the patient state, and
reasoning even though there is interpatient variation. In attempting to
deal with these problems, we have developed an algorithm based on
techniques of signal flow analysis that handles some of these problems
well and others acceptably and has the right properties to provide
understandable justifications for the conclusions it reaches.
The talk will focus on the criteria that are being used in developing
this methodology, the algorithm itself, the effectiveness of the
approach, and the remaining problems.
------------------------------
Date: 5 Nov 85 17:02:55 EST
From: Smadar <KEDAR-CABELLI@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Subject: Seminar - Tools for Building Expert Systems (Rutgers)
III Seminar
Title: Issues in the Selection of Knowledge Engineering Environments
and Tools for Building Large Expert Systems
Speaker: Susan Man
Date: Tuesday, November 12, 1985, 11:00am - 12:00pm
Place: Hill Center, room 423
Susan Man, a Ph.D. student in our department, will present
results of a study on knowledge representation and programming
paradigms (done in conjunction with an independent study under Chris
Tong). This is her abstract:
One of the first decisions that must be made by designers of
expert systems is the choice of the knowledge engineering
environment and tool to be used for the development of the
system. In this talk, we attempt to identify some features
of programming environments and knowledge engineering tools
that are important in building large expert systems. We
first look at features in programming environments on Lisp
machines such as the Symbolics 3600's and the Xerox 1100's.
We then compare three knowledge engineering tools that are
suitable for the development of large-scaled expert systems.
The knowledge engineering tools studied are (1) Zetalisp,
(2) KEE (from Intellicorp), and (3) S.1 (from Teknowledge).
In discussing and comparing the features offered by these
knowledge engineering environments and tools, we are
particularly interested in their abilities to accommodate
various programming methodologies and to provide useful
support utilities. Programming methodology, which
encompasses the issues of knowledge representation and
programming paradigm, impact directly on the ability of the
knowledge engineering tool to model precisely and
efficiently complex domain tasks and problem solving
behaviors. Support utilities offer facilities such as
editing, debugging, and explanation and are important
factors in reducing the time and effort required in building
a large expert system.
------------------------------
Date: Tue 5 Nov 85 14:37:04-PST
From: Terry Winograd <WINOGRAD@SU-CSLI.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Very High-Level Programming Environment (CSLI)
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
COMING ENVIRONMENTS MEETING (11/11) - Steve Westfold (Kestrel)
A Very-High-Level-Language Programming Environment
Kestrel Institute is doing research on a programming system based on a
very-high-level specification/programming language. The language is
based on logic and set theory. It is a wide-spectrum language
encompassing both an inference model of computation and a state-change
model. Compilation is done by transformation and step-wise refinement
into the target language (initially Lisp). A central part of the system
is the ability to define new language constructs and domain languages,
and facilities for manipulating and transforming them. Most of the
system is written in the system language.
The underlying structure of the environment is a database of objects,
sets, sequences and mappings. There is an object hierarchy which is
used primarily for factoring applicability of mappings. Language
statements (parse structures and annotations) are represented in the
database. We identify the representation of statements with the
meta-level description of those statements. Thus, meta-level inference
on descriptions results in statement manipulation such as
transformation. Usually the programmer need not be aware of the
representation because of a quotation construct that is analogous to
lisp backquote, but is more powerful and can be used for testing and
decomposing statements as well as constructing them. Among the ways
that the user may view portions of the database are as prettyprinted
language statements, as objects with properties, and as graphs of boxes
and arrows. The database may be edited using any of these views.
The system enforces constraints stated as implications (universally
quantified) with an indication of the triggers for enforcement and of
the entities to change to make the constraint true.
We have a context tree mechanism for keeping different states of the
database. It is somewhat smart in that it does not save undo
information for database changes that are "internal" to the current
state. It would have wider application if it were able to work on
subsets of the database rather than the database as a whole.
We have recently built a prototype for a project management system. It
deals with system components and their versions and bugs, and tasks and
schedules. This work is at a fairly early stage and not my area so I
wouldn't want to talk much about the details of it, although someone
else at Kestrel might. However, it does provide good examples of the
utility of the language-defining and constraint capabilities in a domain
other than program synthesis.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 85 16:47:40 est
From: walker@mouton (Don Walker)
Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS; ACL 1986 Annual Meeting
CALL FOR PAPERS
24th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
10-13 June 1986, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
SCOPE: Papers are invited on all aspects of computational linguistics,
including, but not limited to, pragmatics, discourse, semantics, and
syntax; understanding and generating spoken and written language;
linguistic, mathematical, and psychological models of language;
phonetics and phonology; speech analysis, synthesis, and recognition;
translation and translation aids; natural language interfaces; and
theoretical and applications papers of every kind.
REQUIREMENTS: Papers should describe unique work that has not
been submitted elsewhere; they should emphasize completed work rather
than intended work; and they should indicate clearly the state of
completion of the reported results. Authors should send eight copies
of an extended abstract up to eight pages long (single-spaced if
desired) to:
Alan W. Biermann
ACL86 Program Chair
Department of Computer Science
Duke University
Durham, NC 27706, USA
[919:684-3048; awb%duke@csnet-relay]
SCHEDULE: Papers are due by 6 January 1986 . Authors will be
notified of acceptance by 25 February. Camera-ready copies of final
papers prepared on model paper must be received by 18 April along with
a signed copyright release statement.
OTHER ACTIVITIES: The meeting will include a program of tutorials and
a variety of exhibits and demonstrations. Anyone wishing to arrange an
exhibit or present a demonstration should send a brief description to
Alan Biermann along with a specification of physical requirements:
space, power, telephone connections, tables, etc.
CONFERENCE INFORMATION: Local arrangements are being handled by Kathy
McKeown and Cecile Paris, Department of Computer Science, Columbia
University, New York, NY 10027; 212:280-8194 and 8125; mckeown and
cecile @columbia-20.arpa. For other information on the conference and
on the ACL more generally, contact Don Walker (ACL), Bell Communications
Research, 445 South Street, MRE 2A379, Morristown, NJ 07960;
201:829-4312; walker@mouton.arpa or walker%mouton@csnet-relay or
bellcore!walker@berkeley.
Program Committee: Alan W. Biermann, Duke University
Kenneth W. Church, AT&T Bell Laboratories
Michael Dyer, University of California at Los Angeles
Carole D. Hafner, Northeastern University
George E. Heidorn, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
David D. McDonald, University of Massachusetts
Fernando C.N. Pereira, SRI International
Candace L. Sidner, BBN Laboratories
John S. White, Siemens Communication Systems
LSA SUMMER LINGUISTIC INSTITUTE: ACL-86 is scheduled just before the
53rd LSA Institute, which will be held at the Graduate School and
University Center of the City University of New York from 23 June to 31
July. The 1986 Institute is the first to focus on computational
linguistics. During the intervening week, a number of special courses
will be held that should be of particular interest to computational
linguists. For further information contact D. Terence Langendoen, CUNY
Graduate Center, 33 W. 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036; 212:921-9061;
tergc%cunyvm@wiscvm.arpa.
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End of AIList Digest
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