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AIList Digest Volume 6 Issue 075
AIList Digest Thursday, 21 Apr 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 75
Today's Topics:
Expert Systems - Functions in Expert Systems,
References - Introductory Text & AM Follow-on & Modal Logic &
Railroad Application,
AI Tools - Explorer (vs. Sun) Experience &
Realtime Knowledge Daemon Project & MACSYMA Information
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 10:36:03 EDT
From: aboulang@WILMA.BBN.COM
Reply-to: aboulanger@bbn.com
Subject: functions in expert systems
I am interested in understanding the importance of the
function in expert systems. From an analysis point of view
functions complicate expert systems quite a bit.
Check out my masters thesis:
"The Expert System PLANT/CD:
A Case Study in Applying The General Purpose Inference System Advise
to Predicting Black Cutworm Damage in Corn." This has some discussion
of the roles of function invocation in expert systems.
This is Report # UIUCDCS-R-83-1134 (July 83) which should be no
problem for you to get.
Albert Boulanger
Aboulanger@bbn.com
------------------------------
Date: 14 Apr 88 15:15:35 GMT
From: sunybcs!rapaport@boulder.colorado.edu (William J. Rapaport)
Subject: Re: References needed
In article <1201@tahoe.unr.edu> greg@wheeler (Greg Sharp) writes:
>
>I am looking for introductory references (books, articles...) concerning ai.
I strongly recommend as a reference the following:
Shapiro, Stuart C. (ed.) (1987), Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence
(New York: John Wiley & Sons).
William J. Rapaport
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Computer Science||internet: rapaport@cs.buffalo.edu
SUNY Buffalo ||bitnet: rapaport@sunybcs.bitnet
Buffalo, NY 14260 ||uucp: {ames,boulder,decvax,rutgers}!sunybcs!rapaport
(716) 636-3193, 3180 ||
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 21:31:04 EST
From: PJURKAT@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU
Subject: Thanks for the references to AM follow on work!
This is to thank all the people who responded to my request for ideas and
references on any work that had been done, since the original, on the kind of
heuristics that were developed by Lenat in his AM. Several of you not only
provided references but also suggested ideas and comments that proved
interested to both my student and myself. Thanks again.
Several responses, without providing any other thoughts, merely suggested that
my student look in "Science Citation Index". My student, of course, had done
so but at Stevens the use of the Index is not free. The search, when finally
completed, cost over $60. Not all the students who attend Stevens can afford
that and neither the school nor the Department is in a position to fund
searches for all such queries. Not all of us work at affluent organizations
and I was hoping that the AIList members consider themselves enough of a
community to provide such help. I was not wrong!!!
cheers - peter jurkat
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 88 14:16:04 PDT
From: ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin)
Subject: modal logic references
Others have mentioned the books by Hughes and Cresswell (there are two,
the Introduction and the Companion), the Handbook of Philosophical
Logic volume 2 (articles by many) and Johan van Benthem's monograph
on Modal Logic and Correspondence Theory (Bibliopolis, Naples, available
through Humanities Press here, i think).
There are other important and helpful works. Brian Chellas's book
Modal Logic (Cambridge) is widely available and easy to read.
Lemmon and Scott's monograph on Modal Logic (Blackwell) is a classic,
but may not be in print. Kripke's original articles are well worth reading.
Johan van Benthem has another monograph, A Manual of Intensional Logic,
in the CSLI lecture note series (U. Chicago), and Goldblatt
has a volume on Logics of Time and Computation in the same series.
Segerberg's thesis is unfortunately not widely available.
Gabbay has a book on his work with modal logics (Reidel), containing
a good number of his highly technical results, but is not really an
introduction.
Since temporal logics are a form of modal logic, I also recommend
van Benthem's monograph (yes, he is prolific) on The Logic of Time (Reidel).
For the provability logic, Boolos's book was mentioned, and there is
another by Craig Smorynski, Self Reference and Modal Logic (Springer),
which studies the provability logic in detail.
There is also substantial literature on the algebraic approach to
modal logics - just as propositional logic and Boolean algebras
correspond, so normal modal propositional logics correspond to
Boolean algebras with an extra unary operator. But that is another
story.
peter ladkin
ladkin@kestrel.arpa
------------------------------
Date: 18 Apr 88 17:22:55 GMT
From: mtunx!mtuxo!mtgzy!jaw@rutgers.edu (XMRN60000[bsm]-j.a.welsh)
Subject: Re: Expert Systems in the Railroad Industry.
> What sort of expert systems have developed for the railroad
> industry?
Strangely enough, the one that I know of is a General Electric locomotive
maintenance expert system. It was mentioned in a computer magazine and
one of the railfanning mags. last year.
------------------------------
Date: 14 Apr 88 17:20:03 GMT
From: frabjous!nau@mimsy.umd.edu (Dana Nau)
Subject: Re: Explorer (vs. Sun) Experience ?
In article <3470003@wdl1.UUCP> mikeb@wdl1.UUCP (Michael H. Bender) writes:
>PLEASE - if you have any experience with the TI Explorer environment,
>or have made any comparisons between it and the SUN environment,
>please help us by lettin us know ....
I've had extensive experience with Suns, Symbolics machines, and Explorers.
Currently, my research group has two Explorers and three Suns. We use the
Explorers for Lisp programming, and the Suns for other stuff. I haven't had
any experience with a Mac-II, so I can't comment on that.
>An associate of mine is debating between the purchase of a Mac-II with
>the TI Explorer board, or a Sun workstation. Currently, he has a Sun,
>and he wants to buy 2 Mac's and link them togehter (NFS? IP/TCP?). He
>will be running Knowledge Craft Primarily.
>
>QUESTION 1)
>How hard is it to learn to use the Lisp environment on the Explorer?
>Is it as difficult as the Symbolics used to be?
>
>In the past - people have told me that it takes close to a year to
>become expert on the Symbolics (much less on the Sun) ... is this true
>for the Explorer also?
The operating systems for both the Explorer and the Symbolics are based on
some code which was originally developed at MIT. Thus, at one time, the
operating systems for the Explorer and Symbolics were nearly the same.
Lately, TI and Symbolics have diverged a bit in the enhancements and
modifications they've made to the operating systems, but there are still a
lot of similarities.
The operating system is complex, and when I was first trying to learn it, I
got pretty frustrated. However, it certainly didn't take me as long as you
indicate above; I was pretty proficient after using the machines for only a
few months. Furthermore, it was well worth the effort, because once I
became proficient, I found Lisp programming on the Lisp machine to be much
easier than it had ever been on a Sun.
>QUESTION 2)
>How hard is it to maintain the software and environment? He is afraid
>that if he gets a Sun he will need to hire a Unix guru.... Will he
>have to hire an Explorer/Zeta-Lisp expert if he gets a MacII with the
>TI board?
I don't know anything about the Mac, but we're doing pretty well with the
Explorers on our own.
We do have a maintenance staff for the Suns, but that's because my
department has several dozen Suns and has made a commitment to maintaining
them for everyone in the department. Our staff has made a lot of
modifications and enhancements to the Sun operating system--and what it
would be to use a Sun without our maintenance staff, I don't know.
>QUESTION 3)
>Does the TI environment (which I assume will completely run on the
>Mac-II) provide a large number of libraries that would otherwise have
>to be developed on the SUN workstations?
For Lisp programming, I much prefer an Explorer or Symbolics rather than a
Sun; for text processing and such, I use the Sun. On the Lisp machines,
Lisp is thoroughly integrated with the operating system, and as a result,
you can quite easily do things with windows, menus, editing, debugging,
etc., that would be pretty painful to do in Lisp on the Sun. For example,
if I want a pop-up a menu on the explorer, I simply call a built-in Lisp
function, giving it the menu title and menu entries, and telling what should
be done for each menu entry. That kind of thing is substantially more
difficult on the Sun.
If the Mac II has the same kind of Lisp/Operating System integration that
the Explorer has, then there might be some advantages to it since it can do
other general-purpose programming too. However, I'd want to check it out
carefully first. The Mac operating system and window environment are
substantially different from those on the Explorer and Symbolics, and I have
no idea how they've integrated Lisp with all this.
Dana S. Nau ARPA & CSNet: nau@mimsy.umd.edu
Computer Sci. Dept., U. of Maryland UUCP: ...!{allegra,uunet}!mimsy!nau
College Park, MD 20742 Telephone: (301) 454-7932
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 14:41:22 EDT
From: Michael Factor <factor-michael@YALE.ARPA>
Subject: [gelernter-david: "Another Yale program"]
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 12:49:50 EDT
From: David Gelernter <gelernter-david>
To: Paul.Birkel@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: "Another Yale program"
Cc: factor, leichter
Subject: Can you name this project?
In a recent exposition on parallel computing in the popular press the
following paragraph appeared. Can anyone name this project, its
investigators, a contact, a publication, or provide any further information?
"Another Yale program - to monitor the equipment in an
intensive-care unit - is more flexible still. Each processor
in this system runs a different program, which monitors the
equipment for signs of a particular problem or ailment. Because
each program has its own processor, it is ever-vigilant for
signs of its disease."
This program is a so-called "Realtime Knowledge Daemon" written
by Mike Factor of the Linda group here, in collaboration with
some anaesthesiologists. The Economist guy got it wrong: each
PROCESS (not processor) runs a different decision procedure.
I'm appending abstracts from a couple of recent reports on the system.
I'll send you copies of the papers if you want them. (The program
is also discussed in a paper forthcoming in the SIGPLAN PPEALS conference
this summer.)
-------------------------------------------------------
The Parallel Process Lattice as an
Organizing Scheme for Realtime Knowledge Daemons
Michael Factor and David Gelernter
{\it Yale University \\
Department of Computer Science \\
P.O. Box 2158 Yale Station \\
New Haven, Connecticut 06520-2158} \\
{\bf Abstract.} A {\it realtime knowledge daemon} is a program that
fastens itself to a collection of data streams and monitors them,
generating appropriate comments and responding to queries, in
realtime. This type of program is called for whenever data-collection
capacity outstrips realtime data {\it monitoring} and {\it
understanding} capacity. A {\it parallel process lattice} is an
organizing structure for realtime knowledge daemons (and more broadly
for expert systems in general). A process lattice is a network of
communicating concurrent processes arranged in a series of ranks or
layers; data values flow upward through the lattice and queries may
flow downward. The intent of the process lattices is to ``waste''
processing power (an ever-cheaper commodity) by constantly monitoring
the likelihood of rare events, and eagerly computing the answers to
questions rarely asked, so that the system can respond rapidly and
gracefully to unusual circumstances. Further, the application's
character as a collection of heterogeneous, communicating expert
processes means that concurrency leads to a far simpler program than
would have been the been the case given a conventional, sequential
organization. We explain the process lattice and discuss its
suitability by describing a simple but fairly realistic prototype
designed for monitoring in an ICU.
A Prototype Realtime Knowledge Daemon
for ICU Monitoring
Michael Factor*, David Gelernter*, Perry Miller\dag and Stanley Rosenbaum\dag
{\it *Yale University \\
Department of Computer Science \\
%P.O. Box 2158 Yale Station \\
New Haven, Connecticut} \\
{\it \dag Yale University School of Medicine \\
Department of Anaesthesiology \\
New Haven, Connecticut} \\
A {\it realtime knowledge daemon} is a program that fastens itself to
a collection of data streams and monitors them, generating appropriate
comments and responding to queries, in realtime. We describe a
prototype designed for monitoring patients in a post-operative ICU.
The prototype is of interest because ($a$) its performance seems
reasonable and correct, and (our experience suggests) should continue
to be reasonable as the system grows (the current prototype isn't
comprehensive enough for clinical testing, but it continues to
expand); ($b$) the program is written using a novel ``process
lattice'' organization that holds a number of advantages for building
large expert systems. The process lattice structure results in a
program with an easily-visualizable logical structure that reflects
the structure of the domain; it imposes a regular organization on an
arbitrarily-heterogeneous set of decision procedures; it's well suited
to a parallel implementation. The prototype we discuss is written in
the parallel language Linda and runs on a commercial parallel
processor.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 88 13:00 EDT
From: Richard Petti <petti@ALLEGHENY.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: MACSYMA information
Robert,
Thank you for your interest in MACSYMA. Here is some information on our new
release of MACSYMA for VAX VMS systems. We would be happy to answer any
questions you have.
In addition to these product features, our software is supported by a staff
of 14 people, including seven technical staff. Service, training,
installation guides and release notes are available.
Dick Petti
Director, Computer Aided Mathematics Group
Symbolics, Inc.
Eleven Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
tel: (617) 621-7770
(800) MACSYMA
email: petti@scrc-stony-brook.arpa
petti@symbolics.com
March 1988
HIGHLIGHTS OF COMMON LISP MACSYMA 412.61 FOR VAX/VMS USERS
Since January 1985, we have poured most of our development effort into a new
generation of MACSYMA(R) software based on Common Lisp. Versions of this
software are now available on Symbolics(TM) and Apollo(R) workstations, and we
plan to deliver it on VAX(TM)/VMS(TM) systems in April or May of this year.
Versions of this product for SUN(TM) workstations and VAX UNIX(TM) systems will
be available at a later date.
The following enhancements are planned for VAX/VMS MACSYMA release 412.61.
Some of these are old packages which have not been delivered in recent VAX/VMS
releases, some are improvements to existing packages, and some are entirely
new. While we expect all of these enhancements to be included in the product,
we will not hold up the release if some of them are not ready on schedule.
o Symbolic Algebra:
- GROBNER: The Grobner algorithm enables MACSYMA to find more solutions
to systems of polynomial equations.
- JORDAN_FORM, a command for computing the Jordan form of matrices, has
been added.
o Symbolic Calculus:
- Ordinary Differential Equations (O.D.E.'s):
. ODEFI finds first integrals of first order O.D.E.'s, using the powerful
Prelle-Singer algorithm.
. ODE, the main solution package for O.D.E.'s, has been made more
reliable.
- INTEQN: The integral equation package has been repaired and extended.
- Tensor analysis:
. CTENSOR, the component tensor package, has been extended to include
frame fields, affine torsion and conformal nonmetricity.
. ITENSR, the indicial tensor analysis package, has been repaired and
is fully functional for VAX users for the first time.
. CARTAN, a package for performing exterior calculus, is repaired.
- OPTVAR, a package for solving variational problems, is available.
o Symbolic Approximation Methods:
- Taylor methods:
. TAYLOR_SOLVE: Solves algebraic and transcendental equations in Taylor
series. Very useful for equations which do not have closed-form
solutions, or whose exact solutions are very complicated.
. TAYLOR_ODE: finds Taylor series solutions of systems of simultaneous
ordinary differential equations which satisfy Lipshitz conditions.
Useful for studying local behavior of complicated systems of O.D.E.'s.
- Perturbation theory methods for O.D.E.'s:
. LINDSTEDT: Finds periodic series solutions for perturbed oscillator
equations using Lindstedt's method.
. AVERAGE_PERIODIC_ODE: Implements the method of averaging for periodic
O.D.E.'s. This is the most popular method for finding qualitative
information about the family of solutions of an ordinary differential
equation.
o Numerical analysis:
- Runge-Kutta numerical integration of systems of O.D.E.'s.
- Newton-Cotes numerical integration.
- Interpolation of numerical roots of equations.
- FFT: Fast Fourier transforms.
- LSQ: Least squares polynomial fit to scattered data.
o Fortran Links:
- GENTRAN, a very powerful Fortran generator, has been installed. It can
translate mathematical expressions, iteration statements, if-then
statements, data type declaration information and much more into Fortran,
`C' or Ratfor. In its `template mode', Gentran enables users to write
"mixed Fortran-MACSYMA code".
o Graphics: VAX/VMS users will have access to full MACSYMA plotting
capabilities in two and three dimensions.
o Pattern Matching: MACSYMA's capabilities were extended in 1986, and these
improvements will be included in the new VAX/VMS version of MACSYMA.
o Compilation: Thanks to the VAX LISP runtime version we are shipping under
MACSYMA, users can for the first time compile their own MACSYMA code. This
results in a 2-10 times speed improvement in execution of large MACSYMA
programs.
o Documentation:
- User's Guide: In July 1987 we made available the MACSYMA User's Guide,
which is much more accessible than the MACSYMA Reference Manual.
- Reference Manual: In the summer of 1988 we will deliver version 13 of the
MACSYMA Reference Manual, which will be reorganized, and much easier to
use.
o Reliability: Our top priority has been to improve the reliability of
Macsyma over the past two years. Many minor improvements have been made.
--
MACSYMA(R) is a registered trademark of Symbolics, Inc.
Symbolics is a trademark of Symbolics, Inc.
Apollo(R) is a registered trademark of Apollo Computer Inc.
VAX and VMS are trademarks of the Digital Equipment Corporation.
SUN is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories.
(C) Copyright 1988 Symbolics, Inc.
All rights reserved.
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End of AIList Digest
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