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Alife Digest Number 108
Alife Digest, Number 108
Thursday, July 22nd 1993
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Artificial Life Distribution List ~
~ ~
~ All submissions for distribution to: alife@cognet.ucla.edu ~
~ All list subscriber additions, deletions, or administrative details to: ~
~ alife-request@cognet.ucla.edu ~
~ All software, tech reports to Alife depository through ~
~ anonymous ftp at ftp.cognet.ucla.edu in ~ftp/pub/alife (128.97.50.19) ~
~ ~
~ List maintainers: Liane Gabora and Rob Collins ~
~ Artificial Life Research Group, UCLA ~
~ ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today's Topics:
Calendar of Alife-related Events
Call for Papers: Self Organisation and Emergence in Economics
ECAL93 Report, Hugo de Garis, ATR
ICANN'94: Call for Papers
ALIFE III T-Shirts Available Again!
Artificial Life IV - Preliminary Call for Papers
STSF'94 Workshop
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 93 17:38:28 MDT
From: liane@santafe.edu (Liane Gabora)
Subject: Calendar of Alife-related Events
**********************************************************************
Dynamically Interacting Robots Workshop Late Aug, 1993 v91
Neural Networks and Telecommunications, Princeton, NJ October 18-20,1993 v100
Fluctuations and Order, Los Alamos, NM Sept 9-12, 1993 v102
Neural Information Processing Systems, Denver, CO Nov 29-Dec 2, 1993 v98
Third Conf on Evolutionary Programming, San Diego, CA Feb 24-25, 1994 v103
Cybernetics and Systems Research, Vienna April 5-8, 1994 v101,103
Intnl Conf Knowledge Rep and Reasoning, Bonn, Germany May 24-27, 1994 v101
IEEE Computational Intelligence, Lake Buena Vista FL Jun 26-Jul 2, 1994 v106
Alife IV, Cambridge MA July 6-8, 1994 v108
Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, Brighton, UK Aug 8-12, 1994 v101
Parallel Problem Solving in Nature, Jerusalem, Israel Oct 9-14, 1994 v102
Congress on Medical Informatics, Sao Paulo, Brazil Sept 9-14, 1995 v91
(Send announcements of other activities to alife@cognet.ucla.edu)
**********************************************************************
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 93 18:59:18 CDT
From: "Leigh Tesfatsion" <S1.TES@ISUMVS.IASTATE.EDU>
Subject: Call for Papers
TO: Alife Digest
FROM: Leigh Tesfatsion (Department of Economics, Iowa State University,
Ames, IA 50011-1070
DATE: 11 July 1993
SUBJECT: Advanced Notice of a Call for Papers
I am on the Program Committee for the next North American Summer Meeting
of the Econometric Society, to be held June 24-28, 1994, in Quebec. My
area of responsibility is self-organization and emergent behavior. If
your research relates to these topics, I hope you will consider
submitting a paper for this conference.
A detailed announcement and call for papers for the conference as a
whole will appear soon in _Econometrica_. All paper submissions should
be mailed to the Program Committee Chair: Professor M. Wooders,
Department of Economics, University of Toronto, 150 St. George Street,
Toronto, Ontario M5A 1A1, CANADA. The deadline for submissions is
January 25, 1994.
Each submission should include three copies of each of the following: a
cover page, an abstract, and (if possible) the paper itself. The
recommended length of abstract is 100 words. The cover page should
include: the name of the author submitting the paper for presentation;
the names, institutional affiliations, addresses, telephone numbers, and
(if available) the email addresses of all the authors; the paper title;
a single J.E.L. (_Journal of Economic Literature_) primary field name
and number; and up to three optional field designations from among 17
listed fields. (For Alife Digest members, the most relevant of these
fields would seem to be (4) game theory, (16) information and learning,
and (17) self-organization and emergent behavior.)
Thanks!
------------------------------
From: Hugo de Garis <degaris@hip.atr.co.jp>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 93 15:11:58 JST
Subject: ECAL93 Report, Hugo de Garis, ATR
Dear ALife Digest,
Here is an ECAL93 report. Its a bit late because I was
travelling a lot. Hope you can use it.
Cheers,
Hugo de Garis.
ECAL93 REPORT
Hugo de Garis
Brain Builder Group,
Evolutionary Systems Department,
ATR,
Kyoto, Japan.
degaris@hip.atr.co.jp
Firstly, my apologies for the fact that this report is late.
I'm usually pretty quick at getting back these ALife conference
reports to the ALife network. However, this time I was caught up for a
month on a world trip to Europe and the US for the summer conference
season and making deals in the US for our new ALife group in Japan.
ECAL93 (The Second European Conference on Artificial Life) was
held at Brussels University, Belgium, Europe, on May 24-26, 1993.
It was a big event, with most of the world's ALife big names present,
e.g. (active in the US) Langton, Kauffman, Ray, Fontana, Rasmusssen, etc.
and (active in Europe) Prigogine, Varela, Nicolis, etc). One of the
intentions of the conference (according to one of the organizers whom
I spoke to), was to show the Americans that "ALife doesn't all happen at
Santa Fe", that there has been a substantial ALife effort in Europe
for many years, and that it would be a good thing for the two
continents to get together. Well, ECAL93 succeeded in doing that, I felt.
Except for a few plenary session talks, most of the conference was
split into 2 parallel sessions. Necessarily I missed at least half
the talks, so this report will be biased by omission. There were a
large number of invited talks with no corresponding write-ups in the
proceedings. (Yes, there was actually a proceedings (2 xeroxed volumes,
1200 pages) which unfortunately were not published (at the time of the
conference). Even xeroxed proceedings were a significant improvement on
ALife III, the previous summer, where there were no proceedings, period.
The kickoff speaker was Varela, with his verbal brilliance,
but due to the jet lag I dont remember much of what he said. I recommend for
ECAL95, that invited speakers be asked to contribute something to the
proceedings, otherwise their wise words are lost forever. Varela
showed a transparency which summarized who was doing what in ALife, which would
have been very interesting to have, plus the corresponding references.
But, characteristic of the French, the talk was more flashy than
pragmatic. (I'm an Anglosaxon, remember).
Varela was followed by Nicolis, the disciple of the famous Nobel
winning Prigogine, who gave a possibly important but dull mathematical
talk which lost most of his audience after 5 minutes. I think
conference kickoff talks ought to be either overviews, or be presentations
of significant work that is of real interest to the field, rather
than be the work of some notable that is only of marginal interest.
My feeling was that the conference organizers were more into paying homage to
the man, rather than thinking that the talk would go over well. (I could
be wrong of course).
However, many of the French speaking presenters (of which
there were many, see below), gave heavily mathematical talks which
completely alienated the Americans, who have little time nor patience
for talks which fail to communicate. Perhaps I'm obsessed with this
issue because I spent 14 years of my life in Brussels, and did my PhD
at Brussels University (the French speaking half) where I was
constantly confronted with the clash in academic values between the
continental European predilection for analysis and rigor (particularly
strong in France) and the British/US stress on simplicity, clarity and
creativity. Someone should tell the French that the primary aim of a
talk is to get your message across and not to try to browbeat your
audience with lots of impressive but incomprehensible mathematical
formulas. A talk, as distinct from a paper, should concentrate upon a
few ideas, expressed simply so that most listeners can follow. The
French do this poorly, and have a bad international reputation as a result.
The parallel sessions then began. Papers were grouped into the
following topics :- Autonomous Behavior, Evolutionary Mechanisms,
Patterns and Rhythms, Origins of Life & Molecular Evolution, Dynamics
of Human Societies, Multi Robot Systems, Collective Intelligence,
Sensory-Motor Activity, Ecosystems & Evolution, Theoretical
Immunology and a poster session. In all there were about 65 talks, and
about 55 posters. New (?) to ALife conferences was the Patterns and
Rhythms session, which unfortunately I didnt see, because I was at the
Autonomous Behavior session.
To give an idea of which countries were most represented at
this European conference, I took some statistics. The country of the
first author (invited, oral or poster) counted as one point. The following list
gives the number of points per country and as a percentage of the total.
France (21, 18.6%)
US (21, 18.6%)
UK (15, 13.3%)
Germany (14, 12.4%)
Japan (7, 6.2%)
Belgium (7, 6.2%)
Switzerland (4, 3.5%)
Italy (3, 2.7%)
Hungary (2, 1.8%)
Holland (2, 1.8%)
Denmark (2, 1.8%)
Canada (2, 1.8%)
Spain (2, 1.8%)
Czech (2, 1.8%)
Others (9, 8.7% - 1 each,
Greece, Mexico, Lithuania, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, Russia, Sweden,
Ireland, Israel)
So, hats off to the French!
Oddly, Italy (one of the big European 4, with a population
comparable to that of the UK or France) did very poorly. Why? Does anyone know?
Highlights
==========
This is always very subjective, so to lighten the blame for poor
judgement on my part, I asked some ALife notables (some of whom I met at the
airport going home, or off to other conferences) for their opinions.
Firstly, my own. I was very entertained by Mark Tilden's talk on his
latest efforts to build minirobots out of (essentially) electronic junk. Our
ALife group has given Tilden a nickname (namely "5D"), which might be
worth spreading around. "5D" because his colorful personality (putting
it mildly) puts him 5 standard deviations from the mean.
Mark had made solid progress since ALife III the previous summer. He
also organized a highly successful Robot Olympics in Canada which I
hear has added to his legend. His talk title, "Robot Jurassic Park",
mystified me at first, but it reflected his long term ambition to
create an exhibit of robots of all descriptions that will fascinate
the public, the way the dinosaurs did in the movie. (If you havent
seen "Jurassic Park" yet, do go. I saw it twice in the US and was
wowed by the special effects).
Tom Ray's talk I found rivetting. Sure, he went over the same old
Tierra stuff by way of introduction, but when he got onto future
plans, namely to evolve massively parallel software in a CM5 machine
(in our group at ATR by the way), I got excited. "Massively parallel computers
will need evolutionary approaches to tap their full programming
potential", was Tom's message.
Chris Langton spoke about a generic ALife software tool he and a
colleague are developing which allows local rules to be input to
generate emergent phoenomena. The tool will be versatile and
sufficiently general to be widely usable. I also hear that Chris is
working on the simulation of a biological cell. Wow.
Schuster talked about his work on mapping polymer sequences to polymer
shapes.
Luisi presented results of actual chemical experiments to generate
self replicating micelles and vesicles, giving "living" proof of his
autopoietic principles that he has been pushing for years. This was
truly impressive.
The Belgian social robot group (Beckers, Deneubourg, Goss) presented
an imressive video and live demo of a robot colony which performed a
lot better (i.e. faster) than Maya Mataric's robots (upon which the
colony was inspired). They flocked, trailed, etc impressively and quickly.
Rasmussen fascinated me with a talk on using self organization in the
engineering field. One of his examples was to get a swarm of low level
communication satellites to self organize. If one blinks off, the rest
restore functionality by using self organization. Their low orbits would
mean that they could be launched by low cost rockets. Neat.
Dave Cliff's talk on evolving neural controllers for robots provided
an update on his group's work.
Todd spoke about "Artificial Death" (an appropriate topic at an ALife
conference). What function does death serve? Why did it evolve? How is
it evolutionarily advantageous? Good questions. Unfortunately the
experiments he undertook to test his ideas didnt seem to work very
well. Still, an important new area.
Stew Kauffman anounced in his talk (basically a rehash of earlier
papers) that his book is finally out (after literally years of delay).
Its called "Origins of Order", and is published by Oxford University
Press. It will probably become required reading for any serious ALifer
(along with ALife I and II).
Other (high ranking ALife) people liked Bedau's talk on "The Evolution
of Diversity", Deneubourg's talk "In Search of Simplicity", Mc
Mullin's poster on "What is a Universal Constructor?", and Lindgren's talk
on "Evolutionary Dynamics of Spatial Games", which was a sort of
Tierra in 2D spaces.
As of late June, I still do not know which, if any, publisher will be
publishing the ECAL93 proceedings. I hear that the organizers want to edit a
book with a subset of the conference papers (a la Langton). If so,
once again, half of the oral papers will go unpublished. Conference
attendees are outnumbered 10-100 to 1 compared to the number of
readers of the proceedings. Conference organizers have an obligation
to spread the papers to a wide audience. The proceedings are probably
the most important element of a conference. They are what one goes away
with and can keep for years. Conference contact memories fade. I hope
future ALife conference organizers will learn from such a conference as
PPSN92 which managed to have a book published which contained all the
conference papers, AND to have it ready in time for the conference
itself. It can be done.
The conference itself was not well organized. It reflected the
characteristic Belgian inattention to detail and lack of discipline
that Belgians are infamous for. There were many little examples, e.g.
the paper submission deadline changed 3 times. On my ETL lab wall last
year, I had 4 sheets stuck up with progressively later dates on ECAL93
deadlines. The handing out of proceedings was not closely supervised,
so people were stealing extra copies. Stew Kauffman couldnt get a set
when he first asked. The video session was dominated by a long running
video, so I didnt get to show mine. There were no multistandard
video players. Such machines should de rigeur at international
conferences. Talks started late, so people at the other session missed
parts of desired talks, etc. etc. (Maybe I've been more influenced by
Japanese efficiency than I'm aware of).
But, on the other hand, one should not overlook the obvious fact,
that it was the Belgians who organized the conference in the first
place. They should be congratulated for that. It was a successful
conference, (says me, who has been to (too) many).
Heard on the ALife Grapevine
============================
Where and when will the next big ALife conference be held? The last I
heard was that preparations for ALife IV (supposedly in Los Angeles)
are dragging. I also heard that Chris Langton (once again) is prepared to step
in and organize ALife IV, if all else fails. If ALife IV does not take
place at LA, then our lab (ATR) might be willing to help Chris
organize it (and maybe in Japan). ATR's ESD (Evolutionary Systems
Dept) will be one of the strongest ALife groups in the world by January 1994.
The next ECAL will probably be held in Eastern Europe in 1995.
Rumor has it (actually I got this from a VERY high ALife source), that
Rod Brooks aged 2 years in half an hour while listening to Mark
Tilden's "Junk Robot" talk at Sante Fe in 1992. Rod likes to be on
the cutting edge, but learned during Tilden's talk that he had become
main stream. He has subsequently changed direction and is now wanting
to build an "upper-body robot" with hand/eye coordination, capable of
cognitive function, using a mid level subsymbolic approach. (I hope I
got that right, Cynthia?) I called in at MIT just last week, to visit
Toffoli's Cellular Automata Machine group. Our "Brain Builder Group"
at ATR, wants to build/evolve an artificial brain inside Toffoli and
Margolus's CAM8 cellular automata machine.
As "5D" Tilden would say, "Is all".
I
------------------------------
From: Piero Morasso <piero@dist.dist.unige.it>
Subject: ICANN'94 first call for papers
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 93 16:52:15 MET DST
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| ************************************************ |
| * * |
| * EUROPEAN NEURAL NETWORK SOCIETY * |
| *----------------------------------------------* |
| * C A L L F O R P A P E R S * |
| *----------------------------------------------* |
| * I C A N N ' 94 - SORRENTO * |
| * * |
| ************************************************ |
| |
| ICANN'94 (INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS)|
| is the fourth Annual Conference of ENNS and it comes after |
| ICANN'91(Helsinki), ICANN'92 (Brighton), ICANN'93 (Amsterdam). |
| It is co-sponsored by INNS, IEEE-NC, JNNS. |
| It will take place at the Sorrento Congress Center, near Naples, |
| Italy, on May 26-29, 1994. |
| |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| S U B M I S S I O N |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Interested authors are cordially invited to present their work |
| in one of the following "Scientific Areas" (A-Cognitive Science; |
| B-Mathematical Models; C- Neurobiology; D-Fuzzy Systems; |
| E-Neurocomputing), indicating also an "Application domain" |
| (1-Motor Control;2-Speech;3-Vision;4-Natural Language; |
| 5-Process Control;6-Robotics;7-Signal Processing; |
| 8-Pattern Recognition;9-Hybrid Systems;10-Implementation). |
| |
| DEADLINE for CAMERA-READY COPIES: December 15, 1993. |
| ---------------------------------------------------- |
| Papers received after that date will be returned unopened. |
| Papers will be reviewed by senior researchers in the field |
| and the authors will be informed of their decision by the end |
| of January 1994. Accepted papers will be included in the |
| Proceedings only if the authors have registered in advance. |
| Allocation of accepted papers to oral or poster sessions will |
| not be performed as a function of technical merit but only with |
| the aim of coherently clustering different contributions in |
| related topics; for this reason there will be no overlap of |
| oral and poster sessions with the same denomination. Conference |
| proceedings, that include all the accepted (and regularly |
| registered) papers, will be distributed at the Conference desk |
| to all regular registrants. |
| |
| SIZE: 4 pages, including figures, tables, and references. |
| LANGUAGE: English. |
| COPIES: submit a camera-ready original and 3 copies. |
| (Accepted papers cannot be edited.) |
| ADDRESS where to send the papers: |
| IIASS (Intl. Inst. Adv. Sci. Studies), ICANN'94, |
| Via Pellegrino 19, Vietri sul Mare (Salerno), 84019 Italy. |
| ADDRESS where to send correspondence (not papers): |
| Prof. Roberto Tagliaferri, Dept. Informatics, Univ. Salerno, |
| Fax +39 89 822275, email iiass@salerno.infn.it |
| EMAIL where to get LaTeX files: listserv@dist.unige.it |
| |
| In an accompanying letter, the following should be included: |
| (i) title of the paper, (ii) corresponding author, |
| (iii) presenting author, (iv) scientific area and application |
| domain (e.g. "B-7"), (vi) preferred presentation (oral/poster), |
| (vii) audio-visual requirements. |
| |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| F O R M A T |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| The 4 pages of the manuscripts should be prepared on A4 white |
| paper with a typewriter or letter- quality printer in |
| one-column format, single-spaced, justified on both sides and |
| printed on one side of the page only, without page numbers |
| or headers/footers. Printing area: 120 mm x 195 mm. |
| |
| Authors are encouraged to use LaTeX. For LaTeX users, the LaTeX |
| style-file and an example-file can be obtained via email as |
| follows: |
| - send an email message to the address "listserv@dist.unige.it" |
| - the first two lines of the message must be: |
| get ICANN94 icann94.sty |
| get ICANN94 icann94-example.tex |
| If problems arise, please contact the conference co-chair below. |
| Non LaTeX users can ask for a specimen of the paper layout, |
| to be sent via fax. |
| |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| P R O G R A M C O M M I T T E E |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| The preliminary program committee is as follows: |
| |
| I. Aleksander (UK), D. Amit (ISR), L. B. Almeida (P), |
| S.I. Amari (J), E. Bizzi (USA), E. Caianiello (I), |
| L. Cotterill (DK), R. De Mori (CAN), R. Eckmiller (D), |
| F. Fogelman Soulie (F), S. Gielen (NL), S. Grossberg (USA), |
| J. Herault (F), M. Jordan (USA), M. Kawato (J), T. Kohonen (SF), |
| V. Lopez Martinez (E), R.J. Marks II (USA), P. Morasso (I), |
| E. Oja (SF), T. Poggio (USA), H. Ritter (D), H. Szu (USA), |
| L. Stark (USA), J. G. Taylor (UK), S. Usui (J), L. Zadeh (USA) |
| |
| Conference Chair: Prof. Eduardo R. Caianiello, Univ. Salerno, |
| Italy, Dept. Theoretic Physics; email: iiass@salerno.infn.it |
| |
| Conference Co-Chair: Prof. Pietro G. Morasso, Univ. Genova, |
| Italy, Dept. Informatics, Systems, Telecommunication; |
| email: morasso@dist.unige.it; fax: +39 10 3532948 |
| |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| T U T O R I A L S |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| The preliminary list of tutorials is as follows: |
| 1) Introduction to neural networks (D. Gorse), 2) Advanced |
| techniques in supervised learning (F. Fogelman Soulie`), |
| 3) Advanced techniques for self-organizing maps (T. Kohonen) |
| 4) Weightless neural nets (I. Aleksander), 5) Applications of |
| neural networks (R. Hecht-Nielsen), 6) Neurobiological modelling |
| (J.G. Taylor), 7) Information theory and neural networks |
| (M. Plumbley). |
| Tutorial Chair: Prof. John G. Taylor, King's College, London, UK |
| fax: +44 71 873 2017 |
| |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| T E C H N I C A L E X H I B I T I O N |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| A technical exhibition will be organized for presenting the |
| literature on neural networks and related fields, neural networks|
| design and simulation tools, electronic and optical |
| implementation of neural computers, and application |
| demonstration systems. Potential exhibitors are kindly requested |
| to contact the industrial liaison chair. |
| |
| Industrial Liaison Chair: Dr. Roberto Serra, Ferruzzi |
| Finanziaria, Ravenna, fax: +39 544 35692/32358 |
| |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| S O C I A L P R O G R A M |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Social activities will include a welcome party, a banquet, and |
| post-conference tours to some of the many possible targets of |
| the area (participants will also have no difficulty to |
| self-organize a la carte). |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
From: Kurt Thearling <kurt@Think.COM>
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 93 17:56:52 EDT
Subject: ALIFE III T-Shirts Available Again!
Due to a number of requests, we are going to be reprinting the sold
out T-Shirts from ALIFE III.
The shirts are black, with white and red printing. Besides the words
"Artificial Life III" and "June 15-19 1992, Santa Fe, New Mexico," the
shirts contain a sequence of computer evolved images of a beetle
evolving into insect robot.
Both LARGE and EXTRA LARGE are available. They are pre-shrunk cotton
t-shirts.
The price is $18, postpaid (outside the US, the price is $20 in US
funds). Orders can be sent to me at the address below.
For those of you who do not know what the shirts look like, a
postscript image of a scanned-in shirt is available via ftp. To get
the image, ftp to think.com and retrieve the file shirt.ps.Z in the
directory ~ftp/pub/alifeIII.shirt.
- kurt
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Kurt Thearling Thinking Machines Corp. kurt@think.com
245 First Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
----------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 93 12:42:04 -0400
From: Pattie Maes <pattie@media.mit.edu>
Subject: Artificial Life IV - Preliminary Call for Papers
Artificial Life IV
An Interdisciplinary Workshop
on the Synthesis and Simulation
of Living Systems
organized by:
Rodney Brooks
MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
July 6-8, 1994
MIT, Cambridge, MA
CALL FOR PAPERS
Proceedings Editors:
Rodney Brooks, MIT AI Lab
Pattie Maes, MIT Media Lab
We are happy to invite contributions for the Fourth Artificial Life
Workshop, to be held at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 6-8,
1994.
Artificial Life complements the traditional Biological sciences,
concerned with the analysis of living organisms, by attempting to
synthesize phenomena normally associated with natural living systems
within computers and other "artificial" media. By extending the
empirical foundation upon which the science of Biology rests beyond
the carbon-chain based life that has evolved on Earth, Artificial Life
can contribute to Theoretical Biology by locating "life-as-we-know-it"
within the larger context of "life-as-it-could-be."
The three previous workshops in this series were held in Santa Fe, New
Mexico. Next year's workshop is intended to continue in the spirit of
the earlier events, encouraging people with a broad range of
backgrounds to share and exchange opinions, ideas, and techniques.
Contributions may made in the following categories: PAPER (30 minutes
for presentation and questions); DEMONSTRATION, which includes robots,
computer demos and/or videos (please give time estimate).
Some PAPER contributions may be accepted as POSTERs. Presentations of
posters may include a computer display (BYOC).
Authors of PAPERs should send 4 copies of a full paper, not to
exceed 14 pages of 12pt single spaced text to the address below by
March 15, 1994 (you get to work all weekend then send it express on
Monday the 14th...). No papers will be accepted for review after
March 15th. Authors will be notified of the status of their
contributions by April 15, 1994. Contributions should include an
email address, telephone and fax numbers on the cover page.
Proprietors of DEMONSTRATIONs should send a maximum four page abstract
describing their contribution to the same address by March 15th.
DEMONSTRATIONs will be held on Thursday afternoon, July 7th, and will
incorporate an ``Artificial 4-H show''.
All accepted PAPERs will be included in the proceedings which will be
available to all registered participants at the workshop. Some
POSTERs may be included in the proceedings, and some DEMONSTRATIONs
will be included in a companion videotape. There will be a very tight
production schedule on the proceedings and camera ready copy will be
absolutely due by Friday May 13th.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
* Self-organization and emergent functionality
* Definitions of life
* Origin of life
* Self-reproduction
* Computer viruses
* Synthesis of "the living state"
* Evolution and population genetics
* Coevolution and ecological dynamics
* Growth, development and differentiation
* Organization and behavior of social and colonial organisms
* Animal behavior
* Global and local ecosystems and their interactions
* Autonomous agents (mobile robots and software agents)
* Collective intelligence ("swarm" intelligence)
* Theoretical biology
* Philosophical issues in Alife (from Ontology to Ethics)
* Formalisms and tools for Alife research
* Guidelines and safeguards for the practice of Alife
Papers should be sent to:
Rodney Brooks/Alife IV
MIT Artificial Ingelligence Lab
545 Technology Square
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
alife@ai.mit.edu
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 11:53:14 UTC+0100
From: Miquel Barcelo <blo@lsi.upc.es>
Subject: STSF'94 Workshop
Friends,
You will find here the CALL OF PAPERS of a new Workshop on
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY THROUGH SCIENCE FICTION
to be held next summer in Barcelona, Spain (22nd and 23rd, June 1994).
This will be the first edition of such a Workshop so, if you know
more people that could be interested, please help in making this
information available just forwarding this message.
If you need more information, please feel free to ask to:
blo@lsi.upc.es
Yours,
Miquel Barcels
PS- Excuse if this message arrives for the second time. Obviously there is
only ONE STSF'94 Workshop. We had some problem with distributions lists.
Thanks. M.B.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
First Announcement and CALL FOR PAPERS
STSF '94
An International Workshop on
SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY through SCIENCE FICTION
22nd-23rd June 1994 - BARCELONA (Spain)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Organized by:
CONSELL SOCIAL (Board of Trustees)
of Universitat Polithcnica de Catalunya (UPC)
in cooperation with:
Software Department (UPC)
Physics and Nuclear Engineering Department (UPC)
WORLD SF (Hispanic Chapter)
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THE WORKSHOP
A good working definition of science fiction is "speculative ex-
trapolation about the effect of science and technology on society".
The aim of this International Workshop is to provide a forum for iden-
tifying, encouraging and discussing research about science and tech-
nology, or their consequences, as portrayed in science fiction. The
Workshop will bring together researchers, scientists, and other aca-
demics with science fiction professionals to share information and ex-
plore new ideas about the relationship between science fiction,
science and technology.
TOPICS OF INTEREST
The topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- Biotechnology, genetic engineering
- Computer science, robotics, artificial intelligence
- Macroengineering
- Nanotechnology
- Physics, astronomy, cosmology
- Professional activity of scientists and engineers
- Social impact of science and technology
- Teaching science and technology with science fiction
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PROGRAM COMMITTEE
* Miquel Barcels (Software Dept., UPC, SPAIN)
* Joe Haldeman (SFWA president, M.I.T. Associate Professor, USA)
* Elizabeth A. Hull (SFRA past-president, USA)
* Frederik Pohl (SFWA and WSF past-president, USA)
* Vernor Vinge (Dept. of Math Sciences, SDSU, USA)
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
* Miquel Barcels (Software Dept., UPC)
* Laura Cabarrocas (Board of Trustees (secr.), UPC)
* Gay Haldeman (Writing Program, M.I.T.,USA)
* Pedro Jorge (Hispanic Chapter of WORLD SF)
* Jordi Josi (Physics and Nuclear Engineering Dept., UPC)
* Louis Lemkow (Sociology Dept., UAB)
* Manel Moreno (Physics and Nuclear Engineering Dept., UPC)
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INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS
Paper submissions must be in English and no more than 6000 words long.
The Proceedings of the Workshop will be published by the organi-
zing institution.
Authors are requested to submit a "Letter of Intention" with the
title of the paper and a short abstract (less than one page) be-
fore November 30, 1993.
Authors must submit five copies of each paper, before January 31,
1994, to the:
Program Chairperson:
Miquel Barcels
Facultat d'Inform`tica
Universitat Polithcnica de Catalunya
Pau Gargallo, 5
E 08028 BARCELONA (Spain)
Tel: 34.3.401.6958
Fax: 34.3.401.7113
E-mail: blo@lsi.upc.es
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IMPORTANT DATES
* Deadline for Letter of Intention: November 30, 1993
* Deadline for Paper Submission: January 31, 1994
* Notification of Acceptance: March 15, 1994
* Camera Ready Papers Due: April 30, 1994
* Workshop: June, 22-23, 1994
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End of ALife Digest
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