Machine Learning List: Vol. 13, No. 4 Sunday, Sept 9, 2001 Contents Calls for Papers and Meeting Announcements Symposium: Bayesian Techniques for Mining Data and Texts (EMCSR'02) 7th Valencia Inter. Meeting on Bayesian Statistics in CanaryIslands CFP: 2nd SIAM International Conference on Data Mining IEEE Transactions on SMC: Special Issue on Learning Automata CFP: AAAI 2002 Spring Symposium Series: Safe Learning Agents ICDM-01 WS on Integrating Data Mining and Knowledge Management Updated CFP: EvoIASP2002/Special Issue of EURASIP JASP Second Call For Papers NL2002 CFP: Categorization and Concept Representation (FLAIRS spec. track) [CEC2002] Extended Deadline Call for Papers: 6th ICCNS GECCO-2002 Call for Papers ITS 2000 - CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION Call for Workshop Proposals - GECCO 2002 Call for Papers: 7th Int. Symp. on AI and Math HIS 2001 - Final Call for Papers FLAIRS Call for workshop proposals. Jobs RA Position and Fellowships Available AI Chair PhD Studentship in Multimedia Indexing Other Software - Tree-based regression system available for download MineSet 4.0 Beta Announcement New Book: Creative Evolutionary Systems Announcing availability of association dataset and real-world benchamrk book announcement--Patel book announcement--Opper RFCT: An unsupervised, temporal extension of C4.5 book announcement--Baldi The Machine Learning List is moderated. Contributions should be relevant to the scientific study of machine learning. Please send submissions for distribution to: ml@isle.org. For requests to be added, removed, or to change your email address, send email to: ml-request@isle.org. In general, submissions should be no more than a few full-screens of text. For meeting announcements, highlight the conference or workshop web page and give a summary description of the goals of the event. Information such as the list of program committee members, talk schedules, and registration forms are unnecessary and should not be included. Job adds are usually no more than a page so they should fit naturally. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Calls for Papers and Meeting Announcements ------------------------------ From: Jerome AZE Subject: Symposium: Bayesian Techniques for Mining Data and Texts (EMCSR'02) Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 18:04:19 +0200 I am an PhD student of Yves Kodratoff and I am sending you this message on his behalf as he is in the hospital and unable to do it himself. The symposium "Bayesian Techniques for Mining Data and Texts" of EMCSR'02, Vienna April 2 - 5, 2002, will be devoted to (inductive) Text Mining and building Bayesian Networks from data. Consult http://www.lri.fr/ia/articles/yk/conf/introduction.fr.shtml for details and motivations. Jérôme Azé ------------------------------ From: David Heckerman Subject: 7th Valencia Inter. Meeting on Bayesian Statistics in CanaryIslands Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 12:36:51 -0700 Dear Colleague, The Seventh Valencia International Meeting on Bayesian Statistics, sponsored by the Universitat de Valencia and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA), is dedicated to former Conference President Professor Dennis V. Lindley. It will take place from June 2nd to June 6th, 2002, inclusive. As on previous occasions it will be a residential conference in a coastal resort: Playa de las Americas, on the South Coast of Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands -- a Spanish province in the Atlantic Ocean. For information on this very special place, see http://www.canarias-digital.org/turismo. The conference venue is the Mare Nostrum Resort, an impressive five star complex by the beach, complete with conference rooms, spa center and casino. You can see the resort virtually at http://www.expogrupo.com/marenostrum.htm The V7 Programme Committee consists of Susie Bayarri, Jim Berger, Phil Dawid, David Heckerman, Adrian Smith, Mike West and Jose Bernardo, who also acts as Local Organizer. The programme will include one stream of 25 invited lectures followed by invited discussions, a second stream of 50 contributed talks, and (it is expected) over 150 contributed papers in poster form. The invited programme is now complete, and posted at the conference web site http://www.uv.es/valencia7 and at its US mirror site, http://www.stat.duke.edu/valencia7 As in previous Valencia meetings, contributed papers will mainly be presented in the very popular plenary evening poster sessions. Space of about one square meter per paper will be provided. Electronic submission of a text-only abstract of about 250 words long, sent to me will be required before May 1st, 2002. Prior registration for the meeting by at least one of the authors will be required. The scientific program of the conference will include, for the first time in a Valencia meeting, Selected Contributed Papers (SCPs), to be presented in oral sessions. The SCPs will be selected from among submissions received, before October 15th, 2001, by a SCP Selection Committee appointed by ISBA. Unselected contributed papers will be eligible for poster presentation. The deadline for poster submissions is May 1, 2002. Detailed instructions for submitting abstracts will shortly be posted on the conference website and on the ISBA web site at http://www.bayesian.org/. For both SCP and poster submissions, at least one author must have registered for the meeting by the relevant deadline. All the best, Jose. ------------------------------ From: Mohammed Zaki Subject: CFP: 2nd SIAM International Conference on Data Mining Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 16:05:46 -0400 Second SIAM International Conference on Data Mining Hyatt Regency, Crystal City Arlington, Virginia, USA April 11-13, 2002 http://www.siam.org/meetings/sdm02/ Advances in information technology and data collection methods have led to the availability of large data sets in commercial enterprises and in a wide variety of scientific and engineering disciplines. We have an unprecedented opportunity to analyze this data and extract intelligent and useful information. The field of data mining draws upon extensive work in areas such as statistics, machine learning, pattern recognition, databases, and high performance computing to discover interesting and previously unknown information in datasets. This conference will provide a forum for the presentation of new research ideas and recent results in data mining, including applications, algorithms, software, and systems. There will be peer reviewed, contributed papers as well as invited talks and tutorials. Proceedings of the conference will be available both online at the SIAM Web site and in hard copy form. In addition, several workshops on topics of current interest will be held on the final day of the conference. IMPORTANT DATES: Paper Due Date: September 24th, 2001 Author Notification: December 3rd, 2001 Camera-ready Version Due Date: January 2nd, 2002 ------------------------------ From: Georgios Papadimitriou Subject: IEEE Transactions on SMC: Special Issue on Learning Automata Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:41:40 +0300 Special Issue on Learning Automata: Theory, Paradigms, and Applications To appear in the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics – Part B Learning automata have attracted a considerable interest in the last decade. They are adaptive decision-making devices that operate in unknown stochastic environments and progressively improve their performance via a learning process. They have been initially used by psychologists and biologists to describe the human behavior from both psychological and biological viewpoints. Learning automata have made a significant impact in all areas of engineering, and decision science problems. They can be applied to a broad range of modeling and control problems that are nonlinear and with a high degree of uncertainty. Learning automata have some key features, which make them applicable to a broad range of applications: they combine rapid and accurate convergence with a low computational complexity. The applications of learning automata include: process control, pattern recognition, control of service activity, task scheduling, optimization and classification problems, image processing, diagnosis, computer vision, concept learning, and routing and bandwidth allocation in computer communications networks. The special issue intends to attract papers that report advances in: Learning Automata Theory Applications of Learning Automata Performance Issues of Learning Automata P-, Q- and S-model Learning Automata. Ergodic and Absorbing Learning Automata Discretized Learning Automata Estimator Learning Automata Multilevel Systems of Automata Interconnected Automata Games of Automata Convergence of Learning Algorithms Implementation Issues of Learning Automata SCHEDULE Submission Deadline: November 1, 2001 Author Notification: March 1, 2002 Final Manuscript Due: May 1, 2002 Tentative Publication Date: Late 2002 The complete Call-for-Papers can be found at the following address: http://www.isye.gatech.edu/ieee-smc/publications/transactions/special/CFP-TSMC-LA.html ------------------------------ From: Michael Wayne Barley Subject: CFP: AAAI 2002 Spring Symposium Series: Safe Learning Agents Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:27:47 +1200 (NZST) AAAI 2002 Spring Symposium Series: Safe Learning Agents Call for Participation Mike Barley and Hans Guesgen Computer Science Department, University of Auckland Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand {barley, hans}@cs.auckland.ac.nz Description Since Weld and Etzioni's `The First Law of Robotics' at AAAI in 1994, there has been growing concern with the safety of deploying intelligent agents in the real world. Perhaps HAL in Kubrick's `2001: A Space Odyssey' is the best image of such an agent gone wrong. One area often missing from such discussions is the safety of learning agents. This is an important omission since learning/adaptation is a component in most definitions of what it means to be an agent. Some recent work has begun to address some of the issues involved, but the field is still in the initial stages of defining the problem. Submissions Those interested in participating should send either a 1-3 page extended abstract or a 6-8 page paper describing their related work and areas of interest. Submissions may discuss work in any stage of development, from concepts and future directions to finished work. Particular attention should be paid to clarifying aspects of the research associated with the topics listed above. Electronic submissions of PostScript or PDF files in AAAI format are preferred and should be sent to Hans Guesgen at hans@cs.auckland.ac.nz by 5 October 2001. For information on the AAAI format see http://www.aaai.org/Publications/instructions.html and look under the section "For Workshop, Symposia, or Technical Report Authors" ------------------------------ From: Melanie Hilario Subject: ICDM-01 WS on Integrating Data Mining and Knowledge Management Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 19:12:18 +0200 Workshop on Integrating Data Mining and Knowledge Management November 29, 2001 to be held in conjunction with ICDM'01: The 2001 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Doubletree Hotel, San Jose, California, USA November 29 - December 2, 2001 Home Page: http://kais.mines.edu/~xwu/icdm/icdm-01.html Call for Papers OBJECTIVE The workshop is aimed at bringing together researchers and practitioners from the areas of data mining and knowledge management. The technical objective is to exchange ideas and techniques from the two areas, and to establish a framework for the development of approaches that integrate knowledge management and discovery. BACKGROUND Knowledge management and data mining developed independently of each other, and their complementarity has not yet been fully recognized, much less exploited. Born of the understanding that knowledge is one if not the most important asset of an organization, both knowledge management (KM) and data mining (DM) grew and fluorished at the confluent of information technologies (machine learning, knowledge-based systems, databases), statistics and data analysis, and the business and management sciences. IMPORTANT DATES September 14, 2001: Workshop paper submissions due. October 12, 2001: Workshop paper acceptance notices. October 26, 2001: Camera-ready version of workshop papers due. November 29, 2001: Workshop takes place. ------------------------------ From: Stefano Cagnoni Subject: Updated CFP: EvoIASP2002/Special Issue of EURASIP JASP Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 12:35:10 +0200 CALL FOR PAPERS EVOIASP2002 Fourth European Workshop on Evolutionary Computation in Image Analysis and Signal Processing Kinsale, Ireland, April 3, 2002 EvoIASP is the first European event specifically dedicated to the applications of evolutionary computation (EC) to image analysis and signal processing (IASP) and gives European and non-European researchers in those fields, as well as people from industry, an opportunity to present their latest research and to discuss current developments and applications, besides fostering closer future interaction between members of the three scientific communities. The previous editions of the Workshop were held in Goteborg, Sweden (1999), Edinburgh, UK (2000) and in Como, Italy (2001). The workshop is sponsored by EvoNet, the Network of Excellence in Evolutionary Computing, and is one of the activities of EvoIASP, the EvoNet working group on Evolutionary Computation for Image Analysis and Signal Processing. It will be part of EvoWorkshops2002 and will be held in conjunction with EuroGP2002, the European Conference on Genetic Programming. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: applications of evolutionary computation to real-life IASP problems, evolvable vision and signal processing hardware, evolutionary pattern recognition, hybrid architectures for machine vision and signal processing including evolutionary components, theoretical developments, comparisons between different evolutionary techniques and between evolutionary and non-evolutionary techniques in IASP applications, financial time series analysis by means of EC techniques. The workshop Proceedings will be published by Springer in the LNCS series and will be available at the workshop. Authors of the best papers submitted to EvoIASP2002 will be invited to submit an extended version of their work for publication in a special issue on Evolutionary Image Analysis and Signal Processing of the "EURASIP Journal of Applied Signal Processing" (http://asp.hindawi.com). Important Dates: Submission deadline: 4 November 2001 Notification of acceptance: 1 December 2001 Camera ready papers for workshop: 20 December 2001 Workshop: 3 April 2002 For full details about submissions and updated news about the workshop please visit the workshop web pages: http://evonet.dcs.napier.ac.uk/eurogp2002/evoiasp.html http://evonet.dcs.napier.ac.uk/eurogp2002/ ------------------------------ From: ICSC-NAISO Subject: Second Call For Papers NL2002 Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 13:32:59 -0700 (PDT) The Second Call for Papers hereafter is aimed at the scientific community interested in Networked Learning: World Conference NL 2002 - Networked Learning in a Global Environment: Challenges and Solutions for Virtual Education http://www.icsc-naiso.org/conferences/nl2002 Venue and Date May 1 - 4, 2002, Technical University of Berlin, Germany Background and Scope Telecommunications, computer networks, multimedia technologies, and the World Wide Web have opened up entirely new ways of teaching and learning ( across institutions, physical locations, countries, continents, and time zones. Students may work distributed worldwide and nevertheless interact in a virtual community. Academic programs are no longer provided by single institutions only but can be established by networked organizations like virtual universities or virtual faculties. Best-of-breed programs are created in the Internet by bringing together top experts from different schools in a virtual program. Powerful wireless technologies will accelerate these developments in the future. Distance education is no longer a matter of "learning in isolation". Collaborative tools like discussion groups, chatrooms, videoconferencing, etc. support immediate interaction between students and teachers and among students in virtual communities. In-company training does not require travelling and physical presence but can be done at the workplace. Geographical locations of students and teachers loose importance. Education in the 21st century is shifting from "real" to "virtual". Physical classes are more and more replaced by virtual networks of students and teachers. NL 2002 aims to bring together content providers, course developers, educators, persons responsible for academic programs or corporate education, platform and tools providers, researchers and system developers from academia and industry to exchange their ideas and experiences, to share the best practices and to foster further development in networked learning. Conference Topics The conference focuses on technological and organizational aspects of networked learning and teaching. Topics include, but are not restricted to: Organization of networked learning * Virtual universities and networked e-learning organizations * Corporate virtual universities, in-company training in distributed enterprises * Integrated e-learning systems, portals, marketplaces, and providers * New academic programs by virtual organizations and cooperation projects * E-learning for business professionals * Open source initiatives for e-learning * Pricing and business models for virtual distance learning * Success stories and pitfalls in e-learning Contributions describing novel approaches to networked learning, practical experience, best practices, and cutting-edge future developments are encouraged. Important Dates - Submission deadline: September 20, 2001 - Notification of acceptance: December 15, 2001 - Final manuscripts: January 31, 2002 ------------------------------ From: colette faucher Subject: CFP: Categorization and Concept Representation (FLAIRS spec. track) Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 02:27:25 -0700 FLAIRS 2002 15th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference Pensacola, Florida May 16-18, 2002 Special Track : "Categorization and Concept Representation : Models and Implications" This track seeks to bring together researchers working on issues related to categorization and concept representation in the areas of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Psychology. TOPIC DESCRIPTION Categorization is the process by which distinct entities are treated as equivalent. It is one of the most fundamental and pervasive cognitive activities. It is fundamental because categorization allows us to understand and make predictions about objects and events in our world. The problem of understanding what criteria are used to group together entities in a same category is indeed central in categorization. Though most works in that topic have proposed that perceptual or structural similarity is the "glue" that binds objects of a same category, some psychologists have claimed that similarity is insufficient to account for the acquisition and use of categories and have proposed more abstract forms of criteria that make categories coherent and give them a kind of homogeneity in terms of the entities that belong to them. The purpose of this track is to bring fresh insights concerning a perhaps revisited notion of similarity, the way goals of categorization influence this process, how the notion of the theory of a concept can be formalized and implemented in computational models of categorization and the implications those elements may have on the representation of concepts. The contributions to this track may be situated in the symbolic approach of categorization or the connectionist one. Contributions in the following sub-topics would be welcomed : - Computational models of similarity, - Computational models of theory-based categorization, - Computational models of similarity-based categorization, - Computational models of human categorization, - Models of concept representation which are relevant as regards to the process of categorization, - Models of concept representation and elicitation, - Formalization of the notion of theory which underlies a category, - Formalization of the context of occurrence of the entities to categorize and its influence on the categorization process. This list is not exclusive provided that the contributions are relevant to the definition of the track specified above. IMPORTANT DATES Paper Submission Deadline : November 15, 2001 Notification of Acceptance-Rejection : January 10, 2002 Camera Ready Copy Due : March 4, 2002 Journal Invitation : February 10, 2002 Journal Paper Due : May 10, 2002 Conference Dates : May 16-18, 2002 TRACK WEBSITE http://perso.wanadoo.fr/colette.faucher/categorization.html FLAIRS 2002 Website http://altair.coginst.uwf.edu/~jkolen/Flairs2002/intro.php3 ------------------------------ From: CEC Publicity Subject: [CEC2002] Extended Deadline Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 8:39:50 +0100 *** Please note the new extended submissions deadline of December 1, 2001. CALL FOR PAPERS 2002 Congress on Evolutionary Computation May 12-17, 2002 Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, HI Held as part of the WCCI World Congress on Computational Intelligence (http://www.wcci2002.org) The annual Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) is one of the premier international conferences in the field. It covers all topics in evolutionary computation: from combinatorial to numerical optimization, from supervised to unsupervised learning, from co-evolution to collective behaviors, from evolutionary design to evolvable hardware, from molecular to quantum computing, from ant colony to artificial ecology, etc. The emphasis of the Congress will be on original theories and novel applications of evolutionary computation techniques. The Congress welcomes paper submissions from researchers, practitioners, and students worldwide. The 2002 Congress will be held in conjunction with the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) and the IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE) as part of the World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI). Crossfertilization of the three fields will be strongly encouraged. The Congress will feature keynote speeches and tutorials by world-leading researchers. It also will include a number of special sessions and workshops on the latest hot topics. Your registration admits you to all events and includes the World Congress proceedings and banquet. The deadline for submissions is 15 October 2001. Look for more details on paper submission and conference registration coming soon at http://www.wcci2002.org. CEC is jointly supported by the IEEE Neural Networks Council, the Evolutionary Programming Society, and the Institution of Electrical Engineers. ------------------------------ From: Cynthia Bradford Subject: Call for Papers: 6th ICCNS Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 16:34:07 -0400 ***** CALL FOR PAPERS ***** SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COGNITIVE AND NEURAL SYSTEMS Tutorials: May 29, 2002 Meeting: May 30 - June 1, 2002 Boston University 677 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02215 http://www.cns.bu.edu/meetings/ This interdisciplinary conference has drawn about 300 people from around the world each time that it has been offered. Last year's conference was attended by scientists from 31 countries. The conference is structured to facilitate intense communication between its participants, both in the formal sessions and during its other activities. As during previous years, the conference will focus on solutions to the fundamental questions: How Does the Brain Control Behavior? How Can Technology Emulate Biological Intelligence? The conference will include invited tutorials and lectures, and contributed lectures and posters by experts on the biology and technology of how the brain and other intelligent systems adapt to a changing world. The conference is aimed at researchers and students of computational neuroscience, connectionist cognitive science, artificial neural networks, neuromorphic engineering, and artificial intelligence. A single oral or poster session enables all presented work to be highly visible. Abstract submissions encourage submissions of the latest results. Costs are kept at a minimum without compromising the quality of meeting handouts and social events. CALL FOR ABSTRACTS Session Topics: * vision * spatial mapping and navigation * object recognition * neural circuit models * image understanding * neural system models * audition * mathematics of neural systems * speech and language * robotics * unsupervised learning * hybrid systems (fuzzy, evolutionary, digital) * supervised learning * neuromorphic VLSI * reinforcement and emotion * industrial applications * sensory-motor control * cognition, planning, and attention * other Contributed abstracts must be received, in English, by January 31, 2002. Notification of acceptance will be provided by email by February 28, 2002. A meeting registration fee must accompany each Abstract. See Registration Information below for details. The fee will be returned if the Abstract is not accepted for presentation and publication in the meeting proceedings. Registration fees of accepted Abstracts will be returned on request only until April 19, 2002. ------------------------------ From: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Subject: GECCO-2002 Call for Papers Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 22:13:55 -0500 CALL FOR PAPERS Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference GECCO-2002 A recombination of the Seventh Annual Genetic Programming Conference (GP-2002) and the International Conference on Genetic Algorithms (ICGA-2002) Co-Sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence July 9-13, 2002 (Tuesday - Saturday) New York City, New York, USA See the latest in YOUR favorite branch of Evolutionary Computation, AND explore developments in other, related tracks. The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2002) will continue the tradition of presenting the latest high-quality results in the growing field of genetic and evolutionary computation. Topics include, but are not limited to, genetic algorithms (GA); genetic programming (GP); evolution strategies (ES); evolutionary programming (EP); evolvable hardware (EH); evolutionary robotics (ER); real-world applications (RWA); classifier systems (CS); DNA and molecular computing (DNA); artificial life, adaptive behavior, agents, and ant colony optimization (AAAA); optimal design of engineered structures; methodology, pedagogy, and philosophy (MPP); genetic scheduling and routing (GS); and other areas to be announced. Papers are now invited (see further information below), with manuscripts to be received for review no later than WEDNESDAY January 23, 2002. Each paper submitted to GECCO will be rigorously reviewed, in a blind review process, by one of at least seven separate and independent program committees specializing in various aspects of genetic and evolutionary computation. These committees make their own final decisions on submitted papers for their areas, subject only to conference-wide space limitations and procedures. WORKSHOPS Proposals for Birds-of-a-Feather Workshops for GECCO-2002 are now being solicited. In addition to a Graduate Student Workshop, many other workshops on a variety of EC-related topics will be held during GECCO-2002, on Tuesday, July 9. See the web pages (www.isgec.org/GECCO-2002/workshops) or contact the Workshops Chair, Alwyn Barry, alwyn.barry@uwe.ac.uk, for the latest list of topics or for information on submitting a proposal to organize a workshop. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION For information concerning hotel reservations, travel discounts, student housing, student travel grants, graduate student workshop, proposals for workshops, proposals for additional tutorials, late-breaking papers, and other matters, visit www.isgec.org/GECCO-2002. For technical matters, email the General Chair, Erick Cantu-Paz at cantupaz@llnl.gov. For administrative matters, email gecco@aaai.org. Conference administered by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Conference operated by the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation. ------------------------------ From: ITS Subject: ITS 2000 - CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:20:47 -0400 CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION ITS 2002 www.itsconference.com ITS 2002, as announced 2 years ago, will be hold in Biarritz, France at the beginning of June, 2002. Avery nice place for this conference. Please consult the call for papers and other details about ITS 2002 at www.itsconference.com. ITS. ------------------------------ From: Alwyn Barry Subject: Call for Workshop Proposals - GECCO 2002 Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 16:27:46 +0100 Call for proposals Bird-of-a-feather Workshops at the 2002 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2002) July 9-13, 2002 (Tuesday - Saturday) [Workshop Day - July 9th] New York City, New York, USA **** Deadline November 1, 2001 **** The GECCO-2002 Program Committee would like to invite proposals for Bird-of-a-feather workshops to be held during the 2002 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2002). Workshops provide an opportunity for researchers to meet and discuss topics with a selected focus in an informal and interactive setting. Workshops are an excellent forum for participants with common interests to explore new approaches, critique existing approaches, and identify emerging areas of interest in genetic and evolutionary computation (GEC). Members of all segments of the GEC community are encouraged to submit proposals. Individual workshops can be two hours, half day, or full day in length. Although the format of the workshops will be determined by their organisers, all organisers will be STRONGLY encouraged to allocate significant time to interactive sessions (discussions, panels, question and answer sessions, group problem-solving, brainstorming, etc.) that cannot normally be accommodated within a larger conference programme. Proposals for workshops should not exceed THREE pages in length and should contain the following information: 1. A description of the workshop topic. Identify the specific issues on which the workshop will focus. 2. A brief discussion of why the topic is of particular interest to the GEC community at this time. 3. A brief description of the proposed workshop format and identification of the points where the workshop will encourage the participation of all workshop attendees. (For example, workshops have often included a combination of the following: panel discussion, question and answer sessions, hands-on demonstrations, small group problem solving sessions, brainstorming sessions, short paper presentations, poster sessions, general discussion). 4. The names and full contact information (e-mail and postal addresses, fax, and telephone numbers) of the workshop organiser(s) and brief descriptions of their relevant expertise. 5. A brief description of the preferred length (2hr, half day, or full day). 6. An indicative list of potential attendees. Organisers' whose proposals are accepted for GECCO workshops will be responsible for co-ordinating the workshop and gathering abstracts/papers for publication if applicable. Attendance of the workshops will be open to all GECCO attendees. ALL organisers, participants, and presenters must register for the GECCO-2002 conference. Where workshops include paper or poster presentations abstracts and/or full papers from each workshop will be published in the separate workshop proceedings. Details and additional deadlines will be provided once decisions have been made on the proposals. Workshop proposals should be submitted as soon as possible and must be received no later than November 1, 2001. Please submit proposals in PLAIN TEXT e-mail format. Please do not send html formatted text or encoded attachments. Organisers will be notified of the committee's decisions by November 16, 2001. Updated information about the workshop program will be provided at http://www.isgec.org/GECCO-2002/workshops/ (c.f. (http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu:8080/GECCO-2002/workshops/) as it is received. Please send proposals and inquiries regarding workshops to: Dr Alwyn Barry, alwyn.barry@uwe.ac.uk ------------------------------ From: J rgen Dix Subject: Call for Papers: 7th Int. Symp. on AI and Math Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2001 10:41:00 +0200 (CEST) Deadline: September 28th 2001 CALL FOR PAPERS Seventh International Symposium on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS January 2-4, 2002, Fort Lauderdale, Florida http://rutcor.rutgers.edu/~amai Email: amai@rutcor.rutgers.edu The full CFP is available as a postscript file under http://rutcor.rutgers.edu/~amai/cfp.ps APPROACH OF THE SYMPOSIUM: The International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics is the seventh of a biennial series. The objective of the symposium is to foster interactions between mathematics, theoretical CS, and artificial intelligence. Traditionally, the Symposium attracts around 100 participants from a variety of disciplines, thereby providing a unique forum for active scientific exchange. The AI & Math Symposia series were started in 1990 and are held every two years, alternating with the AI & Statistics meetings. The meeting includes paper presentation, invited speakers, and special topic sessions. Topic sessions in the past have covered computational learning theory, data mining, knowledge representation, nonmonotonic reasoning, category theory, and computational complexity issues in AI. INVITED SPEAKERS: Sarit Kraus (Bar-Ilan University) Gyorgy Turan (Univ. of Illinois at Chicago) Tom Dean (Brown University) -- to be confirmed Additional invited speakers may be added at a later date. SUBMISSIONS: Authors should e-mail a short abstract (up to 200 words) in plain text format to amai@rutcor.rutgers.edu by 21 SEPTEMBER 2001, and either e-mail postscript files or TeX/LaTeX source files (including all necessary macros) of their extended abstracts (up to 10 double-spaced pages) to be received by 28 SEPTEMBER 2001, to amai@rutcor.rutgers.edu, or send five copies to Boi Faltings Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science Department Swiss Federal Institute of Technology IN (Ecublens), CH-1015 Lausanne (Switzerland) to be received by 28 SEPTEMBER 2001. Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by 3 November 2001. The final versions of the accepted extended abstracts, for inclusion in the conference web-based volume, are due by 30 NOVEMBER 2001. IMPORTANT DATES Abstracts received: September 21, 2001 Extended abstracts due: September 28, 2001 Authors notified: November 3, 2001 Final versions received: November 30, 2001 AI Math Symposium: January 2-4, 2002 INFORMATION: Further information and future announcements can be obtained from the Conference Web Site at http://rutcor.rutgers.edu/~amai or by (e)mail to hoffman@acc.fau.edu or Professor Frederick Hoffman, Florida Atlantic University, Department of Mathematics, PO Box 3091, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA. ------------------------------ From: Ajith Abraham Subject: HIS 2001 - Final Call for Papers Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2001 01:48:58 +1000 HIS 2001 - Final Call for Papers International Workshop on Hybrid Intelligent Systems - 2001 Dear Colleagues, Due to several requests, we have extended the final deadline for submission of papers until 21 September 2001. Venue: Adelaide, South Australia Date: 11-12, December 2001 Workshop URL: http://his.hybridsystem.com or http://www.hybridsystem.com About HIS'01 HIS'01 is an International Workshop that brings together researchers, developers, practitioners, and users of neural networks, fuzzy inference systems, evolutionary algorithms, agents, and other conventional computing techniques. The aim of HIS'01 is to serve as a forum to present current and future work as well as to exchange research ideas in this field. HIS'01 invites authors to submit their original and unpublished work (20 pages maximum limit) that demonstrate current research using hybrid computing techniques and their applications in science, technology, business and commercial. All accepted papers will published in the proceedings of the Workshop by Springer-Verlag, Germany. For important dates, venue information, travel and accommodation details please refer to the web site of the workshop. If you need an extension for submission of paper please let us know early. Ajith Abraham & Mario Köppen for HIS 2001 Team ------------------------------ From: "Stefan C. Kremer" Subject: FLAIRS Call for workshop proposals. Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 16:56:50 -0400 (EDT) Call for Workshop Proposals Preceding the regular program of the FLAIRS-02 conference at the Crown Plaza Pensacola Grand Hotel, workshops on various current topics in AI will be held on Wednesday May 15th at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. We invite researchers interested in chairing one of these workshops to submit workshop proposals. Papers presented at the workshop WILL be included as workshop briefs in the published proceedings of FLAIRS. Workshops focusing on controversial issues, emerging approaches, and open problems are particularly encouraged. Researchers proposing a Special Track are are also encouraged to complement their Special Track with a Workshop proposal where important research questions and challenges can be discussed in a less formal and more intimate forum. Workshop topics include, but are not limited to, the following: artificial neural networks, autonomous agents, case-based reasoning, computer vision, data mining, education, expert systems, genetic algorithms, intelligent user interfaces, intelligent tutoring, knowledge representation and management, learning, logic, multi-agent systems, natural language processing, planning, uncertainty reasoning, robotics, speech recognition, temporal reasoning, and verification/validation. The workshop meetings will be split into morning and afternoon sessions, with free time in between for lunch and ongoing individual exchange. ORGANIZER RESPONSIBILITIES Workshop organizers have several responsibilities including: o coordinating workshop participation and content o moderating discussion o writing a brief summary of discussions not contained in the papers, for inclusion in the proceedings SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS Interested parties should submit a short proposal for a workshop of interest via e-mail by October 7, 2001. Questions may be addressed to skremer@uoguelph.ca. Dr. Stefan C. Kremer, Assistant Prof., Dept. of Computing and Information Science University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1 WWW: http://q.cis.uoguelph.ca/~skremer Tel: (519)824-4120 Ext.8913 Fax: (519)837-0323 E-mail: skremer@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca ------------------------------ Jobs ------------------------------ From: Dean Hougen Subject: [JOB] RA Position and Fellowships Available Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 17:10:30 -0500 This message is primarily intended for masters students who will be graduating soon and are considering going on for their Ph.D.'s. I'll be leaving the University of Minnesota soon to join the faculty at the University of Oklahoma and found my own machine learning and robotics lab there and I'm looking for some top-notch students. * Research Assistantship in Robotics and/or Machine Learning. I'm looking for a research assistant with interests and experience in either machine learning or robotics, preferably both. I've got funding for this position for three years, starting this fall, with a very open topic. If you are interested, please contact me directly at hougen@cs.umn.edu or hougen@ou.edu. * GAANN Fellowship in CS. The School of Computer Science at OU has GAANN Fellowships available, starting this fall. These are full-ride, multi-year fellowships, covering tuition, fees, textbooks, travel to conferences, supplies, and special equipment, plus a stipend of up to $15,000/year (based on need). The area of research is open to anything in CS so, while I'd love to have those interested in Machine Learning, Robotics, or other areas of AI apply, I encourage good students in any area of CS to apply. [Those interested in alife may be interested to know that Tom Ray is one of the faculty you might work with there.] These fellowships are for Ph.D. study and are only open to US citizens or permanent residents, those planning to become US citizens or permanent residents, or permanent residents of the Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands. For more information see: I've had a great time here at the U of MN, both as a student and as a prof, but I'm really looking forward to being at OU. They've got a good CS department that is growing in exciting ways. -- Dr. Dean F. Hougen Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering Associate Director, Center for Distributed Robotics University of Minnesota 4-192 EE/CSci Bldg. 200 Union St. S.E. Minneapolis, MN 55455-0159 612-624-4822 ------------------------------ From: Alan Frisch Subject: AI Chair Date: 30 Jul 2001 20:52:39 +0100 Chair in Artificial Intelligence Department of Computer Science University of York, UK Applications are invited for this professorial post, which is available from 1 February 2002. We seek candidates with an international research reputation in Artificial Intelligence, particularly in Machine Learning, Inductive Logic Programming, Knowledge Representation and Automated Reasoning, Constraint Satisfaction, Computational Linguistics, Multi-Agent Systems, or application domains such as Bioinformatics. The successful candidate would be expected to lead and expand the Department's AI group, which is one of the largest and strongest in the UK. Salary will be within the professorial range (current minimum 39,004 pounds per annum). The University Funding Council assessed the Department's research at grade 5*, the highest grade possible, and has also designated the Department's teaching as "excellent." A recent ranking of UK Computer Science departments placed the department equal first in a ranking of 83 institutions. In recognition of the Department's work, the University was awarded The Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 1996. Research activity centres on the Department's six major research groups: Advanced Computer Architectures, Artificial Intelligence, High-Integrity Systems Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, Programming Languages and Systems, and Real-Time Systems. The Department has about 160 full time researchers, including around 32 permanent members of academic staff. Current research is funded by grants and contracts totalling 5 million pounds from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, the European Commission, other government departments and industry. The Department attracts about 20 percent of the nation's industrial funding for academic research in computing, more than any other department. Informal enquiries about this post may be made to Professor Alan Burns (Head of the Department of Computer Science), telephone +44 (0)1904-432779, alan.burns@cs.york.ac.uk. General information about the University, Department and AI Group is available on the web at www.york.ac.uk. For further information and details of how to apply, please write to the Personnel Office, Univ. of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, U.K. or e-mail jobs@york.ac.uk, quoting reference number /1003 or see www.york.ac.uk/admin/persnl/jobs/1003.htm. The closing date for applications is Monday 1 October 2001. ------------------------------ From: Bernard Merialdo Subject: PhD Studentship in Multimedia Indexing Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 13:15:19 +0200 (MET DST) PhD Studentship in Multimedia Indexing The Multimedia Communications Department of the Institut EURECOM (Sophia-Antipolis, France) is offering a PhD Studentship within a research project for Multimedia Indexing. The main themes of the project are Video Indexing and Information Filtering. Strong background in Mathematics (probabilities and statistics), Computer Science and Networks (Internet) is required. The Institut EURECOM is a education and research center which has been created by the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne (EPFL) and Telecom Paris. It is located on the famous "French Riviera" and is devoted to excellence in education and research. Its activities are organized in Corporate, Mobile and Multimedia Communications. More information is available at: http://www.eurecom.fr/ http://www.eurecom.fr/~bmgroup The studentship will be available from September 2001, for a duration of 3 years. Candidates should send the CV, letter and the name of two references to: Prof Bernard Merialdo email : merialdo@eurecom.fr Institut EURECOM Tel : +33 (0)4 93 00 26 29 2229 Route des Cretes Sec : +33 (0)4 93 00 26 33 B.P. 193 Fax : +33 (0)4 93 00 26 27 06904 Sophia-Antipolis cedex ------------------------------ Other ------------------------------ From: Luis Torgo Subject: Software - Tree-based regression system available for download Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 11:28:20 +0000 RT is a learning system that can handle multiple regression problems based on samples of data. The resulting models have the form of a regression tree. Linux and SunOS versions of RT 4.1.0 are now available for free download for research purposes at: http://www.liacc.up.pt/~ltorgo/RT/ Compared to existing systems for obtaining regression trees, the most distinguishing feature of RT is its ability to use local models in the tree leaves, leading to what we have named local regression trees. The use of these models brings highly significant gains in terms of prediction accuracy at the cost of some interpretability of the models and also with an increase of computation time. Due to the schema used to integrate local models with regression trees, RT can easily behave like a normal local modeling system or a standard regression tree learner. Moreover, this schema allows RT to emulate other regression modeling techniques (like for instance CART, Core, or RETIS). Further information can be obtained at RT web page (www.liacc.up.pt/~ltorgo/RT/). Luis Torgo LIACC/FEP, University of Porto ltorgo@liacc.up.pt - www.liacc.up.pt/~ltorgo ------------------------------ From: "Andy M. Kar" Subject: MineSet 4.0 Beta Announcement Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:32:16 -0700 We are pleased to announce a new, enhanced, version of MineSet, will shortly be available for beta testing. MineSet provides a suite of software tools and a development platform for data mining and data visualization solutions. The suite includes data acquisition and extraction capabilities, sophisticated analytical data modeling and deployment, and intuitive visualizations. MineSet is a client/server application that runs on Windows® 98, Windows® ME, Windows® NT, and Windows® 2000. (Irix and Linux are also supported by MineSet, but will not be available in the beta program.) Additional information about MineSet is available at http://mineset.sgi.com This new beta release, MineSet 4.0, comes with a powerful set of new mining and visualization tools and significantly enhanced API's for embedding data mining functionality into applications. Beta images will be available for Microsoft Windows® platforms. If you are interested in participating in the beta program, please sign up at http://www.sgi.com/cgi-bin/mineset/nda.cgi New features in this release include: * A new MineSet Control API permits applications to build and execute data mining histories. * New visualization tools for high-dimensional data sets and improved display of analytic results. * New analytic tools for improved clustering, improved decision tree induction and detection of anomalous behavior. * Automatic build and compare of analytic classifiers. * Optimized handling of data transformations in the DBMS. * Improved performance of the user interface. We expect the first beta images to be available for download in a few weeks. We will distribute 2 to 3 beta images before the final release of MineSet 4.0, which we are expecting to complete before the end of 2001. Note that previous versions of MineSet will need to be uninstalled in order to run the beta versions. If you have any questions about the beta program, please send us e-mail at mineset_beta@engr.sgi.com. Sincerely - MineSet Team ------------------------------ From: sfillat@mkp.com Subject: New Book: Creative Evolutionary Systems Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:42:57 -0700 Morgan Kaufmann Publishers - New Book Announcement Creative Evolutionary Systems edited by Peter Bentley, David Corne http://www.mkp.com/books_catalog/catalog.asp?ISBN=1-55860-673-4 The use of evolution for creative problem solving is one of the most exciting and potentially significant areas in computer science today. Evolutionary computation is a way of solving problems, or generating designs, using mechanisms derived from natural evolution. This book concentrates on applying important ideas in evolutionary computation to creative areas, such as art, music, architecture, and design. It shows how human interaction, new representations, and approaches such as open-ended evolution can extend the capabilities of evolutionary computation from optimization of existing solutions to innovation and the generation of entirely new and original solutions. This book takes a fresh look at creativity, exploring what it is and how the actions of evolution can resemble it. Examples of novel evolved solutions are presented in a variety of creative disciplines. The editors have compiled contributions by leading researchers in each discipline. If you are a savvy and curious computing professional, a computer-literate artist, musician or designer, or a specialist in evolutionary computation and its applications, you will find this a fascinating survey of the most interesting work being done in the area today. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers San Francisco, California http://www.mkp.com orders@mkp.com ------------------------------ From: "Ronny Kohavi" Subject: Announcing availability of association dataset and real-world benchamrk Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 12:52:40 -0300 We are announcing the availability of a real-world association dataset based on web views. The data comes from the same site that was used for the KDD Cup 2000 (except from a longer period). It is available at the bottom of http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/KDDCUP under the same click-through agreement (basically, use for non-commercial educational or research purposes is allowed). In addition, we would like to share a benchmark paper comparing multiple association algorithms on this and several other real-world datasets. The paper and slides are available at http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/KDDCUP/ and http://robotics.Stanford.EDU/~ronnyk/ronnyk-bib.html - Zijian, Ronny, Llew ------------------------------ From: Jud Wolfskill Subject: book announcement--Patel Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 13:55:57 -0400 Advances in the Evolutionary Synthesis of Intelligent Agents edited by Mukesh Patel, Vasant Honavar, and Karthik Balakrishnan Among the first uses of the computer was the development of programs to model perception, reasoning, learning, and evolution. Further developments resulted in computers and programs that exhibit aspects of intelligent behavior. The field of artificial intelligence is based on the premise that thought processes can be computationally modeled. Computational molecular biology brought a similar approach to the study of living systems. In both cases, hypotheses concerning the structure, function, and evolution of cognitive systems (natural as well as synthetic) take the form of computer programs that store, organize, manipulate, and use information. Systems whose information processing structures are fully programmed are difficult to design for all but the simplest applications. Real-world environments call for systems that are able to modify their behavior by changing their information processing structures. Cognitive and information structures and processes, embodied in living systems, display many effective designs for biological intelligent agents. They are also a source of ideas for designing artificial intelligent agents. This book explores a central issue in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and artificial life: how to design information structures and processes that create and adapt intelligent agents through evolution and learning. The book is organized around four topics: the power of evolution to determine effective solutions to complex tasks, mechanisms to make evolutionary design scalable, the use of evolutionary search in conjunction with local learning algorithms, and the extension of evolutionary search in novel directions. Mukesh Patel is Vice President, Applied Solutions Ltd., and Visiting Lecturer at the Nirma Institute of Technology, Ahmedabad, India. Vasant Honavar is Associate Professor of Computer Science, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and Neuroscience and Director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory at Iowa State University. Karthik Balakrishnan leads the Decision Analytics Group at Obongo Inc., California. For more information please visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/promotions/books/PATAHS01 Jud Wolfskill Associate Publicist, MIT Press ------------------------------ From: Jud Wolfskill To: ml@isle.org Subject: book announcement--Opper Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 14:12:11 -0400 Advanced Mean Field Methods Theory and Practice edited by Manfred Opper and David Saad A major problem in modern probabilistic modeling is the huge computational complexity involved in typical calculations with multivariate probability distributions when the number of random variables is large. Because exact computations are infeasible in such cases and Monte Carlo sampling techniques may reach their limits, there is a need for methods that allow for efficient approximate computations. One of the simplest approximations is based on the mean field method, which has a long history in statistical physics. The method is widely used, particularly in the growing field of graphical models. Researchers from disciplines such as statistical physics, computer science, and mathematical statistics are studying ways to improve this and related methods and are exploring novel application areas. Leading approaches include the variational approach, which goes beyond factorizable distributions to achieve systematic improvements; the TAP (Thouless-Anderson-Palmer) approach, which incorporates correlations by including effective reaction terms in the mean field theory; and the more general methods of graphical models. Bringing together ideas and techniques from these diverse disciplines, this book covers the theoretical foundations of advanced mean field methods, explores the relation between the different approaches, examines the quality of the approximation obtained, and demonstrates their application to various areas of probabilistic modeling. Manfred Opper is a Reader and David Saad is Professor, the Neural Computing Research Group, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University, UK. For more information please visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=5CEC3656-296C-4C48-B6E3-6BDFAC7EBADD&ttype=2&tid=3847 Jud Wolfskill Associate Publicist, MIT Press ------------------------------ From: Kamran Karimi Subject: RFCT: An unsupervised, temporal extension of C4.5 Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 15:31:23 -0600 (CST) Hi everybody, RFCT is a tool that turns C4.5 into an unsupervised tool and extends its abilities by allowing it to understand and respect temporal order among the input data. RFCT's grahical user interface lets the user experiment with different scenarios concerning the passage of time between the variable observations. The user can thus see if the value of one variable is not only determined by other variables observed at the same time, but also by variables observed before. The software is available freely from http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~karimi/downloads.html. You will need a properly installed C4.5 package for RFCT to function. To fully use RFCT's abilities, you need to patch C4.5 Release 8 and recompile it. The patch file is included in the package, and you can get C4.5's sources freely from http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~quinlan. RFCT can still be used as a graphical user interface for C4.5 if you don't patch it. RFCT is written in Java, and is runnable anywhere with a java interpreter and a graphical user interface. This includes Microsoft Windows and X11. There is no special installation necessary. Use softrware such as WinZip under windows and (gzip -d rfct.tgz; tar -xf rfct.tar) under UNIX to unpack the package. In the resulting RFCT-1.0 directory, type rfct.bat to start the program. Use the online help and the sample session files to get started with the program. Let me know if you encounter any problems. Thanks. Kamran Karimi karimi@cs.uregina.ca http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~karimi ------------------------------ From: Jud Wolfskill Subject: book announcement--Baldi Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 13:56:18 -0400 Bioinformatics The Machine Learning Approach second edition Pierre Baldi and Søren Brunak An unprecedented wealth of data is being generated by genome sequencing projects and other experimental efforts to determine the structure and function of biological molecules. The demands and opportunities for interpreting these data are expanding rapidly. Bioinformatics is the development and application of computer methods for management, analysis, interpretation, and prediction, as well as for the design of experiments. Machine learning approaches (e.g., neural networks, hidden Markov models, and belief networks) are ideally suited for areas where there is a lot of data but little theory, which is the situation in molecular biology. The goal in machine learning is to extract useful information from a body of data by building good probabilistic models--and to automate the process as much as possible. In this book Pierre Baldi and Søren Brunak present the key machine learning approaches and apply them to the computational problems encountered in the analysis of biological data. The book is aimed both at biologists and biochemists who need to understand new data-driven algorithms and at those with a primary background in physics, mathematics, statistics, or computer science who need to know more about applications in molecular biology. This edition contains expanded coverage of probabilistic graphical models and of the applications of neural networks, as well as a new chapter on microarrays and gene expression. The entire text has been extensively revised. Pierre Baldi is Professor and Director of the Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics in the Department of Information and Computer Science and in the Department of Biological Chemistry in the College of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine. Søren Brunak is Professor and Director of the Center for Biological Sequence Analysis at the Biocentrum of the Technical University of Denmark. For more information please visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/026202506X Jud Wolfskill Associate Publicist, MIT Press wolfskil@mit.edu ------------------------------ End of ML-LIST Digest Vol 13, No. 4 ***********************************