Machine Learning List: Vol. 16, No. 3 Saturday, Feburary 7, 2004 CONTENTS CALLS FOR PAPERS/PARTICIPATION Special Issue in Mining Graphs, Trees and Sequences AAAI Workshop on Semantic Web Personalization 4th International Cognitive Robotics Workshop Learning and Self-Adapting Agents (IEEE/WIC/ACM WI-IAT'04) CEC 2004: Application of Cultural Algorithms in Industry and Engineering CEC 2004: Learning by Estimating Distributions in Evolutionary ... CEC 2004: Evolutionary Scheduling CEC 2004: Evolutionary Computing in the Process Industry CEC 2004: Recent Developments in Artificial CEC 2004: EC in the Optimisation of Semiconductor Manufacturing ... WCCW2004 Call for Papers: First International Workshop on Web PSMP3 Workshop: Knowledge Representation and Acquisition for ... First Workshop ROC Analysis in AI KDNet Symposium on Knowledge-Based Services for the Public Sector Algorithmic Learning Theory 2004; Discovery Science 2004 Evolutionary Computation in Industry (ECI-2004) track at GECCO-2004 Late Breaking Papers at GECCO 2004 ICML competition and workshop on Physiological Data Modeling Call for Workshop Proposals (IEEE ICDM'04) Computational Creativity workshop - ECCBR 04 Net.ObjectDays 2004 ITS 2004 Call for Workshop Proposals 2004 Proposal" in the Subject: line. We look forward to them! Swarm Intelligence and Patterns (SIP'04) WEBSA2004: 2nd Int'l Workshop on Web Based Systems and Applications ... OTHER MEETING ANNOUNCEMENTS ICCS Deadline Extension for Abstract Submission MobiQuitous 04: Extended paper submission deadline CAREER OPPORTUNITIES Postdoc in vision/neuroscience in University College London R&D jobs in watermarking, biometrics, HCI, medical imaging, image... MISCELLANEOUS ANNOUNCEMENTS Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience 2004 What is Thought?: Book announcement ESSLLI 2004: Preliminary Announcement 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. To keep mailings to a manageable size, please keep submissions brief. For meeting announcements, do highlight the meeting Web site and the goals of the event but omit information such as the program committee and talk schedules. Also, only first calls for papers/participation and brief change of deadline announcements will be included. The ML List moderator reserves the right to omit/edit submissions to meet these criteria. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Takashi Washio Subject: Special Issue in Mining Graphs, Trees and Sequences Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:28:10 +0900 Call for Papers of Journal Special Issue and Book in Mining Graphs, Trees and Sequences (MGTS) Special Issue in Fundamenta Informaticae Guest Editors Luc De Raedt, Professor, University of Freiburg, Germany Takashi Washio, Associate Professor, Osaka University, Japan Joost N. Kok, Professor, Leiden University, The Netherlands Fundamenta Informaticae http://fi.mimuw.edu.pl/index.html Outline of Journal Special Issue Ever since the early days of machine learning and data mining, it has been realized that the traditional attribute-value and item-set representations are too limited for many practical applications in domains such as chemistry, biology, network analysis and text mining. This has triggered a lot of research on mining and learning within alternative and more expressive representation formalisms such as computational logic, relational algebra, graphs, trees and sequences. Whereas there have been a large number of workshops devoted to multi-relational data mining and inductive logic programming as well as applications of intermediate representations in e.g. ontologies, bioinformatics, XML-data, text-mining, there has, to the best of our knowledge, not been any workshops specifically devoted to foundational issues in intermediate representations. Under this consideration, the following workdshop has been organized to bring together researchers interested in mining and learning within graphs, trees and sequences. The workshop was extremely successfull, and more than 40 researchers participated. First International Workshop on Mining Graphs, Trees and Sequences (MGTS-2003) (In conjunction with ECML/PKDD-2003) http://www.ar.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp/MGTS-2003CFP.html On the success of MGTS-2003 workshop, we are pleased to announce Call For Papers of Journal Special Issue in Fundamenta Informaticae on the topic of Mining Graphs, Trees and Sequences (MGTS). We are also planning a book edition of the special issue. The authors who presented their work in MGTS-2003 workshop are welcome to submit their full paper versions. The call for paper is not limited to the authors in MGTS-2003. We strongly encourage other researchers to submit their papers following the scope described bellow. All submitted papers will be equivalently reviewed in terms of relevance, originality, significance and presentation. Scope and Motivation The state-of-the-art of data mining is that attribute-value and item-set representations lie at one extreme end of the spectrum, and multi-relational data mining and inductive logic programming at the other end. The middle is occupied by traditional data structures employed throughout the field of computer science. These include graphs, trees and sequences (or strings). The motivation for using such representations is that they are 1) more expressive (and therefore more widely applicable) than flat representations, and 2) potentially more efficient than multi-relational learning and mining techniques. At the same time, the data structures of graphs, trees and sequences are among the best understood and most widely applied representations within computer science. Thus these representations offer ideal opportunities for developing interesting contributions in data mining and machine learning that are both theoretically well-founded and widely applicable. It is precisely the goal of this special issue to bring together researchers interested in mining and learning within graphs, trees and sequences. We believe it is the right time to have such a journal special issue and a book because of the increasing interest in the role of such data structures, which is in turn motivated by the many interesting application domains. Indeed, the total number of papers related to graph and tree mining in SIGMOD, SIGKDD, IJCAI/AAAI, ICML, ECML/PKDD and IEEE ICDM was 10 in 2001 and their number inceased to 18 in 2002. Along this line, the First International Workshop on Mining Graphs, Trees and Sequences (MGTS-2003) was held in conjunction with ECML/PKDD-2003 in September, 2003. More than 20 papers have been submited, and 9 papers were selected for the presentation. The research activity in MGTS field is significantly increasing. Topics and goals We are looking for contributions related to graph, tree and sequence structure mining and learning. More specifically, the special issue will focus on the following topics: * Efficiency issues in graph, tree and sequence mining and learning * Identifying interesting subclasses that can efficiently be mined or learned * Basic princinciples of graph, tree and sequence mining * Analysis of the complexity of graph, tree and sequence mining * Applications to real world problems in e.g., biology, chemistry, XML, etc. * Relationship of graph, tree and sequence mining to other techniques * Any other result relevant to graph, tree and sequence mining. Research works presenting theoretical results, basic research, perspective solutions and practical developments are welcomed, provided that they address the topic of the special issue. Submission guidelines Please follow the standard guideline on paper format of Fundamenta Informaticae described in the following URL: http://fi.mimuw.edu.pl/submissions.html Authors are requested to email a title and a five line abstract in plain text as early as possible to facilitate organization. A five line abstract submissions : as early as possible but at least before 1/March/2004 Deadline for paper submissions : 19/March/2004 Notification to authors : 19/April/2004 Tentative (Deadline for Reviced Paper Submission : 17/May/2004) (Second Notification to authors : 7/June/2004) (Deadline for Camera Ready Papers : 01/July/2004) (Publication of the special issue : end of August/2004) All submissions of the abstract and papers in latex and ps formats should be sent to the guest editors via email (washio@ar.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp). For further information about the special issue, please do not hesitate to contact the guest editors via Takashi Washio Email: washio@ar.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp Address: Institute for Scientific and Industrial Reseach, Osaka University 1-8, Mihogaoka, Ibarakishi, Osaka, 567-0047, Japan For details about the policy of the FUNDAMENTA INFORMATICAE journal and the requirements for prospective authors, see a recent issue of the journal or check the journal's web site http://fi.mimuw.edu.pl/. ------------------------------ From: "Sarabjot Singh Anand" Subject: AAAI Workshop on Semantic Web Personalization Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:48:53 -0000 CALL FOR PAPERS AAAI 2004 Workshop on Semantic Web Personalization=20 http://maya.cs.depaul.edu/~mobasher/swp04/ July 25-26, 2004, San Jose, California IMPORTANT DATES March 12, 2004: Deadline for electronic submission April 16, 2004: Notification of acceptance or rejection May 14, 2004: Submission of camera-ready paper via AAAI Web site DESCRIPTION OF THE WORKSHOP The Web is now an integral part of numerous applications in which a user interacts with a company, government, employer, or an information provider. However, the potential of the Web is hampered by the enormity of the content available and the diverse expectations of its user base. Hence, Web applications need to combine all available knowledge in order to form personalized, user-friendly, and business-optimal services. Over the years, personalized Web applications and services have been developed that use Web Mining and similar technologies to harvest shallow patterns hidden within masses of transactional, navigational, and content-structural data that are useful for presenting product recommendations and the likes. Without the benefit of deeper semantic or ontological knowledge about the underlying domain, personalization systems cannot handle heterogeneous and complex objects based on their properties and relationships. Nor can these systems possess the ability to automatically explain or reason about the user models or user recommendations. This realization points to an important research focus that combines the strengths of Web mining with semantic or ontological knowledge. The prospect of having deeper knowledge, gained from a combination of relevant but highly heterogeneous sources, about the information available and/or the resources accessed by users, means that personalization approaches can be developed that can present the most contextually relevant content to the user of the Web. The workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from the two rapidly developing research areas: Semantic Web and Web Intelligence. The aim is to improve the results of Web Personalization by exploiting the new semantic structures in the Web, and by incorporating AI techniques that take advantage of existing, learned, or extracted ontological knowledge. TOPICS OF INTEREST We invite submissions covering the full range of topics related to Semantic Web Personalization, from foundational issues of obtaining, modelling, and integrating relevant data, to the deployment and evaluation of these techniques in concrete architectures and systems. We also encourage methodological contributions covering new developments in the basic enabling technologies with a specific view to the demands of Semantic Web Personalization. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): Data/Knowledge Modeling, Integration and Management o The role of domain knowledge and ontologies in user modeling and personalization o Combining background knowledge and user context o Semantic Web Mining using the syntactic layer (XML), the vocabulary layer (e.g., RDF-Schema), or the logical layer (e.g., Description Logics/OIL) o Integration of content, structure and usage data for personalization o The role of multi-channel data in online personalization o Personalized taxonomies or ontologies (for individuals or user communities) o Model integration for personalization and recommendation systems Architectures and Systems o Semantically enhanced scalable collaborative filtering techniques o Ontology-based agents for intelligent information access and filtering o Adaptive systems for the Semantic Web o Hybrid Recommendation Systems o Multi-agent systems for personalization, including client-side or distributed architectures o Community-based and task-oriented personalization o Evaluation of Recommendation Systems Enabling Technologies for Personalization o Web usage, content, and structure mining o Text and hypertext mining for recommendation generation and personalization o Automated techniques for generation and updating of user profiles o Machine Learning techniques for information extraction and integration o Learning and acquisition of taxonomies or ontologies from Web resources o Metadata learning and Harvesting=20 o Applications of relational data mining in personalization PAPER SUBMISSION All papers must be submitted no later than March 12, 2004. All submissions must be made electronically to mobasher@cs.depaul.edu. Please use the AAAI prescribed formatting instructions available at http://www.aaai.org/Workshops. Papers should be no more than 12 pages inclusive of all references and figures. All papers must be submitted in either PDF (preferred) or postscript. It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that the submitted papers print correctly on a variety of printers. If any special fonts are used, they must be included in the submission. All papers must be original, and have not been published or submitted elsewhere. For more information, visit http://maya.cs.depaul.edu/~mobasher/swp04/ ------------------------------ From: Patrick Doherty Subject: 4th International Cognitive Robotics Workshop Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 12:25:05 +0200 First Call for Papers The 4th International Cognitive Robotics Workshop http://www.ida.liu.se/~patdo/cogrob04/ Co-Located with ECAI 2004 August 23 and 24, 2004 Valencia, Spain Workshop Description Research in robotics has traditionally emphasized low-level sensing and control tasks including sensory processing, path planning, and manipulator design and control. In contrast, research in cognitive robotics is concerned with endowing robots and software agents with higher level cognitive functions that enable them to reason, act and perceive in changing, incompletely known, and unpredictable environments. Such robots must, for example, be able to reason about goals, actions, when to perceive and what to look for, the cognitive states of other agents, time, collaborative task execution, etc. In short, cognitive robotics is concerned with integrating reasoning, perception and action with a uniform theoretical and implementation framework. Combining results from the traditional robotics discipline with those from AI and cognitive science has and will continue to be central to research in cognitive robotics. This workshop aims to bring together researchers involved in all aspects of the theory and implementation of cognitive robotics, to discuss current work and future directions. While all aspects of cognitive robotics are of interest to the workshop, we especially welcome discussions and demonstrations of implemented systems. Submission Information Potential participants are invited to submit either - a technical paper (extended abstract) - an overview on their ongoing research, - a position paper, - a statement of interest, - or a description of an implemented system that the authors are willing to demonstrate at the workshop. For the sake of uniformity, all technical papers should follow the ECAI 2004 style guide and should be no longer than 5 pages in camera ready PDF format. Author names should be included. Please refer to the ECAI submission process for details. (See workshop homepage). Others wishing to attend should submit a 1-2 page description of their work or interest in this area (including a short list of related publications). This may include specific questions and issues that they feel should be addressed. Proposals of panels on specific issues are also welcome. Authors who would like to participate in systems demonstrations (either live, simulated, or video-taped) should indicate their audio-visual and/or computer needs at the time of submission. If the quality of the submissions is sufficiently high, we may look into the possibility of publishing extended versions of selected articles in a special journal issue. All submissions must arrive by May 10, 2004. Only electronic submissions will be accepted and all papers must be in PDF format. All submissions should be sent to patdo@ida.liu.se Important Dates Submission Deadline: May 10, 2004 Notification of Acceptance: May 26, 2004 Submission of camera ready copies: June 6, 2004 For more information, visit http://www.ida.liu.se/~patdo/cogrob04/ ------------------------------ From: "IEEE/WIC/ACM WI/IAT Conference Secretariat" Subject: Learning and Self-Adapting Agents (IEEE/WIC/ACM WI-IAT'04) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:08:13 +0900 Call for Workshop Proposals: Learning and Self-Adapting Agents http://www.maebashi-it.org/WI04/workshop.php (In conjunction with the 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conference on Web Intelligence (WI'04 http://www.maebashi-it.org/WI04/) and Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'04 http://www.maebashi-it.org/IAT04/) Workshops will be held at the beginning of the conference, September 20, 2004 at King Wing Hot Spring Hotel, Beijing, China. The 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM WI/IAT Conference Secretariat wi-iat@maebashi-it.org The 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM Web Intelligence (WI'04) http://www.maebashi-it.org/WI04/ http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/WI04/ The 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'04) http://www.maebashi-it.org/IAT04/ http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/IAT04/ ------------------------------ From: Eugene Eberbach Subject: CEC 2004: Application of Cultural Algorithms in Industry and Engineering Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 05:25:17 -0500 CEC 2004 Special Session Announcement Applications of Cultural Algorithms in Industry and Engineering Robert Reynolds More information at: http://www.cs.unr.edu/~sushil/cec/#ACAIE This special session will focus on applications of Cultural Algorithms, a type of evolutionary learning based upon cultural evolution, to problems in industry and engineering. Example applications include approaches to assembly line balancing, alternative fuel vehicles, consumer response to automobile price incentives, engineering design, among others. We solicit papers addressing these and related topics. Robert Reynolds Department of Computer Science 5143 Cass Avenue 424 State Hall Wayne State University Detroit, MI 48202 Tel: 313-577-0726 Fax: 313-577-6868 ------------------------------ From: Eugene Eberbach Subject: CEC 2004: Learning by Estimating Distributions in Evolutionary Computation Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 06:12:03 -0500 CEC 2004 Special Session Announcement Learning by Estimating Distributions in Evolutionary Computation Nikolaus Hansen, Stefan Kern, Jiri Ocenasek, and Petros Koumoutsakos More information at: http://www.cs.unr.edu/~sushil/cec/#LEDEC Continuous Evolutionary Algorithms use probability distributions in their variation operators to sample new search points (offspring). Usually, no particular knowledge of a suitable choice of the parameters or even the type of the probability distribution for an optimization problem is available. For this reason, reliable and efficient strategies are needed to learn probability distributions, based on the information provided by the selection of promising offspring. The idea of introducing learning to evolutionary algorithms to enhance their efficiency is not new: In evolution strategies, this form of learning is usually referred to as 'adaptation'. In genetic algorithms, the learning is called 'estimation of distribution' or 'learning probability distributions'. For this special session, we want to bring together leading researchers and practitioners from these areas. Please send correspondence to Nikolaus Hansen Institute of Computational Science / Computational Lab, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zuerich, ETH Zentrum, HRS H3, CH-8092 Zuerich, Switzerland. Phone: +41 1 632 0638 Fax: +41 1 632 1703 ------------------------------ From: Eugene Eberbach Subject: CEC 2004: Evolutionary Scheduling Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 06:09:41 -0500 CEC 2004 Special Session Announcement Evolutionary Scheduling Dr. Edmund Burke, Dr. Kay Chen Tan, and Dr. G. Kendall More information at: http://www.cs.unr.edu/~sushil/cec/#ES The session will cover all aspects of evolutionary scheduling and related issues. We would hope to attract a balance of applied and theoretical papers from across the evolutionary computing and meta-heuristic research communities. Typical examples of such problems include rostering, machine scheduling, timetabling, vehicle routing, resource assignment, planning, etc. This special track invites submissions in all areas of evolutionary scheduling and metaheuristics. Dr. Edmund Burke Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning Research Group School of Computer Science and Information Technology University of Nottingham NOTTINGHAM NG8 2BB, UK. e-mail: ekb@cs.nott.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)115 951 4206 Fax: +44 (0)115 951 4249 WWW: http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/ekb/ Dr. Kay Chen Tan Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering National University of Singapore 4 Engineering Drive 3, Singapore 117576, Republic of Singapore Tel: (65) 6874 2127 Fax: (65) 6779 1103 http://vlab.ee.nus.edu.sg/~kctan WWW: http://vlab.ee.nus.edu.sg/~kctan Dr. G. Kendall Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning Research Group School of Computer Science and Information Technology University of Nottingham NOTTINGHAM NG8 2BB, UK. e-mail: gxk@cs.nott.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)115 951 4206 Fax: +44 (0)115 951 4249 WWW: http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gxk/ ------------------------------ From: Eugene Eberbach Subject: CEC 2004: Evolutionary Computing in the Process Industry Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 05:29:11 -0500 CEC 2004 Special Session Announcement Evolutionary Computing in the Process Industry Rajkumar Roy and Ashutosh Tiwari More information at: http://www.cs.unr.edu/~sushil/cec/#ECPI Submission deadline: February 7, 2004 There is an ever-increasing demand in the process industry to become more flexible, more responsive and to be competitive with energy efficiency. The competition is fierce; complex products are required at higher quality at the same cost si nce margins are continuously being squeezed. In order to succeed in such competitive environment, the industry seeks innovative intelligent systems to enhance its new product and process development strategies. Traditional methods often employed to solve complex optimisation problems in the process industry tend to inhibit elaborate exploration of the search space, often resulting in sub-optimal solutions. Evolutionary Computation (EC) is generating considerable interest for solving these problems. It is proving robust in delivering global optimal solutions and helps to resolve limitations encountered in traditional methods. EC harnesses the power of natural selection to turn computers into optimisation tools. Most industrial processes (e.g. in metal forming industry, chemical industry, paper industry, etc.) are large scale, high dimensional, non-linear and uncertain with highly skilled operators to control the process plants. While many issues have been addressed in recent research efforts, limitations for wider applications of these techniques to process industry still exist that restrict more realistic solutions to be achieved. Current challenges include, for example, complexity of the search space, nature of constraints, multiple objectives, and search within integrated qualitative/quantitative space. This special track invites submissions in all areas of evolutionary computation dealing with the challenges of applying EC techniques to real world problems in the process industry. Rajkumar Roy and Ashutosh Tiwari Enterprise Integration School of Industrial and Manufacturing Science (SIMS) Cranfield University, Cranfield Bedfordshire, MK43 OAL, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1234 754936 Fax: +44 (0) 1234 750852 Email: {r.roy,a.tiwari}@cranfield.ac.uk ------------------------------ From: Eugene Eberbach Subject: CEC 2004: Recent Developments in Artificial Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 05:27:03 -0500 CEC 2004 Special Session Announcement Recent Developments in Artificial Immune Systems Jonathan Timmis and Dr. Leandro N. de Castro More information at: http://www.cs.unr.edu/~sushil/cec/#AIS The mammalian immune system is a remarkably complex interacting network of cells that at a basic level, protects hosts from infections. There are many difficulties facing the immune system, such as the vast array of stimuli that can infect the host, the continual bombardment of such stimuli (there is no resting for the immune system) and the countless interactions that occur with other processes and systems within the host (such as the neural systems and endocrine or hormonal systems). The remarkable ability if the immune system to react to these stimuli (antigens) and remove the majority of them from our system has fascinated researchers over the years. More light is being shed day by day through work by immunologists, and these findings have caught the attention of computer scientists. The reason for this is that the immune system has many properties that are very desirable for use in computer systems: recognition of stimuli, learning about new stimuli, remembering past infections, communication mechanisms, robustness of the system and the distributed nature of the immune system. All of these are properties have been inspiring computer scientists for the past decade to build systems that mimic in some way these properties of the immune system, this area of research is known as Artificial Immune Systems (AIS). Within AIS, there is no one standard AIS algorithm, however, there are a number of basic flavours of AIS algorithms that draw their inspiration from certain processes within the immune system. To date there are clonal selection, immune network, bone marrow and negative selection algorithms. There are many variations on these algorithms, but there is at least some basic acceptance, for example, of what a clonal selection algorithm consists of and how it should work. These basic algorithms then form the foundation for the plethora of other algorithms that are applied in a vast array of application areas. These range from optimisation, to machine learning, to data mining, to software testing, to fault tolerance, to computer security, to virus detection and the list goes on. This session will aim highlight the latest in the developments of artificial immune systems, in terms of algorithm development, application and theoretical analysis. Papers are invited for submission on unpublished work in the following (but not restricted to) areas: * AIS algorithm developments * New paradigms in AIS such as danger theory * Theoretical studies in AIS * Applications of AIS * Modelling of immune system components and processes * Frameworks for AIS development Dr. Jonathan Timmis Computing Laboratory University of Kent Canterbury, Kent. CT2 7NF WWW: http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/~jt6/ Tel: +44 (0) 1227 823636 Dr. Leandro N. de Castro Catholic University of Santos Brazil http://www.dca.fee.unicamp.br/~lnunes ------------------------------ From: Eugene Eberbach Subject: CEC 2004: EC in the Optimisation of Semiconductor Manufacturing and Testing Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 05:29:21 -0500 CEC 2004 Special Session Announcement EC in the Optimisation of Semiconductor Manufacturing and Testing More information at: http://www.cs.unr.edu/~sushil/cec/#ECOSMT This special session invites original contributions using evolutionary computation techniques in the optimisation of semiconductor industry applications. Automated analysis for semiconductor wafer defect data has become increasingly important over the past several years as a means of quickly understanding and controlling contamination sources and process faults which impact product yield. Larger semiconductor wafer and smaller defect size have caused an exponential increase in the volume of visual and parametric defect data that must be analysed, evaluated and maintained. The ability of a manufacturer to readily access this data and to quickly extract useful process knowledge is required as market trends cycle drive the cycle time down. There is therefore the need to develop automated intelligent analysis and reduction algorithms that correlate facility, design, process, test and work-in-process data. Methods such as automatic defect classification, spatial signature analysis, statistical process control, and Data Mining are but a few of the technologies being developed and tested in the fabrication environment today as a means of adding informational content to the raw measured data. ------------------------------ From: "Baowen Xu" Subject: WCCW2004 Call for Papers: First International Workshop on Web Computing in Cyberworlds Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:04:52 +0800 WCCW2004 Call for Papers First International Workshop on Web Computing in Cyberworlds (WCCW2004) at the International Conference on Cyberworlds 2004 Tokyo, November 18-20, 2004 http://cse.seu.edu.cn/people/bwxu/wccw2004 Aims The open approach to developing Web computing in Cyberworlds has attracted an increasing attention in both academia and industry. This workshop will not only focus on architecture and models for Web computing, but also emphasize the emerging technologies in various Web computing aspects, which will be held together with the International Conference on Cyberworlds 2004 (http://cw2004.myvnc.com/). The Web Computing is an ideal model to utilize the millions of personal computers?? idle CPUs through the Web, thus providing high efficient and cheap computation. The distributed and dynamic architecture and system models have become the foundation of Web Computing. The inherent cooperation in Web computing enables a large range of computations. Aims The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners working on theory, techniques and applications, concerning analysis and/or manipulation of Web computing. The complex and large-scale Web computing requires effective methodologies and tools for the analysis, design, implementation and maintenance. Topics The workshop emphasizes on the analysis and manipulation techniques. Topics include, but not limited to: Architecture and Models - Web Computing Model and Framework - Web Computing Software Environment - Heterogeneity and Portability in Web Computing - Semantics and Ontology Engineering Methods and Tools - Web Computing and Distributed Technologies - Security and Accessibility in Web Computing - Proxy and Cache Techniques - Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Rough Sets, and Evolutionary Computation Applications - Applications of Web Computing - Web Information Filtering and Retrieval - Clustering-Based Recommended Systems - Web-Based Applications and Systems Quality Assurance - Cooperation and Integration - Testing and evolution - Maintenances of Web Computing Systems Submission Original papers on new results in the rapidly emerging area ?C web computing in Cyberworlds are welcome. Papers should indicate the innovative aspects of the results and contribution to the field. Papers submitted For publication in a journal or another conference will not be considered. All submitted papers will be evaluated according to its originality, significance, correctness, presentation and relevance. Papers must be submitted electronically in Postscript or PDF format via E-mail to professor Baowen Xu (bwxu@seu.edu.cn). The total number of the accepted papers will be no more than 20. Papers should conform to the IEEE paper guidelines: http://www.computer.org/cspress/instruct.htm Accepted papers will published in the proceedings of Cyberworlds 2004 and will be published by IEEE Computer Society Press. Important Dates Paper submissions due: 1st May 2004 ------------------------------ From: Jon Smid Subject: PSMP3 Workshop: Knowledge Representation and Acquisition for Knowledge Presentation, Sharing, Mining and Protection Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 02:12:53 -0500 (EST) C A L L F O R P A P E R S The P S M P 3 Workshop featuring KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION and ACQUISITION for Knowledge Presentation, Sharing, Mining and Protection in CYBER COMMUNITIES. http://jewel.morgan.edu/~jsmid/psmp3/ June 21 - 24, 2004 Monte Carlo Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA The PSMP3 workshop is a continuation of the first PSMP workshop, Las Vegas, June 2003 and of the second PSMP2 workshop, Innsbruck, Austria, February 2004. The PSMP 3 workshop is organized within The 2004 International Multiconference in Computer Science and Computer Engineering. PSMP 3 WORKSHOP TOPICS The primary focus of the PSMP3 workshop is knowledge representation and knowledge acquisition. The following topics are suggested as particular examples of interest to the workshop. Submissions are not limited to these topics. o Ontologies, knowledge representations, e.g. semantic nets, property-based representation, semantic types. o Semantics theories o Knowledge acquisition via semantic mappings o Syntax and semantics applications o Wordnet, Semantic Web approaches o Applications: o Tutorial and dialog systems in cyber communities o Inference in dialog and language acquisition systems, current status of dialog systems and their limitations o Interaction in networks o Sub-natural language interface problems o Dialogs in peer-to-peer networks o Dialogs for robot communities o Dialogs in agent communities o Machine versus human readable WWW o Abstract models of the above topics PROCEEDINGS The PSMP 3 workshop papers will be published in the proceedings of The 2004 International Multiconference in Computer Science and Computer Engineering. The conference proceedings will be published by CSREA Press (ISBN) in hardcopy. It will be a multivolume set. The proceedings will be available at the conference. Some accepted papers will also be considered for journal publication (soon after the conference). All conference proceedings published by CSREA Press are considered for inclusion in major database indexes that are designed to provide easy access to the current literature of the sciences (database examples: ISI Thomson Scientific, IEE INSPEC, DBLP, ...). SUBMISSION OF CONTRIBUTIONS Please send proposals to J.Smid at jsmid@jewel.morgan.edu. Prospective authors are invited to submit via email draft papers (about 5 pages - single space, font size of 10 to 12) by the due date. The length of the Camera-Ready papers (if accepted) will be limited to 7 (IEEE style) pages. Papers must not have been previously published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. The first page of the draft paper should include: Title of the paper, Name, Affiliation, postal address, E-mail address, telephone number, and fax number for each author. The first page should also include the name of the author who will be presenting the paper and a maximum of 5 keywords. IMPORTANT DATES: February 16, 2004: Draft papers due March 22, 2004: Notification of acceptance April 21, 2004: Camera-Ready papers & Prereg. due June 21-24, 2004: The PSMP3 Workshop, The 2004 MultiConference Please refer to http://jewel.morgan.edu/~jsmid/psmp3/ for further details. ------------------------------ From: cferri@dsic.upv.es Subject: First Workshop ROC Analysis in AI Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:14:01 +0100 Call for Papers First Workshop on ROC Analysis in AI, ROCAI2004 http://www.dsic.upv.es/~flip/ROCAI2004/ Valencia, Spain, 22-23 August, 2004 Submission Deadline: 15 April, 2004. to be held within ECAI2004, http://www.dsic.upv.es/ecai2004/ the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence Overview Receiver Operating Characteristic Analysis (ROC Analysis) is related in a direct and natural way to cost/benefit analysis of diagnostic decision making. Widely used in medicine for many decades, it has been introduced relatively recently in some areas of artificial intelligence: machine learning, multiagent systems, intelligent decision support and expert systems. In this context, ROC analysis provides tools to select possibly optimal models and to discard suboptimal ones independently from (and prior to specifying) the cost context or the class distribution. Furthermore, the Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) has been shown to be a better evaluation measure than accuracy in contexts with variable misclassification costs and/or imbalanced datasets. AUC is also the standard measure when using classifiers to rank examples, and, hence, is used in applications where ranking is crucial, such as campaign design, model combination, collaboration strategies, and co-learning. Nevertheless, there are many open questions and some limitations that hamper a broader use and applicability of ROC analysis. Its connections with other evaluation measures is not yet clarified completely, its incorporation in decision support and expert systems technology just envisaged, its use for improving the decisions of (communities of) intelligent agents unexplored, and its use in data mining still below its full potential. Among the limitations of ROC analysis, an important one, despite some recent progress, is its possible but difficult extension for more than two classes. One of the main goals of the workshop is to foster the cross-fertilisation of ideas and applications with related areas in artificial intelligence. Consequently, the presentations and discussions will be open to a broad list of topics (not exhaustive): * Adaptation of classical learning methods for improving AUC instead of accuracy. * Agent selection/ranking in multiagent systems. * Alternative ROC representations. * Alternatives to AUC measures (such as AUC*). * Analysis of the performance of learners or decision systems based on AUC. * Applications of ROC Analysis in Expert Systems. * Classifier Evaluation. * Co-learning (collaborative learning) and ROC Analysis. * Consensus and Collaborative/Distributed Decision Making. * Constraint Satisfaction Methods for ROC Analysis. * Cost-sensitive Learning. * Decision Networks and Probabilistic Reasoning with ROC Analysis. * Expert Systems, Knowledge Bases and ROC Analysis. * Inductive Logic Programming and ROC Analysis. * Multi-class ROC on top of binary ROC. * Oversampling and ROC analysis. * Precision & Recall measures in Information Retrieval. * Ranking Actions. Applications in Planning and Robotics with variable contexts. * Reinforcement Learning and ROC analysis. * ROC Analysis for Model Building and Modification. * ROC Analysis for Descriptive Data Mining (association rules, subgroup discovery). * Soft classifiers and Probability Estimators. * Software Packages and Efficient Implementations (Convex Hull). * Use of ROC analysis and measures as fitness and selection criteria in evolutionary techniques. * Working with Imbalanced datasets. Details of the workshop This is a one-day workshop, with sessions consisting of short paper presentations, devoting an important share of time to informal discussion and interaction between the participants. The workshop will be closed with an open discussion about more promising open problems and research areas of ROC analysis, continuation of the workshop, future related events, etc. Papers will be selected by the program committee according to the quality of the submission and its relevance to the workshop topics. All accepted papers will be gathered in printed form and distributed to registered attendees as workshop notes. The publication of a selected set of papers for a special volume or a journal issue is considered, but this will depend on the success and overall results of the workshop. Important dates * Call for papers: 20 January 2004 * Deadline for the workshop papers: 15 April 2004 * Notification of acceptance: 15 May 2004 * Camera Ready copies: 1 June 2004 * Workshop dates: 22 or 23 August 2004 (soon to be determined, depending on the ECAI organising committee) Submission Guidelines Potential participants are invited to submit short papers (no longer than 10 pages), which may be in the form of a technical paper, a position paper (e.g. highlighting open problems or new applications of ROC analysis), an overview of their research or a software demonstration. Authors should submit their papers electronically (PDF or PS format) to the contact person (jorallo@dsic.upv.es). It is recommended to submit papers using the final camera-ready ECAI 2004 conference paper style (http://www.dsic.upv.es/ecai2004/cfp/style/style.html) including author names. Those wishing to attend the meeting without submitting a paper should send a short statement of interest to the contact person describing their work or interest in the area. For more information, visit http://www.dsic.upv.es/~flip/ROCAI2004/ ------------------------------ From: "Ina Lauth" Subject: KDNet Symposium on Knowledge-Based Services for the Public Sector Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 18:59:52 +0100 Call for Papers KDNet Symposium on Knowledge-Based Services for the Public Sector Bonn, Germany, June 3-4, 2004 http://symposium.kdnet.org/ KDNet, the European Knowledge Discovery Network of Excellence, is organizing a symposium to present Knowledge Discovery (KD) research projects and applications aimed at information management in the public sector. The symposium is structured in a number of workshops concerning different aspects of KD in the public sector. Currently, three workshops and an exposition for the demos are scheduled. Workshops are: 1. KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL DOMAIN 2. MINING OFFICIAL DATA 3. KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEMS AND SERVICES FOR HEALTH CARE The symposium will maintain a balance between theoretical issues and descriptions of case studies to promote synergy between theory and practice. Therefore, the target group is that of researchers and applicants of KD tools from the academia, research institutions, government organisations and industry. The meeting will allow participants to learn about the many different applications of KD in the public sector. Paper submission Research work presenting theoretical results, basic and applied research, perspective solutions and practical developments are welcome, provided they address the topic of one of the workshops. For more information on workshop topics please refer to the home page of workshops available at http://symposium.kdnet.org/ Papers should be original and not previously published elsewhere. Position papers (4 page abstracts) of current projects including new solution ideas and visions statements are also welcome. Submissions must refer to one of the three workshops and should comply submission procedures indicated for each workshop. All submissions will be reviewed by the respective program committees. Extended/revised versions of selected papers will be considered for inclusion in an edited book Important dates - Submission deadline: Monday March 15, 2004 - Notification of acceptance: Thursday April 15, 2004 - Early registration: Saturday May 1, 2004 - Camera-ready copies due: Wednesday May 5, 2004 - Workshops: Monday June 3 through Tuesday June 4, 2004 Grants A number of grants will be available in order to help students to take part in the symposium. Priority will be given to authors of accepted papers. Proof of student status will be required. For more information, visit http://symposium.kdnet.org/ ------------------------------ From: Thomas Zeugmann Subject: Algorithmic Learning Theory 2004; Discovery Science 2004 Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 00:02:21 +0100 (MET) Call for Papers: ALT 2004 The 15th International Conference on Algorithmic Learning Theory http://www.tcs.uni-luebeck.de/pages/thomas/ALT04/alt04.jhtml University of Padova, Padova, Italy, October 2-5, 2004 and Call for Papers: DS 2004 The 7th International Conference on Discovery Science http://www.slab.dnj.ynu.ac.jp/DS04/ University of Padova, Padova, Italy, October 2-5, 2004 The 15th International Conference on Algorithmic Learning Theory (ALT 2004) and the 7th International Conference on Discovery Science will be held at the University of Padova, Padova, Italy, October 2-5, 2004 are part of the Padova Dialogues 2004 http://thepadovadialogues.dei.unipd.it/ The SUBMISSION DEADLINE for all conferences is MAY 22, 2004. For any further information, please visit the web-sites given above. ------------------------------ From: "Roy, Rajkumar" Subject: Evolutionary Computation in Industry (ECI-2004) track at GECCO-2004 Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 18:15:36 -0000 EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION IN INDUSTRY (ECI-2004) part of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) Seattle, Washington USA June 26-30, 2004 (Saturday - Wednesday) http://www.isgec.org/gecco-2004/ For the third year, GECCO in 2004 will have a series of sessions entitled "Evolutionary Computation in Industry". The Evolutionary Computation in Industry sessions are tutorial-style and presenters are invited, but all GECCO participants are invited to attend. The ECI sessions will be scheduled later, but are expected to be on June 28-30 (Monday - Wednesday) during the main part of GECCO conference. Each session focuses on a different topic related to applications of evolutionary algorithms. The presentations are designed for attendees such as managers, technology scouts, and industrial practitioners, who are seeking less technical presentations on the ways that evolutionary applications can make a difference. Presenters in these sessions will be experts in applications and in describing the way that good evolutionary computation projects are planned and executed. Sample topics in the sessions include project case histories, descriptions of successful projects, and project descriptions organized around topics such as chemical applications, governmental applications, and applications in the area of industrial design. The Evolutionary Computation in Industry sessions are organized this year by --- David Davis (NuTech Solutions) [david.davis@nutechsolutions.com] --- Rajkumar Roy (Cranfield University) [r.roy@cranfield.ac.uk] --- Mark Jakiela (Washington University in St. Louis) [mjj@wustl.edu] ------------------------------ From: Maarten Subject: Late Breaking Papers at GECCO 2004 Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 10:40:04 +0100            CALL FOR GECCO-2004 LATE-BREAKING PAPERS           Late-Breaking Paper Deadline: May 21, 2004   Genetic and Evolutionary Computation COnference (GECCO-2004)              June 26-30, 2004 (Saturday-Wednesday)                        Red Lion Hotel                   Seattle, Washington, USA                       A recombination of the     13th International Conference on Genetic Algorithms (ICGA) and           the 9th Genetic Programming Conference (GP)                  http://www.isgec.org/gecco-2004/ Papers describing late-breaking developments in the field of genetic and evolutionary computation are being solicited for presentation at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation 2004 Conference (GECCO-2004) to be held on June 26-30 (Saturday-Wednesday), 2004 at the Red Lion hotel in Seattle, Washington USA, and inclusion in a special CD-ROM to be distributed to all attendees of the conference. This special CD-ROM is distinct from the conference proceedings. Late-breaking papers will be briefly examined for relevance and minimum standards of acceptability, but will not be peer reviewed in detail. Paper acceptance decisions will be made as soon as possible after receipt of the submission, so late-breaking papers may be submitted any time between now and the May 21, 2004 deadline. Note that all papers included in the Late Breaking Papers CD-ROM must also be presented at GECCO-2004. At least one author of each Late Breaking Paper must register for GECCO-2004, or the paper will not appear in the Late Breaking Papers CD-ROM. We currently plan that late-breaking papers will be presented orally in special sessions held during GECCO-2004. Authors will individually retain copyright (and all other rights) to their late-breaking papers and should feel free to submit them (either before or after the above deadline) for publication by other conferences or journals. SUBMISSION PROCEDURE Late Breaking Papers must be RECEIVED in electronic (PDF) camera-ready format no later than 21 May 2004. Late-breaking papers must be submitted in camera-ready form in accordance with the camera-ready GECCO- 2004 format specifications that can be found at the GECCO-2004 web site. Late-breaking papers should be no more than TWELVE (12) pages in length. To submit please: All 4 of the following items must be submitted by May 21, 2004.  Because the late-breaking papers are published on a very tight time schedule, please be very attentive in carrying out each of the following 4 steps correctly no later than May 21, 2004: (1) Send a PDF electronic copy of your paper as an email attachment to the LBP chair, Maarten Keijzer (email: mkeijzer@cs.vu.nl). Late-breaking papers must be submitted in camera-ready form in accordance with the camera-ready GECCO-2004 format specifications that can be found at the GECCO-2004 web site. Late-breaking papers should be no more than 12 pages in length. Please be very careful about formatting your paper (and testing it, by printing it out) because of the very tight time schedule. No paper-based submissions can be accepted. (2) FAX a SIGNED "permission to publish" form (that can be downloaded from the GECCO-2004 web site) to the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (FAX: +1-650-321-4457). No paper-based submissions can be accepted. (3) Send a plain text email to both gecco04abs@aaai.org and mkeijzer@cs.vu.nl including the following information: --- First Name, Last Name, and e-mail for all the authors of the paper --- Paper title --- Abstract --- Name of the proposed presenter of the paper (4) At least one presenter of the paper must have paid the registration fee and be registered for GECCO-2004 by May 21, 2004. Registration may be accomplished in several ways (including FAX and credit card). Since there will be no opportunity for revisions, authors should be especially careful that their original submission is fully compliant with all requirements above. PRODUCING A PDF VERSION OF YOUR MANUSCRIPT PDF documents can be produced either by using commercial software available from Adobe or by using free conversion tools for Windows or the ps2pdf and pdflatex utilities under Unix/Linux (with links at the GECCO-2004 web site).  In addition, recent versions of MS Word may be able to save directly in PDF format. Please, preview your PDF file with acrobat reader to check that all the fonts and figures are properly reproduced before submitting the manuscript. For more information, visit http://www.isgec.org/gecco-2004/ ------------------------------ From: Dave Andre Subject: ICML competition and workshop on Physiological Data Modeling Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 14:34:33 -0500 ICML 2004 workshop The Physiological Data Modeling Contest (PDMC) A Machine Learning Challenge July 8th, 2004 Banff, Alberta, Canada http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/sherstov/pdmc Physiological data offers many challenges to the machine learning community including dealing with large amounts of data, sequential data, issues of sensor fusion, and a rich domain complete with noise, hidden variables, and significant effects of context. The Physiological Data Modeling Contest (PDMC) will challenge participants to exhibit machine learning algorithms for classification and regression on data taken using BodyMedia (www.bodymedia.com) wearable body monitors. These devices collect and store continuous data from multiple sensors packaged in an unobtrusive armband. To enable this contest, BodyMedia is providing a rich dataset comprising several months of data from more than two dozen subjects. Features include raw data such as skin temperature, heat flux, galvanic skin response, and vital statistics of the user. The tasks include detecting classes of activity being engaged in by the user (e.g. walking, sleeping, watching TV, etc.) based on the values of these features. The training data is available now; the test data will be released approximately four weeks before the workshop; and the competitors will submit entries consisting of predictions for this test data shortly before ICML 2004. At the workshop, the performance of each entrant will be announced and the various techniques discussed and analyzed in detail. A small prize will be awarded to the winning competitors. Entrants will be invited to contribute papers describing their approaches to a special issue of a technical journal or magazine. The intended audience is machine learning researchers and professors currently teaching machine learning classes. Complete details are available on the contest website: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/sherstov/pdmc Important dates (tentative) NOW: Send your expression of interest to the organizers 2 April: Notice of intent to participate due 1 June : Test data set released and announced 18 June : Entry submission deadline 8 July : Workshop/results ------------------------------ From: icdm@wi-lab.com Subject: Call for Workshop Proposals (IEEE ICDM'04) Date: 3 Feb 2004 16:54:31 +0900 Call for Workshop Proposals The 2004 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM '04) Sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Brighton, UK November 1-4, 2004 http://icdm04.cs.uni-dortmund.de The ICDM '04 organizing committee invites proposals for workshops to be held in conjunction with the conference. The purpose of these workshops is to provide participants with an informal setting for discussing innovative work in progress on important new technical directions.Workshops will be held on November 1, immediately preceding the conference on November 2-4. Researchers and practitioners from all areas of the data mining community are invited to submit proposals for review. The organizers of approved workshops are expected to define the workshop's focus, gather and review submissions, and decide upon final program content.Although the format of the workshop also is to be determined by the organizers, substantial time should be allotted for discussion. Two sucessful workshop formats that worked in the past (somehow complementary) are: (1) a focused, technical area with a large enough community to sustain it (e.g. "Techniques and representations for text clustering"), or a cross-field topic attractive to reserachers from several sub-communities (e.g. "Privacy and Security of Genetic and Bioinformatics Data"). The schedule for submission and preparation of workshop papers also will be left to the discretion of the workshop organizers. Because ICDM will handle publication of the informal workshop proceedings, we ask that (1) workshop papers be prepared in the same format as ICDM conference papers (Latex style file available here), (2) workshop papers adhere to a 10 page limit (2 pages longer than the conference limit), and (3) workshop organizers prepare the camera-ready proceedings by October 15. IMPORTANT DATES May 1 Deadline for proposals May 10 Notification of acceptance September 15 CR papers for proceedings due November 1 Workshops at ICDM '04 Submission Procedure Workshop proposals should be submitted electronically (in Postscript, PDF or MS Word) to the ICDM '04 Workshops Chair, Stan Matwin. ADDRESS FOR SUBMISSION Stan Matwin, ICDM'04 Workshops Chair University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada, K1N6N5 School of Information Technology and Engineering Email: stan@site.uottawa.ca URL: http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~stan Tele: +1 613 562 5800 6679 Fax:: +1 613 562 5664 How to Propose a Workshop Proposals for workshops should be at most five pages in length (fewer if possible) and should contain: * A brief description of the specific technical issues that the workshop will address * The reasons why the workshop is of interest at this time. * The names, postal address, phone and fax numbers and email addresses of the Workshop Organizing Committee. This committee should consist of at least three experts in the field, not all at the same institution. * The name of one member of the Workshop Organizing Committee who is designated the contact person. * A list of previously-organized related workshops by any of the Workshop Organizing Committee. Previous experience organizing workshops is not a requirement. * A list of potential attendees. * A draft workshop Call for Papers. * A list of audio-visual or technical requirements and any special room requirements. Potential workshop proposers may wish to look at web pages from ICDM'01 Workshops and ICDM'02 Workshops. ------------------------------ From: Subject: Computational Creativity workshop - ECCBR 04 Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 15:45:01 +0100 FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS - Computational Creativity Workshop 7TH EUROPEAN CONFERENCE IN CASE-BASED REASONING (ECCBR’04) Madrid, Spain, 30 of August till 2 of September, 2004 The Program Committee of the Computational Creativity workshop CC04 invites submissions of technical and position papers for the workshop. The workshop will be held at Madrid, Spain, as part of the 7TH European Conference in Case-Based Reasoning (ECCBR’04). The publication of the proceedings of the Workshop is being negotiated with a publisher. Workshop Objectives This workshop will bring together researchers from AI, Cognitive Science and other related areas such as Psychology, Philosophy and Arts working on Computational Creativity, providing the opportunity to promote presentation and discussion of ongoing work in the area. The workshop should encourage cross-fertilization between the various approaches, including the study of cognitive and computational models for Creativity, and the application of current AI techniques to the development of Creative Systems. The workshop will provide a forum for identifying trends and opportunities for research on creativity and promising practices concerning the development of creative systems. Topics Original contributions are solicited in all areas related to Creative Systems, including but not limited to: - Computational models of creativity - Cognitive Science models of creativity - Machine Creativity - Evaluation of Creativity - Metaphor - Conceptual Combination and Conceptual Integration - Evolutionary art - Emotion modelling - Games and Creativity Important Dates May 7, 2004 Submission deadline June 7, 2004 Notice of Acceptance July 9, 2004 Deadline for final camera-ready copies Workshop Format The workshop will comprise invited talk, presentation and discussion sessions. An invited talk by a well known researcher in the field is expected to occur during the first session. The remaining sessions will consist of paper presentations followed by a discussion panel. Time will be assigned for each paper presentation, including some time for discussion. At the end of each day, a slot will be scheduled for a final discussion. Submission Requirements for Contributions Two categories of submissions are welcome: full papers and short papers. Full papers must be no longer than 8 pages in length, and are expected to address foundational issues and research proposals and reports, or to describe in detail current research on creative systems development and modelling. Short papers must be no longer than 4 pages and are expected to describe ongoing work. All papers MUST be submitted in Springer LNCS format, which is the format required for the final camera ready copy. Authors instructions along with LaTeX and Word macro files are available on the web at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. All Submissions will be made by electronic means, in postscript or PDF format. Fax, e-mail or snail mail submissions will not be accepted. Detailed instructions and a submission form will be available at the workshop web site. Note: Participants are expected to register for the main ECCBR conference in addition to the workshop. Reviewing Process Submissions will be judged on significance, originality, quality and clarity. Each paper will be cross-reviewed by at least two referees. Contributions will be subject to anonymous, blind peer review: reviewers will not be aware of the identities of the authors. This requires that authors exercise some care not to identify themselves in their contributions. Authors will receive feedback in the form of reviewers' comments. Proceedings Accepted contributions will be distributed by the organisation as workshop notes. Publication of the Proceedings of the Workshop is being negotiated with a publisher. Further details will be made available at the website of the workshop as soon as possible. Workshop Web Site Enquiries Address Email: creative-systems@dei.uc.pt ------------------------------ From: Subject: Net.ObjectDays 2004 Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 20:41:47 +0100 (CET) First Call for Papers Net.ObjectDays 2004 5th Annual International Conference on Object-Oriented and Internet-based Technologies, Concepts, and Applications for a Networked World Erfurt, Germany, September 27-30, 2004 Conference Web Site: www.netobjectdays.org Important Dates Submission of Papers: April 23, 2004 Notification: May 28, 2004 Final Version Due: June 25, 2004 Conference: September 27-30, 2004 Net.ObjectDays is one of the major international conferences on object-oriented and internet-based technologies, concepts, and applications. Based on a strong research and innovation focus, Net.ObjectDays has a tradition in bringing together leading researchers from academia and industry on the one hand and system architects, developers, and users from industry and administration on the other hand. Constantly evolving and increasingly powerful information and communication technologies have substantially changed the nature of global relationships, sources of competitive advantage, and opportunities for economic and social development. The Internet, and associated communication technologies have turned the globe into an interconnected network of individuals, firms, organizations, and governments, communicating and interacting with each other through a variety of channels. These developments pose increasingly complex challenges to the computer science community in general and the software community in particular. One of the most important aspects is characterized by buzzwords like on-demand computing or adaptable computing. The basic idea is to assemble, configure and compose software at runtime to provide individual solutions to solve one-of-a-kind issues in an adequate, reliable and cost-effective way. Given this background, the focus of Net.ObjectDays 2004 is on methods, concepts, languages, and tools for efficient, reliable and adaptive composition of software artefacts to provide value-added services, i.e., to provide the scientific and technological basis for making on-demand computing a reality. Recent developments in different areas contribute to this technological basis, for instance web services, service composition and grid computing, but also in software generation, domain engineering and related approaches. Along this line, the topics of the conference include but are not limited to: - Software Methodologies for service composition - Semantic Web Services - Ontological Engineering - Grid Services infrastructure - Functional and non-functional properties - Service Registry design - Standardization issues - Framework technologies and platform developments - Software Reusability - Domain Engineering and Software Product Lines - Object-oriented technologies and concepts - Architecture-centric development - Component-based approaches - Agile Processes and Agile Modeling - Generic Programming - Model Driven Architecture - Software Patterns and Frameworks - Software Quality and Testing - Aspect-Oriented Software Development - Generative Programming - Component Market Places - Middleware, especially EJB, CORBA, Web Services, .NET, Jini We invite submissions in the following categories: - Research papers - Case studies from industry Electronic submissions are strongly encouraged; please upload a self-contained PostScript file or PDF file; details will be announced shortly. Papers must be original contributions that have not been published previously, nor already submitted to other conferences in parallel with this conference. The length of the paper cannot exceed 16 pages, and the paper should be in such a form that it can be immediately included in the proceedings without major revision. The layout has to match the formatting instructions of Springer LNCS that can be found at www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. Papers that do not match these formatting instructions will not be considered. Papers must be in English. Submissions received too late and submissions sent by fax will not be considered. The title page must contain a short abstract and a classification of the topics covered, preferably based on the topics above. Please also specify the paper category. The paper must clearly state the problem being addressed, the goal of the work, the results achieved, and the relation to other work. It must be self contained. For more information, visit www.netobjectdays.org ------------------------------ From: "ITS" Subject: ITS 2004 Call for Workshop Proposals Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 17:53:08 -0500 ITS 2004 Call for Workshop Proposals and Tutorial Proposals The ITS 2004 Workshops and Tutorials Chairs invite proposals for workshops and tutorials to be held 30-31 August 2004 in conjunction with the 7th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems in Maceió, Alagoas, Brasil (see ). Submit a workshop or tutorial proposal in Word or HTML in the form of an announcement ready to post on the ITS2004 website, including: * Title of workshop or tutorial * Preferred duration (half or full day) * Information about organizer(s): name, title, affiliation, address, phone, email * Objectives to be achieved * Scope of topics to be addressed * Target audience * Format and schedule (allow ample time for discussion, especially in workshops!) * Audiovisual resources requested * Anything else attendees should know Workshop proposals should also include: * Organizing/review committee Tutorial proposals should also include: * Background knowledge expected from the participants * An abstract of approximately 200 words * Table of contents (one page) * Relevant qualifications of instructor(s). We encourage co-teaching by multiple instructors with different perspectives. Besides the announcement, also provide: * Evidence of interest, such as a list of people who have said they are likely to participate or to send students. IMPORTANT DATES (updates at ) * PROPOSALS DUE: March 10 * Organizers notified: March 24 * Announcements posted: March 26 * Workshop papers due: May 5 * Workshop authors notified: May 31 * Camera-ready papers due: June 30 * Workshop proceedings due: July 15 * Tutorial handouts due: July 30 (Local ITS2004 conference organizers will print workshop proceedings and tutorial handouts.) Please email your proposals (or questions) to both of us. Include "ITS 2004 Proposal" in the Subject: line. We look forward to them! The ITS 2004 Workshops and Tutorials Chairs: Jack Mostow Carnegie Mellon University, USA mostow@cs.cmu.edu Patricia Tedesco Federal University of Pernambuco, Brasil pcart@cin.ufpe.br ------------------------------ From: Vitorino RAMOS Subject: Swarm Intelligence and Patterns (SIP'04) Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 16:06:55 +0000 SWARM INTELLIGENCE AND PATTERNS (SIP'04) - Call for Papers Web site: http://alfa.ist.utl.pt/~cvrm/staff/vramos/SIP.html Int. Workshop Session at ISDA'04 - 4th International Conference on Intelligent Systems, Design and Applications. Conference dates: August 26-28, 2004. Location: Budapest,Hungary. IMPORTANT DATES: Paper submission Due (full paper) : April 1, 2004 Notification of acceptance: May 10, 2004 Camera ready papers and authors' registration : June 10, 2004 Conference - August 26-28, 2004. Budapest, Hungary. SCOPE AND CALL FOR PAPERS: Self-organizing intelligent complex systems typically are comprised of a large number of frequently similar components or events. Through their process, a pattern at the global-level of a system emerges solely from numerous interactions among the lower-level components of the system. Moreover, the rules specifying interactions among the system's components are executed using only local information, without reference to the global pattern, which, as in many real-world problems is not easily accessible or possible to be found. Stigmergy, a kind of indirect communication and learning by the environment found in social insects is a well know example of self-organization, providing not only vital clues in order to understand how the components can interact to produce a complex pattern and engineer applications, as can pinpoint simple biological non-linear rules and means to achieve an improved design of artificial intelligent systems. SWARM INTELLIGENCE is precisely a relatively novel discipline devoted to the study of self-organizing collective processes in Nature and Human artefacts as well as on their applications. An example of particularly successful research direction in swarm intelligence is ant colony optimization (ACO), which focuses on discrete optimization problems, and has been applied successfully to a large number of hard discrete optimization problems including the travelling salesman, the quadratic assignment, scheduling, vehicle routing, etc., as well as to routing in telecommunication networks. However, apart from the remarkable successful applications in optimization as well as on their critical features as a bio-inspired computational paradigm, a small number of works have still been devoted to Data Classification and Retrieval Systems, Clustering, Pattern Recognition, Distributed Data-Mining, Web Mining and GRIDS, Collaborative Filtering, Image Analysis and Signal Processing, Pattern Formation, Perception, Memory and Generalization. At the present section we seek to explore the applicability of these bio-inspired approaches to the development of self-organizing, evolving, adaptive and autonomous information technologies, which will meet the requirements of next-generation information systems, such as diversity, scalability, robustness, and resilience. TOPICS OF INTEREST: Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, applications and theory dealing with any aspect of Swarm Intelligence, Pattern Recognition, Data and Image Processing, as: - Intelligent Systems Design. - Advanced Signal and Image processing algorithms. - Pattern Recognition and Emergent Behaviour. - Data Categorization, Visualization. Data and Knowledge Extraction / Representation. - Feature Extraction and Selection. Unsupervised Learning. - Information Systems. - Collective Intelligence and Search. Exploring versus Exploiting. - Artificial Habitats and Information. - Exploratory Data Analysis. Data-Mining. - Cognition, Interactivity, Signals and Communication. - Bottom-up Strategies and Non-Hierarchical Systems. - Adpative Systems and Self-Configuration. - Mapping Concepts, Cognitive Maps and Self-Organizing Maps. - Complex Adaptive Systems. - Stigmergy, Self-Organization, Metamorphosis, Emergence and Co-Evolution. - Artificial Life as well as other Animal Societies bio-inspired algorithms. - Artificial Societies and Web-based Communities. - Wireless Communication, Cellular Systems, Indirect Communication through artefacts. - Social Networks and New Media. - Artificial Immune Systems and Self-Organization. - Classification, Sorting, Data Retrieval, Clustering. - Web Mining, Semantic Web, Collaborative Mining, GRIDS, Network security. - Auto-Catalysis, Positive and Negative Feedbacks, Cybernetics. - Swarm and Cooperative Robotics. - Distributed algorithms, self-regulation, self-repair and self-maintenance ontologies. - Biomedical, multimedia and e-commerce applications. - Collective on-line Games. iDesign, Active aLif(v)e Art and e-Artefacts. - Generative and Computational Art. - Hybridization with other methods (e.g. Evolutionary Computation and Neural Networks). PAPER SUBMISSION: All accepted papers should follow IEEE format (check ISDA Call for Papers). Submitted papers have to be original, 6 pages long, containing new and original results. Author's guidelines and format instructions can be downloaded from the following links: http://alfa.ist.utl.pt/~cvrm/staff/vramos/SIP.html and http://www.cs.okstate.edu/~isda04/submission.html . Please send the full paper as an email attachment to: Vitorino Ramos vitorino.ramos@alfa.ist.utl.pt with a cc to ajith.abraham@ieee.org ------------------------------ From: "Baowen Xu" Subject: WEBSA2004: 2nd Int'l Workshop on Web Based Systems and Applications (WEBSA2004) Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2004 21:24:47 +0800 Second International Workshop on Web Based Systems and Applications (WEBSA2004) http://cse.seu.edu.cn/people/bwxu/websa2004 in conjunction with COMPSAC 2004 September 28-30, 2004, Hong Kong http://rachel.utdallas.edu/compsac Motivation The open approaches to develop web-based systems and applications have attracted an increasing attention in both academia and industry. In order to ensure the quality of web-based systems and applications, this workshop will not only focus on models and architectures for web-based systems, but also emphasize the emerging technology in analyzing and testing web-based applications, which will be held together with COMPSAC 2004 (http://rachel.utdallas.edu/compsac/ ). The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners working on theories, techniques and applications, concerning analysis and/or testing of web-based systems. The complex and large-scale web-based systems require effective methodologies and tools for their analysis, testing, maintenance and evolution. Scope of the Workshop The workshop emphasizes on the analysis and testing techniques concerned with the quality of the web-based systems and applications. The program will consist of invited papers, contributed papers and possible working sessions. Topics include, but not limited to: Architecture and Models - Web Application Models - Adaptive Web systems - Semantic Web and Ontology Engineering - OO Technology and Component-based Web Engineering Methods and Tools - Security and Accessibility in Web Applications - Proxy, Search and Cache Techniques - Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Rough Sets, and Evolutionary Computation - Lightweight and Web-based Tools Quality Assurance - Cooperation and Integration - Web-Based System Testing and Evolution - Measurements for Web-Based Software Development Original papers on new results in the rapidly emerging area -- web-based systems and their applications especially in analyzing and testing technology are preferred. Papers should indicate the innovative aspects of the results and the contribution to the fields. Papers submitted for publication in a journal or another conference will not be considered. Important Dates Paper submissions due: March 15, 2004 Notification of acceptance: May 20, 2004 Camera-ready Due: June 30, 2004 Submission All contributed papers will be reviewed following the same schedule and criteria as for the COMPSAC 2004 submissions. The workshop will be open to all COMPSAC attendees interested in these topics. Papers must be submitted electronically at http://rachel.utdallas.edu/compsac/submit.html. Please read and follow the instructions listed on that page. The format of submitted papers must follow the IEEE conference proceedings guidelines which are available at http://computer.org/author/psguide.htm. Accepted papers will be included in a separate proceedings. Each paper is expected to be no more than four pages. One of the authors of each accepted paper must present the paper at the workshop and have regular registration uniquely identified with the paper, which will cover the following: the admission to all the technical sessions and a copy of the proceedings of COMPSAC 2004 and its workshops, the welcome reception and conference banquet. For updated information, please refer to http://rachel.utdallas.edu/compsac or contact Professor Baowen Xu ( bwxu@seu.edu.cn ). ------------------------------ From: Yaneer Bar-Yam Subject: ICCS Deadline Extension for Abstract Submission Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 09:48:39 -0500 Preliminary Program and Abstract Submission Deadline Extension for the International Conference on Complex Systems with special sessions on Engineering Complex Systems Because of a delay in the program committee meeting the ICCS abstract submission deadline has been extended to February 15. After this date, abstracts will be accepted only if space is available in specific sessions. The early registration deadline has been extended to March 1. Registering to attend the conference without giving a presentation is also still possible. Students and postdocs should submit papers about recent advances in their research. Generally, they will be given opportunities to give short talks or, if they prefer, poster presentations. We expect to have funds to assist students and postdocs in attending the conference. Preliminary conference program and further details available on the conference web page at: http://www.necsi.net/events/iccs/iccscover.html ------------------------------ From: Stefano Basagni Subject: MobiQuitous 04: Extended paper submission deadline Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 18:10:12 -0500 (EST) MobiQuitous 2004 http://www.mobiquitous.org The First Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Networking and Services August 22-25, 2004 Boston, Massachusetts, USA The combination of mobile and ubiquitous computing is emerging as a promising new paradigm with the goal to provide computing and communication services all the time, everywhere, transparently and invisibly to the user, using devices embedded in the surrounding physical environment. In this context, the communication devices, the objects with which they interact, or both may be mobile. The implementation of such a paradigm requires advances in wireless network technologies and devices, development of infrastructures supporting cognitive environments, and discovery and identification of ubiquitous computing applications and services. The first ACM Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: networking and services (Mobiquitous 04) will cover all these aspects, representing a forum where practitioners and researchers coming from the many areas involved in ubiquitous solutions design and deployment will be able to interact exchanging the cross-layer experiences needed to build the overall ubiquitous systems. Areas addressed by the conference include: applications, service-oriented computing, middleware, networking, agents, knowledge management and databases. (Visit the conference site for details.) IMPORTANT DATES Paper registration deadline: FEBRUARY 14 2004, 11:59pm PST Paper submission deadline: **NEW** FEBRUARY 16 2004, 11:59pm PST Notification of acceptance: APRIL 30 2004 Camera-ready version due: MAY 15 2004 Papers submitted to MobiQuitous 2004 must be registered with EDAS by 11:59pm, PST, February 14, 2004. The deadline for submitting a registered paper is 11:59pm, PST, February 16, 2004. ------------------------------ From: Zhaoping Li Subject: Postdoc in vision/neuroscience in University College London Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:05:16 +0000 Research Fellow Applications are invited for the post of Postdoctoral Research Fellow to work with Dr. Li Zhaoping (http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~zhaoping) in the area of neuroscience, particularly on biological vision, using theoretical and/or psychophysical investigation tools. The candidate should have good experience in theoretical/modelling area or in visual psychophysical area. Interest and capability to engage in research activities in both areas would be preferable although not essential. The research fellow is expected to contribute to the research environment of the laboratory and should have the capability to work well in a team. The post is available for two years and may be extended. Salary is on the RA1A scale (A323,259-29,473 including London allowance) and will depend upon qualifications and experience. We particularly welcome women and black and ethnic minority applicants as they are under represented at this level within University College London (s.48 of the SDA 1975/s.38 of the RRA 1976 apply). Applications (e-mail or hard copy) by covering letter, CV and Personal Information form (the latter available at: http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/info/Personal_Information.doc) to John Draper, Departmental Administrator, Department of Psychology, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK, j.draper@ucl.ac.uk. If applying by e-mail please submit all requested information in one .pdf file named by your surname eg Smith.pdf. Further information concerning the post are on the web at: http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/info/psychophysics_li.htm while interested candidates can also contact Li Zhaoping, z.li@ucl.ac.uk, 44 20 7679 1174. ------------------------------ From: aiia_announcements-admin@penelope.csd.auth.gr Subject: R&D jobs in watermarking, biometrics, HCI, medical imaging, image/video processing Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 12:12:54 +0200 Research Positions at AIIA Lab, Greece The applicants must be citizens of EU or of associated countries. The Artificial Intelligence and Information Analysis (AIIA) Laboratory at the Department of Informatics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece is seeking for candidates to fill a number of vacant research positions: * Postdoctoral researchers. * Researchers at the level of Diploma of Electrical Engineering / Computer Science / Computer Engineering or equivalent. The applicants can work towards a PhD degree, while occupying these positions, if desirable. * Support engineers (C, C++ programming, Data base programming, WWW design, e-commerce/marketing). The AIIA Lab profile and related infos can be found in http://poseidon.csd.auth.gr. The positions are funded by several competitive FP6 R&D projects (Networks of Excellence and Integrated projects funded European Union). The general research topic is digital signal / image / video processing and analysis, computer vision, graphics, biomedical imaging, bioinformatics. An indicative list of possible research topics is the following: * Multimedia copyright protection/ Watermarking * Bioinformatics * Medical Image Processing * Multimodal interfaces, affective computing, gesture recognition * Biometrics and Face Verification * Multimedia, Human-Computer Interaction and Virtual Reality, * Image/Video Processing and Analysis * Data Mining and Retrieval from image/video databases The exact research topic of the new researcher will be chosen so as to match his/her experience aiming at maximum productivity. The positions are financed by EU research projects. Appointments can be extended for 3 years or more. Proven research experience in one of the following fields: digital image processing, computer vision, graphics, interfaces, biomedical, very good knowledge of English, C/C++ programming and strong interest in academic research are highly desired. The applicants must be citizens of EU or of associated countries. Prospective applicants should forward their resume (CV) and recommendation letters by fax or email (preferably) to: Prof. Ioannis Pitas Department of Informatics Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Thessaloniki 54124, Box 451 GREECE Tel: +30-2310-996304 Fax: +30-2310-996304 e-mail: pitas@zeus.csd.auth.gr ------------------------------ From: bruns02@freenet.de Subject: Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience 2004 Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 12:01:54 +0100 ADVANCED COURSE IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE (AN IBRO NEUROSCIENCE SCHOOL) August 16th - September 10th, 2004 MUNICIPALITY OF OBIDOS, PORTUGAL DIRECTORS: Ad Aertsen (University of Freiburg, Germany) Peter Dayan (University College London, UK) Alain Destexhe (CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France) Eilon Vaadia (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel) The Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience introduces students to the panoply of problems and methods of computational neuroscience, addressing issues of neural organization from sub-cellular to network and inter-areal levels. The course has two complementary parts. Mornings are devoted to lectures given by distinguished international faculty on topics across the breadth of experimental and computational neuroscience. During the rest of the day, students are given practical training in the art and practice of neural modeling, largely through the medium of their individual choice of model systems. The first week of the course introduces students to essential neurobiological concepts and to the most important techniques in modelling single cells, networks and neural systems. Students learn how to solve their research problems using software packages such as GENESIS, MATLAB, NEST, NEURON, XPP, etc. During the following three weeks the lectures cover specific brain areas and functions. Topics range from modelling single cells and subcellular processes through the simulation of simple circuits, large neuronal networks and system level models of the brain. The course ends with project presentations by the students. The Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience is designed for advanced graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in a variety of disciplines, including neuroscience, physics, electrical engineering, computer science, mathematics and psychology. Students are expected to have a keen interest and basic background in neurobiology as well as some computer experience. Students of any nationality can apply. A maximum of 30 students will be accepted. There will be a fee of EUR 800,- per student covering costs for lodging, meals and other course expenses. Depending on funding, there will be a limited limited number of tuition fee waivers and travel stipends available for students who need financial help for attending the course. We have received IBRO funding to provide full travel and fee support for 4-5 students from developing countries. These students will be accepted according to the normal selection procedure. We specifically encourage applications from researchers who work in the developing world. Applications, including a description of the target project must be submitted electronically (see below) and should be accompanied by two letters of recommendation (also sent electronically). Applications will be assessed by a committee, with selection being based on the following criteria: the scientific quality of the candidate (CV) and of the project, the letters, and evidence that the course affords substantial benefit to the candidate's training. More information and application forms can be obtained from: http://www.neuroinf.org/courses/EUCOURSE Please apply electronically using a web browser. Contact address: - mail: Camilla Bruns, FR2-1, Fakultaet IV, Technical University of Berlin, Franklinstrasse 28/29, 10587 Berlin, Germany - e-mail: bruns@cs.tu-berlin.de APPLICATION DEADLINE: April 23, 2004 DEADLINE FOR LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION: April 30, 2004 Applicants will be notified of the results of the selection procedures by end of May 2004. ------------------------------ From: Eric Baum Subject: What is Thought?: Book announcement Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 07:43:58 -0500 New Book: What is Thought? Eric B. Baum MIT Press 478p This reports on a 10+ year project to see whether what I viewed as the worldview of the connectionist/COLT community could extend in any plausible way to explain all the capabilities of mind. I found such an extension, but only after being constrained into conjectures that are at odds with what I would have expected. *What is Thought?* proposes a model that explains how mind is equivalent to execution of a computer program, addressing aspects such as understanding, meaning, creativity, language, reasoning, learning, and consciousness, that is consistent with extensive data from a variety of fields, and that makes empirical predictions. Meaning is the computational exploitation of the compact underlying structure of the world, and mind is execution of an evolved program that is all about meaning. Occam's Razor, as formalized in the recent computer science literature, is explained and extrapolated to argue that meaning results from finding a compact enough program behaving effectively in the world; such a program can only be compact by virtue of code reuse, factoring into interacting modules that capture real concepts and are reused metaphorically. For a variety of reasons, including arguments based on complexity theory, developmental biology, evolutionary programming, ethology, and simple inspection, this compact Occam program is most naturally seen to be in the DNA, rather than the brain. Learning and reasoning are then fast and almost automatic because they are constrained by the DNA programming to deal only with meaningful quantities. Evolution itself is argued to exploit meaning in related ways. Words are labels for meaningful computational modules. Using the abilility to pass along programs through speech, humans have made cumulative progress in constructing, as part of their minds, useful computational modules built on top of the ones supplied by evolution. The difference between human and chimp intelligence is largely in this additional programming, and thus can be regarded as due to better nurturing. Human written computer programs, however, are generally not highly compressed and thus don't display understanding in the same way as human thought, but experiments are described in which modular computer programs were evolved that achieve abilities giving insight into how programs can evolve understanding. The many aspects of consciousness are also naturally and consistently understood in this context. For example, although the brain is a distributed system and the mind is a complex program composed of many modules, the unitary self emerges naturally as a reification (manifestation) of the interest of the genes. Qualia (the sense of experience of sensations such as pain or redness) have exactly the appropriate nature and meaning that evolution coded in the DNA so that the compact program behaves effectively. No previous familiarity with computer science (or other fields) is assumed-- *What is Thought?* presents a pedagogical survey of the relevant background for its arguments. ------------------------------ From: Methods for Modalities Subject: ESSLLI 2004: Preliminary Announcement Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 15:17:02 +0100 Preliminary Announcement ESSLLI 2004 Nancy, France 9-20 August, 2004 ESSLLI 2004, the 16th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information will be held in Nancy, France 9-20 August, 2004. It is being hosted by LORIA (the Laboratoire lorrain de recherche en informatique et ses applications) and will be held on the Campus Scientifique of the University of Nancy 1 (University Henri Poincare). ESSLLI is the annual summer school of FoLLI, the European Association for Logic, Language and Information. Like previous ESSLLIs, ESSLLI 2004 will offer a two week program of foundational lectures, introductory lectures, advanced lectures, and workshops. All in all, 48 lectures and workshops will be offered. You can find more information, including a timetable, at the ESSLLI 2004 website: http://esslli2004.loria.fr Registration for ESSLLI 2004 is not yet open, but on this website you will already find preliminary information about registration, accomodation and prices. An email announcement will be sent around when registation opens. We look forward to seeing you in Nancy this August! Carlos Areces, Patrick Blackburn (for the organising committee) Helene Kirchner (Director of Loria) ------------------------------ End of ML-LIST Digest Vol 16, No. 3 ***********************************