Machine Learning List: Vol. 16, No. 4 Saturday, February 21, 2004 Contents Calls for Papers Swarm Intelligence and Patterns (SIP'04) Artificial Neural Networks in Business Intelligence Special issue on Epigenetic Robotics IEEE/WIC/ACM Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'04) Psycho-computational Models of Human Language Acquisition Foundations of Genetic Algorithms 2005 Third International Workshop On Active Mining (AM-2004) CfP 27th German Conf. on AI - KI2004 Intenration Journal of Computing and Information Sciences ICML04 Workshop on Relational Reinforcement Learning ICML04 Workshop on Statistical Relational Learning and its Connections... Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Engineering Adaptive Multimedia Retrieval Workshop at ECAI'04 Other Meeting Announcements MobiQuitous 04, Extendend Deadline (2/29/04) CART Data Mining 2004 Conference Call for participation Career Opportunities Postoctoral position in machine learning Summer internship on text classification at IBM Research Postdoctoral Position in Machine Learning Miscellaneous Announcements Graduate study at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit ESSLLI 2004: Registration Open 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: Vitorino RAMOS Subject: Swarm Intelligence and Patterns (SIP'04) Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 18:33:14 +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. Chairs: Vitorino Ramos (CVRM-IST, Technical University of Lisbon, PORTUGAL), Ajith Abraham (Bio-Inspired Grid Lab, Oklahoma State University, USA). 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 CONTACTS: Vitorino Ramos: vitorino.ramos@alfa.ist.utl.pt [http://alfa.ist.utl.pt/~cvrm/staff/vramos] Ajith Abraham: ajith.abraham@ieee.org [http://ajith.softcomputing.net/] RELATED EVENTS: # ANTS'2004 - 4th Int. Wkshp on ACO and Swarm Intelligence, Brussels, Belgium, Sep 5-8 2004 [http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~ants/ants2004/]. # ESOA'2004 - 2nd Int. Wkshp on Engineering Self-Organising Applications, New York, USA, July 19 or 20 2004 [http://esoa.unige.ch/esoa04/esoa04-cfp.html]. # WCLC'2004 -1st World Congress on Lateral Computing, Bangalore, India, Dec. 17-19 2004 [http://www.lateral-computing.org/wclc/]. ------------------------------ From: Subject: Artificial Neural Networks in Business Intelligence Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 15:15:52 +0100 CALL FOR PAPERS Special Session on Artificial Neural Networks in Business Intelligence http://www.bis-lab.com/conferences/ic-ai04/cfp_ic-ai04.htm @ The 2004 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Part of the 2004 International Multiconference in Computer Science and Computer Engineering Monte Carlo Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA June 21-24, 2004 You are invited to submit a draft paper for a special research session at the 2004 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence. All accepted and presented papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Please see instructions below. TOPICS OF INTEREST Methods (include but are not limited to): - artificial neural networks (all paradigms) - support vector machines - support vector regression - related & hybrid soft computing methods Applications (include but are not limited to): - business forecasting & demand planning - time series prediction - knowledge discovery in databases - data mining (temporal & structural) - regression - classification - association - clustering / segmentation DRAFT PAPER Prospective authors are invited to submit their draft paper (7 pages IEEE style or 5 pages, single space, font size 12) electronically to the special session organiser by the due date. E-mail submissions must be made in PDF-format. In case of technical problems, fax or printed submissions are accepted after contact with the session organiser. The first page of the draft paper must include: title of the paper, name, affiliation, postal address, E-mail address, telephone & Fax number for each author, indicating the name of the author who will be presenting the paper (if accepted) & a maximum of 5 keywords. The review process will contain at least two independent reviewers. CAMERA READY PAPERS The length of the camera ready papers accepted will be limited to 7 IEEE style pages. Templates / typing instructions, copyright forms, conference registration forms etc. will be supplied upon acceptance. Papers must not have been previously published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. After the conference, some sessions will be considered for publication in appropriate journals as special issues. All conference proceedings/books are considered for inclusion in major database indexes that are designed to provide easy access to the current literature of the sciences (e.g.: ISI Thomson Scientific, IEE INSPEC, DBLP, ...). Formal presentation time will be 20 minutes. PAPER SUBMISSION Please submit draft papers to: Sven F. Crone, eMail cfp@bis-lab.com IMPORTANT DATES March 14th, 2004 - Draft papers due March 30, 2004 - Notification of acceptance April 21, 2004 - Camera ready papers & Pre-registration due June 21-24, 2004 - 2004 IC-AI'04 & Int'l Multiconference in CS & CE SPECIAL SESSION INFORMATION Organisation by: Sven F. Crone, email: ic-ai04@bis-lab.com Lancaster University, Management School, Department of Management Science, www.lums.lancs.ac.uk Laboratory for Business Intelligence in Information Systems, www.bis-lab.com An invitation of all session participants to a complimentary cocktail reception for informal networking is planned on one evening - sponsored by BIS lab - the Business Intelligence Laboratory. CONFERENCE INFORMATION The last Multiconference attracted over 1,650 researchers from 78 countries (on 3800 submissions). Over 200 papers were presented at the IC-AI'03. It is anticipated that the 2004 Int'l Multiconference will attract about 2000 participants. The 2004 event is composed of 18 (planned) major conferences. Attendees will have full access to all 18 conferences' sessions & tracks. The IC-AI'04 Conference and all others are organised by the World Academy of Science www.world-academy-of-science.org - Each event is the premier conference for presentation of advances in their respective subjects. - All conferences will be held simultaneously (Monte Carlo Resort, June 21-24, 2004, Las Vegas). - Each conference will have its own proceedings. CONFERENCE FEES Non-students fee: $490 ($100 late registration after April 22 2004) Full-time student fee: $390 ($100 late registration after April 22 2004) The fee includes: books + 4 breakfasts + 12 refreshment breaks + one formal dinner + booklets + CDs + access to all tutorial sessions + access to all sessions of all conferences If you have any questions regarding the special session or the conference please do no hesitate to contact the session Organiser: Sven F. Crone Lancaster University Management Science Lancaster LA1 4XY United Kingdom eMail ic-ai04@bis-lab.com For more information, visit http://www.bis-lab.com/conferences/ic-ai04/cfp_ic-ai04.htm ------------------------------ From: Luc Berthouze Subject: Special issue on Epigenetic Robotics Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 12:52:48 +0900 (JST) Call for Papers Special Issue of Cognitive Systems Research on EPIGENETIC ROBOTICS submissions are due by July 1st, 2004 Epigenetic robotics denotes a new field of research resulting from the mutual rapproachement of developmental psychology and robotics, with a focus on the prolonged epigenetic process through which increasingly more complex cognitive structures emerge in the system as a result of interactions with the physical and social environment Epigenetic robotics includes basic research goals of interdisciplinary integration between developmental psychology and robotics. Psychological theory and empirical evidence should be used to inform epigenetic robotic models, and these models should be used as theoretical tools to make experimental predictions in developmental psychology. This special issue aims to bring together state-of-the-art research, including theoretical work as well as empirical/experimental studies of both natural and artificial systems. Papers drawing inspiration from, and contributing back to, developmental psychology will be particularly appropriate. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): - the biological basis of development - the role of social, organizational, and cultural embedding in development - the relevance of sensorimotor activity for development - the role of motivation, emotions and value systems in development - the development of concepts, consciousness and self-awareness, emotion, imitation, intentionality, intersubjectivity, joint attention, learning, motivation, non-verbal and verbal communication, self, sensorimotor schemata, shared meaning and symbolic reference, social learning, social relationships, social understanding, and value systems - the interaction between innate structure, ongoing developing structure, and experience - related issues from human and nonhuman empirical studies - related issues in robotics and embodied systems SUBMISSIONS: Authors intending to submit are encouraged to contact the Guest Editor (address below) as soon as possible to discuss paper ideas and suitability for this issue. Submit manuscripts to the Special Issue Guest Editor by email with "CSR submission" in the subject line. Dr Luc Berthouze Neuroscience Research Institute (AIST), Umezono 1-1-1, Tsukuba 305-8568, Japan Luc.Berthouze@aist.go.jp Tel.: +81 29 861 5369 Fax.: +81 29 861 5841 Formatting instructions can be found at the journal's web site: http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/~rsun/journal.html IMPORTANT DATES: July 1st, 2004 - submission deadline September 1st, 2004 - notification of authors November 1st, 2004 - revised papers due End of 2004 - special issue appears Up-to-date information will also be available at http://staff.aist.go.jp/luc.berthouze/CSR.html THE JOURNAL: The Cognitive Systems Research journal (editors-in-chief: Ron Sun, Vasant Honavar and Gregg Oden) is published by Elsevier Science, in both print and electronic form (see http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/~rsun/journal.html). ------------------------------ From: "WI-IAT" Subject: IEEE/WIC/ACM Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'04) Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 11:21:20 +0800 IEEE/WIC/ACM IAT'04 C A L L F O R P A P E R S 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'04) September 20-24, 2004 Beijing, CHINA www.maebashi-it.org/IAT04/ or www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/IAT04/ The 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'04) will be jointly held with the 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI'04). This joint conference is sponsored and organized by IEEE Computer Society, Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC), and ACM-SIGART. IMPORTANT DATES Submission: April 4, 2004 Notification: June 10, 2004 Camera-ready: July 5, 2004 Conference: September 21-24, 2004 SUBMISSIONS AND PUBLICATION IAT'04 will accept ONLY on-line submissions, containing PDF, PostScript, or MS-Word versions. More detailed instructions and the On-Line Submission Form can be found from the IAT'04 homepage. IAT'04 also welcomes Industry/Demo-Track submissions, Workshop and Tutorial proposals. The conference proceedings will be published by the IEEE Computer Society Press. A selected number of IAT'04 accepted papers will be expanded and revised for inclusion in Web Intelligence and Agent Systems and in Annual Review of Intelligent Informatics. TOPICS http://www.maebashi-it.org/IAT04/topics.php ------------------------------ From: William Gregory Sakas Subject: Psycho-computational Models of Human Language Acquisition Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 23:26:04 -0500 Call for Papers COLING-2004 Workshop: Psycho-computational Models of Human Language Acquisition Geneva Switzerland 28 August 2004 http://www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/psychocomp/ Workshop Topic The workshop will be devoted to psychologically motivated computational models of language acquisition -- models that are compatible with research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology and linguistics -- with particular emphasis on the acquisition of syntax. Workshop Description and Motivation In recent decades there has been a great deal of successful research that applies computational learning techniques to emerging natural language technologies, along with many meetings, conferences and workshops in which to present such research. However, there have been few venues in which psycho- computational models of how humans acquire their native language(s) are the focus. Psycho-computational models of language acquisition are of particular interest in light of recent results in developmental psychology which suggest that very young infants are adept at detecting statistical patterns in an audible input stream. However, this begs the question of whether or not a psychologically plausible statistical learning strategy can be successfully exploited in a full- blown psycho-computational acquisition model. Although there has been a significant amount of presented research targeted at modeling the acquisition of word categories and phonology, research aimed at psychologically motivated modeling of syntax acquisition has just begun to emerge. The principal goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers who work within computational linguistics, formal learning theory, machine learning, artificial intelligence, linguistics, psycholinguistics and other fields, and who have created or are investigating computational models of language acquisition. In particular, it will provide a forum for establishing links and common themes between diverse paradigms. Although research which directly addresses the acquisition of syntax is strongly encouraged, related studies that inform research on the acquisition of syntax are also welcome. Papers are invited on, but not limited to, the following topics: * Acquisition models that contain a parsing component * Models that have a cross-linguistic or bilingual perspective * Models that address the question of learning bias in terms of innate linguistic knowledge versus statistical regularity in the input * Models that can acquire natural language word-order * Hybrid models that cross established paradigms * Models that directly make use of or can be used to evaluate existing linguistic or developmental theories in a computational framework (e.g. the principles & parameters framework or Optimality Theory) * Empirical models that make use of child-directed corpora * Formal models that incorporate psychologically plausible constraints * Comparative surveys, across multiple paradigms, that critique previously published studies Paper Length: Submissions should be no longer than 8 pages (A4 or the equivalent). High-quality short papers or extended abstracts of 4 to 5 pages are encouraged. Submission and format details are below. Lunch session: Word-order acquisition The topic of this session will be the acquisition of different natural language word-orders. The workshop will provide a common test-bed of abstract sentence patterns from word order divergent languages. The shared data contains the sentence patterns and cross-linguistic fully-specified parses for each sentence pattern. The patterns are available at: www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/grammar/data/allsentences.zip General information and a web interface for perusing the data can be found at: www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/grammar Due to the limited amount of time available to work with novel data, pilot studies are encouraged. The session will consist of short presentations and roundtable discussion. Submissions for this session are limited to 2 pages. Those who may be interested in submitting to this session should contact the workshop organizer before the submission deadline for further details. Dates of submissions Submission deadline: 30 March 2004 Acceptance notification: 14 May 2004 Camera-ready deadline: 10 June 2004 Workshop date: 28 August 2004 Workshop Organizer William Gregory Sakas, City University of New York (sakas@hunter.cuny.edu) Paper Submission Length: Submissions should be no more than 8 pages (A4 or equivalent). High- quality short papers or extended abstracts of 4 to 5 pages are encouraged. Submissions to the lunch session on word-order should be up no more that 2 pages. (If accepted, final camera ready versions may be up to 8 pages or 5 pages for the word-order submissions.) Layout: Papers must conform to COLING 2004 formatting guidelines, available at: http://www.issco.unige.ch/coling2004/coling2004downloads.html Electronic Submission: All submissions will be by email. Reviews will be blind, so be careful not to disclose authorship or affiliation. PDF submissions are preferred and will be required for the final camera-ready copy. Submissions should be sent as an attachment to: Psycho.Comp@hunter.cuny.edu. The subject line must contain the single word: Submission. Please be sure to include accurate contact information in the body of the email. Contact: Psycho.Comp@hunter.cuny.edu or sakas@hunter.cuny.edu For further details, visit http://www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/psychocomp/ ------------------------------ From: "L. M. Schmitt" Subject: Foundations of Genetic Algorithms 2005 Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 14:49:43 +0900 Foundations of Genetic Algorithms 2005 (FOAG05: January 5-9, 2005) http://www.foga05.org The University of Aizu, Aizu-Wakamatsu City Fukushima Prefecture 965-8580, Japan Submission deadline: July 10, 2004 Sponsored by: - International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (ISGEC), http://www.isgec.org. - The University of Aizu, http://www.u-aizu.jp. The seventh "Foundations of Genetic Algorithms Conference" will be held in Aizu-Wakamatsu City, Japan, January 5-9, 2005. Authors are invited to submit full research papers on theoretical aspects of evolutionary computation, including genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies, and other evolutionary computation paradigms. Submission deadline for full papers shall be July 10, 2004. - Submissions will be carried out electronically via the Web via a link found at the conference web page http://www.foga05.org. The maximum length and style requirements will be available at this site soon. - Student-papers must be submitted with a title starting in "Student paper:". The leading-main contributor of such a paper must be a student enrolled (or graduated in academic years 2003-4) at an accredited institution. Proof of proper status shall be required for accepted student papers. - Accepted papers will be published in a proceedings volume with a major publisher. For publication in the proceedings volume, registration + payment of the conference fee (approx. USD 350) are required for at least one author. - A limited number of travel grants may be available for all authors. - There will be two best student paper awards to recognize distinguished student research. - Attending students can have their conference fee reduced. Organizers with email addresses and contact information: - Alden Wright general-chair@foga05.org Address/Fax: http://www.cs.umt.edu Phone: http://www.cs.umt.edu/CS/FAC/WRIGHT/wright.htm - Michael D. Vose editor-in-chief@foga05.org Address: http://www.cs.utk.edu/~vose/index.html Phone/Fax: http://www.cs.utk.edu/~vose/index.html - Kenneth A. De Jong publications-chair@foga05.org Address: http://cs.gmu.edu/generalinfo/contact.html Phone/Fax: http://cs.gmu.edu/faculty/dejong.html - Lothar M. Schmitt organization-chair@foga05.org Address: http://www.u-aizu.jp/official//index_e.html Phone/Fax: http://www.lmschmitt.de For more information, visit http://www.foga05.org ------------------------------ From: "Masayuki NUMAO" Subject: Third International Workshop On Active Mining (AM-2004) Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 18:17:45 +0900 CALL FOR PAPERS THIRD INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON ACTIVE MINING (AM-2004) http://www.ai.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp/am2004/ May 31 -- June 1, 2004 Kanazawa, Japan TOPICS Discovery of new information source; Active collection of information; Tools for information collection; Information filtering; Information retrieval, collection, and integration on WWW for data mining; Data mining process; Inspection and validation of mined pieces of knowledge; Description language for discovery; Evaluation and accountability; Interactive mining; Design and deployment of customer response model in CRM; Adaptive modeling in data mining; Selection, transformation, and construction of features; Selection and construction of instances; Exception/deviation discovery; Visualization; Spatial data mining; Text mining; Graph mining; Success/failure stories in data mining and lessons learned; Data mining for evidence-based medicine; Distributed data mining; Data mining for knowledge management; Active learning; Meta learning; Active sampling; Usability of mined pieces of knowledge; User interface for data mining IMPORTANT DATES Deadline of Paper Submission: February 29, 2004 Notification of Review Result: March 31, 2004 Deadline of Camera Ready Copy: April 30, 2004 Workshop Date: May 31 and June 1, 2004 CONTACT PERSON Masayuki Numao The Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research Osaka University E-mail: am2004@ai.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp ------------------------------ From: kuenstliche.intelligenz@informatik.uni-ulm.de (Dept AI Uni Ulm) Subject: CfP 27th German Conf. on AI - KI2004 Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 15:18:47 +0100 (CET) 27th GERMAN CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE -- KI2004 -- (co-located with INFORMATIK 2004) September 20-24, Ulm, Germany http://ki2004.uni-ulm.de/ CALL FOR PAPERS The conference invites original research contributions from all areas of Artificial Intelligence. Besides work on theoretical foundations, papers on novel applications and the integration of methods are particularly welcome. As the conference will be co-located and interleaved with INFORMATIK 2004, the annual German Conference on Informatics, we aim at a particularly broad spectrum of topics and aspects. Topics The areas of interest include, but are not limited to: Agent Technology; Automated Reasoning; Case-based Reasoning; Computational Logic; Computer Vision; Cognitive Modeling; Cognitive Robotics; Configuration and Design; Constraint Reasoning; Diagnosis; Game Playing; Image Understanding; Intelligent Planning; Intelligent Scheduling; Intelligent User Interfaces; Knowledge-based Systems; Knowledge Discovery; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Representation and Ontologies; Machine Learning; Multiagent Systems; Natural Language Processing; Neural Networks; Neurosymbolic Integration; Probabilistic Reasoning; Reasoning about Actions; Reasoning under Uncertainty; Robotics and Machine Perception; Search; Semantic Web; Soft Computing; Theorem Proving; Temporal and Spatial Reasoning Submission Submission deadline is April 8. Conference submission is electronic, in pdf or postscript format. The paper submission system will be available on this website in the beginning of March. Submitted papers must not exceed 15 pages and should conform to Springer LNCS style. Papers must be written in English. The conference proceedings will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) Series. At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference and present the contribution. Further information is available on the conference website: http://ki2004.uni-ulm.de ------------------------------ From: "Dr. M. Sarfraz" Subject: Intenration Journal of Computing and Information Sciences Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 20:35:59 +0300 Call For Papers International Journal of Computing and Information Sciences (IJCIS) ISSN 1708-0460 http://www31.brinkster.com/ijcis/index.htm Computing and Information Sciences is a peer reviewed journal that is committed to timely publication of original research, surveying and tutorial contributions on the analysis and development of computing and information engineering. The journal is designed mainly to serve researchers and developers, dealing with information and computing. Papers that can provide both theoretical analysis, along with carefully designed computational experiments, are particularly welcome. The journal is published 2-3 times per year with distribution to librarians, universities, research centers, researchers in computing, mathematics, and computer scientists. The journal maintains strict refereeing procedures through its editorial policies in order to publish papers of only the highest quality. The refereeing is done by anonymous reviewers. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following: Information Engineering, Mathematical Modeling, Artificial Intelligence, Computational Intelligence, Genetic Algorithms, Optimizations, Combinatorics, Fuzzy and Symbolic Logic, Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing, Neural Networks, Expert Systems, Knowledge Representation, Pattern Recognition, Algorithms, Image Processing, Computer Vision, Graph Theory. Researchers and practitioners pursuing investigations in the areas of information engineering, computations, and applications. Authors are encouraged to submit high quality, original work written in good English that has neither appeared in, nor is under consideration by, other journals. They are encouraged to submit their papers electronically via email directly to the editor-in-chief in one of the following formats: PDF, LaTeX, PS, MS-Word. Alternatively, authors can send five copies of their paper with a storage medium (e.g., 3.5-inch floppy disk or CD-ROM, and with the operating system and word processing program), directly to the EDITOR-IN-CHIEF. For detailed submission instructions, including formatting, see: http://www31.brinkster.com/ijcis/index.htm ------------------------------ From: "Prasad Tadepalli" Subject: ICML04 Workshop on Relational Reinforcement Learning Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 12:58:23 -0800 (PST) Workshop on Relational Reinforcement Learning http://eecs.orst.edu/research/rrl to be held in conjunction with International Conference on Machine Learning http://www.aicml.cs.ualberta.ca/banff04/icml Banff, Alberta, Canada July 8, 2004 Reinforcement learning has shown a lot of promise in recent years as a highly effective approach for building autonomous learning agents. More recently there have been a few successful attempts to generalize reinforcement learning to relational setting under the name of Relational Reinforcement Learning (RRL). The goal of this workshop is to foster more research in this area and to strengthen its connections to a number of different but related fields such as inductive logic programming, speedup learning, probabilistic relational modeling, and decision theoretic planning. The workshop is intended to be highly interactive and participatory. The format of the workshop will include one or two invited talks, presentations of current and on-going research, and plenty of time for formal and informal discussions. Potential speakers should submit a paper of a maximum of 6 pages in the ICML/UAI paper format: http://www.aicml.cs.ualberta.ca/banff04/icml/papers/format/ http://research.microsoft.com/uai2004/submission.htm We encourage smaller contributions or summaries of on-going work, one page abstracts, and position papers on the topics relevant to the workshop. To facilitate a thorough and deep discussion of the issues, we ask each potential presenter and participant to propose, in advance, a provocative question or claim, with the emphasis on provocative. We will use the resulting pool of questions, possibly anonymously, to stimulate discussion as needed. The papers and provocative questions or claims should be sent by email to tadepall@eecs.orst.edu. We will assume that your questions can be attributed to you unless you request anonymity. Important Dates Paper Submissions Due: April 2, 2004 Acceptance Notification: April 16, 2004 Final Papers Due: May 7, 2004 Workshop: July 8, 2004 More information on the workshop is available at: http://eecs.orst.edu/research/rrl ------------------------------ From: Lise Getoor Subject: ICML04 Workshop on Statistical Relational Learning and its Connections to Other Fields Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 16:40:02 -0500 CFP: ICML 2004 Workshop on Statistical Relational Learning and its Connections to Other Fields (SRL2004) http://www.cs.umd.edu/srl2004 July 8, 2004 in conjunction with the 21st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-2004) Banff, Alberta, Canada Submissions Due April 2 CALL FOR PAPERS Statistical machine learning is in the midst of a "relational revolution." After many decades of focusing on independent and identically-distributed (iid) examples, many researchers are now studying problems in which the examples are linked together into complex networks. These networks can be a simple as sequences and 2-D meshes (such as those arising in part-of-speech tagging and remote sensing) or as complex as citation graphs, the world wide web, and relational data bases. Statistical relational learning raises many new challenges and opportunities. Because the statistical model depends on the domain's relational structure, parameters in the model are often tied. This has advantages for making parameter estimation feasible, but complicates the model search. Because the ``features'' involve relationships among multiple objects, there is often a need to intelligently construct aggregates and other relational features. Problems that arise from linkage and autocorrelation among objects must be taken into account. Because instances are linked together, classification typically involves complex inference to arrive at "collective classification" in which the labels predicted for the test instances are determined jointly rather than individually. Unlike iid problems, where the result of learning is a single classifier, relational learning often involves instances that are heterogeneous, where the result of learning is a set of multiple components (classifiers, probability distributions, etc.) that predict labels of objects and relationships between objects. There have been several workshops on relational learning in recent years. The goal of this workshop is to reach out to related fields that have not participated in previous workshops. Specifically, we seek to invite researchers in computer vision, spatial statistics, social network analysis, language modeling and probabilistic inference to attend the workshop and give tutorials on the relational learning problems and techniques developed in their fields. FORMAT Because our goal is to build links with other fields, a significant amount of time in the workshop will be devoted to invited tutorials and discussion. Tutorials will include (a) overview of relational learning, (b) relational learning in spatial statistics, (c) relational learning in social network analysis, (d) relational learning in computer vision, and (e) approximate probabilistic inference for large networks. Focus topics for discussion will include (a) methodology (e.g., how to evaluate machine learning research on linked data by using connections between the test set and training set in a principled manner). (b) barriers to progress (the cost of inference, the need for benchmark data sets), and (c) new application directions (short talks describing interesting new applications). To give participants an opportunity to share their research with others, we plan to have at least one poster session Participation is open. Participants are encouraged to submit papers (up to six pages). Accepted papers may be presented orally or as posters. IMPORTANT DATES April 2 Workshop papers due April 16 Author notification May 7 Final papers July 9 Workshop ORGANIZERS Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University Lise Getoor, University of Maryland, College Park Kevin Murphy, MIT AI lab For further details, visit: http://www.cs.umd.edu/srl2004 ------------------------------ From: Lorenzo Magnani Subject: Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Engineering Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:37:38 +0100 MODEL-BASED REASONING IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING ABDUCTION, VISUALIZATION, AND SIMULATION MBR'04 Pavia, Italy, December 16-18, 2004 Chairs: Lorenzo Magnani and Nancy J. Nersessian http://www.unipv.it/webphilos_lab/courses/progra1.html GENERAL INFORMATION From Thursday 16 to Saturday 18 December 2004 (three days) the International Conference "MODEL-BASED REASONING IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING: ABDUCTION, VISUALIZATION, AND SIMULATION" will be held at the University of Pavia (near Milan, Italy). The conference continues the theme of the Conferences "Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery" MBR'98 and "Model-Based Reasoning: Scientific Discovery, Technological Innovation, and Values" MBR'01 PROGRAM The conference will deal with the logical, epistemological, and cognitive aspects of modeling practices employed in science and engineering, including computational models of such practices. We solicit papers that examine the role of abduction, visualization, and simulation in model-based reasoning from philosophical, historical, sociological, psychological, or computational perspectives. RELEVANT RESEARCH AREAS We call for papers that cover topics pertaining to model-based reasoning in science and engineering from the following list: - abduction - visual, spatial, imagistic modeling and reasoning - simulative modeling - the role of diagrammatic representations - computational models of visual and simulative reasoning - causal and counterfactual reasoning in model construction - visual analogy - thought experimenting - logical analyses related to model-based reasoning - manipulative reasoning - distributed model-based reasoning - embodiment in model-based reasoning - model-based reasoning and technological innovation INVITED SPEAKERS The list of the invited speakers who already accepted to give e presentation at MBR04 is available in the Conference WEB SITE http://www.unipv.it/webphilos_lab/courses/progra1.html SUBMISSIONS OF PAPERS All submitted papers will be carefully refereed. The precise format of the conference will be fixed after we have an idea of the number of accepted papers. We expect approximately 40 contributed presentations some of 40 and others of 20 minutes. There will be several invited papers of 1 hour. A selected subset will be invited for inclusion (subject to additional refereeing) in a book which will constitute an advanced handbook for researchers in this area. The book will be published by an international publishing house. Moreover another selected subset will be invited for inclusion (subject to additional refereeing) in special issues of suitable international journals. Authors must submit an electronic version - formatted in Microsoft Word or RTF, PS or PDF ( in this last case two cases please include source - DOC, TEX, etc., file) - of an extended abstract (total word count aproximately 1000-1200). The file must also contain a 300 WORD abstract that will be used for the conference web site/booklet. Not later than May 1, 2004 Please send electronically the extended abstract to the Prof. Magnani at the address lmagnani@cc.gatech.edu (if the previous address does not work please use lorenzo.magnani@unipv.it) For further details on submissions, registration, the venue, local arrangements, and so on, visit http://www.unipv.it/webphilos_lab/courses/progra1.html For information about paper submission and the program that is not available on the web site, please contact the program chair. ------------------------------ From: "Marcin Detyniecki" Subject: Adaptive Multimedia Retrieval Workshop at ECAI'04 Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 17:45:49 +0100 2nd International Workshop on Adaptive Multimedia Retrieval - AMR 2004 - Part of ECAI 2004, 22-27 August 2004 Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain (http://irgroup.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/amr2004) To improve today's retrieval tools and thus the overall satisfaction of a user, it is necessary to develop intelligent methods that are able to support the user in the search process, e.g. by providing additional user adapted information about the search results as well as the data collection itself and especially by adapting the retrieval tool to the user's needs and interests. The goals of the workshop are to intensify the exchange of ideas between different research communities, to provide an overview of current activities in this area and to point out connections between the diverse involved research communities and research in AI. Topics of interested (further topics are listed on the web page): - intelligent feature extraction techniques for multimedia - computer linguistic approaches (semantic web and ontologies) - (dynamic/user adadptive) data analysis methods - (adaptive) multimedia retrieval languages - user profiling and modelling - visualization methods and user interface design - retrieval system presentations Submissions: Submissions should be formatted according to Springer LNCS style (see http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). Papers should have about 10 pages but should not exceed 15 pages and should be submitted electronically in PDF or postscript format. Important Dates: March 21, 2004: Deadline for paper submission May 2, 2004: Notification of acceptance May 30, 2004: Deadline for final papers Venue: The workshop will take place during the 16th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2004) in Valencia, Spain. Information about the venue, hotels, etc. are provided on the web pages of the main conference (http://www.dsic.upv.es/ecai2004/). Further details can be found on the Web page of the workshop: http://irgroup.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/amr2004 ------------------------------ From: Stefano Basagni Subject: MobiQuitous 04, Extendend Deadline (2/29/04) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 17:26:41 -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 Given the many requests for individual extensions, the TCP co-chairs have decided to extend the MobiQuitous 2004 deadline for paper REGISTRATION and SUBMISSION to: *** FEBRUARY 29 2004 *** This is to be indended as a strict deadline. No further extensions will be granted. IMPORTANT +++NEW "DROP DEAD"+++ DATES Paper registration deadline: FEBRUARY 29 2004, 11:59pm PST Paper submission deadline: FEBRUARY 29 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 29, 2004. The deadline for submitting a registered paper is 11:59pm, PST, February 29, 2004. ------------------------------ From: Lisa Solomon Subject: CART Data Mining 2004 Conference Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 05:36:58 -0800 CART Data Mining 2004, San Francisco, March 22-24, 2004 Below are links for the registration and the latest scheduling information. Please note that you can register with an early-bird discount if you register NOW and write the words "SCHEDULE" on your registration form. Homepage: http://www.cartdatamining.com Detailed Conference Schedule: http://www.cartdatamining.com/program.htm Registration (San Francisco): http://www.cartdatamining.com/RegCART04.pdf OPENING SESSION, Monday March 22nd, 7:30 PM Personal recollections of Leo Breiman, Jerome Friedman, Richard Olshen, Charles Stone. Join us to hear Breiman, Friedman, Olshen and Stone discuss their early research interests and trace the ideas, decisions, and chance events that culminated in CART, their landmark work. Join us for John Elder's popular presentation: "Top Ten Data Mining Mistakes (with real-world examples)" "Best Practices" for Data Mining will be (accidentally)illuminated by their (rarely described) opposites. Come hear cautionary tales of endangered projects and embarrassed teams -- and thereby perhaps avoid such a fate yourself. Immediately Preceding the Opening Session NEW TUTORIAL Introducing Jerome Friedman's TreeNet/MART and Leo Breiman's Random Forests, revolutionary new contributions to data mining. Cost: 35% Discount for all Conference Attendees. Other optional pre-conference tutorials for CART, MARS and Hybrid Modeling will be offered the week preceding the conference. These hands-on Tutorials will be discounted 35% for conference attendees. Tutorial Registration: http://www.cartdatamining.com/workshops.htm Early-bird Registration Discount Deadline extension for SAN FRANCISCO: Must write code: SCHEDULE on the registration form. http://www.cartdatamining.com/RegCART04.pdf Early-bird Registration Discount Deadline for Madrid venue: March 30, 2004 http://www.cartdatamining.com/RegCART04Madrid.pdf To register, please click on the links above or call: 619-543-8880 To be placed on the CART Data Mining mailing list, please respond to info@cartdatamining.com Please let me know if you have any further questions. Sincerely, Lisa Solomon lisas@salford-systems.com 619-543-8880 x14 ------------------------------ From: Menno van Zaanen Subject: Call for participation Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 09:37:26 +0100 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION OMPHALOS CONTEXT-FREE LANGUAGE LEARNING COMPETITION http://www.irisa.fr/Omphalos/ Intro Omphalos is the first context-free language learning competition that forms part of ICGI-2004 (See http://iit.demokritos.gr/icgi04/). The task is to infer a model of a context-free language from unstructured examples (both positive and negative) and to use that model to label a set of test sentences as being either in or out of the language. The Competition Task We have generated some context-free grammars. For each grammar we have labelled a set of sentences indicating whether or not those sentences can be generated from that grammar. The goal of the competition is to infer a model of each language (such as a grammar) using the training data. You then need to tag new sentences, indicating whether the sentences are in the language or not. Important Dates February 15th 2004 Competition begins October 1st 2004 Competition closes October 11th 2004 Competition winner announced October 11th-13th 2004 Omphalos session at ICGI-2004 More Information For more information, check the website: http://www.irisa.fr/Omphalos/ or contact the organizers at: omphalos@irisa.fr Omphalos is being organized and administered by: Brad Starkie, François Coste, and Menno van Zaanen ------------------------------ From: "Machine Learning Group, Univ. Firenze" Subject: Postoctoral position in machine learning Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 09:31:28 +0100 The Neural Networks and Machine Learning group at Universita' di Firenze (Italy) is seeking one postdoctoral researcher to join an EU funded collaborative research project focused on algorithms and architectures for learning with probabilistic logic representations. The position will be funded on the three-year project APRIL II, in the 6th framework programme (Future and Emerging Technologies). APRIL II aims at developing a theoretical framework for probabilistic logic learning and demonstrate its effectiveness on significant applications, especially in the area of bioinformatics. Program partners are Freiburg University, Germany, Imperial College London, UK, Univ. of Helsinki, Finland, INRIA Rocquencourt, France, Universita' di Firenze, Italy, Aalborg University, Denmark, and Univ. of York, UK. Tight scientific collaboration is expected among all the research partners. We are especially interested in applicants with a strong background and experience in computational logic and machine learning. Experience in other related areas such as relational learning systems, probabilistic relational models, kernel methods on discrete structures, is also desiderable. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. The position is available immediately and can be renewed for up to three years. Researchers who have recently completed their Ph.D. few months are particularly encouraged to apply. Applicants are invited to send a CV and two letters of recommendation to Prof. Paolo Frasconi Dipartimento di Sistemi e Informatica Universit=E0 di Firenze Via di Santa Marta 3, 50139 Firenze, Italy Email: paolo AT dsi DOT unifi DOT it http://www.dsi.unifi.it/neural/ ------------------------------ From: Tessa Lau Subject: Summer internship on text classification at IBM Research Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 16:57:16 -0500 One of the uses for email is to track processes that happen over time. For example, the simple process of buying a book online is typically reflected in email as a sequence of several messages: an order confirmation, a purchase confirmation, and a shipping confirmation. As another example, organizing a candidate's interview schedule means securing agreement from each of the interviewers on a date/time, and managing scheduling conflicts as they arise. Many such processes now take place over email. However, today's email clients provide little to no support for managing and tracking progress through these workflow processes. The research goal of this project is to leverage existing text classification methods to automatically detect and classify emails that are the results of a structured process. Open research questions include: * Can we classify email according to a known process model? * Can we automatically identify exceptions to the process model, such as when a book is temporarily out of stock? * Can we automatically learn the process model from labelled examples? * What types of visualizations are useful in helping humans leverage this knowledge? * Can we extract structured information from process-oriented email, such as transaction details? This project seeks a creative, motivated individual for a summer internship at IBM Research in Hawthorne, NY. Knowledge of the basics of machine learning and preferably text classification is a plus. For more details on the IBM summer intern program, see: http://www.research.ibm.com/about/career.shtml Interested students should fill out the online application at: http://careers.peopleclick.com/jobposts/Client40_GLDTR/BU1/External/139-4787.htm?ShowReturn=Yes and also send a resume to Tessa Lau . ------------------------------ From: "Christian W. Omlin" Subject: Postdoctoral Position in Machine Learning Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 11:02:10 -0500 The Department of Computer Science at the University of the West­ ern Cape (South Africa) has identified the area of intelligent systems as one of its main research thrusts. We aim to position ourselves to assume a national leadership role in this emerging field. In order to further strengthen our research capacity, we invite applications for a POSTDOCTORAL POSITION for an initial 1-year period in our Intelligent Systems Group. The appointment can be extended by an additional 2 years. Areas of interest include but are not restricted to neural networks signal processing internet applications human/computer interaction data/web mining intelligent networks/security intelligent agents For applicants with research interests in bioinformatics, there exist opportunities for collaboration with the South African Na­ tional Bioinformatics Institute. The successful candidate may either pursue his/her own research programme or may participate in existing projects. No teaching duties are expected from the postdoctoral research fellows; however, there exists the opportunity to supervise MSc/PhD students or to give a postgraduate course if he/she so desires. We offer a competitive, tax-free stipend, a friendly atmosphere, and state-of-the-art equipment. We encourage publication of re­ search results and offer financial support for travel to confer­ ences. The University of the Western Cape is located 20 minutes from the center of cosmopolitan Cape Town which features scenic views, sandy beaches, great opportunities for outdoor activities, na­ tional parks withs stunnning fauna and flora, and plenty of arts and culture. We also have one of the most pleasant climates in the world with 300 days of sunshine and very mild winters. We are also located 20 minutes from the heart of South Africa's wineland where world-class wines are produced at numerous vinyards. Please send your CV, a list of publications, copies of two repre­ sentative papers and a statement of your research interests to comlin@uwc.ac.za. Also, please have 3 referees e-mail letters of recommendation to the same address. Deadline for applications is March 31, 2003. Prof. Christian W. Omlin Phone: +27-21-959-3010/2967 Intelligent Systems Group Fax: +27-21-959-2577 Department of Computer Science E-mail: comlin@uwc.ac.za University of the Western Cape URL: http://www.cs.uwc.ac.za Bellville 7535 South Africa ------------------------------ From: Maneesh Sahani Subject: Graduate study at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 15:13:16 +0000 (GMT) Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit 4 year PhD Programme The Gatsby Unit is a world-class centre for theoretical neuroscience and machine learning, focusing on unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, neural dynamics, population coding, interpretation of neural data, perceptual processing, and computational motor control. It provides a unique opportunity for a critical mass of theoreticians to interact closely with each other, and with other world-class research groups in related departments at University College London, including Anatomy, Computer Science, Functional Imaging Laboratory, Physics, Physiology, Psychology, Neurology, Ophthalmology, and Statistics. The Unit always has openings for exceptional PhD candidates. Applicants should have a strong analytical background, a keen interest in neuroscience and a relevant first degree, for example in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics, Psychology or Statistics. The PhD programme lasts four years, including a first year of intensive instruction in techniques and research in theoretical neuroscience and machine learning. A number of competitive fully-funded studentships are available each year and the Unit also welcomes students with pre-secured funding or with other scholarship/studentship applications in progress. Applicants are encouraged to apply informally in the first instance by sending, in plain text format, a CV, a statement of research interests, and the names and addresses of three referees to admissions@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk. General enquiries should also be directed to this e-mail address. For further details of research interests please see http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/research.html Applications to begin the programme in September 2004 should be received by the 1st of March 2004. ------------------------------ From: Carlos Areces Subject: ESSLLI 2004: Registration Open Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 17:12:33 +0100 Call for Registration ESSLLI 2004 Nancy, France 9-20 August, 2004 Registration for ESSLLI 2004, the 16th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information, is now open. To register go to: http://esslli2004.loria.fr click on the registration button, fill out the online form, print out the result, and fax (or surface-mail) it in. As well as registering, you can use the same form to reserve student accomodation and book lunch tickets (the lunch menu is available on the ESSLLI 2004 website). Please note: we can only guarantee 360 student accomodation places, and these will be distributed on a first-come-first-served basis. Also, please note that the deadline for early registration is May 1st 2004. 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. 4 ************************************