Information Retrieval List Digest 381 (November 17, 1997) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/irld/irld-381 IRLIST Digest ISSN 1064-6965 November 17, 1997 Volume XIV, Number 43 Issue 381 ****************************************************************** III. NOTICES A. Publications 1. FARNET's Washington Update 11/7/97 2. New Book on IR B. Meetings 1. Canadian Association for Information Science Annual Conference 2. JFA'98 - 13th French-speaking Conference on Machine Learning 3. ISIC'98 4. IBERAMIA '98 - Call for Papers 5. Workshop on Lexical Semantics in Context: Corpus, Inference, and Discourse C. Miscellaneous 1. Relevant Access to Text, Media, Markets--by Pidginxn ****************************************************************** III. NOTICES III.A.1. Fr: Garret Sern Re: FARNET's Washington Update 11/7/97 FARNET'S WASHINGTON UPDATE --- NOVEMBER 7, 1997 In this issue: Resolving Internet domain name disputes -- is an international framework necessary? Senate subcommittee hears testimony on next generation Internet. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Written from FARNET's Washington office, "FARNET's Washington Update" is a service to FARNET members and other interested subscribers. We gratefully acknowledge EDUCOM's NTTF and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) for additional support. If you would like more information about the Update or would like to offer comments or suggestions, please contact Garret Sern at garret@farnet.org. ********** III.A.2. Fr: Jerry Kowalski Re: New Book on IR New Book: Information Retrieval Systems: Theory and Implementation This book provides a theoretical and practical explanation of the latest advancements in information retrieval and their application to existing systems. It takes a system approach, discussing all aspects of an Information Retrieval System. The importance of the Internet and its associated hypertext linked structure are put into perspective as a new type of information retrieval data structure. The total system approach also includes discussion of the human interface and the importance of information visualization for identification of relevant information. The theoretical metrics used to describe information systems are expanded to discuss their practical application in the uncontrolled environment of real world systems. The primary goal of writing this book is to provide a college text on Information Retrieval Systems. But in addition to the theoretical aspects, the book maintains a theme of practicality that puts into perspective the importance and utilization of the theory in systems that are being used by anyone on the Internet. The student will gain an understanding of what is achievable using existing technologies and the deficient areas that warrant additional research. The text provides coverage of all of the major aspects of information retrieval and has sufficient detail to allow students to implement a simple Information Retrieval System. The comparison algorithms from Chapter 10 can be used to compare how well each of the student's systems work. The following link provides details on the book. The publisher is Kluwer. http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/kowalski/ ********** III.B.1. Fr: Elaine G. Toms Re: Canadian Association for Information Science Annual Conference 26th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science/ Association canadienne des sciences de l'information 3-5 June 1998 Universite d'Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario Information Science at the Dawn of the Millennium For more than a quarter of century Canadian information scientists have met to discuss the access, retrieval, production, organization, distribution, value, use and management of information. From those early days of examining computational ways of manipulating information through to investigations of information as communication, CAIS has provided a forum for presentation, discussion and debate. CAIS/ACSI '98 continues this noteworthy tradition. CAIS/ACSI '98 will be held at the Universite d'Ottawa, in Canada's national capital, Ottawa, Ontario. CAIS will be meeting with the 1998 Congress of Social Sciences and Humanities which will offer exceptional opportunities for creative contacts and fruitful between CAIS delegates and members of the other 80 learned societies that will meet concurrently. We seek submissions related to any aspect of information science, particularly those which exemplify the leading edge of our discipline. Submissions must include a 500 word extended abstract of the proposed paper. The author(s) name, complete address, phone, fax and email should be included on a separate sheet. Abstracts will be refereed; final papers will be published in the proceedings and presented at the conference. Preference will be given to papers that report research or debate underlying methodological/philosophical issues, rather than those that report on plans yet to be implemented. DEADLINES: abstracts: January 15, 1998. notification of acceptance: February 15, 1998. final papers (3,000-4,000 words) electronic form: April 15, 1998. Doctoral candidates are especially invited to submit to the conference. CAIS will be awarding a full conference registration and one year membership to the best student submission. Student submissions must be single-authored. Please indicate student status on your submission. Initial submissions in print or electronic form (ASCII, Word or Wordperfect) should be sent to: Elaine Toms CAIS '98 Program Chair School of Library and Information Studies Dalhousie University Halifax, NS B3H 3J5=0C Voice: (902)494-2452 Fax: (902)494-2451 E-Mail: etoms@is.dal.ca ********** III.B.2. Fr: Engelbert Mephu-Nguifo Re: JFA'98 - 13th French-speaking Conference on Machine Learning First Call for Papers Thirteenth French-speaking Conference on Machine Learning Arras, May 18-20, 1998 Submission deadline: February 13, 1998 temporary location: http://www.lifl.fr/~mephu-ng/conf/jfa98_uk.html permanent location: http://www.univ-artois.fr/jfa98 GENERAL INFORMATION: JFA'98 is the annual french-speaking conference on Machine Learning. It is made of reviewed papers, invited lectures and tutorials. JFA accepts both symbolic and numeric approaches in machine learning, and research or application papers in this area. Papers may be submitted in english but the final version must be written in french. The thirteenth JFA conference will be held on May 18-20, 1998 at Artois University (Arras). SUBMISSIONS: Papers relevant to the discipline of Machine Learning are sollicited, including, but not limited to: * Applications of Machine Learning * Case-based Learning * Computational Learning Theory * Data Mining * Evolutionary Computation * Hybrid Learning Systems * Inductive Learning * Inductive Logic Programming * Knowledge Discovery in Databases * Language Learning * Learning and Problem Solving * Learning by Analogy * Learning in Multi-Agent Systems * Learning in Dynamic Domains * Learning to Search * Multistrategy Learning * Neural Networks * Reinforcement Learning * Robot Learning * Scientific Discovery. Papers are limited to 12 pages (using a 10pt Times Roman font, single-spaced, with 3cm margins on all sides) including figures, title page, references, and appendices. (See Format instructions.) The papers will be refereed according to clarity and overall quality criteria, focusing primarily on their relevance to the conference. Email submissions are strongly preferred. Please send an attached PostScript file to jnicolas@irisa.fr Those unable to produce a PostScript file may send 4 hardcopies of their paper submission to the program chair: Jacques Nicolas IRISA - INRIA Campus Universitaire de Beaulieu, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France Tel: (+33) 2 99 84 73 12 E.mail: jnicolas@irisa.fr TIMETABLE: February 13, 1998 deadline for submission April 6, 1998 notification of acceptance/rejection May 4, 1998 deadline for final versions of papers May 18-20, 1998 JFA'98 Dr. Engelbert MEPHU NGUIFO Maitre de conferences CRIL - IUT de Lens - Universite d'Artois Rue de l'Universite SP 16 62307 Lens cedex France Pho: (+33) (0)3 21 79 32 {55 , 73 , 53} Fax: {40 , 60} E.mail: mephu@cril.univ-artois.fr www: http://www.lifl.fr/~mephu-ng ********** III.B.3. Fr: D.K.Allen Re: ISIC'98 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Information Seeking in Context: An International Conference on Information Needs, Seeking and Use in Different Contexts. Sheffield, United Kingdom, August 13-15 1998 Hosted by: The Department of Information Studies at Sheffield University. http://panizzi.shef.ac.uk/david_allen/ISIC/isic.html To reserve a place at this conference please complete and return the Conference Booking Form, available at: http://panizzi.shef.ac.uk/david_allen/ISIC/booking.html CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION: The first ISIC conference was held in Tampere, Finland in August 1996 and was a considerable success with 136 participants from 17 countries. The Second Information Seeking in Context conference is intended to build on and develop the themes debated at the first meeting. The Conference will offer an opportunity to hear results of the latest research in the field of information seeking, to debate methodological issues, and to identify areas for further research. All participants at the first ISIC meeting will be welcome in 1998 and we hope that many researchers for whom this will be their first Conference will be attracted. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: Information Behaviour and Electronic Environments * Information Requirements and Information Systems Design * Theoretical and methodological issues Information Seeking in Educational, Business and Health Sectors * Longitudinal Studies Contributions from cognate disciplines such as Marketing, Consumer Studies, Media Studies, Communication Studies, Information Systems and Computer Science are welcome and may lead to separate sessions. FURTHER INFORMATION: Please check periodically the website for ISIC-98, under construction at: http://panizzi.shef.ac.uk/david_allen/ISIC/isic.html Also, join the Official ISIC-98 e-mail list for e-mail alerts concerning updated information on the conference, paper acceptances, keynote speaker updates and logistical details and deadlines. To do so, send an e-mail message to mailto: m.x.walker@sheffield.ac.uk In the Subject Line of the message type: ISIC-98-SUB In the body type: Your full name and the name of your organization. FURTHER INFORMATION: ISIC 98 /Department of Information Studies, Regent Court, 211 Portobello Street, Sheffield, S1 4DP, Telephone: 0114 222 2630 Fax: 0114 278 0300 ********** III.B.4. Fr: Joao Balsa da Silva Re: IBERAMIA '98 - Call for Papers C A L L F O R P A P E R S IBERAMIA-98 SIXTH IBERO-AMERICAN CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Lisbon, Portugal October 5-9,1998 (Under the auspices of the Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence) E-mail: iberamia@di.fct.unl.pt WWW: http://www-ssdi.di.fct.unl.pt/~iberamia/ The age of AI Atlantic discoveries: "The Portuguese dared to engage the great oceanic sea. They entered it fearlessly. They discovered new islands, new lands, new seas, new peoples, and what is more important, new heavens and new stars ... Now it is clear that these discoveries ... were not achieved through guesswork: our seamen set off well trained and provided with instruments and rules of astronomy and geometry." from Pedro Nunes, 1537 The Sixth IberoAmerican Conference on Artificial Intelligence will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, on October 5-9, 1998, under the auspices of the Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence (APPIA), in a unique cultural environment, precisely the headquarters of Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian (two museums, one for Modern Art and another for Classical Art, covering also the private collection of the founder, a library, permanent exhibitions, and a beautiful garden). At the same time the World Exposition (Expo'98), around the main topic of Oceans and commemorating the Portuguese sea discovery of India (1498), will be open in the eastern side of Lisbon, creating a historic context for discussing the cooperation within the sciences of the artificial among the countries of the Atlantic rein, and under the theme of AI Atlantic discoveries. Established in 1988 (Barcelona) by three IberoAmerican Associations of AI (AEPIA, SMIA and APPIA), after a first meeting in Morelia (Mexico) in 1986 of SMIA and AEPIA, the event was organized every two-years since then in Morelia (1990), La Habana (1992), Caracas (1994) and Cholula (1996), taking Portuguese and Spanish as official languages and with the aim to promote and diffuse the research and development carried out in the countries associated with those two Latin languages and connected by strong historical links from XVI century. Along the years, the Executive Committee of IBERAMIA was enlarged with the inclusion of AVINTA (Venezuela), SMC (Cuba) and SBC (Brazil). IBERAMIA-98 will run for the first time in a decade with a paper track in English (for submission and presentation) in order to close the links now with other AI communities where AI is more developed and explored. STRUCTURE: The scientific program will be structured along two main modules, the open discussion and the paper track. October 5, a holiday in Portugal, may be dedicated to visit the World Fair Expo'98. The first day of the Conference (Tuesday) is organized with tutorials directed to informatics professionals, the formal opening, the IBERAMIA lecture delivered by a distinguished IberoAmerican researcher, and the declaration of the prize Jose Negrete awarded by the Scientific Committee to the best paper submitted. Also, and in parallel, working groups will be organized in order to discuss general topics (e.g. scientific and industrial joint cooperation). The open discussion track (Wednesday) will be composed by working sessions devoted to the most important areas of research in IberoAmerican countries, the AI Education Symposium dedicated to confront ideas about the best ways to teach AI, a session to present the best M. Sc. or Ph.D. thesis of the whole region, and a video conference panel to establish bridges between Europe and America (involving those unable to attend this panel). The paper track (Thursday and Friday) will be composed by invited talks and paper presentations from all over the world on the full range of AI research and covering both theoretical and foundational issues, and applications as well. Some Workshops will be organized the week before, namely one on Distributed Artificial Intelligence (following the first one in Xalapa (Mexico) in 1996, before IBERAMIA-96, and on any other topics to be proposed by those interested in activating the current research. During the Conference there will be an exposition of books written by IberoAmerican researchers and academics, access to the WWW pages of the AI associations sponsoring the event, and demonstrations of AI industrial products designed in IberoAmerican countries. The portuguese association (APPIA) will organize the week before the Sixth Advanced School on AI (EAIA-98) adopting English as the official language. PAPER PRESENTATIONS: The first track will be held mainly in Latin languages (Portuguese and Spanish), but also in English (depending on the preference of the authors). The papers may be written in English. The second track will be conducted only in English. PUBLICATION: The invited lecture and the papers of the open discussion track will be published in the Proceedings of the Conference. The contributions to the paper track will be published by Springer Verlag. SUBMISSION: Submissions are namely requested in the following topics: Agent-oriented programming * Case-based reasoning * Computer vision * Constraint programming * Database mining tools and applications * Explanation mechanisms * Foundations issues * Genetic algorithms * Hypothetical reasoning * Intelligent information retrieval * Intelligent tutoring and learning environments * Knowledge acquisition * Knowledge representation * Knowledge-based systems validation * Model-based reasoning * Multi-agent and distributed problem-solving * Natural language processing * Neural nets * Robotics * Temporal and spatial reasoning * Symbolic learning IMPORTANT DATES: -Deadline for submission of papers (Open Discussion and Full International tracks): February, 1, 1998 -Deadline for submission of tutorials, working groups and workshops proposals: April 2, 1998 -Deadline for submission of proposals for the concourse of the best thesis (M. Sc. or Ph.D.): April 2, 1998 Chair: Dr. Jaime Sichman Escola Politecnica Universidade de Sao Paulo Av. Professor Luciano Gualberto, no 158, travessa 3 CEPO 5508-900 Sao Paulo, SP, Brasil jaime@pcs.usp.br) -Notification of acceptance of papers: May 15, 1998 -Notification of acceptance of tutorials, working groups, and workshops: June 1, 1998 -Deadline for receipt of paper's final version: June 15, 1998 President and Local Chairman: Prof. Gabriel Pereira Lopes (P) Departamento de Informatica Faculdade de Ciencias e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa Quinta da Torre 2825 Monte da Caparica, Portugal Phone: (351 1) 294 85 36 Fax: (351 1) 294 85 41 gpl@di.fct.unl.pt Program and Scientific Chairman: Prof. Helder Coelho (P) Departamento de Informatica Faculdade de Ciencias, Universidade de Lisboa Bloco C5, Piso 1, Campo Grande 1700 Lisboa, Portugal Phone: (351 1) 7500087 Fax: (351 1) 7500084 hcoelho@di.fc.ul.pt 2nd DAI IBERAMIA Workshop Chair Dr. Francisco Garijo Telefonica I+D Emilio Vargas 6 28043 Madrid, Spain Phone: +34 1 337 4518 Fax: +34 1 337 4602 fgarijo@tid.es ********** III.B.5. Fr: Paul Buitelaar Re: Workshop on Lexical Semantics in Context: Corpus, Inference, and Discourse ESSLLI-98 Workshop on LEXICAL SEMANTICS IN CONTEXT: CORPUS, INFERENCE AND DISCOURSE August 17 - 21, 1998 A workshop held as part of the 10th European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI-98) August 17 - 28, 1998 Saarbruecken, Germany ** First Call for Papers ** ORGANIZERS: Johan Bos (Saarbruecken) Paul Buitelaar (Brandeis University) Web site: http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~esslli98/workshops.html BACKGROUND: The workshop aims at bringing together research in two complementary fields of semantic analysis that are still too far apart. In order to achieve both a broad and a deep understanding of any given text document, a system needs both advanced acquisition of corpus specific lexical semantic knowledge and powerful inference mechanisms that utilize that knowledge in discourse analysis. Given the still relatively limited results within both areas there has been little impetus to combine them. Corpus-based extraction of lexical semantic knowledge has only recently become a more feasible task, because of the growing availibility of on-line text documents; robust corpus processing technologies, such as broad coverage part-of-speech tagging and shallow parsing; and readily available statistical methods. The various approaches to discourse analysis, originating in such diverse fields as formal semantics, psychology and AI, are in the process of converging into a unified approach to the analysis and representation of the cohesive structure of natural language documents. The intersection between these two fields lies in the application of lexical semantic knowledge to such problems in discourse analysis as anaphora resolution and discourse segmentation. In fact, the benefit will be mutual, because knowledge of discourse structure is helpful to lexical knowledge extraction as well. In summary, large scale domain specific lexical semantic knowledge acquisition can assist in analyzing discourse structures, which in turn can assist in acquiring even more accurate lexical semantic representations for the relevant terms in the domain. WORKSHOP FORMAT: The workshop will consist of five sessions, with two or three 20+10-minute presentations in each session. Additionally, a number of invited talks will be given by members of the program committee, while also some time will be set aside for general discussion of the topic of the workshop. PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Submitted papers will be reviewed by the organizers and the following program committee: Bran Boguraev Ann Copestake Daniel Kayser Alex Lascarides Manfred Pinkal Massimo Poesio James Pustejovsky SUBMISSION: It should be stressed that we especially encourage those contributions that address aspects of the integration of all three areas of research mentioned above (lexical semantics, discourse analysis and corpus-based approaches to both of these). The accepted papers will be made available in a summer school reader. Publication in an edited volume is under discussion. All researchers in the area, but especially Ph.D. students and young researchers, are encouraged to submit an extended abstract (4 to 5 pages), preferably by email and in postscript. Submissions should be sent before February 15, 1998 to one of the following two organizers: Johan Bos Paul Buitelaar University of the Saarland Brandeis University Dept. of Computational Linguistics Department of Computer Science Postfach 15 11 50 Waltham, MA 02254 D-66041 Saarbruecken USA Germany paulb@cs.brandeis.edu bos@coli.uni-sb.de REGISTRATION: Workshop contributors will be required to register for ESSLLI-98, but they will be elligible for a reduced registration fee. IMPORTANT DATES: Feb 15, 98: Deadline for submissions Apr 15, 98: Notification of acceptance May 15, 98: Deadline for final copy Aug 17, 98: Start of workshop FURTHER INFORMATION: To obtain further information about ESSLLI-98 please visit the ESSLLI-98 home page at http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/esslli ********** III.C.1. Fr: Stanley Rice Re: Relevant Access to Text, Media, Markets--by Pidgin A new "MAJOR APPLICATION" is heading for the Internet. DETAILED MATCHING OF DEMAND-PROFILES WITH SUPPLY-PROFILES. Methods, basis, background, examples, fuzzy strategies, etc. http://www.cruzio.com/~autospec Anyone can play, free. (Nothing for sale.) Cheers, Stan Rice ****************************************************************** IRLIST Digest is distributed from the University of California, Division of Library Automation, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, CA. 94612-3550. Send subscription requests and submissions to: nancy.gusack@ucop.edu Editorial Staff: Nancy Gusack nancy.gusack@ucop.edu Cliff Lynch (emeritus) cliff@cni.org The IRLIST Archives is set up for anonymous FTP. Using anonymous FTP via the host ftp.dla.ucop.edu, the files will be found in the directory /data/ftp/pub/irl, stored in subdirectories by year (e.g., data/ftp/pub/irl/1993). Search or browse archived IR-L Digest issues on the Web at: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/idom/irlist/ These files are not to be sold or used for commercial purposes. Contact Nancy Gusack for more information on IRLIST. 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