Information Retrieval List Digest 451 (April 20, 1999) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/irld/irld-451.txt IRLIST Digest ISSN 1064-6965 April 20, 1999 Volume XVI, Number 15 Issue 451 ****************************************************************** II. JOBS 1. U. Glasgow: CS: Lectureship in IR 2. NASA Ames: Adaptive Information Management: Scientist III. NOTICES A. Publications 1. [WASHINGTON-UPDATE] EDUCAUSE Washington Update 4-16-99 2. JASIS TOC, Volume 50, N. 7 B. Meetings 1. GLDV ´99 2. AIMDM '99 Tutorials/Workshops 3. SOFSEM 99 4. Evolution of Language 2000 C. Miscellaneous 1. Rare Book School 1999 ****************************************************************** II. JOBS II.1. Fr: Ian Ruthven Re: U. Glasgow: CS: Lectureship in IR UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTING SCIENCE LECTURESHIP in INFORMATION RETRIEVAL LECTURER A/B - £16,655-=£29,048 PER ANNUM REF 177/99AA To strengthen an existing major research group within the Department. Visit http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/. Expected to contribute to the Department's undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, and make a significant contribution to research. In exceptional circumstances an appointment may be made at a higher level than advertised. Informal enquiries to Professor Keith van Rijsbergen, keith@dcs.gla.ac.uk. For an application pack visit http://www.gla.ac.uk/ or write quoting Ref: 177/99AA to the Recruitment Section, Personnel Services, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ. Closing date: 21 May 1999. The Post The University invites applications for a lectureship in Information Retrieval within the Department of Computing Science. The Department has demonstrated the highest standards in both teaching and research. We are actively developing new courses, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and have a thriving research community. Applicants must possess the enthusiasm and ability to fit into a dynamic academic environment, together with appropriate experience in teaching and research. The Department of Computing Science is seeking a lecturer in Information Retrieval to join a strong existing research group led by Professor Keith van Rijsbergen. The successful applicant will be expected to contribute to the Department's teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, in addition to making a significant contribution to research. In exceptional circumstances an appointment may be made at a higher level than advertised. Applicants should preferably have a strong research interest in one of the following areas: theoretical development of probabilistic and logic-based models for IR; design of multimedia IR systems based on Computer Vision and Image Processing technology; evaluation and usability of IR systems in the context of large scale experimentation. The ideal candidate will have the following attributes: * a PhD in Computing Science, preferably in one of the research areas identified above; * the ability to teach some computing science topics outwith their specialist area; * willing to undertake an active role in research student supervision within the IR group; * keen to develop their own research by seeking external research funding from the Research Councils, the EU or industry. For background about the Department's activities see http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/. 14/4/99 Ian Ruthven Email: igr@dcs.gla.ac.uk Editorial Assistant Phone: +44 (0)141 330 6292 The Computer Journal Fax: +44 (0)141 330 4913 http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~igr/ http://www.oup.co.uk/computer_journal ********** II.2. Fr: Jim R. Chen Re: NASA Ames: Adaptive Information Management: Scientist Research Opening at NASA Ames The Adaptive Information Management (AIM) project team at NASA Ames Research Center has an immediate full-time opening for a scientist with research experience in one or more of the following areas: Agents & Assistants Collaboration Digital Libraries Information Retrieval Intelligent Interfaces Knowledge Infrastructure Metadata The candidate should have a Ph.D. (or expect to receive one this year) in Computer Science or related discipline. A strong background in web technologies and artificial intelligence is essential, as is an interest in collaborative work. Good development skills in Java, and familiarity with agent communication protocols are also desirable. The AIM project team is part of the Intelligent Collaboration and Assistant Systems group in the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center (http://ic-www.arc.nasa.gov/ic/projects/aim/). We have developed a Java prototype of a collaborative multi-agent system called DIAMS, which supports dynamic organization of personal or group information repositories, distributed over the WWW. These repositories in turn enable information sharing and exchange between users. We're exploring further research and development in knowledge-based indexing, intelligent user interface and integration with science data and database applications. Please send your resume to Dr. Jim Chen MS 269-2 Computational Sciences Division NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 chen@mail.arc.nasa.gov ****************************************************************** III. NOTICES III.A.1. Fr: EDUCAUSE Re: [WASHINGTON-UPDATE] EDUCAUSE Washington Update 4-16-99 EDUCAUSE: Transforming Education Through Information Technologies http://www.educause.edu EDUCAUSE WASHINGTON UPDATE --- APRIL 16, 1999 IN THIS ISSUE: BROADBAND AND OPEN ACCESS: SENATE COMMERCE COMMITTEE ON THE DEPLOYMENT OF ADVANCED DATA SERVICES FCC ANNOUNCES FORMATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL ADVISORY COUNCIL NEW BIPARTISAN ENCRYPTION BILL SIGNIFIES SHIFT AWAY FROM ADMINISTRATION POLICY UPCOMING EVENTS: REED HUNDT TO SPEAK AT NET '99 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Written from EDUCAUSE'S Washington office, "The EDUCAUSE Washington Update" is a free service of EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit association dedicated to transforming higher education through information technologies. Anyone may subscribe to the Update by sending e-mail to listserv@listserv.educause.edu with "subscribe update firstname lastname" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe, send a "signoff update" command to the same address. If you would like more information about the Update or would like to offer comments or suggestions, please contact Garret Sern at gsern@educause.edu. ********** III.A.2. Fr: Richard Hill Re: JASIS TOC, Volume 50, N. 7 Journal of the American Society for Information Science JASIS VOLUME 50, NUMBER 7 [Note: below are URLs for viewing contents of JASIS from past issues. Below the contents of Bert Boyce's "In This Issue" has been cut into the Table of Contents as well as material from the introduction to the special section.] CONTENTS EDITORIAL In This Issue Bert R. Boyce 555 RESEARCH H.G. Wells's Idea of a World Brain: A Critical Reassessment W. Boyd Rayward 557 Literature-Based Discovery by Lexical Statistics Robert K. Lindsay and Michael D. Gordon 574 Jumpstarting the Information Design for a Community Network Misha W. Vaughan and Nancy Schwartz 588 Searching Scientific Information on the Internet: A Dutch Academic User Survey Henk J. Voorbij 598 SENTINEL: A Multiple Engine Information Retrieval and Visualization System Kevin L. Fox, Ophir Frieder, Margaret M. Knepper, and Eric J. Snowberg 616 BRIEF COMMUNICATION Systematic Weighting and Ranking: Cutting the Gordian Knot Charles H. Davis and Geoffrey W. McKim 626 BOOK REVIEWS Ink into Bits: A Web of Converging Media, by Charles T. Meadow Jeff White 629 Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape, edited by Philip E. Agre and Marc Rotenberg Marc Lampson 631 LETTER TO THE EDITOR 634 Erratum 635 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The ASIS home page contains the Table of Contents and brief abstracts as above from January 1993 (Volume 44) to date. The John Wiley Interscience site includes issues from 1986 (Volume 37) to date. Guests have access only to tables of contents and abstracts. Registered users of the interscience site have access to the full text of these issues and to preprints. We are still working on restoring access for ASIS members as "registered users." ********** III.B.1. Fr: Bernhard Schroeder Re: GLDV ´99 C A L L F O R P A P E R S "Multilingual Corpora: Encoding, Structuring, Analysis" The 11th Annual Meeting of the Society for Computational Linguistics and Language Technology (GLDV) will take place in July 8-10, 1999. Main topic: "Multilingual Corpora: Encoding, Structuring, Analysis". The meeting will be hosted by the Institute of Comparative Linguistics of Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitaet, Frankfurt am Main (Germany). Papers can be offered for plenary sessions as well as sessions of the Special Interest Groups (Arbeitskreise) of GLDV. Papers that are NOT related to the main topic (e.g. Computational Linguistics, Language Technology, Linguistic Data Processing, etc.) are ALSO welcome! Extended abstracts must be sent in by April 30 via mail to titus@em.uni-frankfurt.de * Size: 2-3 pages (2000 words maximum); * Format: RTF, HTML, ASCII. The program committee will decide about acceptance of the papers on May 28, 1999. For details go to: http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/curric/gldv99e.htm ********** III.B.2. Fr: Steve Rees Re: AIMDM '99 Tutorials/Workshops AIMDM'99 TUTORIALS AND WORKSHOPS As you might have already heard this years joint meeting of the societies of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Europe (AIME) and the European Society of Medical Decision Meking (ESMDM), entitled AIMDM'99, will take place in Aalborg, Denmark, 20th-24th June 1999. AIMDM'99 includes a day of tutorials and workshops that have now been finalised. These will take place on Sunday 20th June at Hotel Hvide Hus,Vesterbro 2, 9000-Aalborg. Tutorials will be run in parallel and last for a half a day, with morning tutorials taking place from 9 am to 12:30 pm and afternoon tutorials from 1:30 pm to 5pm. Workshops will also be run in parallel, each workshop lasting the whole day. Registration for a single tutorial costs 400 DKK. Registration for a workshop costs 500 DKK for AIMDM'99 participants or 750 DKK otherwise. Registration for a workshop includes lunch. Please note that tutorials are only open to those registering for the main AIMDM'99 conference. Registration for AIMDM'99 (excluding tutorials and workshops) costs 2550 before May 15th and 3000 DKK after, or for students 1400 DKK before May 15th or 1800 DKK after. Details of the tutorials and workshops are now given, followed by a registration form. Please send your completed form to: AIMDM99 Aalborg Turist og Kongres Bureau A/S Østerågade 8, Postbox 1862 DK-9100 Aalborg, Denmark For further details of other activities occurring as part of the AIMDM`99 conference please visit our web site at: http://www.miba.auc.dk/AIMDM99/ TUTORIALS 1) NATURAL LANGUAGE GENERATION Audience: Researchers and software developers who are interested in improving the quality of documents and other written materials produced by software systems. Description: Many medical IT systems need to produce documents or other types of written texts, such as discharge reports, letters to patients, and explanations of expert-system reasoning. The quality and readability of such texts is not always as high as it could be, unfortunately. This tutorial will discuss some of the linguistic problems that computer-generated texts can suffer from, such as poor rhetorical structure, inappropriate anaphors, false implicatures, and grammatical mistakes. Natural-language generation (NLG) technology is introduced, and it is discussed how it can be used to automatically produce texts that satisfy linguistic constraints and hence do not suffer from these problems. The tutorial will be illustrated with examples from NLG systems developed at Aberdeen and elsewhere. Attendees do not need any background in linguistics or natural-language processing, but they should be familiar with basic AI concepts. I hope that even people who do not intend to use NLG technology will still benefit from the tutorial, by becoming more aware of potential linguistic problems in computer-generated texts and how they can be resolved. Tutorial Presenter Ehud Reiter Dept of Computing Science, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UE, UK. Phone +44-1224-273443, Fax +44-1224-273422, email: ereiter@csd.abdn.ac.uk 2) THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MEDICAL DECISION MAKING This course is intended for clinicians, and others who wish to gain insight into the psychological factors influencing their decision making under uncertainty. The aim of this tutorial is to increase understanding of the psychological processes involved in medical decision making. This knowledge is useful in trying to improve decision making. Additionally it is a fruitful area for research. The course assumes the attendee has only a basic knowledge of the subject matter. The clinician's reasoning is a partial cause of non-optimal medical decisions. The cognitive psychology of judgment and decision making offers explanations of how some of these reasoning errors are made. The course will review the basic nature of expert medical reasoning, to discover possibilities for capitalizing on its strengths and supporting its weaknesses. The participant will learn why the human cognitive system, with its large memory, limited attention span, and powerful pattern recognition ability, seems destined to operate by automatic "scripted" response rather than thoughtful deliberation. We will demonstrate the implications of clinicians' cognitive processes for two basic activities of rational decision making: diagnosis and choosing a course of action. Clinicians' reasoning strategies, motivations, habits, and cognitive limitations can lead them to make errors of diagnosis, and define the methods they can use to seek and use information more rationally. Clinicians' strategies for predicting what will happen can lead to misjudgments of probability and their methods of evaluating things can lead to misjudgments of treatment consequences. Understanding the psychological processes involved will suggest methods for helping clinicians reason better about the probabilities of outcomes and about their own or their patients' preferences. Tutorial presenters Robert M. Hamm Clinical Decision Making Program, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, 900 NE 10th St, Oklahoma City, OK 73104, U.S.A. Telephone: 405/271-8000 ext 3-2302, Fax: 405/271-2784, e-mail:robert-hamm@ouhsc.edu Clare Harries Department of Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, U.K.Telephone: +44 171 504 5389, Fax: +44 171 436 4276, e-mail: clare.harries@ucl.ac.uk Jack Dowie, PhD Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, U.K. Telephone: +44 171 254 7576, Fax: +44 171 254 7576, e-mail: j.a.dowie@open.ac.uk 3) DATA MINING TECHNIQUES AND APPLICATIONS IN MEDICINE With the widespread use of medical information systems that include databases that have recently featured explosive growth in their sizes, physicians and medical researchers are faced with a problem of making use of the stored data. The traditional manual data analysis has become insufficient, and methods for efficient computer-assisted analysis indispensable, in particular those of data mining and other related techniques of knowledge discovery in databases and intelligent data analysis. This tutorial will address current techniques and applications of data mining in medicine. We will provide an overview of data mining methods, including symbolic data mining (mining of decision rules, association rules, decision trees, inductive logic programming, hierarchical concept discovery, etc.) and subsymbolic data mining (instance based learning, neural nets, Naive Bayesian classifier, etc). Specific evaluation techniques and statistical criteria suited for medical applications will be discussed. Selected data preprocessing and data visualization methods will also be presented. The participants of tutorial will get familiar with * fundamental concepts data mining and knowledge discovery in data bases * an overview of data mining methods, * specific data mining methods, including decision trees and rules, association rules, and naive Bayesian classifier * metrics that can be used to assess the quality and interestingness of discovered relationships * how intelligent data analysis is different from common statistical approaches and how it can complement it * what features should be supported by a particular data mining tool to be useful for medical data analysis * how to successfully integrate data mining techniques within existing medical information system Intended audience: This tutorial will be of interest to clinicians, medical researchers, information technology professionals, information systems developers and managers, data analysts and institutional decision makers, and anyone else interested in applying modern data analysis methods to extract useful knowledge from medical data bases. Tutorial presenters Blaz Zupan (1,2) and Nada Lavrac (2) (1) University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences Trzaska 25, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. phone: +386 61 177 3380, fax: +386 61 125 1038 e-mail: blaz.zupan@fri.uni-lj.si (2) J. Stefan Institute, Department of Intelligent Systems Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. phone: +386 61 177 3272, fax: +386 61 125 1038. e-mail: nada.lavrac@ijs.si 4) HOW TO BUILD A CAUSAL PROBABILISTIC NETWORK A Causal Probabilistic Network, also called Bayesian network is a flexible and efficient framework for reasoning under uncertainty, and it has established itself as a practical method for knowledge representation and inference in a number of medical areas. The framework consists of a structural part, where the domain in question is modelled through a directed acyclic graph, and a quantitative part, where the impact between nodes in the graph are represented as conditional probabilities. This tutorial will through examples give an informal introduction to theory and use of CPNs in connection with decision theory. The participants will obtain hands-on experience with the construction of a small CPN, including the acquisition of structure and conditional probabilities. Tutorial presenters Finn V. Jensen Dept. of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Fredrik Bajers Vej 7, DK-9000 Aalborg Øst, Denmark. Phone: +4596358903, email: fvj@cs.auc.dk Steen Andreassen Dept. of Medical Informatics and Image Analysis, Aalborg University, Fredrik Bajers Vej 7D, DK-9000 Aalborg Øst, Denmark. Phone: +4596358812, Fax: +4598154008, email: sa@miba.auc.dk 5) FOUNDATIONS OF PREFERENCE THEORY AND QUALITY OF LIFE ADJUSTMENT. The methods of preference assessment and quality of life adjustment are widely applied in the medical decision making and cost-effectiveness literature. Yet, the theory and assumptions that underlie the use of these methods are poorly understood. The objectives of this short course are to provide experienced practioners with a quick and accessible introduction to the underpinnings of utility theory, with an emphasis on the relevance, power, and limitations of these assumptions in health and medical contexts. Topics to be covered will include: the theory of choice and preference; traditional models of individual decision making under uncertainty, including the von-Neumann - Morgenstern expected utility framework; the additional assumptions that support the use of multi-attribute utility functions and quality-adjusted life-years; and the difficulties encountered when the theory is extended beyond the individual to represent choice at the societal level. Tutorial presenter Jospeh S. Pliskin, Ph.D. Department of Industrial Engineering and Management and Department of Health Policy and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev,Beer-Sheva, Israel. P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.Tel: 972-7-6472219,Fax: 972-7-6472958 email: jpliskin@bgumail.bgu.ac.il 6) HOW TO READ (AND MAYBE PERFORM) A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW (METAANALYSIS) Physicians are committed to manage their patients according to the best available evidence. Systematic reviews are about asking the relevant questions; obtaining the published material (all of it); and extracting the evidence. In the tutorial we will address the following questions: 1. Why do we need systematic reviews? 2. How to put the questions? 3. How to formulate a relevant protocol? 4. How to collect the pertinent studies? 5. How to evaluate the methodological soundness of the studies? Does it matter? 6. How to obtain data from the studies and how to combine it? 7. How to explore heterogeneity and why is it so important? 8. How to check for biases? 9. How to present results? 10. Does metaanalysis work? Tutorial presenters Karla Soares Weiser, Leonard Leibovici Department of Medicine E, Beilinson Hospital, Petah-tiqva 49100, Israel; Tel 972 3 9376501; fax 972 3 9376505; e-mail leibovic@post.tau.ac.il AIMDM99 - Workshops 1) COMPUTERS IN ANAESTHESIA AND INTENSIVE CARE The care of critically ill patients in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and during Anaesthesia is becoming increasingly complex. Clinicians are required to rapidly interpret and respond to a large number of clinical parameters, selecting appropriate treatment for the patient among many different options. New measurement technology has increased the demand for improved information management, as has the need to monitor and assess the quality of care provided. This workshop presents "State of the art" applications of information technology for clinicians, researchers and industry working in Anaesthesia and Intensive care. · Topics of particular interest include those related to supporting clinical decision making, including · Decision support systems: clinical guidelines and protocols; model based advisory systems; monitoring and intelligent alarming; and the application of Artificial Intelligence methodology in Anaesthesia and Intensive care. Computer systems for control and assessment of quality of care. · Information management: visualization and interpretation of clinical data; planning and scheduling of critical care resources. In addition patient Data Management systems will be presented by representatives from industry. Scientific committee: Silvia Miksch (Chair) (A), Steen Andreassen (DK), Michel Dojat (F), Jim Hunter (UK), Christian Popow (A), Steve Rees (DK), Per Thorgaard (DK). 2) PROGNOSTIC MODELS IN MEDICINE: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND DECISION ANALYTIC APPROACHES. Prognostic models are increasingly used in medicine to predict the natural course of disease, or the expected outcome after treatment. Prognosis forms an integral part of systems for treatment selection and treatment planning. In evaluating quality of care, prognostic models are used for predicting outcome, such as mortality, which is compared with the actual measured outcome. Furthermore, prognostic models may play an important role in guiding diagnostic problem solving, e.g. by only requesting information concerning tests, of which the outcome affects knowledge of the prognosis. In recent years several methods and techniques from the fields of artificial intelligence, decision theory and statistics have been introduced into models of the medical management of patients (diagnosis, treatment, follow-up); in some of these models, assessment of the expected prognosis constitutes an integral part. Typically, recent prognostic methods rely on explicit (patho)physiological models, which may be combined with traditional models of life expectancy. Examples of such domain models are causal disease models, and physiological models of regulatory mechanisms in the human body. Such model-based approaches have the potential to facilitate the development of actual systems, because the medical domain models can be (partially) obtained from the medical literature. Various methods have been suggested for the representations of such domain models ranging from quantitative and probabilistic approaches to symbolic and qualitative ones. Semantic concepts such as time, e.g. for modelling the progressive changes of regulatory mechanisms, have formed an important and challenging modelling issue. Moreover, automatic learning techniques of such models have been proposed. When model construction is hard, less explicit domain models have been studied such as the use of case-based and neural network representations and their combination with more explicit domain models. In medical decision analysis, where the theories of probability and utility are combined, various representations and techniques are suggested such as decision trees, regression models, and representations in which advantage is taken from the Markov assumption (such as in Markov decision problems). This workshop aims at bringing together various theoretical and practical approaches to computational prognosis that comprise the state of the art in this field. This workshop is a follow up on the initiative started with the successful invited session on "Intelligent Prognostic Methods in Medical Diagnosis and Treatment Planning" in 1998 during the conference "Computational Engineering in Systems Applications 1998" (cesa'98) (http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~lucas/ipm-cesa98.html) which has resulted in a special issue on prognosis of the journal Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. Scientific committee: Ameen Abu-Hanna (Co-Chair) (H), Peter Lucas (Co-Chair) (H), S. Andreassen (DK), P.M.M. Bossuyt (H), J. Fox (UK), J.D.F. Habbema (H), P. Haddawy (USA), P. Hammond (UK), E. Keravnou (Cyprus), N. Lavrac (Slovenia), J. van der Lei (H), L. Ohno-Machado (USA), M. Ramoni (UK), M. Stefanelli (I), Th.Wetter (D), J.Wyatt (UK) ********** III.B.3. Fr: Jan Staudek Re: SOFSEM 99 SOFSEM'99 XXVI-th Seminar on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Informatics November 27 - December 4, 1999 Devet-skal hotel, Milovy Czech Republic URL: http://www.sofsem.cz Organized by CSCS, Czech Society for Computer Science DCIT, Prague Institute of Computer Science, Academy of Sciences, Prague Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Brno Utrecht University in co-operation with ERCIM - the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics Subject SOFSEM (SOFtware SEMinar) is an eight-day international conference devoted to the theory and the practice of software systems. Its program consists of a series of invited talks given by prominent academic professionals and researchers. Contributed talks and posters of participants are also included in the program of SOFSEM. The working language is English. Invited talks and contributed talks are published by Springer-Verlag in the "Lecture Notes in Computer Science" series and distributed at the seminar. Sofsem'99 is the 26th in the series of Sofsem seminars held annually It is intended to foster cooperation among people working in various areas of computer science. Its scientific program offers a unique opportunity to gain a relatively quick and representative overview about the selected parts of computer science, presented by top researchers. Its social program provides an optimum framework for discussions, meetings, establishing contacts, and socializing. Especially suited for young computer scientists. TABLE OF CONTENTS Topics Committees Program of Invited Talks Submissions Contributed Talks Posters Deadlines Contact Addresses, Sofsem www-page Fees Cancellation Financial support Exhibitions Sponsors Local Arrangements, Venue, History Registration REGISTRATION FORM AND PAYMENT NOTICE Topics Trends in Theory Core Technologies Software and Information Engineering From Data to Knowledge Applications Committees Advisory Board D. Bjorner, (UN University, IIST, Macau), P. van Emde Boas, (CWI Amsterdam, NL), M. Broy, (TU Munich, DE), M. Chytil, (ANIMA Praha, Prague, CZ), G. Gottlob, (TU Vienna, A), K. G. Jeffery, (CLRC RAL, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon, UK), M. Zemankova, (NSF, Washington DC, USA) Steering Committee J. Wiedermann, Chair (Academy of Sciences, Prague, CZ) B. Rovan, Vice-Chair (Comenius University, Bratislava, SK) K. G. Jeffery (CLRC RAL, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon, UK) J. Pavelka (DCIT, Prague, CZ) F. Plasil (Charles University, Prague, CZ) I. Privara (Institute of Informatics and Statistics, Bratislava, SK) J. Staudek (Masaryk University, Brno, CZ) Invited Talks Trends in Theory -Jozef Gruska, Masaryk University, Brno, CZ Quantum Challenges -Juraj Hromkovic, University of Aachen, DE Stability of approximation algorithms for hard optimization problems -Wojciech Rytter, Warsaw University, PL Algorithms on compressed strings and arrays Core Technologies -Wolfgang Appelt,GMD, Sankt Augustin, DE WWW based collaboration with the BSCW System -Christian Bac, Guy Bernard, Didier Le Tien, INT Evry, FR Middleware and Quality of Service -Jean-Marie Rifflet, Universite Paris 7, FR Chorus internals -Noemi Rodrigues, Catholic University Rio de Janeiro, BR Dynamic Reconfiguration of CORBA-based Applications -Doaitse Swierstra, University Utrecht, NL Parsing -Ghica van Emde Boas, IBM Nederland N.V., NL IBM San Francisco: Java based business application components and new ways to develop them Software and Information Engineering -Paolo Atzeni, University of ROMA III, IT Data bases and the World Wide Web, accomplishments and challenges -Juan Biccaregui, CLRC-RAL, UK Exploiting formality in software engineering -Ronald Cramer, ETH Zurich, CH Secure Multi-Party Computation -Max Garzon, University Memphis, US Biocomputing -Vaclav Rajlich, Wayne State University, Detroit, US Software change and evolution -Peter Sloot, WINS, NL Distributed Simulation with Cellular Automata: Applications and Architecture From Data to Knowledge -Alejandro P. Buchmann, T. University, Darmstadt, DE Data warehousing -Max Garzon, University Memphis, US Knowledge applications on human-computer interactions Applications -Martin Bogdan, Wolfgang Rosenstiel, University of Tuebingen, DE Application of artificial neural networks for different engineering problems -Maxime Crochemore, University of Marne-la-Vallie, FR String algorithms and text compression -Emil Pelikan, Czech Academy of Science, CZ Principles of Forecasting -Dan Roth, University of Illinois, US Neural Nets Applications -Willy Schilders, Philips Labs, NL Electronics design -Stephan Tschoeke, University Paderborn, DE Real Life Project with Lufthansa Submissions The categories for submissions include Contributed Talks and Posters. Each submission should have a title giving the following information: - name, address, e-mail address, and phone/fax number of each author; - specification of one of the authors as the contact person. To submit, please send a postscript file of your contribution via e-mail. With each submission, please e-mail also an abstract in plain ASCII. Any other form of electronic submission should be consulted in advance with the PC sectretary. Contributed Talks 8-page drafts in English are expected. A full camera-ready copy of contributed talks on current topics in Computer Science should be no longer than 8-pages. Presentation time for contributed talks is 25 minutes. Contributed talks will be included in the Proceedings of SOFSEM '99, published in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series by Springer-Verlag. The Organizing Committee will supply the authors of accepted contributed talks with detailed technical instructions and the LaTeX style file for the preparation of the camera-ready copy. Posters We actively encourage posters describing work in progress. Final versions of two A4 page poster are expected. Deadlines Submission of the contributed talk/poster May 7, 1999 Notification of acceptance / rejection June 30, 1999 Camera-ready copy of the talks August 25, 1999 Contact Addresses Sofsem www-page http://www.sofsem.cz Communications and enquires should be adressed to: sofsem@ics.muni.cz Submissions should be adressed to: sochor@fi.muni.cz or Jiri Sochor Faculty of Informatics Masaryk University Botanicka 68a, 602 00 Brno Czech Republic ********** III.B.4. Fr: Conference Evolang Re: Evolution of Language 2000 Preliminary CALL FOR PAPERS [deadline: November 8, 1999] T H E E V O L U T I O N O F L A N G U A G E Paris April 3-6, 2000 Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications Paris - France http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/ ORGANISED BY: Professor Jean Aitchison (Oxford University), Dr. Jean-Louis Dessalles (ENST Paris), Professor Jim Hurford (Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh), Dr. Chris Knight (Department of Sociology, University of East London), Professor Luc Steels (Sony CSL and Vrije Universiteit Brussel). LOCAL ORGANISATION: Jean-Louis Dessalles (ENST), Laleh Ghadakpour (CREA), Frédéric Kaplan (Sony CSL), Luc Steels (Sony CSL), François Yvon (ENST). This will be the third conference in a series concerned with the evolutionary emergence of speech. From a wide range of disciplines, we seek to attract researchers willing to integrate their perspectives with those of modern Darwinism. The aim is to bring together linguists, computer scientists, anthropologists, palaeontologists, ethologists, geneticists, neuroscientists, and other scientists who are concerned with the question of the origin and evolution of language. Provisional PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: Jean Aitchison (Worcester College), Robert C. Berwick (M.I.T.), Derek Bickerton (Univ. Hawaï), Melissa Bowerman* (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics), Ted Briscoe (University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory), René Carré (ENST), Bernard Comrie (University of Southern California), Jean-Louis Dessalles (ENST), Jean-Marie Hombert* (MSH Rhône-Alpes), James R. Hurford (University of Edinburgh), Judy Kegl* (University of Southern Maine), Simon Kirby (University of Edinburgh), Chris Knight (University of East London), André Langaney (Musée de l'Homme), Frederick J. Newmeyer (University of Washington), Michael Studdert-Kenedy* (Haskins Laboratories), Luc Steels (Sony CSL & Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Bernard Victorri (ENS Ulm). * [to be confirmed] Submission Instructions Prospective authors are invited to submit extended abstracts or short papers (from 1 to 4 pages, max. 2000 words). Submitted papers will be refereed and selected for oral presentation (25/30 min) on the basis of quality and relevance to the Conference topics. Accepted abstracts and papers will be included in the Conference Proceedings and will be made accessible through the web. Copies of the proceedings will be available at the Conference. Authors of accepted contributions will be asked to submit full length papers for a volume to be published after the Conference by an international publisher. Authors are strongly encouraged to submit their papers electronically (MS Word preferred, but most formats will be recognised). Please email your submission to evolang@infres.enst.fr Don't forget to include the submission form in your message. The deadline for submission is November 8th, 1999. If you cannot send your submission through email, please send four copies (and the submission form) to: J-L Dessalles ENST / Dep. InfRes 46 rue Barrault F-75013 Paris - France If you are planning to submit a paper or abstract, or if you simply plan to attend the Conference, please send a mail to evolang@infres.enst.fr You will be kept informed through e-mail of further useful information. Conference web site: http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/ Call for papers: http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/cfp.html EMAIL: evolang@infres.enst.fr ********** III.C.1. Fr: Book Arts Press Re: Rare Book School 1999 RARE BOOK SCHOOL 1999 (RBS): Rare Book School is pleased to announce its schedule of courses for the summer of 1999, consisting of 27 five-day, non-credit courses on topics concerning the history of books and printing, manuscripts, and special collections, to be offered on the grounds of the University of Virginia 12 July - 6 August. Tuition per course for the RBS 1999 Summer Session is $640. The complete brochure, expanded course descriptions, and applications are available at our website: Readers of IR-L may find the courses featured below to be of particular interest: 17. IMPLEMENTING ENCODED ARCHIVAL DESCRIPTION. Encoded Archival Description (EAD) provides standardized machine-readable access to primary resource materials. This course is aimed at archivists, librarians, and museum personnel who would like an introduction to EAD that includes an extensive supervised hands-on component. Students will learn SGML encoding techniques in part using examples selected from among their own institution's finding aids. Topics: the context out of which EAD emerged; introduction to the use of SGML authoring tools and browsers; the conversion of existing finding aids to EAD. Offered in both weeks 1 and 3. Instructor: Daniel Pitti. DANIEL PITTI became Project Director at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in 1997, before which he was Librarian for Advanced Technologies at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the Coordinator of the Encoded Archival Description initiative. 27. ELECTRONIC TEXTS AND IMAGES. A practical exploration of the research, preservation, editing, and pedagogical uses of electronic texts and images in the humanities. The course will center around the creation of a set of archival-quality etexts and digital images, for which we shall also create an Encoded Archival Description guide. Topics include: SGML tagging and conversion; using the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines; the form and implications of XML; publishing on the World Wide Web; and the management and use of on-line texts. See for details about last year's course. Some experience with HTML is a pre-requisite for admission to the course. Offered in both weeks 2 and 4. Instructor: David Seaman. DAVID SEAMAN is the founding director of the nationally-known Electronic Text Center and on-line archive at the University of Virginia. He lectures and writes frequently on SGML, the Internet, and the creation and use of electronic texts in the humanities. Book Arts Press ph: 804/924-8851 114 Alderman Library fax: 804/924-8824 University of Virginia email: oldbooks@virginia.edu Charlottesville, VA 22903 website: ****************************************************************** IRLIST Digest is distributed from the University of California, California Digital Library, 1111 Franklin Street, Oakland, CA. 94607-5200. 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 hibiscus.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. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN IRLIST DO NOT REPRESENT THOSE OF THE EDITORS OR THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. AUTHORS ASSUME FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR MATERIAL.