Information Retrieval List Digest 495 (March 13, 2000) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/irld/irld-495.txt IRLIST Digest ISSN 1064-6965 March 13, 2000 Volume XVII, Number 11 Issue 495 ****************************************************************** II. JOBS 1. Canon Research Centre Europe: Software Engineer: IR 2. U. Strathclyde: Glasgow, Scotland: Chair, Information Science 3. UW-Milwaukee: Assistant Professor: SLIS III. NOTICES A. Publications 1. Reminder: Computational Linguistics Special Issue on Anaphora and Ellipsis Resolution 2. Book: Breadth and Depth of Semantic Lexicons 3. [WASHINGTON-UPDATE] March 13, 2000 B. Meetings 1. Evolang: CFParticipation 2. 2nd Learning Language in Logic (LLL) Workshop: CFPapers 3. IEEE Vis 2000: 2nd CFParticipation 4. Graphics Hardware 2000: 2nd CFParticipation 5. Cross Language Evaluation Forum: CFParticipation C. Miscellaneous 1. IR-L Has a New Address 2. W3C Developments 3. AntWorld Web Search Tool Now Available ****************************************************************** II. JOBS II.1. Fr: Tony Rose Re: Canon Research Centre Europe: Software Engineer: IR Canon Research Centre Europe (CRE) has a position for a top quality Software Engineer in the Retrieval Department. Applications from experienced software engineers and exceptional recent graduates are invited for the following position: Job Specification * to design, develop and maintain prototypes, demonstrators and product-level software for advanced information retrieval * to perform development activities as an integral member of an R&D team working on advanced information retrieval, user interface technology, natural language processing & WWW Requirements * first class academic background: honours degree in computer science or related discipline with significant computing content * excellent software engineering skills in a variety of languages including C/C++ and Java * experience of working on commercial software projects Desirable: * experience of building robust IR or NLP applications * track record of proven initiative and teamwork in software development projects * expertise in the areas of: - C++ standard template library - distributed systems - databases We offer * Stimulating and flexible working environment * Competitive salary and benefits package * Excellent career opportunities Canon has over 75,000 employees world wide. Since its founding, Canon has moved forward toward its objective of being the manufacturer of the best products in the world. While pursuing the pinnacle of quality, we have taken the lead in developing electronic and automation technologies to enhance the ease of use of our products. One key to Canon's success has been the spirit of meeting new technological challenges and at CRE you will have the opportunity to play a significant part in this. Because of British Law, preference will be given to applicants who already have the right to work in the United Kingdom. To apply please e-mail, mail or fax your CV with a covering letter to: The Recruitment Manager Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd 1 Occam Court PHONE: +44 (0)1483 448 844 Occam Road FAX: +44 (0)1483 448 845 Guildford GU2 7YJ E-MAIL: jobs@cre.canon.co.uk UNITED KINGDOM WWW: www.cre.canon.co.uk Dr TG Rose Retrieval Dept. Manager Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd Occam Road, Surrey Research Park, Guildford, Surrey, UK GU2 7YJ email:tgr@cre.canon.co.uk tel:+44 1483 448807 fax:+44 1483 448845 ********* II.2. Fr: Ruben Leon Re: U. Strathclyde: Glasgow, Scotland: Chair, Information Science CHAIR IN INFORMATION SCIENCE The University of Strathclyde invites applications for a Chair in Information Science. Applicants should have an established reputation and track record of publications in Information Ccience and demonstrate a commitment to excellence in research and teaching. Applications will be particularly welcome from established academics in the fields of knowledge and information retrieval. The person appointed will be expected to provide research leadership, contribute to the Department's Undergraduate and Postgraduate classes, and take on management responsibilities as these are rotated within the Department. The Department has two Masters programmes (MSc/PG Diploma in Information Management and MSc/PG Diploma in Information and Library Studies). The research activity is organised into two main groupings, Information Retrieval and Information Management The Department was rated "Excellent" under the Teaching Quality Assessment and 4 in the last Research Assessment Exercise. Further information is available in http://www.dis.strath.ac.uk. Informal inquiries are welcome, contact the Head of Department Forbes Gibb at forbes@dis.strath.ac.uk. For application form (Ref 15/00) and further particulars (available on request in alternative formats for applicants with a disability) contact the Personnel Office, Tel 0141 548 4133 (24 hour Voicemail Service). Applications Closing Date: 3 April 2000. ********** II.3. Fr: Dietmar Wolfram Re: UW-Milwaukee: Assistant Professor: SLIS University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Library and Information Science ASSISTANT PROFESSOR The School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) invites applications for a second new full-time tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level. The successful candidate will teach courses and conduct research in one or more of the following areas: telecommunications, computer networking, informatics, information resources management, digital libraries. The selected applicant will teach courses in the School's undergraduate B.S. program in Information Resources, graduate M.L.I.S. program and multidisciplinary doctoral program in Information Science. A Ph.D. in Information Science or related field is required as is demonstrated ability in research and teaching. Competitive salary for an academic year (9 month) appointment, plus additional compensation for possible summer teaching, and generous fringe benefits. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is a major university committed to academic excellence. It is one of the two doctoral degree-granting institutions in the multi-campus University of Wisconsin system, and has a student enrollment of over 22,000. The School of Library and Information Science offers programs leading to a nationally accredited Masters in Library and Information Science, a B. S. program in Information Resources, a certificate in advanced studies, and a multidisciplinary doctorate. The School has a strong research faculty, 350+ students, and state-of-the-art information technology laboratories. UWM is located in the cultural, commercial, and educational hub of the state, in a pleasant residential neighborhood overlooking Lake Michigan. Review of applications will begin April 17, 2000. The starting date is August 21, 2000 or negotiable. Send letters of application, resume, and three letters of reference to: Dietmar Wolfram, Chair, Search Committee School of Library and Information Science University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee P.O. Box 413 Milwaukee, WI 53201 Phone: (414) 229-6836 Fax: (414) 229-4848 Email: dwolfram@uwm.edu The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer with a strong commitment to the diversity of faculty, staff, and student body. ****************************************************************** III. NOTICES III.A.1. Fr: Ruslan Mitkov Re: Reminder: Computational Linguistics Special Issue on Anaphora and Ellipsis Resolution Reminder: Submission Deadline is 1 April 2000 Call for Papers Special Issue of Computational Linguistics: Anaphora and Ellipsis Resolution Guest editors: Ruslan Mitkov, Branimir Boguraev, Shalom Lappin Anaphora and ellipsis both account for cohesion in text and are phenomena of active study in formal and computational linguistics alike. The correct interpretation of anaphora and ellipsis, as well as the understanding of the relationship between them, is vital for Natural Language Processing. After considerable initial research, and after years of relative silence in the early eighties, these issues have attracted the attention of many researchers in the last 10 years and much promising work on the topic has been reported. Discourse-orientated theories and formalisms such as DRT and Centering have inspired new research on the computational treatment of anaphora. The drive towards corpus-based robust NLP solutions has further stimulated interest, for alternative and/or data-enriched approaches. In addition, application-driven research in areas such as automatic abstracting and information extraction, has independently identified the importance of (and boosted the research in) anaphora and coreference resolution. Ellipsis resolution too, being of particular importance to a number of Natural Language Understanding applications such as dialogue and discourse processing, has received increasing attention. The growing interest in anaphora and ellipsis resolution has been demonstrated clearly over the last 4--5 years through the MUC coreference task projects and at a number of related for a (workshops, conferences, etc.). Against this background of expanding research and growing interest, this special issue offers the opportunity for a high quality, and timely, collection of papers on anaphora and ellipsis resolution. Topics The call for papers invites submissions of papers describing recent novel and challenging work/results in anaphora and ellipsis resolution. The range of topics to be covered will include, but will not be limited to: o new anaphora and ellipsis resolution algorithms, o factors in anaphora resolution: salience and interaction of factors, o techniques in ellipsis resolution, o use of theories and formalisms in anaphora resolution, o use of theories and formalisms in ellipsis resolution, o applications of anaphora/coreference resolution, o applications of ellipsis resolution, o multilingual anaphora resolution, o evaluation issues, o use/production of annotated corpora for anaphora and ellipsis. In addition, we expect papers addressing various issues of debate related to the resolution of anaphora and ellipsis, such as: o Is it possible to propose a core set of factors used in anaphora resolution? o When dealing with real data, is it at all possible to posit "constraints", or should all factors be regarded as "preferences"? o What is the case for languages other than English? o What degree of preference (weight) should be given to "preferential" factors? How should weights best be determined? What empirical data can be brought to bear on this? o What would be an optimal order for the application of multiple factors? Would this affect the scoring strategies used in selecting the antecedent? o Is it realistic to expect high precision over unrestricted texts? o Is it realistic to determine anaphoric links in corpora automatically? o Are all CL applications 'equal' with respect to their requirements from an anaphora resolution module? What kind(s) of compromises might be possible, depending on the NLP task, and how would awareness of these affect the tuning of a resolution algorithm for particular type(s) of input text? o Should ellipsis resolution be handled by syntactic or semantic reconstruction? o Is it necessary to retrieve both syntactic and semantic properties of the antecedent in the reconstructed representation of the elided structure? Finally, we invite discussion on various open questions from both theoretical and computational point of view such as whether we should construe ellipsis as entirely distinct from anaphora. Submissions and Reviewing The submission deadline is 1 April 2000. Authors can submit either electronically or send 6 hard copies of their paper (for format and style details, see http://www.aclweb.org/cl) to: Ruslan Mitkov (R.Mitkov@wlv.ac.uk) School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences University of Wolverhampton Stafford St. Wolverhampton WV1 1SB United Kingdom Please note that in addition to the submission, a 100-word abstract and details of the author (following the format given at http://www.aclweb.org/cl/submit.txt) should be emailed to R.Mitkov. Each submission will be reviewed both by experts appointed by the editor of the journal and by members of the guest editorial board of the special issue. In addition to the guest editors, Ruslan Mitkov (University of Wolverhampton), Branimir Boguraev (IBM Research, Yorktown Heights) and Shalom Lappin (University of London), the guest editorial board includes the following members: Nicholas Asher (University of Texas), Amit Bagga (GE CRD), Claire Cardie (Cornell University), David Carter (Speech Machines, Malvern), Eugene Charniak (Brown University), Walter Daelemans (University of Antwerp), Mary Dalrymple (Xerox PARC), Dan Hardt (Villanova University), Graeme Hirst (University of Toronto), Jerry Hobbs (SRI International), Aravind Joshi (University of Pennsylvania), Lauri Karttunen (Xerox Research Center Europe), Andrew Kehler (SRI International), Christopher Kennedy (Northwestern University), Massimo Poesio (University of Edinburgh), Monique Rolbert (University of Marseille), Stuart Shieber (Harvard University), Candy Sidner (Lotus Research), Marilyn Walker (AT&T). This call for paper is also available at http://www.wlv.ac.uk/sles/compling/news/text.html ********** III.A.2. Fr: Jean Veronis Re: Book: Breadth and Depth of Semantic Lexicons KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS TEXT, SPEECH AND LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY Volume 10 Series editors: Nancy Ide and Jean Véronis BREADTH AND DEPTH OF SEMANTIC LEXICONS Edited by EVELYNE VIEGAS Computing Research Laboratory New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, USA Most of the books about computational (lexical) semantic lexicons deal with the depth (or content) aspect of lexicons, ignoring the breadth (or coverage) aspect. This book presents a first attempt in the community to address both issues: content and coverage of computational semantic lexicons, in a thorough manner. Moreover, it addresses issues which have not yet been tackled in implemented systems such as the application time of lexical rules. Lexical rules and lexical underspecification are also contrasted in implemented systems. The main approaches in the field of computational (lexical) semantics are represented in the present book (including Wordnet, CyC, Mikrokosmos, Generative Lexicon). This book embraces several fields (and subfields) as different as: linguistics (theoretical, computational, semantics, pragmatics), psycholinguistics, cognitive science, computer science, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, statistics and natural language processing. The book also constitutes a very good introduction to the state of the art in computational semantic lexicons of the late 1990s. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht Hardbound, ISBN 0-7923-6039-7 November 1999, 352 pp. NLG 270.00 / USD 144.00 / GBP 89.00 Check the series Web page for order information: http://www.wkap.nl/series.htm/TLTB ********** III.A.3. Fr: EDUCAUSE Re: [WASHINGTON-UPDATE] March 13, 2000 EDUCAUSE: Transforming Education Through Information Technologies http://www.educause.edu IN THIS ISSUE UNIVERSITIES WOULD GAIN FROM NEW SENATE IMMIGRATION BILL UPCOMING EVENTS "Networking 2000": March 30-31 (Washington, D.C.) A Gathering of State Networks: Strategies for the Next Decade April 16-18, 2000 (St. Louis, Missouri) http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/events/apr2000/ >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 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.B.1. Fr: Conference Evolang Re: Evolang: CFParticipation Evolution of Language Conference April in Paris CALL FOR PARTICIPATION This is 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. All useful information (scientific programme, registration information) can be found at the following address: http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang Scientific programme: http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/program.html Registration information: http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/registration.html You may send a message to:evolang-registration@cwtfrance.comor write to agonlit Evenements, 16, Rue Ballu - 75009 Paris, France We invite you to consider sending your registration before March 15 to benefit from reduced rates (155 Euros, instead of 230 Euros after this date). The number of available places is limited, and priority will be given to early registrations. Jean-Louis Dessalles Conference : The Evolution of Language April 3rd - 6th , 2000 Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications Paris - France http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang ********** III.B.2. Fr: Claire Nedellec Re: 2nd Learning Language in Logic (LLL) Workshop: CFPapers CALL FOR PAPERS 2nd LEARNING LANGUAGE IN LOGIC (LLL) WORKSHOP 13th - 14th September 2000, Lisbon - Portugal Co-located with ICGI and CoNLL http://www.lri.fr/~cn/LLL-2000 Presentation Our purpose is to provide a forum for discussion on all aspects of learning linguistic knowledge in logic. This workshop is a follow-up of the succesfull LLL workshop held in 1999 in Bled, (Slovenia) and co-located with ICML (http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/mlg/lll/workshop/). It will be co-located with the International Conference on Grammar Inference (ICGI) (http://vinci.inesc.pt/icgi-2000/) and the Conference on Natural Language Learning (CoNLL) (http://lcg-www.uia.ac.be/conll2000/cfp.html). Aims and scope of the conference The fact that more and more people are interested in the automatic acquisition of lexica is due to the progress in the development of applications in NLP, terminology acquisition, indexing, information extraction, retrieval, question-answering, etc. Relational learning seems like a valuable alternative to data analysis in some NLP domains. This is clearly shown by the recent success of both NLP methods based on ILP or non-classic logics, and hybrid methods. Interest in learning linguistic knowledge has grown steadily over the last 15 years. As compared to manual acquisition, specialized resources can be learned, revised and extended with respect to the task at hand for much less cost. Despite the degree of variation in the applications and resources we want to acquire, most of them are learned in the same way: by observing regularities among the co-occurence of phenomena in the corpus. Therefore, a large amount of work is naturally based on statistics, and attempts to develop robust and large-scale methods. Moreover, relational learning and logic-based learning have proved their capacity to learn complex structured knowledge from structured data and explicit background knowledge. Compared to data analysis, some of the major advantages here are: a better means to express the representation; a method that is easier to understand; and a comprehensible learning result. As a consequence, interest is growing for a corpus-based learning of structures that represent linguistic resources such as predicate-argument structures, grammars, ontologies, etc. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers from many subfields of AI who are working on learning from text, while emphasizing the logic-based learning techniques and algorithms. These techniques include, * Instance-based and clustering approaches in relational learning * Scalability issues (applying Logic-based methods to large data sets) * Logical approaches to statistical NLP * Theory revision * Explanation-based learning * Higher-order logic for LLL * Handling very complex terms * Multi-predicate learning * Collaborative and interactive learning * Learning in description logics * Combinations of approaches and multi-strategy learning * Evaluation techniques * Information indexing, filtering, retrieval, extraction * Text classification methods * Question answering * Learning ontologies, thesauri and lexicon * Learning terminology * Learning predicate-argument structure * Shallow parsing * Learning grammar * Learning subcategorisation frames * Part-of-speech tagging * Morphosyntactic tagging * Morphological analysis In addition to these topics, the workshop covers all theoretical and methodological issues concerning learning from text using logic-based techniques. Submissions describing innovative applications are also encouraged. Important dates Submission of papers by May, 15, 2000 Acceptance notices mailed by June, 19, 2000 Final, camera-ready papers due by July, 14, 2000 Organization The workshop will be two full days, including invited talks, paper presentations, poster presentations, and numerous opportunities for discussion. There will be joint sessions with the workshop "International Conference on Grammar Inference" (ICGI) and the "Conference on Natural Language Learning" (CoNLL) on topics of common interest. Joint sessions will include invited talks and paper presentations, depending on submissions. Submission procedure Full papers may be up to 10 pages, short papers up to 6 pages, both in an 11-point font and single-spaced. We accept either electronic submission (preferred), in Postscript, PDF or Word format, or paper submissions (in 4 copies) to the following address: Claire Nedellec LLL workshop LRI, Bat 490 e-mail: cn@lri.fr Universite Paris-Sud Tel: +33 (0)1 69 15 66 26 F-91405 Orsay Fax: +33 (0)1 69 15 65 86 FRANCE Program chair Claire Nedellec Inference and Machine Learning Group e-mail: cn@lri.fr LRI, Bat 490 Tel: +33 (0)1 69 15 66 26 Universite Paris-Sud Fax: +33 (0)1 69 15 65 86 F-91405 Orsay FRANCE Web : http://www.lri.fr/~cn ********** III.B.3. Fr: vis2000@gris.uni-tuebingen.de (IEEE Visualization 2000) Re: IEEE Vis 2000: 2nd CFParticipation I E E E V i s u a l i z a t i o n 2 0 0 0 Paper, case study, tutorial, panel, mini-workshop, BOF deadline is coming up on March 31, 2000 2nd CALL FOR PARTICIPATION October 8 - October 13, 2000 Doubletree Hotel Salt Lake City, Utah http://www.erc.msstate.edu/vis2000 THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS, INC. IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY Sponsored by IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Visualization and Graphics In Cooperation with ACM/SIGGRAPH Visualization is a vital research and applications frontier shared by a variety of scientific, medical, engineering, business, and entertainment fields. IEEE Visualization 2000 focuses on inter- disciplinary methods and collaboration among developers and users of visualization methods across all of science, engineering, medicine, and commerce. Sunday through Tuesday of Conference Week will include tutorials, symposia, and mini-workshops. Papers, panels, case studies, and works in progress will be presented Wednesday through Friday. We invite you to participate in IEEE Visualization 2000 by submitting your original research through papers, panels, case studies, work in progress, and demonstrations. Share your perspectives through panels and workshops, or your experience through tutorials. Please select the forum appropriate to your submission, where it will be considered by your peers for presentation. Particular focus on volume visualization and information visualization are addressed in special two- day symposia. For further information on the conference or symposia contact: Charles Hansen, Conference Co-Chair, University of Utah, Phone: +1 801 581 3154, Fax: +1 801 581 5843, Email: hansen@cs.utah.edu Chris Johnson, Conference Co-Chair, University of Utah, Phone: +1 801 581 7705, Fax: +1 801 585 6513, Email: crj@cs.utah.edu Steve Bryson, Conference Co-Chair, NASA Ames Research Center Phone: +1 650 604 4524, Fax: +1 650 604 3957, Email: bryson@nas.nasa.gov See the conference web page for complete up-to-date information at http://www.erc.msstate.edu/vis2000 The three conference tracks cover: Visualization Algorithms: Volume Rendering, Flow Visualization, Isosurfaces, Compression, Vector and Tensor Visualization, Sonification, etc. Visualization Techniques: Information Visualization, Databases, Human Perception, Human Factors, Multivariate Visualization, Virtual Reality, etc. Visualization Applications: Archaeology, Astrophysics, Aerospace, Automotive, Biomedicine, Chemistry, Education, Electronics, Environment, Finance, Mathematics, Mechanics, Molecular Biology, Physics, Virtual Reality, WWW, Java, VRML, HTML, AVS, Data Explorer, Iris Explorer, Khoros, vtk, etc. IMPORTANT DATES March 31: Conference papers, Panels, Case Studies, Tutorials, Mini-Workshops, BOF proposals, InfoVis 2000 papers, and VolViz 2000 papers due May 30: Conference papers, Panels, Case Studies, Tutorials, Mini-Workshops, BOF proposals, and InfoVis 2000, and VolViz 2000 selections announced June 15: Conference Work in Progress and Demonstration proposals due June 30: InfoVis 2000 Late Breaking Hot Topics papers due July 17: Final Conference papers, final InfoVis 2000 papers, and VolViz 2000 papers due to publisher August 1: Conference Work in Progress selections announced August 21: Conference Work in Progress final abstracts due to publisher August 31: Conference Work in Progress video submissions due September 8: Close of Early Registration October 8: Conference Commences October 9: InfoVis 2000 and VolViz 2000 Commence Paper Submissions (due March 31, 2000) Papers are solicited that present research results related to all areas of visualization. Original papers are limited to 5,000 words. The submission of NTSC VHS video (up to 5 minutes in length) to accompany the paper is strongly recommended. This year we will begin accepting electronic submissions of papers. If you choose to submit electronically, please submit in PDF or postscript format. If you choose to submit hardcopy, please submit 7 hardcopies of all materials. Regardless of whether you submit your paper electronically or in the hardcopy format, a complete paper submission form including the abstract must be sent through the conference website for each submission. Details for electronic submission are available at http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~vis00/. Accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings; the videos will be included in the conference video proceedings. Hard copy paper submissions should be sent to Amitabh Varshney, Visualization 2000, 2425 Computer Science Bldg, State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794, phone: +1 631 632 8446 Panel Proposals (due March 31, 2000) Panels should address the most important issues in visualization today. Panelists should be experts in their fields who can discuss the challenges of visualization, and engage the audience and fellow panel members in a stimulating, interactive debate. Panel proposals should describe the topic to be addressed and identify the prospective panelists. Each panelist should include a position statement on the topic and a short biography, the total of which should be limited to 500 words. The statements will be included in the conference proceedings. Panel proposals should be sent to Jamie Painter, Email: jamie@acl.lanl.gov Case Study Papers (due March 31, 2000) Case studies are reports on how visualization has contributed to the analysis of data in actual applications or studies of the visualization process. A short paper limited to 2,500 words (maximum 4 pages B/W plus 1 page color) will be included in the conference proceedings. Images and/or NTSC VHS video to accompany the paper are recommended; the video will be included in the conference video proceedings. This year we will begin accepting electronic submissions of the papers in PDF or postscript format. If electronic submission is not possible, please submit 7 hardcopies of all materials. For more detailed information concerning submission, see the web site at http://perseus.cwi.nl:8086, or contact Robert van Liere, Email: robertl@cwi.nl Work in Progress (due June 15, 2000) Submissions are solicited for Works in Progress sessions that pertain to all areas of visualization. These submissions must be original abstracts, must describe work in progress by the authors and their collaborators, and may not exceed 500 words or a maximum of 1 page. Images and/or NTSC VHS video to accompany the abstract are recommended. Authors of accepted abstracts will have an opportunity to submit a revised and extended abstract, as well as present the work at the conference. These extended abstracts may not exceed 1,000 words or a maximum of 2 pages including images. All accepted abstracts will be distributed at the conference but not published in the conference proceedings. Videos associated with accepted abstracts may be included in the conference video proceedings. All submissions will be done electronically. Submission details can be found at the conference web site. For further information, contact Sam Uselton, Email: uselton1@llnl.gov Tutorial Proposals (due March 31, 2000) Half-day and full-day course proposals are invited for visualization systems, methods, and application areas. Tutorials will be offered Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. For more detailed information concerning submission and format content, see the conference web site, or contact Penny Rheingans, Email: rheingan@cs.umbc.edu Mini-Workshop and Birds-of-a-Feather Proposals (due March 31, 2000) Proposals may be submitted for Mini-Workshops and evening Birds-Of-A- Feather (BOF) gatherings on visualization methods or application areas. They should deal with state-of-the-art topics and involve experts in the field. Discipline-focused proposals devoted to a particular discipline's methods and needs are encouraged. Mini-Workshop and Birds-of-a-Feather Proposals should be sent to Rob Erbacher, Email: erbacher@cs.albany.edu Demonstration Proposals Visualization 2000 is a unique opportunity to present your products or research to visualization experts from a wide variety of fields. We invite demonstrations of commercial hardware, software, integrated systems peripherals, and literature, as well as academic research. We encourage demonstrators to have technical representatives in attendance. For more information on participating in Visualization 2000 demonstrations, contact Eric Greenwade, Email: leg@inel.gov Creative Applications Lab (due July 15, 2000) The Creative Applications Lab (CAL) is designed to let presenters interact with conference attendees on an individual basis, and to let attendees demonstrate their own visualization systems and techniques. The CAL will have a variety of computers on which the contributors and attendees can install their materials for others' experimentation and enjoyment. The CAL will be open in conjunction with the demonstrations at Visualization 2000. For details on participating in the CAL, see the conference web site or contact Russell Taylor, Email: taylorr@cs.unc.edu. IEEE SYMPOSIUM ON INFORMATION VISUALIZATION (INFOVIS 2000) Sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Visualization and Graphics October 9-10, 2000 Doubletree Hotel Salt Lake City, Utah InfoVis 2000, the sixth Information Visualization Symposium, will be held to focus on the rapidly growing area of information visualization. Increasing amounts of data and information and the availability of fast digital network access are creating a rapidly growing demand for accessing, querying and retrieving information and data. However, information technology will not transform business, science, medicine, engineering, and education if users cannot use it easily and efficiently. Technology must come to the users, taking their needs into account. If we do not involve the users, we will develop useless systems. InfoVis 2000 will focus on all aspects of information visualization and human-centered information interfaces, and on ways in which advances in interactive computer graphics hardware, mass storage, and data visualization can be used to visualize information. Submissions are solicited in all areas of information visualization and human-centered information interfaces, including, but not limited to, such topics as: - Information visualization for heterogeneous audiences - Visualizing the Internet and WWW - Browsing and other navigation methods - Visualization algorithms - Interactive information visualization - Multi-dimensional information visualization - Information presentation - Visualization of complex information - Visualization of algorithms - Visualization of textual information - Visualization and knowledge discovery - Visualization of search results - Graph / network visualizations - Geographic visualizations - Empirical studies - Data structures and models for information visualization - Visualization systems for collaborative workspaces Paper Submissions: The deadline for submission is March 31, 2000. Papers should be at most 8,000 words including an abstract, affiliation, and keywords, and should present previously unpublished original results. Please submit 8 copies of your paper. Video submissions (NTSC VHS) with papers are welcome (4 copies), but are not required. Videos will assist reviewers' assessment of the papers. Submit to: Steven Roth, MAYA Viz, 2100 Wharton Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15203, USA, Phone: +1 412 488 2900, Fax: +1 412 488 294, Email: roth@maya.comFor more information, please contact Daniel A. Keim, Email: keim@informatik.uni-halle.de InfoVis Late Breaking Hot Topics (due June 30, 2000) Submissions will be accepted on Late Breaking "Hot Topics" that pertain to all areas of Information Visualization. These submissions must be original, may show work in progress, and may not exceed 2,000 words or a maximum of 4 pages including images. Images to accompany the paper are recommended. Accepted papers will be published and distributed at the conference. Authors of accepted papers will have an opportunity to submit a revised paper. Submissions of printed papers (8 copies, due June 30, 2000) should be sent to Nahum Gershon, The MITRE Corporation, 1820 Dolley Madison Blvd. McLean, VA 22102, USA, Phone: +1 701 883 7518, Fax: +1 703 883 5230, Email: gershon@mitre.org For more information on InfoVis Late Breaking Hot Topics, please contact Keith Andrews, Email: kandrews@iicm.edu For further information http://www.infovis.org/infovis2000 Symposium Chair Jock Mackinlay, Xerox PARC VOLUME VISUALIZATION AND GRAPHICS SYMPOSIUM (VOLVIZ 2000) Co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and ACM/SIGGRAPH October 9-10, 2000 Doubletree Hotel Salt Lake City, Utah The Seventh Volume Visualization Symposium (VolViz 2000) will be held October 2000 in conjunction with IEEE Visualization 2000. Papers containing original work in all areas of volume visualization and graphics are solicited. Of special interest are papers dealing with very large volumes and papers dealing with volume graphics modeling and rendering. Suggested topics include: - Modeling with volumes - Volume manipulation and deformation - Voxel representations - Hardware-assisted volume rendering - Hardware and software architectures - PC-based volume graphics - Special purpose hardware for volume graphics - Interacting with volumetric models - Volume rendering of extremely large datasets - Compressed volume data - Iso-surface extraction - Vector field visualization - Visualization of multiple related fields - Time-varying volume data - Volume rendering of curvilinear and irregular grids - Applications of volume graphics and volume visualization Submissions: The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2000. Final papers will be limited to 8 proceedings pages plus one page of color figures. There are two alternative ways to submit a contribution. The preferred method is to submit all your material via e-mail in compressed postscript format to: volviz00@cis.ohio-state.edu. Videos should be in MPEG format and images in JPEG or TIFF. Or, you may choose to send five copies with any accompanying NTSC video to the following postal address: Roger A. Crawfis, The Ohio State University, Department of Computer and Information Science, 2015 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43210, Phone: +1 614 292 2566 CRITICAL DATES March 31: Papers Due May 30: Notification of acceptance July 17: Final papers due to publisher October 9: Symposium commences For further information e-mail: volviz00@cis.ohio-state.edu or see http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/volviz/volviz00.html Symposium Chair Bill Lorensen, GE Corporate R&D Center ********** III.B.4. Fr: HWWS2000@gris.uni-tuebingen.de Re: Graphics Hardware 2000: 2nd CFParticipation 2 n d C A L L F O R P A R T I C I P A T I O N Graphics Hardware 2000 in cooperation with Eurographics and ACM SIGGRAPH (to be confirmed) Interlaken, Switzerland Monday and Tuesday, August 21-22, 2000 Graphics Hardware is a highly visible, established international forum for exchanging experience and knowledge related to computer graphics hardware. The workshop offers a unique perspective on graphics hardware by combining discussions and constructive critique of innovative concepts as well as product-level designs. The workshop is an inclusive forum for the entire graphics hardware community and brings together researchers, engineers, and architects. This year's workshop will be held in Interlaken, Switzerland, jointly with Eurographics 2000. Please visit our website at http://www.merl.com/hwws00/ Schedule April 12 Deadline for paper submissions May 8 Notification of acceptance May 22 Camera-ready papers due July 12 Deadline for Hot 3D Systems submissions Aug 21-22 Workshop Traditional Papers Track We invite high-quality, original papers on all aspects of computer graphics hardware describing either proven and tested solutions or novel ideas and concepts. Possible topics include: Graphics accelerator architectures Performance issues Pixel operations and frame buffer techniques Multi-processor architectures for graphics Hardware support for image-based rendering Load balancing in graphics systems Expansion and acceleration of shading models Volume rendering architectures Space, screen, and model partitioning Hardware support for photorealism Media processors Exploitation of new memory technologies for 3D graphics Authors are invited to send papers electronically, in Adobe PDF format as an email attachment, to lastra@cs.unc.edu. Please limit the length to 10 typeset pages or 20 double-spaced pages. If electronic submission is not feasible, please send six copies of the paper to the address below. If you would like to send videotapes to accompany the paper, please make six copies and mail them to the address below. An effort should be made to include the segment in both PAL and NTSC on the same VHS tape, to ensure that it can be seen by all reviewers. Submission address: Anselmo Lastra Department of Computer Science CB 3175, Sitterson Hall University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 USA Phone +919-962-1958 FAX +919-962-1799 Email: lastra@cs.unc.edu If you wish to send papers electronically, but via an alternate method such as ftp, please contact lastra@cs.unc.edu for instructions. Hot 3D Systems Track We invite industry groups to present their latest and greatest 3D chips or system designs. Presentations should be technical, rather than marketing, and should focus on real products and their performance evaluation. Presentations should last approximately 20-25 minutes. Bound copies of the slides will be prepared for attendees, and presentation slides will be made available on the workshop web page after the workshop. Contributors are invited to send their presentation slides electronically, in Microsoft PowerPoint format, as an email attachment to bosch@us.ibm.com by July 12, 2000. If electronic submission is not feasible, please send a hardcopy of the slides to the address below. Submission address: Bengt-Olaf Schneider IBM T.J. Watson Research Center P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights NY 10598 U.S.A. Phone: +914-945-1585 Fax: +914-945-4297 E-mail: bosch@us.ibm.com The Workshop The workshop will take place in Interlaken, Switzerland in a hotel during Monday and Tuesday of Eurographics 2000 week. The workshop will feature two full days of paper and industry presentations and invited talks. We will continue the workshop's tradition of a sumptuous banquet at a unique location. Registration The registration fee (in US $) includes the workshop proceedings, banquet, coffee, and lunches. The workshop fee does not cover accommodations. Please see our website for full details on registration and accommodations. Best Paper Award An award of $500 will be given to the authors of the paper considered to be the outstanding paper presented at the workshop. The award is based on the accuracy, originality, and importance of the technical concept, the quality and readability of the manuscript, as well as the content and delivery of the verbal presentation. To qualify for this award, one or more of the principal authors must be enrolled at the workshop and present the paper. The winner will be chosen by the organizing committee based on audience feedback and will be announced at the end of the workshop. Demonstrations Presenters and workshop participants are invited to bring prototypes or products for demonstration at the workshop. Demonstrations will be held on Monday and Tuesday during breaks and before and after workshop sessions. We highly encourage paper authors and industry presenters to demonstrate their systems at the workshop. Please contact the workshop chairs to arrange for space or electrical connections that may be required for your demonstration. For more information please visit http://www.merl.com/hwws00/ Workshop Chairs: Bengt-Olaf Schneider - IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA Wolfgang Strasser - University of Tuebingen, Germany ********** III.B.5. Fr: Jeff Allen Re: Cross Language Evaluation Forum: CFParticipation CROSS-LANGUAGE EVALUATION FORUM A Cross-Language System Evaluation activity is now being launched in Europe. The activity is sponsored by the DELOS Network of Excellence for Digital Libraries in collaboration with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the TREC Conferences. The Cross-Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF) will run three main evaluation tracks in 2000, testing multilingual, bilingual and monolingual (non-English) information retrieval systems. There will also be a special sub-task for domain-specific cross-language evaluation. For further information, see . The results of the activity will be presented during a two-day Workshop on Multilingual Information Access, 21-22 September in Lisbon, Portugal, immediately after the fourth European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL2000: see ). Those intending to participate in CLEF 2000 are requested to send an e-mail to Carol Peters (carol@iei.pi.cnr.it), as soon as possible, indicating in which task(s) they intend to participate. IMPORTANT DATES: Data Release - 1 April 2000 Topic Release - 8 May 2000 Receipt of results from participants - 1 July 2000 Release of relevance assessments and individual results - 15 August 2000 Submission of paper for Working Notes - 5 September 2000 Workshop - 21-22 September 2000 Carol Peters Istituto di Elaborazione della Informazione Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (or IEI-CNR) Area della Ricerca di Pisa Via Alfieri, 1 56010 Ghezzano, PISA, Italy Tel: +39 050 315 2897 Fax: +39 050 315 2810 E-mail:carol@iei.pi.cnr.it http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/Personal/carol.html Jeff ALLEN - Technical Manager/Directeur Technique European Language Resources Association (ELRA) & European Language resources - Distribution Agency (ELDA) (Agence Europe'enne de Distribution des Ressources Linguistiques) 55, rue Brillat-Savarin 75013 Paris FRANCE Tel: (+33) 1.43.13.33.33 - Fax: (+33) 1.43.13.33.30 mailto:jeff@elda.fr http://www.elda.fr/ See the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC) 2000 Web site: http://www.elda.fr/lrec2000.html ********** III.C.1. Fr: Nancy Gusack Crawford Re: IR-L Has a New Address Subscribers! Please read the notice at the bottom of this issue for the IR-L Digest's new address and contact information. Thanks to Cliff Lynch and the CNI for offering to host the IR-L Digest. I am leaving the University of California (after 20 years) and am joining PeopleSoft. I'll continue to moderate the IR-L Digest via CNI. Nancy ********** III.C.2. Fr: Clifford Lynch Re: W3C Developments There are a number of public documents coming out from the Worldwide Web consortium that should be of interest to many readers of this list. You can find all of this linked from the main web consortium page at http://www.w3c.org/ First, there is a proposed W3C recommendation on accessibility guidelines in web user agents that is out for comment. This is part of the consortium's continuing program of work on accessibility. Second, there is a public draft requirements document for the XML Query Language effort. This effort is still at an early stage, but I think it bears very careful tracking. Both of these documents are obvious, prominent links from the main page. Third, there is a last call draft of the work of the XML Digital Signature joint W3C/IETF effort. You can find this, and other documents related to this effort, at http://www.w3c.org/Signature/ (it is also linked from the main page). This is a potentially important specification for many applications involving digital signatures and is an effort I have been following for some time. Note the (at least to me) surprising complexity of the specification. I believe that the W3C would welcome comment on all of this work; it's all of importance to our community. Clifford Lynch Director, CNI ********** III.C.3. Fr: Paul Kantor Re: AntWorld Web Search Tool Now Available All interested members of the IR community are invited to try out a new tool for searching the web, at http://aplab.rutgers.edu/ant, where you will find more information about the AntWorld Project, supported by DARPA. There is quite a lot of information at the site, and this note is intended to provide a fast path to exploration of the AntWorld web tool. To use it, follow the link "Browse the Web with AntWorld!" on our home page. AntWorld can be used on almost any computer with the Netscape web browser (version 4.07 or above). When you use AntWorld, you have to first describe the goals of your current search (quest). Once the quest is started, a small console window will appear at the top of your screen. Using it to conduct searches will automatically place search results in your main browser window. The console allows you to return to any of your prior searches, annotate pages as to their usefulness, and draw on information developed by other users of AntWorld. There are a number of options, which are transparent only after they have been learned. There is extensive help available directly from the console. AntWorld quests are persistent (i.e., stored in our central database). That is, if you want to resume your last AntWorld quest after you reboot your computer or go from one computer to another, you only need to revisit the AntWorld Home site and re-enter your user id on the "Browse..." page for your AntWorld console to reappear. This takes only half a minute or so. Of course, you can start a new quest as well. When you use AntWorld the first time, the browser will bring up two "Netscape security" dialog boxes, asking you to grant "access to your browser" and "modifying your browser" permissions. This is necessary to enable the AntWorld's console window interact with the document window (where you are browsing the web), and does not represent any security hazard. Benefits and risks: The AntWorld support does not write to your hard drive, and does not harm your own system. It will give you access to searches ("quests") conducted by others, arguably a benefit. It will also record in its central database (on our server) the judgments made in your quests, and give others access them, which you may not desire. If you close the AntWorld console, no information about your use of the Web is transmitted to the central database.AntWorld client (optional): For extra functionality, follow the link "Install AntWorld client" from the AntWorld home. Installing and configuring the client ("AntScape") involves some effort (depending on how far your Netscape configuration is from the standard one), but if successful, it will provide iconic indication of links that have been judged useful in similar quests. Because this option processes the text of incoming pages, it works rather more slowly than the other, so for a first encounter you will probably prefer the plain version. Note also that if you install and use AntScape, all pages you visit during the AntWorld session (and not only those you explicitly judge) are recorded in the central database. Please send comments and suggestions to kantor@scils.rutgers.edu (Project director) and vmenkov@aplab.rutgers.edu (Research associate) Paul B. Kantor, Professor and Voice 732 932 1359/7705 Director, Alexandria Project Lab. FAX 732 932 1504 LIS/SCILS/Rutgers Director: Rutgers Distributed Laboratory for Digital Libraries Project Editor-in-Chief: Information Retrieval (http://www.wkap.nl/journals/ir) Member, Rutgers Center for Operations Research. Personal home page: http://scils.rutgers.edu/~kantor Internet: kantor@scils.rutgers.edu Mail: 4 Huntington St. New Brunswick NJ. 08901-1071 ****************************************************************** IRLIST Digest is now distributed from the Coalition for Networked Information, 21 Dupont Circle, Suite #800, Washington, DC 20036-1109. Phone: 202.296.5098. Web: http://www.cni.org/ Send subscription requests and submissions to: nancy@cni.org. Editorial Staff: Nancy Gusack Crawford [nancy@cni.org] Cliff Lynch (emeritus) [cliff@cni.org] The IRLIST Archives will eventually be set up for anonymous FTP at its new location. Meanwhile, contact Nancy Gusack Crawford and nancy@cni.org for back issues. 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 Crawford for more information on IRLIST. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN IRLIST DO NOT REPRESENT THOSE OF THE EDITORS OR THE COALITION FOR NETWORKED INFORMATION. AUTHORS ASSUME FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR MATERIAL.