4-6 February 1986 Los Angeles, California

Data Engineering is concerned with the role of data and knowledge about data in the design, development, management, and utilization of information systems. As such, it encompasses traditional aspects of databases, knowledge bases, and data management in general. The purpose of this conference is to continue to provide a forum for the sharing of experience, practice, and theory of automated data and knowledge management from an engineering point-of-view. The effectiveness and productivity of future information systems will depend critically on improvements in their design, organization, and management.

We are actively soliciting industrial contributions. We believe that it is critically important to share practical experience. We look forwards to reports of experiments, evaluation, and problems in achieving the objectives of information systems. Papers which are identified as such will be processed, scheduled, and published in a distinct track.

topics of interest

• Logical and physical database design

• Design of knowledge-based systems

• Data management methodologies

• Architectures for data- and knowledge-based systems

• Distribution of data and information

• Performance Evaluation

• Data engineering tools

We also are planning a special workshop track:

• Performance models and measurement of relational database systems

and solicit papers that report or evaluate such findings.

awards, student papers, and subsequent publication

An award will be given for the best paper at the confer­ence. Up to three awards of $500 each to help defray travel costs will be given for outstanding papers authored by students. Outstanding papers will be considered for publication in the IEEE Computer Magazine, the Trans­actions on Computers, and the Transactions on Software Engineering. For more information, contact the General Chairman.

conference timetable 1 july 1985

Deadline for receipt of four copies of paper by Second Data Engineering Conference IEEE Computer Society 1109 Spring Street, Suite 300 Silver Spring MD 20910 (301 598-8142) l October 1985 Acceptance letters sent.

15 November 1985 Camera-ready copy due.

honorary chairman

C. V. Ramamoorty University of California Berkeley, CA The FINITE STRING Newsletter general chairman

P. Bruce Berra Syracuse University Syracuse, NY [315] 423-4445 program chairman Gio Wiederhold Dept. of Computer Science Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305 [415] 497-0685 Wiederhold@ sumex-aim. arpa

program co-chairpersons Iris Kameny SDC

Ming T. (Mike) Liu Ohio State University Columbus, OH 43210

Richard L. Shuey Schenectady, NY 12309

Benjamin Wah Purdue University

international coordination Tadeo Ichikawa Hiroshima University Faculty of Engineering, Shitami Saijo-Cho Higashi-Hiroshima 724, Japan

Herbert Weber Universitaet Dortmund Fachbereich Informatik, August Schmidt Strasse 4600 Dortmund, F.R.Germany tutorials Peter Ng University of Missouri Columbia, MO awards

Ming T. (Mike) Liu State University of Ohio Columbus, OH

treasurers

Lily Chow IEEE

Aldo Castillo TRW

publicity

Mas Tsuchiya

One Space Park

The correct design and implementation of data systems requires attention to principles from data bases, know­ledge bases, software engineering, and system evaluation. We hope you will participate.

theoretical aspects of reasoning about knowledge

Asilomer Conference Center, Monterey, CA

While traditionally research in the area of theoretical aspects of reasoning about knowledge was mainly done by philosophers, recently it has been shown to be of great relevance to computer science, especially in such areas as artificial intelligence, distributed systems, data­base systems, and cryptography. There has also been interest in the area among linguists and economists. The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers from these various disciplines with the intent of further­ing our theoretical understanding of reasoning about knowledge.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Semantic models for knowledge and belief

• Resource-bounded knowledge (appropriate for model­ling reasoners with limited reasoning power and reasoning about cryptographic protocols)

• Using knowledge to specify and reason about distrib­uted systems

• Semantic models of knowledge acquisition and learning

• Nonmonotonic reasoning

Please send 8 copies of a detailed abstract not exceeding 10 double-spaced typewritten pages in length (not a full paper), by 15 September 1985, to the program chair:

Dr. J. Halpern 5600 Cottle Rd.

The abstract should include a clear description of the problem being addressed, comparisons with extant work, and a section on major original contributions of this work. The abstract must provide sufficient detail for the program committee to make a decision. Papers will be chosen on the basis of scientific merit, originality, and appropriateness for this conference.

Authors will be notified of acceptance by 1 November 1985. Accepted papers typed on special pages will be due at the above address by 15 December 1985.

We hope to allow enough time between the talks during the conference for private discussions and small The FINITE STRING Newsletter group meetings. In order to ensure that the conference remains relatively/ small, attendance will be limited to invited participants and authors of accepted papers. Support for the conference has been received from IBM and AAAI; an application for further support is pending at ONR.

program committee M. Fischer, Yale J. Halpern, IBM San Jose H. Levesque, University of Toronto R. Moore, SRI

R. Parikh, CUNY/Brooklyn College R. Stalnaker, Cornell R. Thomason, University of Pittsburgh M. Vardi, Stanford/CSLI

first international conference on expert database systems

1-4 April 1986 Charleston, South Carolina

Sponsored by: Institute of Information Management, Technology, and Policy, College of Business Adminis­tration, University of South Carolina

In cooperation with: American Association for Artificial Intelligence; Associaton for Computing Machine -SIGMOD, SIGART, and SIGPLAN; IEEE Technical Committee on Data Base Engineering; Agence de l'Informatique, France Conference General Chairman:

Donald A. Marchand, Director,

Institute of Information Management, Technology, and Policy Tutorial Chairman: Jonathan King, Teknowledge, Inc.

Panel Coordinator: Arun Sen, Univ. of South Carolina Conference Coordinator: Cathie L. Huges, IIMTP

CONFERENCE OBJECTIVES:

The goal of this conference is to explore both the theore­tical and practical issues of Expert Database Systems. These systems represent the confluence of R&D activities in Artificial Intelligence, Logic, and Database Manage­ment.

Expert Database Systems will play an ever-increasing role in scientific, governmental, and business applications by

• providing intelligent knowledge-based access to large shared data bases through novel user interfaces and natural-language question-answering facilities.

• endowing database systems with reasoning, planning, and justification capabilities.

• creating knowledge-base management bools and tech­niques to support the creation, manipulation, indexing, and evolution of large knowledge bases, and

• integrating AI and QB functional requirements into new hardware and software environments for the specifica­tion, prototyping, testing, and debugging of know­ledge-based applications.

In order to foster the cross fertilization of ideas from AI, Logic, and Data Bases, the conference will be composed of tutorial sessions, paper sessions, and panel discussions.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

The Program Committee invites original papers (of approximately 5000 words) addressing (but not limited to) the following areas:

• Theory of Knowledge Bases (including knowledge representation, knowledge models, recursive data models, object-oriented models, knowledge indexing and transformation)

• Knowledge Engineering (including acquisition, mainte­nance, learning, knowledge-directed dtabase specifica­tion and design methodologies, case studies)

• Knowledge Base Management (including architectures and langauges, constraint and rule management, meta­data management, extensible data dictionaries)

• Reasoning on Large Data/Knowledge Bases (including inexact and fuzzy reasoning, non-monotonic reasoning, deductive data bases, logic-based query languages, semantic query optimization, constraint-directed reasoning)

• Natural Language Interactions (including question-an­swering, extended responses, cooperative behavior, explanation and justification)

• Intelligent Database Interfaces (including expert system - database communication, knowledge gateways, knowledgeable user agents, browsers, videotex)

• Knowledge-Based Environments (including Decision Support Systems, CAD/CAM, VLSI design)

• Organizational Issues (including technology transfer, procurement of expert database sysems, knowledge administration, knowledge certification)

PAPER SUBMISSION

Please send five (5) copies of papers by September 12, 1985 to

Larry Kerschberg, Program Chairman College of Business Administration University of South Carolina Colubmia, SC 29208

Conference proceedings will be available at the confer­ence and subsequently will appear in book form.

IMPORTANT DA TES

Submission Deadline 12 September 1985

Acceptance Notification 25 November 1985 The FINITE STRING Newsletter

EIGHTH EUROPEAN MEETING ON CYBERNETICS AND SYSTEMS RESEARCH

University of Vienna, Austria Organized by Austrian Society for Cybernetic Studies

plenary lectures and symposia on

• General System Methodology

• Cross-Disciplinary and Empirical Refinement of Isomorphies

• Designing and Systems

• Humanity, Architecture, and Conceptualisation

• Cybernetics in Biology and Medicine

• Cybernetics of Socio-economic Systems

• Computers in Health Care

• Fuzzy Sets - Meeting of the EURO Working Group

• Systems Engineering for Design Automation

• Communication, Computers, and Networking

• Methodological Improvements and New Applications of Expert Systems

• Knowledge-Based Natural Language Processing

In conjunction with this conference, a SPECIAL MEETING will be held on• Future and Impacts of Artificial Intelligence paper submission

Send three copies of the full paper (up to eight A4 pages, single-spaced), in English. Submissions should include the selected symposium or special meeting. Papers must be received not later than 1 October 1985.

submissions/enquiries should be sent to the Chairman:

Robert Trappl

Department of Medical Cybernetics

and Artificial Intelligence University of Vienna Freyung 6/2

CANADIAN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CONFERENCE (CSCSI-86)

Sponsored by Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence

The Sixth National Conference of the CSCSI invites submission of theoretical and applied research papers in all areas of Artificial Intelligence research, particularly:

• Knowledge Representation

• Computer Vision

• Natural Language Understanding

• Expert Systems and Applications

• Logic Programming and Formal Reasoning

• Robotics

• Planning, Problem Solving and Learning

• Cognitive Science

• Social Aspects of AI

• AI Architecture, Languages and Tools

All submissions will be fully refereed by the program committee. Authors are requested to prepare full papers of no more than 5000 words in length and specify in which area they wish their papers reviewed. All papers should contain concise clear descriptions of significant contributions to Artificial Intelligence research with proper references to the relevant literature. Figures and illustrations should be professionally drawn.

Three copies of each submitted paper must be in the hands of the Program Chairman by December 31, 1985. Electronic submissions are unfortunately not acceptable. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings.

Correspondence should be addressed to either the General Chair or the Program Chair, as appropriate.

GENERAL CHAIR

Renato De Mori

Department of Computer Science Concordia University Montreal, P.Q. H3G 1M8 CANADA

PROGRAM CHAIR Bill Havens

Department of Computer Science University of British Columbia Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1W5 CANADA

Network Address: havens@ubc.CSNET

COLING 86 THE Xlth INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS

University of Bonn (West Germany)

NATIONAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Istvân S. Bätori, Koblenz Peter Hoschka, Bonn Jürgen Krause, Regensburg Rainer Kuhlen, Konstanz Winfried Lenders, Bonn Christian Rohrer, Stuttgart Helmut Schnelle, Bochum (Chairman) Wolfgang Wahlster, Saarbrücken

topics: computational linguistics in general, syntax, pars­ing, language generation, semantics, phonological and morphosyntactical analysis, speech analysis and synthe­sis, discourse analysis, machine translation, machine-aid­ed translation, representation of knowledge, computational models of understanding, linguistic theo­riesand computational models, software tools and programming languages for computational linguistics, hardware for natural language processing, dictionaries, lexical data bases.

Authors wishing to present a contribution should submit five copies of draft of their paper (maximum The FINITE STRING Newsletter

Programs

8000 words), double-spaced, by 1 December 1985, to the Chairman of the Program Committee:

Prof. Makoto Nagao (Kyoto) Dept. of Electrical Engineering Kyoto University Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606, Japan

The Program Committee will respond before 15 March 1986.

The complete text of the revised papers in camera-ready form should be sent before 1 May 1986 to Winfried Lenders

Institut für Kommunikationsforschung und Phonetik

der Universität Bonn Poppelsdorfer Allee 47 D-5300 Bonn 1

act european chapter: second conference

Opening Session: Invited Speaker

Kornai — Natural languages and the Chomsky hierarchy Hess - How does Natural Language Quantify Stirling — Distributives, quantifiers, and a multiplicity of events

Slocum and Bennett — An evaluation of METAL Root - A two-way approach to structural transfer in MT Boitet et al. - Various representations of texts for EURO-TRA AFTERNOON

Descles — Predication and topicalisation: a formal study in

the framework of applicative languages Bainbridge — Montagovian definite clause grammar Des Tombe et al. - Specification of time in natural language

Fum - Natural language processing and the automatic

acquisition of language Wilks - Right attachment and preference semantics Dunin- Keplica - How to restrict ambiguity of discourse Haugeneder - An ATN treatment of WH-movement Popowich - SÄUMER: Sentence analysis using METArules Ramsay — A self improving parser for generalised phrase

structure grammars Lehtola — A language based environment for natural language parsing

Bestougeff, Ligozat - Parametrised abstract objects for

linguistic information processing Salton - On the representation of query term relations by soft Boolean operators

Altman - The resolution of local syntactic ambuiguity by

the human sentence processing mechanism Pulman — A parser that doesn't

Delmonte - Parsing difficulties and phonological processing in Italian

Izumida et al. - A natural language interface using a world model

Berry-Rogghe - Interpreting singular definite descriptions

in database queries Bree, Smit — Non-standard uses of if Wehrli - Design and implementation of a lexical data base Maistros, Kotsanis - Lexifamis: A lexical analyser of modern Greek

Beale - Grammatical analysis by computer of the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen corpus

Fimbel et al. — Using a text model for analysis and gener­ation

Gillott — The simulation of stress patterns in synthetic

speech — a two level problem Johnston, Altman - Automatic speech recognition: a framework for research

Garside — A probabilistic parser

Boguraev, Briscoe — Toward a dictionary support environ­ment for real time parsing

Koktova - Towards a new type of morphemic analysis

Fum et al. — A rule based approach to evaluating impor­tance in descriptive texts

Patten - A problem solving approach to generating text from systematic grammar

Parisi, Giorgi - GEMS: a model of sentence production

McDonald, Pustejovskh - SAMSON: A computational theory of prose style in generation

Tait - An English generator for a case-labelled dependency representation

Muraki et al. — Augmented dependency grammar

Hajicova, Sgall - Towards an automatic identification of topic and focus

Morik — User modelling, dialog structure, and dialog strat­egy in HAM-ANS

Narin'Yani, Simonova - Communicative context of dialogue interaction