IRList Digest Sunday, 21 December 1986 Volume 2 : Issue 71 Today's Topics: Email - vtisr1 down for a week - More about redistribution at finhutc.earn Query - Applying connectionism to IR performance problems Query - Pisa Proceedings for SIGIR members Reply - Pisa Proceedings and SIGIR finances Announcement - Message Understanding Conference CSLI - Resurrection of Metaphors: A Tool for Transdisciplinary Migration News addresses are ARPANET: fox%vt@csnet-relay.arpa BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet CSNET: fox@vt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 21 Dec 86 17:53:22 est From: fox (Ed Fox) To: rick@seismo.css.gov Subject: vtisr1 Rick: vtisr1 is down for a week, till probably 12/30, when it will come back up as a 3B2/310 instead of a 3B2/300, with new software. If you can hold mail, please do so, or if you can send instead to me at another address like fox%vt@csnet-relay.arpa please do that. . . . Regards, Ed [Note: the above is included here since there are IRList members who use UUCP mail to correspond with IRList. Sorry for the inconvenience! Let me wish all of you a happy Holiday Season! - Ed] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Dec 86 12:09 N From: LILIUS@FINFUN.bitnet Subject: LISTSERV usage Hi !! I have received several requests for subscription, but this is not quite what I wanted. Users wanting to subscribe from LISTSERV@FINHUTC should issue the command TELL LISTSERV AT FINHUTC SIGNON "Name" IRLIST. This will put you on the list. You can also issue INFO as a command to LISTSERV. This will give you some help. Cherio, Johan [Note: Thanks for clarifying things! This should help people who were confused by the message in IRList V2 #69. - Ed] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Dec 86 01:39:47 est From: wyle@ifi.ethz.chunet Subject: Where are the reviews, comments? So far, only Dr. G. Salton sent me a review of the conspectus paper. What does the readership of IRlist think of the possibilities of applying connectionism to the IR performance problems? Mitch Wyle wyle@ifi.ethz.chunet@relay.cs.net (arpa and csnet) !cernvax!ethz!wyle (uucp) [Note: this refers back to the article that made up Issue 62 - Ed] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Dec 86 14:54 PST To: FOXEA@VTVAX3 From: IIN4CLB@UCLAMVS.bitnet Subject: Pisa proceedings Ed, Seeing the reference list for the Pisa meeting reminds me that I have yet to receive the usual copy of the SIGIR Forum that is the conference proccedings. Do you know what has become of it? If not, can you tell me who does (and his/her email address)? Thanks in advance. Chris ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Dec 86 08:15:35 est From: foxea@vtvax3 Subject: list, Pisa Chris: . . . Regarding Pisa Proceedings, I made an announcement in IRList Digest V2 #59 of 14 November about how to obtain a copy. Unfortunately, the SIG is going to have to raise dues - with $6/year dues we are already in the red and can't send a $18 book out! Yes it is unfortunate, and I am sure there are many members who are unhappy about this, but unless we raise dues way beyond the $12 now planned, we will have to stick with this policy. We welcome comments on how else to handle this. . . . Regards, Ed [Note: People can call ACM at 800-342-6626 and order Proc. 9th Int'l SIGIR Conf. on R&D in IR for $18 ($24 for non-members) plus $3 handling. - Ed] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Dec 86 13:03:15 PST From: Beth M. Sundheim Subject: Conference: Message Understanding [Forwarded from NL-KR Digest 12/16/86 Volume 1 Number 29 - Ed] MESSAGE UNDERSTANDING CONFERENCE Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, CA For the past six years, researchers at the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC) have been investigating automated processing of text in Naval messages. These messages are characterized by all of the problems anticipated in processing natural languages, with the problems of telegraphic input and technical sub-languages playing prominent roles. To get a better appreciation of relevant ongoing R & D in this area, NOSC will host a Message Understanding Conference (MUCK) in June 1987. Participation in this conference will be by invitation only and will be limited to those who have technical approaches that are most promising for the particular problem of processing military messages. The conference will be conducted in the form of a workshop, including software demonstrations of the technology being developed by the individual participants. If you are involved in text processing, especially military message processing, and are interested in participating in this conference, contact Beth Sundheim of NOSC (sundheim@nosc). Those who indicate an interest will receive a technical document containing an unclassified version of a set of Naval tactical messages, representing the types of text processing problems encountered. Respondents will also receive details relative to the conference. Through subsequent dialog, participants in the workshop will be selected. G. R. ALLGAIER Head, Artificial Intelligence Branch By direction of the Commander ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Dec 86 00:55:53 est From: EMMA@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Subject: CSLI Calendar, December 11, No. 10 [Extract - Ed] NEXT TINLUNCH Resurrection of Metaphors A Tool for Transdisciplinary Migration Egon E. Loebner System Performance Center Hewlett-Packard Laboratories January 8, 1987 It is proposed that some techniques which can accelerate entry into a second scientific professional practice are analogous to the well established deductive techniques by which many adults approach the acquisition of a second language in a deliberate fashion. A successful migration from one language community to another relies on the transference of linguistic, cognitive and societal skills of individuals from one system to a different system, which nevertheless shares many linguistic and cultural universals with the former system. The claim put forward here is that the very same skills are transferred during transdisciplinary migration. Language acquisition data, collected on four continents, strongly suggest that "being bilingual can have tremendous advantages not only in terms of language competencies but also in terms of cognitive and social development" (W. E. Lambert, 1981, NYAS, Vol. 379, pp. 9-22). I believe that becoming multidisciplinary can lead to similar advantages in terms of professional and scientific competencies and can induce an expanded metadisciplinary development of cognitive and communicative skills. The talk concentrates on the role that can be played by a remarkable analogy, invented 131 years ago, by the world's master builder of theory construction, James Clerk Maxwell. He defined it as "that partial similarity between the laws of one science and those of another which makes each of them illustrate the other". I plan to show how such partial similarities can be extracted using textual analyses of now dead metaphors which, while alive, aided theory construction by, in the words of T. S. Kuhn, "calling forth a network of similarities which help to determine the way in which (scientific) language attaches to the world". Buttressing my argument through reference to recent findings of linguists, philosophers, psychologists, and educators on the role of metaphor in theory construction and reconstruction, I plan to argue that dead metaphors in unrelated fields are relatable if their metaphoricity had a common origin and that these interrelations constitute a transformational grammar that can assist in interpreting concepts of one field in terms of the other field. Finally I wish to suggest that the transdisciplinary migration technique can not only enhance new discipline acquisition but can also provide the metascientific means to integrate and unify practices and theories in different branches of science, even in those that appear to be quite remote at this point in history.