IRList Digest Saturday, 7 January 1989 Volume 5 : Issue 3 Today's Topics: Query - Hypertext systems and ACM - Personal Consultant Plus Reply - SuperBook person to contact - Bibliographic records and LCSH Discussion - CD-ROMs for lawyers and accountants Announcement - NSF Program in knowledge models and cognitive systems News addresses are Internet: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu BITNET: foxea@vtcc1.bitnet (replaces foxea@vtvax3) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 05 Jan 89 18:52:22 EST From: "Bernard Rous (Associate Director of Publications)" Subject: ACM and Hypertext ACM has produced its first hypertext publication called "Hypertext on Hypertext." (It is available from ACM for IBM pcs, Macs, Suns and Apollos. For more information call 1-800-342-6626.) ACM is now planning to produce a series of hypertext publications. ACM is looking for vendors who are interested in working with ACM in a hypertext publishing venture. An rfp has been prepared and is being mailed out. If you are such a vendor or know of one who would like to receive the rfp, please let ACM know immediately. Bernard Rous Associate Director of Publications ACM 11 West 42 Street New York, NY 10036 e-mail: Rous-CR at ACMVM.bitnet [Note: It would be interesting to find out what commercially available hypertext systems are out there or under development - has anyone done a survey recently? - Ed.] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Dec 88 10:20:09 CST From: Tung-Ying Chang Subject: Personal Consultant Plus ... I had read some materials about Personal Consultant Plus, a Texas Instrument's expert system development shell. Westinghouse has four or five expert systems in various stages of development, and a sixth one is planned. All the systems are being developmented via Personal Consult..... (Personal Computing Nov. 1985) In Personal Consultant Plus Ver. 3.02, TI provides PC IMages and PC Online. They claim PC IMages enables developers to create Knowledge-based applications that incorporate complex graphical "active images" User- interactive dials, gauges, forms.... PC Online allows the developer to design expert systems which interact directly with process data, as opposed to input from a human operator. Designed for intelligent process monitoring applications, this optional package helps deliver expertise that is "online all the time". Recently, I have the chance to review the manual of Personal Consult Plus and find that it is an EMYCIN-like rule-based system shell. There are several features in the shell, such as PC SCHEME compiler, frame, forward-chaining, backward-chaining, meta-level function, graphic and external data interface, user-defined lisp function call etc. In general, it sounds powerful and flexible, but I suppose it is still lack of automatic learning and feedback tools. However, I decided to build an experimental system of disease diagnosis. Before I get deeply into this effort through, I want to get opinions of others. My questions are below. Any advice you have about this subject will be greatly appreciated. 1. Is there any non-commercial evaluation report on Personal Consultant Plus ? 2. What kind of expertise or hueristic decision could be "cooked" effectively by expert system shell ? 3. Is it a good idea to build tutoring system with knowledge-based system ? How about apply expert system in mental or linguistic simulation ? Thanks in advance. Tung-Ying Chang ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Jan 89 19:02 PST From: Christine Borgman Subject: Re: IRList Digest V5 #2 CC: Dennis Egan , furuta@BRILLIG.UMD.EDU Ed, on Rick Furuta's inquiry about the "Bell Labs SuperBook" project in V5, #2: one person to contact is Dennis Egan at Bellcore, who made an excellent presentation about it at ASIS in October. Dennis is at EGAN@BELLCORE.COM and I am copying him and Furuta with this message. Christine Borgman, UCLA BITNET: IIN4CLB@UCLAMVS ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 03 Jan 89 12:15:01 EST From: "Jerry Caswell, Univ. of Vermont" Subject: Re: IRList Digest V5 #2 query by H. Chen I sent this message to the IRL, but the LISTSERV replied that I was not authorized to contribute. [Note: Please be sure to send all IRList news to me directly at the news address given at the top of each message. This is a moderated digest and so I need to receive all submissions. - Ed] In response to Hsinchun Chen's request for machine readable bibliographic records and Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): The Cataloging Distribution Service of the Library of Congress sells tapes of both the bibliographic records and the LC Subject Headings. The data on both tapes comes in the MARC communications format and must be converted for use in a local system. I believe the subject headings are, or will be available soon, on compact disc with special retrieval software. [Note: Does anyone have address and price information? - Ed] ------------------------------ Date: 3 Dec 88 23:31:10 EST (Sat) From: lsuc!dave@uunet.UU.NET (David Sherman) Subject: CD-ROM with bilateral tax treaties- re IRList Digest V4 #56 Newsgroups: comp.theory.info-retrieval Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto Re CD-ROMs: I understand that there is a CD-ROM with all of the world's bilateral tax treaties available. (This stuff is important for lawyers and accountants who do international tax work; the set of treaties between any one country and the rest of the world fills a largish binder, so the treaties between every pair of countries that has treaties is pretty big.) I don't know how widely it's used. It's available from the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation. Many law publishers are looking at CD-ROM for publishing case reports and the like. I don't know yet if any of the U.S. firms have done so yet; the Canadian publishers are still as the looking stage. David Sherman The Law Society of Upper Canada Toronto Moderator, mail.yiddish { uunet!attcan att pyramid!utai utzoo } !lsuc!dave ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 Nov 88 11:26 EST From: Henry J. Hamburger Subject: NSF Program in Knowledge Models and Cognitive Systems [Forwarded from NL-KR Digest V5 No.30 11/30/88, thanks to R. France - Ed.] NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION PROGRAM in KNOWLEDGE MODELS and COGNITIVE SYSTEMS Knowledge Models and Cognitive Systems is a relatively new name at NSF, but the Program has significant continuity with earlier related programs. This holds for its scientific subject matter and also with regard to its researchers, who come principally from computer science and the cognitive sciences, each of these emphatically including important parts of artificial intelligence. Many such individuals are also interested in areas supported by other NSF programs, especially in this division -- the Division of Information, Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) -- and in the Division of Behavioral and Neural Sciences. This unofficial message has two parts. The first is a top-down description of the major areas of current Program support. There follows a list of some particular topics in which there is strong current activity in the Program and/or perceived future opportunity. Anyone needing further information can contact the Program Director, Henry Hamburger, who is also the sender of this item. Please use e-mail if you can: hhamburg@b.nsf.gov or else phone: 202-357-9569. To get a copy of the Summary of Awards for this division (IRIS), call 202-357-9572 Many of you will be hearing from me with requests to review proposals. To be sure they are of interest to you, feel free to send me a list of topics or subfields. MAJOR AREAS of CURRENT SUPPORT The Program in Knowledge Models and Cognitive Systems supports research fundamental to the general understanding of knowledge and cognition, whether in humans, computers or, in principle, other entities. Major areas currently receiving support include (i) formal models of knowledge and information, (ii) natural language processing and (iii) cognitive systems. Each of these areas is described and subcategorized below. Applicants do not classify their proposals in any official way. Indeed their work may be relevant to two or all three of the categories (or conceivably to none of them). In particular, it is recognized that language is intertwined with (or part of) cognition and that formality is a matter of degree. For work that falls only partly within the program, the program director may conduct the evaluation jointly with another program, within or outside the division. Descriptions of the three areas follow. FORMAL MODELS of KNOWLEDGE and INFORMATION: Recent work supported under the category Formal Models of Knowledge and Information divides into formal models of three things: (i) knowledge, (ii) information, and (iii) imperfections in the two. In each case, the models may encompass both representation and manipulation. For example, formal models of both knowledge representation and inference are part of the knowledge area. The distinction between knowledge and information is that a piece of knowledge tends to be more structured and/or comprehensive than a piece of information. Imperfections may include uncertainty, vagueness, incompleteness and abductive rules. Many investigations contribute to two or all three categories, yet emphasize one. COGNITIVE SYSTEMS Four recognized areas currently receive support within Cognitive Systems: (i) knowledge representation and inference, (ii) highly parallel approaches, (iii) machine learning, and (iv) computational characterization of human cognition. The first area is characterized by symbolic representations and a high degree of structure imposed by the programmer, in an attempt to represent complex entities and carry out complex tasks involving planning and reasoning. The second area may have similar long-term goals but takes a very different approach. It includes studies based on a high degree of parallelism among relatively simple processing units connected according to various patterns. The third area, machine learning, has emerged as a distinct area of study, though the choice between symbolic and connectionist approaches is clearly relevant. In all of the first three areas, the research may be informed to a greater or lesser degree by scientific knowledge of the nature of high- level human cognition. Characterizing such knowledge in computational form is the objective of the fourth area. NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING Recent work supported under the category Natural Language Processing is in three overlapping areas: (i) computational aspects of syntax, semantics and the lexicon, (ii) discourse, dialog and generation, and (iii) systems issues. The distinction between the first two often involves such intersentential concerns as topic, plan, and situation. Systems issues include the interaction and unified treatment of various kinds of modules. TOPICS of STRONG CURRENT ACTIVITY and OPPORTUNITY for FUTURE RESEARCH Comments on this list are welcome. It has no official status, is subject to change, and, most important, is intended to be suggestive, not prescriptive. The astute reader will notice that many of these topics transcend the neat categorization above. Reasoning and planning in the face of imperfect information and a changing world - reasoning about reasoning itself: the time and resources taken, and the consequences - use and formal understanding of temporal and nonmonotonic logic - integration of numerical and symbolic approaches to uncertainty, imprecision and justification - multi-agent planning, reasoning, communication and coordination Interplay of human and computational languages - commonalities in the semantic formalisms for human and computer languages - extending knowledge representation systems to support formal principles of human language - principles of extended dialog between humans and complex software systems, including those of the new computational sciences Machine Learning of Classification, Problem-Solving and Scientific Laws - formal analysis of what features and parameter settings of both method and domain are responsible for successes. - reconciling and combining the benefits of connectionist, genetic and symbolic approaches - evaluating the relevance to learning of AI tools: planning, search, and learning itself