IRLIST Digest October 17, 1990 Volume VII Number 31 Issue 36 ********************************************************** I. NOTICES A. Meetings announcements/Calls for papers 1. Association for Computers and the Humanities Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing 1991 Joint Conference March 18-21, 1991 Arizona State University, Tempe, 2. Machine Learning of Natural Language and Ontology AAAI Spring Symposium March 26-28, 1991 Stanford University, California 3. 29th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics June 18-21, 1991 University of California, Berkeley B. Publications announcements 1. The Journal of Computers and the Humanities Special Issue on Common Methodologies in Computational Linguistics and Humanities Computing Edited by Nancy M. Ide and Donald E. Walker C. Miscellaneous 1. A Live Satellite TV Broadcast December 5, 1990 University of Maryland Instructional Television II. NOTICES A. Questions and answers 1. Archive server for computer theory information retrieval B. Requests for information 1. Evaluated hypermedia documents from an ISAR perspective ********************************************************** I. NOTICES I.A.1. Fr: Nancy Ide Re: Association for Computers and the Humanities Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing 1991 Joint Conference March 18-21, 1991 Arizona State University, Tempe TOPICS: Papers are invited on research in the areas of literary and linguistic computing, including, but not limited to, computational lexicography, corpora, text encoding, text representation (e.g., hypertext), statistical models and methods of text analysis, and syntactic, semantic, and content analysis; also computer applications in philosophy, music, history, art, etc. REQUIREMENTS: Papers should describe substantial and original work, especially new methodologies and applications. They should empahsize completed rather than intended work. FORMAT: Abstracts should be 1500-2000 words in length. Send hard copy or electronic copy by OCTOBER 15, 1990 to: Daniel Brink Department of English Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-0302 (602) 965-2679 ATDXB@ASUACAD.BITNET CONFERENCE INFORMATION: Tempe is immediate adjacent to Phoenix, AZ, and less than one hour by air from Los Angeles. The weather in March is dry, with the temperature in the mid-70s to mid-80s (25-30 C), making swimming, tennis, and golf popular extracurricular activities. Tempe is close to a number of Native American towns (and archeological sites), as well as early mining camp ghost towns, and not too distant from a number of famous attractions, including Grand Canyon. INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Donald Ross, University of Minnesota, chair Daniel Brink, Arizona State University, local host Tom Corns, University of Wales Paul Fortier, University of Manitoba Jacqueline Hamesse, Universite Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve Susan Hockey, Oxford University Computing Service Nancy Ide, Vassar College Randall Jones, Brigham Young University Antonio Zampolli, University of Pisa ********** I.A.2. Fr: David Powers, AG Siekmann Re: Machine Learning of Natural Language and Ontology AAAI Spring Symposium March 26-28, 1991 Stanford University, Calfiornia Over the last thirty years there has been a trickle of papers addressing aspects of the Natural Language Learning area. The 80s have even seen a few books published on the subject. These have tended to take drastically different theoretical approaches, and have drawn on varying degrees on fields outside Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. During this same period, computational and mathematical modelling of language and learning have increasingly been recognized as relevant to assessing the validity of a theory of Language Acquisition or the Nature of Language. Conversely, researchers in Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Philosophy, as well as Computing, have been considering how and where we can apply our increasing knowledge of the human characteristics and constraints which determine how we solve problems, learn about the world, and use language. The symposium will address all aspects of the relationship between Machine Learning and Natural Language. We not only expect input from researchers in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning, Natural Language, Robotics, Vision, Neural Nets, Parallelism, etc.) but wish particularly to encourage relevant contributions from other fields (Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, Philosophy, Neurology, Mathematics, etc.) Specific areas of interest include: Traditional Approaches - Applicability of traditional machine learning. - Applicability of traditional parsing techniques. Complexity Theory - Formal results on learning and language constraints. - Development of effective classifications of language. Cognitive Science - Psychological results on language and restrictions. - Linguistic results on the nature of natural language. Parallel Networks - Neural models of parsing and learning. - Parallel models of parsing and learning. Symbol Grounding - Grounding of Natural Language Systems. - Interaction between Modalities and Learning of Ontology. System Development - Computable hypotheses and heuristics for language learning. - Experimental language learning systems and their rationale. Prospective participants are encouraged to contact a member of the symposium committee to obtain a more detailed description of the symposium goals and issues. Participants should then submit an extended abstract of a paper (500-1000 words) and/or a personal bio-history of work in the area (300-500 words) with a list of (up to 12) relevant publications. We will acknowledge your e-mail enquiries or submissions promptly, and will deal with other forms of communication as quickly as possible. Submissions should be sent by e-mail to powers=sub@informatik.uni-kl.de (and/or reeker@cs.ida.org) by November 16th. If e-mail is impossible, two copies should be sent to arrive by November 16th to: Larry Reeker, Institute for Defense Analyses, C & SE Div., 1801 N. Beauregard St, Alexandria, VA 22311-1772 OR, fax a copy (with cover page) by November 16th BOTH to 1-703-820-9680 (Larry Reeker, USA) AND to +49-631-205-3210 (David Powers, FRG). Program Committee: David Powers (chair - powers@informatik.uni-kl.de), Larry Reeker (reeker@cs.ida.org), Manny Rayner (manny@sics.se), Chris Turk (UK - Fax: +44-633-400091). ********** I.A.3. Fr: Don Walker Re: 29th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics June 18-21, 1991 University of California, Berkeley TOPICS OF INTEREST: Papers are invited on substantial, original, and unpublished research on all aspects of computational linguistics, including, but not limited to, pragmatics, discourse, semantics, syntax, and the lexicon; phonetics, phonology, and morphology; interpreting and generating spoken and written language; linguistic, mathematical, and psychological models of language; machine translation and translation aids; natural language interfaces; message understanding systems; and theoretical and applications papers of every kind. REQUIREMENTS: Papers should describe unique work; they should emphasize completed work rather than intended work; and they should indicate clearly the state of completion of the reported results. A paper accepted for presentation at the ACL Meeting cannot be presented at another conference. FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION: Authors should submit six copies of preliminary versions of their papers, not to exceed 3200 words (exclusive of references). The title page should include the title, the name(s) of the author(s), complete addresses, a short (5 line) summary, and a specification of the topic area. Submissions that do not conform to this format will not be reviewed. Send to: Douglas E. Appelt Artificial Intelligence Center SRI International 333 Ravenswood Road Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA (+1-415)859-6150; (+1-415)859-6171 fax appelt@ai.sri.com SCHEDULE: Preliminary papers are due by 19 January 1991 (the December date specified in The FINITE STRING Fall issue is incorrect). Authors will be notified of acceptance by 8 March 1991. Camera-ready copies of final papers prepared in a double-column format, preferably on laser-printer output, must be received by 19 April 1991, along with a signed copyright release statement. OTHER ACTIVITIES: As a new feature, there will be a ***Special Student Session*** organized by a committee of ACL graduate student members. Participants must be ACL members; anyone interested should contact Philip Resnik, Computer & Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA; (+1-215)898-1595; resnik@grad1.cis.upenn.edu. The meeting will also include a program of tutorials organized by Cecile Paris, USC/ISI, 4676 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292, USA; (+1-213)822-1511; paris@isi.edu. Anyone wishing to arrange an exhibit or present a demonstration should send a brief description together with a specification of physical requirements (space, power, telephone connections, tables, etc.) to Sandra Newton, Brown Bear Consulting, 3842 Louis Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303, USA; (+1-415)856-6506; newton@decwrl.dec.com. CONFERENCE INFORMATION: Local arrangements are being handled by by Peter Norvig, Division of Computer Science, University of California, 573 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; (+1-415)642-9533; norvig@teak.berkeley.edu; and Robert Wilensky, Division of Computer Science, University of California, 571 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; (+1-415)642-7034; wilensky@teak.berkeley.edu. For other information on the conference and on the ACL more generally, contact Don Walker (ACL), Bellcore, MRE 2A379, 445 South Street, Box 1910, Morristown, NJ 07960-1910, USA; (+1 201)829-4312; walker@flash.bellcore.com or bellcore!walker. PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Doug Appelt (SRI International), Ken Church (AT&T Bell Labs and USC/ISI), Robin Cohen (University of Waterloo), Erhard Hinrichs (University of Illinois), Eduard Hovy (USC/ISI), Robert Ingria (BBN Systems & Technologies), Yasuhiro Katagiri (NTT Basic Research Laboratories), Diane Litman (Columbia University), K. Vijay-Shanker (University of Delaware), Meg Withgott (XEROX PARC), Henk Zeevat (University of Amsterdam). ********** I.B.1. Fr: Nancy M. Ide Re: The Journal of Computers and the Humanities Special Issue on Common Methologies in Computational Linguistics and Humanities Computing CALL FOR PAPERS Recently, panels and sessions at COLING, and conferences of the Association for Computational Linguistics, the Association for Computers and the Humanities, and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing have addressed the increasing merging of methodologies in the fields of computational linguistics and humanities computing. On the one hand, computational linguists are devoting considerable attention to statistical and other quantitative measures traditionally used in humanities computing. Also, work with large text corpora, long the central activity in humanities computing, is also becoming an important area for computational linguistics. Computational linguists are now beginning to consider texts, and even literary texts, as an object of study and a rich source of information about the phenomena of language and discourse. On the other hand, humanists are turning to methods for morphological, syntactic, and semantic analysis developed by computational linguists to enhance their strategies for literary and linguistic studies. A special issue of Computers and the Humanities will be devoted to papers that describe work which falls at the intersection of the fields of computational linguistics and humanities computing, either in methodology or use of materials. Papers dealing with computational lexicology and lexicography, corpora and corpus linguistics, statistical models and methods for language and text analysis, and syntactic, semantic, and content analytic methods are invited. All papers should be submitted by May 1, 1991. The special issue is expected to appear in late spring, 1992. Papers and requests for information should be sent to: Nancy M. Ide Department of Computer Science Box 520 Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY 12601, USA ide@vassar.bitnet (+1 914) 437-5988 (+1 914) 437-7187 fax or Donald E. Walker Bellcore, MRE 2A379 445 South Street, Box 1910 Morristown, NJ 07960-1910, USA walker@flash.bellcore.com (+1 201) 829-4312 (+1 201) 455-1931 fax ********** I.C.1. Fr: Ben Chneiderman Re: A Live Satellite TV Broadcast December 5, 1990 University of Maryland Instructional Television Organized by Ben Shneiderman Speakers: Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland User Interface Update Andries van Dam, Brown University Electronic Books: User Controlled Animation in a Hypermedia Framework Elliot Soloway, University of Michigan Interactive Learning Environments Bill Curtis, MCC Human Interface Laboratory Advanced User Interface Architectures and Software Tools Audience: User interface designers, programmers, software engineers, interface evaluators, managers in the computing and communications fields, technical writers, human factors specialists, trainers, marketing personnel. Overview: Four leaders in the field offer their perspectives on why the user interface is a central focus for expanding applications of computers in business, education, the home, etc. They offer their visions and suggest exciting opportunities for the next decade's developments. Demonstrations, new software tools, guiding principles, emerging theories, and future scenarios will be presented. Enrollment: This live satellite course will be broadcast from the University of Maryland Instructional Television System via Ku and C Bands. In order to view the broadcast, access to a satellite dish is necessary. Contact your organization's training or conference director to ask if he or she can organize a satellite downlink and obtain a site license. If you do not have access to a satellite dish, a number of open viewing sites have been established in major metropolitan areas in the US and Canada. For information on viewing locations, course fee, and for questions about the broadcast, call (301) 405-4905 or FAX (301) 314-9639. The broadcast will be in cooperation with the National Technological University (NTU). Lecture 1: 11:00am - Noon EST User Interface Update Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland Rapid progress by researchers and developers during the past year has opened up new opportunities: 1) Public Access via Touchscreen and Multi-media are substantially improved - information kiosks, videodisk and home control panels, database query, touchscreen keyboards, music and art instruments 2) Computer Supported Cooperative Work and the emergence of groupware is supported by applications for education and business, tour our new Teaching Theater by videotape 3) Home control systems become more attractive - Security, entertainment, and comfort control, periodic scheduling for home devices, taming your VCR, access to information resources and hypermedia. Ben Shneiderman is Head of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, Professor of Computer Science, and Member of the Institute Advanced Computer Studies all at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the co-author of the recently published hyperbook/disk Hypertext Hands-On!, and author of Designing the User Interface and Software Psychology. Dr. Shneiderman is editor of the Ablex Publishers series on Human-Computer Interaction, on the editorial board of 6 journals, the author of 125 technical papers, and the creator of the Hyperties hypertext system. He is an international lecturer and consultant for many organizations including Apple, AT&T, IBM, Library of Congress, NASA, and NCR. Lecture 2: 12:30pm - 1:25pm EST Electronic books: User-controlled animation in a hypermedia framework Andries van Dam, Brown University Electronic books have the potential of preserving the attractive properties of paper books while ameliorating their shortcomings. A model for such books, and indeed of a digital library, that is becoming increasingly popular is that of a hypermedia database: a directed-graph-structured collection with media such as text, dynamic graphics, video and audio at the nodes. An essential ingredient is user control of the presentation's content and format. An important example of such interactivity is user-controlled, real-time 3D (and 4D) animation derived from stored models of physical and abstract objects and phenomena. Hypermedia electronic books will be used for such applications as teaching and learning, research, technical documentation and even electronic shopping. Brown University's Intermedia system and the Animation Generation system will be shown. Andries van Dam is a professor of Computer Science at Brown University and was the department's first Chairman. He has been working for over 20 years on the design of ``electronic books,'' based on high-resolution graphics displays, for use in teaching and research. van Dam received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966. A member of IEEE Computer Society, and ACM, he helped to found and was an editor of Computer Graphics and Image Processing and was an editor of ACM's Transactions on Graphics. In 1967, Professor van Dam co-founded ACM's SIGGRAPH. He is the coauthor of the popular book Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics, and its greatly expanded successor, Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice, published in June 1990. van Dam has received the IEEE Centennial Medal, State of Rhode Island Governor's Science and Technology Award, and National Computer Graphics Association's Academic Award. He is past Chairman of the Computer Research Board, and Senior Consulting Scientist at Bloc Development and ComputerVision. Lecture 3: 1:35pm - 2:30pm EST Interactive Learning Environments Elliot Soloway, University of Michigan The computer has long held great promise for education and training: individualized instruction, mimicking that of a personal mentor, has been the Holy Grail. However, years of experience with various approaches to education and training (e. g., computer-assisted instruction (CAI), intelligent tutoring systems (ITS), interactive video (IV)) has shown that while there are clear strengths of each approach, there is no one approach that is a cheap and easy path to the Holy Grail. This talk surveys the major computer-based approaches to learning and training. Demonstrations will illustrate the situations where each approach provides advantages and provide design rules that can be applied in other projects. Evidence is offered to show that CAI approaches can reduce time to learn significantly (approximately 30%), while facilitating modest improvement in performance (an increase of 10%). In contrast, the ITS model can facilitate a much higher performance improvement (one standard deviation), but at a higher cost (e. g., more computing resources or narrow topic area). The next generation of interactive learning environments, e. g. environments that support more active construction on the part of the learner, and not just information delivery, have the potential for still greater benefits. Elliot Soloway is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He directs the "Highly-interactive computing environments" project in the Artificial Intelligence Lab. He and his group are exploring the roles that multimedia-based, computer-aided design environments will play in restructuring learning and training. He is the editor of the new journal, Interactive Learning Environments (Ablex Press, Inc.), serves on the Editorial Board of Human Computer Interaction, Journal of Educational Computing Research, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, and has authored over 100 papers. Soloway has consulted for IBM, Digital Equipment Corp., Apple Computer, Arthur Anderson & Company, Educational Testing Service, and NASA. Lecture 4: 3:00pm - 3:55pm EST Advanced User Interface Architectures and Software Tools Bill Curtis, MCC Human Interface Laboratory The next generation of user interfaces will require computers to resolve ambiguous inputs that may arrive simultaneously from modalities such as voice, gesture, handwriting, etc. MCC's Human Interface Laboratory is integrating the knowledge-based and media-based capabilities needed for supporting these multi-modal interfaces. After discussing the capabilities of current generation interface toolkits such as NeXTStep, MacApp, and OSF Motif, this talk will discuss the technology developed and lessons learned in our research on building such interface capabilities. At the core of our multidisciplinary research is a blackboard system tailored for user interface requirements. It provides a powerful runtime architecture for integrating interface modalities and interpreting ambiguous inputs. For instance, in building paper-and-pencil-like interfaces we are integrating neural net and parsing capabilities for recognizing sketched input that can range from characters, to equations, to diagrammatic languages. The ability to integrate knowledge-based and media- based capabilities will become more important as applications grow more data intensive and place a greater premium on searching large information spaces, creating interactive graphic representations of the data or objects, and in providing tutorial assistance on-line (self-training interfaces). Dr. Curtis is Director of MCC's Human Interface Laboratory pursuing research on a new generation of user interface technology. Previously he was a Director in MCC's Software Technology Program, which is developing a new generation of technology for supporting the design of large systems. Prior to joining MCC, Dr. Curtis was the Manager of Programming Trends Analysis at ITT's Programming Technology Center; Manager of Software Management Research in the Space Division of General Electric, and Research Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. He has published over 80 articles on software engineering, human-computer interaction, and the management of large systems development, and has edited two books: Human Factors in Software Development (an IEEE tutorial) and Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 1985 Proceedings). He is on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, and the Journal of Systems and Software. Discussion: 4:05pm - 5:00pm EST Presenters will accept phoned-in questions from the live satellite audience. ********************************************************** II. NOTICES II.A.1. Fr: Andrey Yeatts Re: Archive server for computer theory ir Does anyone know of an ftp server that archives comp.theory.info-retrieval? Thanks, andrey - -- Andrey Yeatts Dept. of Computer Science andrey@cs.arizona.edu Univ. of Arizona {uunet,allegra,cmcl2,noao}!arizona!andrey Tucson, AZ 85721 (602) 621-8373 ********** II.B.1. Fr: Peter Evans Re: Evaluated hypermedia documents from an ISAR perspective I am planning a paper on the evaluation of hypermedia systems from an Information Storage and Retrieval perspective. The tack I will take is that many of the traditional measures of Information Retrieval (e.g. recall, precision) do not seem to apply to the situation where a person is interacting with a hypermedia system. Submitting a formal query to a document retrieval system and browsing through a hypermedia system seem to be very different strategies for information seeking. For example, when a person is browsing through a system what would a precision ratio be? I think I will argue that we must do some type of micro-analysis where we follow the individual while they are interacting with the system and attempt to track BOTH their state at a given time and the materials they are looking at, i.e. performance depends on their information need at that time rather than at the beginning or the end of the session. Obviously a fairly labour intensive process. Such an evaluation would need to consider the interface but the emphasis would be on the extend to which the system/user combination was able to identify and retrieve any information in the system which was relevant to the information need. Does anyone know of any relevant articles or studies which have evaluated hypermedia documents from such an ISAR perspective? Any help or comments would be appreciated. I recently completed a paper on browsing as an information seeking strategy and would be happy to email it to anyone who is interested - - and can give me some useful information ;-) Thanks, for any assistance. Peter Evans pevans@umd5.umd.edu (301)405-2033 Rm. 4105 Hornbake Library Building College of Library and Information Services University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742 ********************************************************** IRLIST Digest is distributed from the University of California, Division of Library Automation, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, CA. 94612-3550. Send subscription requests to: LISTSERV@UCCVMA.BITNET Send submissions to IRLIST to: IR-L@UCCVMA.BITNET Editorial Staff: Clifford Lynch lynch@postgres.berkeley.edu calur@uccmvsa.bitnet Mary Engle engle@cmsa.berkeley.edu meeur@uccmvsa.bitnet Nancy Gusack ncgur@uccmvsa.bitnet The IRLIST Archives will be set up for anonymous FTP, and the address will be announced in future issues. These files are not to be sold or used for commercial purposes. Contact Mary Engle or Nancy Gusack for more information on IRLIST. The opinions expressed in IRLIST do not represent those of the editors or the University of California. 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