LINGUIST List 11.2800

Sat Dec 23 2000

Calls: Evolutionary COmputation, Semantics/Pragmatics

Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Robert E. Smith, Evolutionary COmputation and Multi-Agent Systems (ECOMAS)
2. Peter K�hnlein, Semantics & Pragmatics of Dialogue - BI-DIALOG 2001

linguisttamvm1.tamu.edu



Call for Participation:
Evolutionary COmputation and Multi-Agent Systems
(ECOMAS)
(see
http://gal4.ge.uiuc.edu:8080/gecco-2001/workshops/index.html#evolutionaryCO,
where a more extensive webpage will be added in the New Year)

A Birds-Of-A-Feather Workshop At
GECCO 2001
(http://gal4.ge.uiuc.edu:8080/gecco-2001/)

Submissions Due: February 15, 2001
Workshop Date: July 7, 2001

Description Of The Workshop Topic

Multi-agent systems (MAS) are collections of interacting autonomous
entities. The behaviour of the MAS is a result of the repeated
asynchronous action and interaction of the agents. Understanding how
to engineer adaptation and self-organisation is thus central to the
application of agents on a large scale. Moreover, multi-agent
simulations can also be used to study emergent behaviour in real
systems.

Desirable self-organisation is observed in many biological, social and
physical systems. However, fostering these conditions in artificial
systems proves to be difficult and offers the potential for
undesirable behaviours to emerge. Thus, it is vital to be able to
understand and shape emergent behaviours in agent based
systems. Current mathematical and empirical tools give only a partial
insight into emergent behaviour in large, agent-based societies. EC
provides on paradigm for addressing this need. Moreover, EC techniques
are inherently based on a distributed paradigm (natural evolution),
making them particularly well suited for adaptation in agents.

At the same time, ideas from natural ecosystems or economies, such as
resource flows, niches, and spatial context or neighbourhood can
contribute both to the development of MAS and to the improvement of EC
techniques. The interaction between these different sources of natural
inspiration and the two computing disciplines of MAS and EC is
beginning to stimulate a range of systems with properties that extend
the MAS and EC concepts in new and interesting directions.

Notable examples of systems of that begin to examine the issues of EC in MAS
include Holland's ECHO system, Tierra, Avalanche, Egglets, Amalthaea,
InfoSpiders, and many others .

The goal of EcoMAS is to open a dialog among researchers and
practitioners who are examining EC in MAS. EcoMAS represents an
important opportunity for those active or interested in this area to
hear about current work, discuss future directions and priorities, and
form invaluable research contacts.

Interest To The GEC Community

With the advance of computational power and communications speed, we
now live in a computational world where a large number of agents may
be working on behalf of any given user. A large number of Internet
software agents may be acting on behalf of even the most casual user:
searching for music, comparing pension schemes, purchasing good and
services, identifying chat partners, etc. Moreover, these agents may
be collaborating with those of other users, while spawning and
managing agents of their own. In more formal settings, a business,
academic, or government user may simultaneously employ many software
agents to manage workflow, trade goods or information, collaboratively
solve problems, etc. In the future, even relatively simple household
appliances may play a role in this churning system of interacting,
computational agents.

In this world, EC theories and practices have new implications. Agents
that interact according to these theories are no longer locked inside
the laboratory conditions imposed by EC researchers and users.The
interest in merging the EC and MAS research communities is certainly
growing. In the opinion of the organizers, it is important to the GEC
community that there is a forum to discuss the particular issues of EC
in MAS. Simultaneously, such a forum allows for ideas from
contemporary MAS research to spread to the GEC community.

Workshop Format

In the opinion of the organizers, it is important that a workshop
involve more than talks and presentations. Therefore, the workshop
will be focused on an extensive, directed discussion on the future of
EC in MAS. Other aspects of the workshop will be directed at
facilitating this discussion:

1) The workshop will allow for the selected presenters to post
"mini-posters." Much of this material will be available before the workshop,
via a web site.
2)
3) The first hour of the workshop will consist of "mini-presentations" to
preview the mini-poster session. Authors will be allowed to present at most
two transparencies. Time constraints will be adjusted, depending on the
number of presenters selected, but a limit will be maintained, to allow for
the sessions outlined below.
4)
5) The second hour of the workshop will consist of a mini-poster session.
6)
7) The third hour of the workshop will focus on a discussion of the future
of EC in MAS.
8)
9) The final, and perhaps most important, hour of the workshop will be a
discussion focused on action items for advancing EC in MAS. The organizers
feel that explicitly providing time to discuss agendas in the fashion will
give the workshop an atypical, meaningful outcome.
10)
Submission Instructions

If you would like to present material at the workshop (in the format
noted above), please submit a 4 page extended abstract in Postscript
or PDF form to cefn.hoilebt.com by February 15th, 2001. If your
submission is accepted, expect to submit a camera ready version of the
extended abstract by April 15th, 2001, and to submit a web-based
presentation (PowerPoint, HTML, PDF, etc.) by June 1st, 2001.

If you would like to participate, but not present, please notify
cefn.hoilebt.com by February 15th, 2001, as GECCO requires us to submit a
participants list.

Important Dates:

Submissions Due: February 15, 2001

Review Decisions To Authors By: March 15, 2001

Camera Ready Due: April 15, 2001

Reservations Due at Holiday Inn Golden Gateway Hotel: June 6, 2001

Web Materials Due: June 1, 2001

Workshop Date: July 7, 2001

Workshop Organizers


Claudio Bonacina, Robert Smith
Intelligent Computing Systems Centre
University of The West of England
Coldharbour Lane, Frenchay
Bristol BS16 1QY, UK

Cefn Hoile, Paul Marrow
Intelligent Systems Laboratory, BTexaCT
Admin 2 PP 5, Adastral Park
Ipswich IP5 3RE, UK

 Third Call for Papers

 BI-DIALOG 2001

 FIFTH WORKSHOP ON THE SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS OF DIALOGUE

 Bielefeld University, Germany
 June 14-16 2001

 http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/BIDIALOG/

Bi-Dialog 2001 will be the fifth in a series of workshops that aim
at bringing together researchers working on the semantics and
pragmatics of dialogues in fields such as artificial intelligence,
formal semantics and pragmatics, computational linguistics, 
philosophy, and psychology.

We invite abstracts on all topics related to the semantics and
pragmatics of dialogues, including, but not limited to:

- common ground in communication
- semantic interpretation in dialogues
- modelling agents' information states and how they get updated
- multi-agent models
- reference in dialogues
- dialogue and discourse structure
- reasoning in spoken and multimodal dialogue systems

In addition to giving talks, there will be an opportunity to exhibit
posters (in an extra poster session) and give system demonstrations.
Please read the next section carefully.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:

There are different formats for the submissions, relating to the kind
of presentation that is aspired.

All authors should submit an anonymous extended abstract. The length
of abstracts pertaining to talks should be at most 5 single-column
pages (for talks with a duration of 30' plus 10' discussion). Those
who wish to participate in the poster session or the system
demonstrations session should submit 2 pages in the same format,
describing their presentations. All submissions should go together
with a separate page specifying the authors' names, affiliation,
address, and e-mail address.

The abstracts should be submitted electronically (in LaTeX,
postscript, html, ascii, or pdf format) to: bidialoguni-bielefeld.de.

Authors who are *accepted* for the poster sessions can use the
university's plotter for printing out their posters; they will be
charged about 4.60 EURO per print out. The required format is
PostScript (but contact the local organizers), and the maximum paper
size is A0. Those who need special equipment for their presentations
should also contact the local organizers early. If you need, e.g.,
machines other than PCs for your demonstration, we will probably be
able to provide you with that. But we need the information early.

IMPORTANT DATES:

Abstracts due: February 15th
Acceptance notice: April 15th
Final version due: May 22
Conference: June 14-16th

INVITED SPEAKERS (preliminary):

Simon Garrod (HCRC, Univ. Glasgow), Alois Knoll (Univ. Bielefeld),
Alex Lascarides (HCRC, Univ. Edinburgh), David Sadek (France Telecom),
Robert van der Sandt (Univ. Nijmegen), Isabel Gomez Txurruka (ILCLI)

ADVISORY BOARD (preliminary):

Ellen Bard (HCRC), Anton Benz (HU Berlin), Peter Bosch (Univ.
Osnabrueck), Robin Cooper (Goteborg Univ.), Claire Gardent (Univ.
des Saarlandes), Yasuhiro Katagiri (ATR MIC LR), Massimo Poesio 
(HCRC), Uwe Reyle (IMS), Henk Zeevat (ILLC)

ORGANIZATION:

The workshop will take place at Bielefeld University. The local 
organizers are Peter Kuehnlein, Hannes Rieser, and Henk Zeevat.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Information about Bielefeld University: 
http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/

News about the conference will be posted on the workshop's web 
page at
http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/BIDIALOG/

Send emails to bidialoguni-bielefeld.de or
pkuehnlelili.uni-bielefeld.de for questions about local
arrangements.

Previous workshops in this series include:

MunDial'97 (Munich)
 (http://www.cis.uni-muenchen.de/sil/workshop/dialogwsh.html)
Twendial'98 (Twente)
 (http://parlevink.cs.utwente.nl/Conferences/twlt13.html)
Amstelogue'99 (Amsterdam)
 (http://earth.let.uva.nl/~amstelog/)
Gotalog'00 (Gothenburg)
 (http://www.ling.gu.se/gotalog)


- 
Collaborative Research Center SFB 360
Univ. Bielefeld			phone: ++49-521-106 3503
Universitdtsstrasse 25		e-mail: pkuehnlelili.uni-bielefeld.de
D-33611 Bielefeld		URL: http://www.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/~pkuehnle
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