Newsletter 29

August 28, 1995


ALONZO CHURCH (1903 - 1995)
Alonzo Church, who was born on June 14, 1903 in Washington, D.C., died
Friday, August 11, 1995 in Hudson, Ohio at the age of 92.  Memorial
contributions may be made to the Association for Symbolic Logic (1409
West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801) and marked "For the Alonzo Church
Fund".

LOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS, COMPUTER SCIENCE AND PHYSICS
-- Kurt Goedel's Legacy (GOEDEL'96)
  August 25-29, 1996, Brno, Czech Republic (birthplace of Kurt Goedel).  
* Topics.  The aim of the conference is to hold tribute to Kurt Goedel by
  arranging a scientific event presenting a forum for papers relevant to
  foundational aspects of Logic in Mathematics, Computer Science,
  Philosophy and Physics -- areas influenced by Kurt Goedel's work. Both
  original scientific papers are sought for the conference, as well as
  research work in history connected with Goedel's work.  A session is
  planned to honour Professor Hao Wang, one of Goedel's closest
  collaborators, who died on May 13 this year.
* Programme Committee.  Z. Adamowicz, Warsaw; J. Bicak, Prague;
  L. Bukovsky, Kosice; D. de Jongh, Amsterdam; J. Grygar, Prague;
  E. Koehler, Vienna; J. Krajicek, Prague; P. Hajek (chair), Prague;
  A. Leitsch, Vienna; D. Mundici, Milano; G. Mueller, Heidelberg; J. Paris,
  Manchester; C. Parsons, Harvard.
* Contact Addresses.  Programme and submissions (full draft papers): Petr
  Hajek, Institute of Computer Science, Academy of Sciences of the Czech
  Republic, Pod vodarenskou vezi 2, 182 07 Prague, Czech Republic.  E-mail:
  goedel96-program@uivt.cas.cz.  Telephone: +42-2-66051111, +42-2-66414244,
  +42-2-66413418.  Fax: +42-2-8585789.  Organization: Jiri Zlatuska,
  Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Buresova 20, 602 00 Brno,
  Czech Republic.  E-mail: goedel96@informatics.muni.cz.  Telephone:
  +42-5-41213125, +42-5-41211646, +42-5-41213219.  Fax: +42-5-41212747.
* Submission Deadline.  January 14, 1996.

WORKSHOP: OPERATIONAL & DENOTATIONAL SEMANTICS OF LOGIC PROGRAMMING: 
EXTENDING PROOF- AND MODEL-THEORETIC ANALYSES
  December 8th, 1995, Portland, Oregon (USA)
* Topics.  The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers in the
  areas of proof theory, logic programming language design and programming
  language semantics.  The specific technical issues addressed by this
  workshop will include: Proof-theoretic definitions of logic programming
  languages; Proof-theoretic interpretations of aggregate operators,
  including negation-as-failure; Operational semantics of logic programs:
  requirements and methods; Nondeterminism, process theory and
  powerdomains: towards a basis for the denotational semantics of logic
  programming; Proof theory and (denotational) semantics as common
  frameworks for functional and logic programming.
* Associated Conference.  The workshop is in association with ILPS'95
  (International Logic Programming Symposium)
* Submissions.  Papers must not exceed 15 pages (approximately 5000 words)
  and are due September 15. Authors are encouraged to submit papers via
  email, in either Postscript or (self-contained) LaTeX/TeX format.  If
  email is unavailable or inconvenient, six paper copies should be
  submitted. Submissions should include the name, address, fax, and email
  address of a contact author.  Prospective authors are encouraged to send
  an expression of interest via email on or before September 1st, including
  the title and authors of the paper.
* Contact address.  James Harland, Department of Computer Science, Royal
  Melbourne Institute of Technology, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne, 3001,
  Australia.  Email: jah@cs.rmit.edu.au.  Phone: +613 9660 2045.  Fax: +613
  9662 1617.

HIGHER-ORDER ALGEBRA, LOGIC AND TERM REWRITING (HOA '95)
  21st-22nd September 1995, Paderborn, GERMANY  
[Previous announcement in Newsletter 21]  
* Updates.  Visit the WWW page for the final program and
  registration info.

3RD INT'L WORKSHOP ON TEMPORAL REPRESENTATION AND REASONING (TIME-96)
  May 19-20, 1996, Key West, Florida, USA  
* Topics.  The purpose of this workshop is to bring together active
  researchers in the area of temporal representation and reasoning in
  Artificial Intelligence.  The workshop will be conducted as a combination
  of paper presentations, a poster session, an invited talk, and panel
  discussions.  The format will provide ample time for discussions and
  exchange of ideas.  Submission of high quality papers describing mature
  results or on-going work are invited for all areas of temporal
  representation and reasoning, including, but not limited to: temporal
  logics and ontologies, temporal languages and architectures, continuous
  versus discrete time, point versus interval representations, expressive
  power versus tractability, belief and uncertainty in temporal knowledge,
  temporal databases and knowledge bases, temporal learning and discovery,
  reasoning about actions and events, time and nonmonotonism, time and
  constraints, time in problem solving (e.g. diagnosis, qualitative
  physics,...), multiple agents, communication, and synchronization,
  applications.
* Associated Meeting.  The workshop is planned as a two day event to
  immediately precede FLAIRS-96 (Ninth Annual Florida Artificial
  Intelligence Research Symposium, May 20-22). Workshop participants are
  also encouraged to submit papers to FLAIRS and attend the conference.
* Submissions.  Accepted papers will be invited for full presentation or a
  poster presentation. All submissions must be received by December 5,
  1995.  Prospective participants should submit 5 copies of a 6-8 page
  paper (indicating the selected areas), to be received by December 5,
  1995, to: TIME-96, Luca Chittaro and Angelo Montanari, Dipartimento di
  Matematica e Informatica, Universita' di Udine, Via delle Scienze, 206,
  33100 Udine -- ITALY.  Or preferably, submit by anonymous FTP a
  postscript version of the paper to: bach.dimi.uniud.it (158.110.1.140),
  directory: pub/time96.  After submitting electronically, please
  communicate the title, area, and authors of the paper by sending an
  e-mail to time96@dimi.uniud.it
* Program Committee.  Frank Anger, Fahiem Bacchus, Mark Boddyk, Luca
  Chittaro (co-chair), Jan Chomicki, Philippe Dague, Tom Dean, Mark
  Denecker, Jennifer Elgot-Drapkin, Marcelo Finger, Michael Fisher, Dov
  Gabbay, Malik Ghallab, Anthony Galton, Michael Gelfond, Michael Georgeff,
  Peter Haddawy, Pat Hayes, Peter Ladkin, Gerard Ligozat, Angelo Montanari
  (co-chair), Robert Morris, Bernhard Nebel, Don Perlis, Han Reichgelt,
  Raymond Reiter, Mark Reynolds, Maarten de Rijke, Erik Sandewall, Marek
  Sergot, Murray Shanahan, Peter van Beek, Andre Trudel.

CONF ON THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF PROLOG (PAP'96)
  April 22-26, 1996, London, UK   
* Topics The PAP series of conferences is the world's leading showcase for
  Prolog applications and systems. Now in its fourth year the conference
  continues to grow, and to demonstrate the benefits of this important
  technology, including increased productivity, reduced maintenance, and
  flexible solutions which can easily adapt to changing business needs.  We
  invite you to submit papers or industrial reports describing applications
  in the areas of logic and constraint logic programming.  Papers can be of
  any length, and on virtually any topic, but as these conferences are
  aimed at demonstrating the benefits of the technology for industry and
  commerce, preference will be given to papers describing fielded
  applications in the business arena.
* Submissions.  Five copies of papers should be submitted by November 17th
  1995.
* Demonstrations, Workshops and Tutorials.  The conference also provides an
  opportunity for software vendors and developers to demonstrate Prolog
  systems.  You are invited to contact the organiser to arrange for your
  application to be exhibited at the event.  If you would like to organise
  a workshop or tutorial, or wish to see a particular topic covered, please
  contact us.
* Programme Committee.  Howard Arner, Ad-Track, USA; Pedro Barahona, U. of
  Lisbon, Portugal; Oskar Bartenstein, IF Computer, Japan; Barry Crabtree,
  British Telecom, UK; Sam Daniel, Motorola, USA; Pierre Deransart, INRIA,
  France; John Fox, ICRF; Markus Fromherz, Xerox PARC, USA; xeAlexander
  Herold, ECRC, Germany; Kazuyoshi Honda, Tokyo Gas Company, Japan; Leo
  Jensen, PDC, Denmark; Philip Kay, COSYTEC, France; Andr=E9 Marien, BIM,
  Belgium; Yossi Nygate, AT & T; David Pearce, DFKI, Germany; Luis Moniz
  Pereira, U. of Lisbon, Portugal; Peter Reintjes (chair), IBM, USA; Al
  Roth, Prolog Management Group; Thomas Sjoland, SICS, Sweden; Leon
  Sterling, Case Western Reserve University; xeHans-Juergen Stenger,
  Siemens Nixdorf, Germany; Peter Szeredi, IQSOFT, Hungary; Patrick
  Taillibert, Dassault Electronique, France; Michel Van Caneghem, PrologIA,
  France; Phil Vasey, LPA, UK; Andrew Verden, IF Computer, Germany; Mark
  Wallace, ICL and Imperial College, UK.
* Further Information.  Al Roth. Tel: +44 (0) 1253 358081.  Fax: +44 (0)
  1253 353811.  E-mail: info@pap.com.  WWW: (see above).

CONF ON THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF CONSTRAINT TECHNOLOGY (PACT'96)
  April 22-26, 1996, London, UK   
* Topics.  The PACT conference and exhibition is the premier forum for
  constraint applications and systems. Now in its second year the
  conference builds on the success of PACT'95, and clearly demonstrates the
  benefits of constraints for solving real-world problems. PACT'96 will
  focus on the industrial exploitation of Constraint Programming, and
  explore the realisable benefits for business, and future trends for this
  important technology.  We invite you to submit a paper or industrial
  report describing fielded applications in the area of constraint
  programming. Papers can be any length, and on any topic. Note that as
  PACT conferences are aimed at demonstrating the benefits of the
  technology for industry and commerce, preference will be given to papers
  which describe fielded applications.
* Submissions.  Five copies of papers for PACT'96 should be submitted by
  November 17th, 1995.
* Demonstrations, Workshops and Tutorials.  The conference provides an
  opportunity for software vendors and developers to demonstrate constraint
  systems. You are invited to contact the organiser to arrange for your
  application to be exhibited at the event. If you would like to organise a
  workshop or tutorial or wish to see a particular topic covered, again
  please contact the organiser.
* Exhibition.  The multi-vendor exhibition will demonstrate live
  applications and cutting-edge development systems.
* Programme Committee.  Akira Aiba, New Generation Computer Technology;
  Bjorn Freeman-Benson's, Object Technology International; Barry Crabtree,
  British Telecom; Jean-Marc David, Renault; Mehmet Dincbas, COSYTEC;
  Alexander Herold, ECRC; Joxan Jaffar, University of Singapore; James
  Little, Brunel University; Jean-Francois Puget, ILOG; Peter Reintjes,
  IBM; Al Roth, Prolog Management Group; Gert Smolka, DFKI; Peter Stuckey,
  University of Melbourne; Erik Tiden, Siemens; Edward Tsang, University of
  Essex; Michel Van Carnegem, PrologIA; Pascal Van Hentenryck, Brown
  University; Mark Wallace (Chair), ICL ; Vijay Saraswat, Xerox PARC.
* Further Information.  Al Roth.  Phone: +44 (0)1253 358081.  Fax: +44
  (0)1253 353811.  E-mail: pact96@pap.com.  WWW: (see above).

ADVANCES IN THE THEORY OF COMPUTATION AND COMPUTATIONAL MATHEMATICS
This is a serial (in book form) publishing surveys with some original
content on mathematical aspects of "computation", including theory of
computation.
* Editor-in-Chief.  Charles Dunham, Computer Science Department, The
  University of Western Ontario, London, CANADA N6A 5B7.  E-mail:
  dunham@csd.uwo.ca
* Editors.  Members of the editorial board with theory of computation
  interests are the editor-in-chief, and Helmut Jurgensen of the same
  address.  We are looking for volume editor who would take responsibility
  for producing a 6-12 article volume on a special topic of their choice.
  Submit a proposal to the editor or write for details. The publisher is
  ABLEX, Norwood, New Jersey.

NONSTANDARD QUERIES AND NONSTANDARD ANSWERS.
R.Demolombe and T. Imielinski (eds.): (Studies in Logic and Computation
No. 3) Oxford University Press, 1994, 288 pages, Hardback, Price: 45.00
L. ISBN 0-19-853852-9.
* Summary.  Future Data and Knowledge Base Systems will require new
  functionalities: richer data modelling capabilities, more powerful query
  languages and new concepts of the query answers.  Future query languages
  will include functionalities such as hypothetical reasoning, abductive
  reasoning, modal reasoning, and metareasoning involving knowledge and
  belief.  Intensional answers will lead to cooperative query answering in
  which the answer to a query takes under consideration user's
  expectations.
  Non-classical logic plays an important role in this book for the
  formalization of new queries and new answers.  It is shown how logic
  allows to give precise definitions for concepts like: cooperative
  answers, subjunctive queries, or reliable sources of information, and
  gives a precise framework for reasoning about these complex concepts.  It
  is worth noting that adavances in knowledge management are not just an
  application domain for existing results in logic, but also require new
  developments in logic.
  The book is organized into 10 chapters which cover the areas of
  cooperative query answering (the first three chapters), metareasoning and
  abductive reasoning (chapters 5 to 7) and finally, hypothetical and
  subjunctive reasoning (last three chapters).
* Contents.  T.  Gaasterland, P. Godfrey, J.  Minker: An overview of
  cooperative answering.  W.Chu, Q.Chen, M.Merzbacher: Cobase: a
  cooperative database sytem; A. Hemerly, M. Casanova, A.  Furtado:
  Exploiting user models to avoid misconstruals; R.Nossum: Modal logics for
  practical reasoning; R. Demolombe, A. Jones: Deriving answers to safety
  queries; P. Mathieu, J-P. Delahaye: Abductive reasoning in three-valued
  logic for knowledge bases; D.Gabbay, J.Pitt, R.Kempson: Labelled
  abduction and relevance reasoning; A.Bonner: Hypothetical reasoning with
  intuitionistic logic; C.Boutilier: A modal analysis for subjunctive
  queries; G.Grahne, A.Mendelzon: Updates and subjunctive queries.