Newsletter 88 October 27, 2003 ******************************************************************* * Past issues of the newsletter are available at http://www.lfcs.informatics.ed.ac.uk/lics/newsletters/ * Instructions for submitting an announcement to the newsletter can be found at http://www.lfcs.informatics.ed.ac.uk/lics/newsletters/inst.html ******************************************************************* TABLE OF CONTENTS * CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS LICS 2004 - Call for Workshop Proposals IJCAR 2004 - Call for Papers RTA 04 - Call for Papers CDB'04 - Call for Papers HSCC 2004 - Call for Papers ACSD04 - Call for Papers CONCUR 2004 - Preliminary Announcement * BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS Aspects of Incompleteness - Per Lindstrom Many-Dimensional Modal Logics: Theory and Applications - D. Gabbay, A. Kurucz, F. Wolter, M. Zakharyaschev An Introduction to Mathematical Logic and Type Theory: To Truth Through Proof (Second Edition) - Peter B. Andrews Reasoning About Uncertainty - Joseph Y. Halpern * JOURNALS Acta Informatica Special Issue on Types in Concurrency * VACANCIES PhD & postdoc vacancies - Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands Chairs, Readers & Lecturers - University Durham, UK THE NINETEENTH IEEE SYMPOSIUM ON LOGIC IN COMPUTER SCIENCE - LICS 2004 Turku, Finland LICS 2004: July 14-17, 2004 LICS 2004 Workshops: July 12-13 and July 18, 2004. Call for Workshop Proposals * The Nineteenth IEEE Symposium on Logic In Computer Science (LICS 2004) will be held in Turku, Finland July 14-17, 2004 in conjunction with ICALP. The organizers have made arrangements for pre- and post-LICS workshops to be run in conjunction with the main conference. Possible dates are July 12-13 and July 18, and could be joint with ICALP (see http://www.math.utu.fi/ICALP04/WScall.html) * Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit proposals for workshops on topics relating logic - broadly construed - to computer science or related fields. Typically, LICS workshops feature a number of invited speakers and a smaller number of contributed presentations. LICS workshops do not produce formal proceedings. However, in the past there have been special issues of journals based in part on certain LICS workshops. * Proposals should include: - A short scientific summary and justification of the proposed topic. This should include a discussion of the particular benefits of the topic to the LICS community. - A discussion of the proposed format and agenda. - The proposed duration, which may vary from half a day to two days, and preferred dates. - Procedures for selecting participants and papers. - Expected number of participants. - Potential invited speakers. - Plans for dissemination (for example, special issues of journals). * Proposals are due Nov. 15, 2003 and should be submitted electronically to: Philip Scott Workshops Chair, LICS 2004 phil@site.uottawa.ca * The selections will be chosen by a committee consisting of Phokion Kolaitis (LICS General Chair), Harald Ganzinger (LICS 2004 Program Committee Chair), Phil Scott (LICS Workshop Chair) and Lauri Hella (LICS 2004 Conference chair). The results will be announced by Nov 30th, 2003. * http://www.lfcs.informatics.ed.ac.uk/lics SECOND INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON AUTOMATED REASONING Cork, Ireland July 4-8, 2004 Call for Papers * The Second International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning (IJCAR) is the fusion of several major conferences in Automated Reasoning: CADE (International Conference on Automated Deduction) TABLEAUX (International Conference on Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods) FTP (International Workshop on First-Order Theorem Proving) FroCoS (Workshop on Frontiers of Combining Systems) CALCULEMUS (Symposium on the Integration of Symbolic Computation and Mechanized Reasoning) These five events will join for the first time at the IJCAR conference in Cork in July 2004. * IJCAR 2004 invites submissions related to all aspects of automated reasoning, including foundations, implementations, and applications. Original research papers and descriptions of working automated deduction systems are solicited. * Submitted research papers and system descriptions must be original and not submitted for publication elsewhere. Research papers can be up to 15 proceedings pages long, and system descriptions can be up to 5 pages long. The proceedings of IJCAR 2004 will be published by Springer-Verlag in the LNAI/LNCS series. * Important Dates January 5, 2004: Submission deadline March 22, 2004: Notification of acceptance April 14, 2004: Camera-ready copy due July 4-8, 2004: IJCAR 2004 * http://4c.ucc.ie/ijcar/ 15th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON REWRITING TECHNIQUES AND APPLICATIONS Call for Papers * http://www-i2.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/RTA04/ * important dates: Jan 15 2004: Deadline electronic submission of title+short abstract Jan 22 2004: Deadline electronic submission of papers Mar 14 2004: Notification of acceptance of papers Apr 4 2004: Deadline for final versions of accepted papers Jun 3-5 2004: Conference. * subjects: APPLICATIONS: case studies; rule-based (functional and logic) programming; symbolic and algebraic computation; theorem proving; system synthesis and verification; proof checking. FOUNDATIONS: matching and unification; narrowing; completion techniques; strategies; constraint solving; explicit substitutions; tree automata. FRAMEWORKS: string, term, and graph rewriting; lambda-calculus and higher-order rewriting; proof nets; constrained rewriting/deduction; categorical and infinitary rewriting. IMPLEMENTATION: compilation techniques; parallel execution; rewriting tools. SEMANTICS: equational logic; rewriting logic. * program committee: Zena Ariola, Jurgen Giesl, Masahito Hasegawa, Helene Kirchner, Pierre Lescanne, Klaus Madlener, Narciso Mart-Oliet, Paul-Andre Mellies, Oege de Moor, Vincent van Oostrom (program chair), Frank Pfenning, Ashish Tiwari, Ralf Treinen. * RTA'04 is part of RDP'04: http://www-i2.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/RDP0 1st INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON APPLICATIONS OF CONSTRAINT DATABASES (CDB'04) (in conjunction with SIGMOD-PODS 2004) Call for Papers Paris, France, June 12-13, 2004 http://www.luc.ac.be/cdb04 * Scope. The last few years saw a growing interest of constraint database theory, query evaluation, and applications in a variety of conferences, journals, and books. This symposium wants to bring together people from several diverse areas that can contribute to the practice and the application of constraint databases. * Topics of interest: We especially encourage submissions - opening new and future directions in constraint database research; - addressing constraints over domains other than the reals; - contributing to a better implementation of constraint database systems, in particular of query evaluation; - addressing efficient quantifier elimination; and - describing applications of constraint databases. The following is a non-exclusive list of topics of interest: Applications: bioinformatics, CAD and GIS, computer security data mining, model checking, string databases. Data and knowledge representation: approximation techniques, constraint data extraction, constraint interpolation, incomplete information, spatiotemporal models, visualization Query evaluation: algebras, indexing, quantifier elimination Query languages: complexity, expressive power, new operators * All submissions must be done electronically. See webpage for details. * Important dates: Abstract submission: January 23, 2004, Submission deadline: February 2, 2004. * Invited Speakers: Joos Heintz (Universities of Buenos Aires and of Cantabria), Leonid Libkin (University of Toronto), Andreas Podelski (Max-Planck-Institut fur Informatik). 7th INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON HYBRID SYSTEMS: COMPUTATION AND CONTROL (Technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society) UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA, USA MARCH 25-27, 2004 http://www.seas.upenn.edu/hybrid/HSCC04/ Call for Papers * The Seventh International Workshop on Hybrid Systems : Computation and Control (HSCC 2004), will be held at the Hilton Inn at Penn on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, from March 25-27, 2004. The annual workshop on hybrid systems attracts researchers from academia and industry interested in modeling, analysis, and implementation of dynamic and reactive systems involving both discrete and continuous behaviors. The previous workshops in the HSCC series of were held in Berkeley, USA (1998), Nijmegen, The Netherlands (1999), Pittsburgh, USA (2000), Rome, Italy (2001), Palo Alto, USA (2002), and Prague, Czech Republic (2003). * TOPICS. Submissions are invited in all areas pertaining to the design, analysis, implementation, and applications of hybrid systems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Modeling and representations, Computability and complexity issues, Tools for analysis and verification, Tools for synthesis and design, Programming language support and implementation, Control and optimization, Hybrid models in biology and other sciences, Engineering applications such as automotive control, avionics, energy systems, transportation networks, manufacturing, and robotics * INVITED SPEAKERS. Edmund M. Clarke , Department of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University; John Doyle , Control and Dynamical Systems, California Institute of Technology * SPECIAL INVITED SESSION. In addition to the keynote speakers, during the workshop there will be one special invited session focusing on the interplay between biomolecular networks, systems biology, formal methods, and control of hybrid systems. Invited speakers include: Patrick Lincoln , Director, Computer Science Laboratory, SRI; Harvey Rubin , School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania * PAPER SUBMISSION. The conference proceedings will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Selected papers will be invited after the meeting to submit an extended version to a special issue of the journal Formal Methods in System Design (Kluwer Academic Publishers). Submitted papers must present original, unpublished research that has not been submitted elsewhere. Papers should be prepared using Springer's LNCS style, and must be at most 15 pages including abstract, figures, and bibliography. Instructions for submitting the papers electronically will be available on the conference homepage in September 2003. * IMPORTANT DATES. October 10, 2003: Submission deadline; December 1, 2003: Notification of Acceptance/Rejection; January 15, 2004: Final Papers Due FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON APPLICATION OF CONCURRENCY TO SYSTEM DESIGN Hamilton, Canada June 16-18, 2004 * The International Conference on Application of Concurrency to System Design (ACSD) serves as a forum for disseminating theoretical results and advanced methods and tools for the design of complex concurrent systems. While there are a few success stories in the field, there is still a strong need to bring theory and practice closer together. The conference aims at cross-fertilizing both types of research. * Submitted papers must be in IEEE CS Press 2-column format (see instruct.pdf at ftp://pubftp.computer.org/Press/Outgoing/proceedings/). The cover page must contain an abstract of no more than 60 words, the corresponding author's physical and e-mail addresses, as well as phone and FAX numbers. * Important dates: Deadline for submissions: 19 December, 2003 Notification of acceptance of papers: 28 February, 2004 Final papers due: 26 March, 2004 * http://acsd.mcmaster.ca/ CONCUR 2004: FIFTEENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON CONCURRENCY THEORY Royal Society, London 31 August - 3 September 2004 Preliminary Announcement * The purpose of the CONCUR conferences is to bring together researchers, developers and students in order to advance the theory of concurrency, and promote its applications. Typical topics of the CONCUR conferences are all areas of semantics, logics and verification techniques for concurrent systems. * The proceedings will be published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. * Important dates: Submission: Friday 9 April 2004 Notification: Monday 31 May 2004 Final version: Tuesday 15 June 2004 Workshops: Monday 30 August and Saturday 4 September 2004 Main conference: Tuesday 31 August - Friday 3 September 2004 * General chair: Philippa Gardner Programme Committee co-chairs: Philippa Gardner, Nobuko Yoshida Workshops organisers: Vladimiro Sassone, Julian Rathke Local organiser: Iain Phillips * Concur 2004 webpage: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/concur2004 * Email: concur2004@doc.ic.ac.uk BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT Aspects of Incompleteness; Lecture Notes in Logic, #10 Per Lindstrom Association for Symbolic Logic (Dist. By A K Peters, Ltd.) 2003, ISBN 1-56881-173-X; Paperback; $35.00 http://www.akpeters.com/book.asp?bID=172 * This thoroughly revised second edition of a classic book on the main ideas and results of general meta-mathematics contains new results and simplified proofs, as well as an up to date bibliography. In addition to the standard results of Godel and others on incompleteness, (non) finite axiomatizability, interpretability, etc.., it contains a thorough treatment of partial conservativity and degrees of interpretability. The reader should be familiar with the widely used method of arithmetization and with the elements of recursion theory. * Ordering information. See the URL above. BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: Many-Dimensional Modal Logics: Theory and Applications. Authors: D. Gabbay, A. Kurucz, F. Wolter, M. Zakharyaschev Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, 148, Elsevier, North-Holland, 2003, 0-444-50826-0 * Information about the book can be obtained from: http://www.elsevier.com/inca/publications/store/6/8/0/8/3/9/index.htt BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT An Introduction to Mathematical Logic and Type Theory: To Truth Through Proof (Second Edition) Peter B. Andrews Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, CMU, Pittsburgh, PA, USA * Book Series: Applied Logic Series: Volume 27 http://www.wkap.nl/prod/s/APLS * This introduction to mathematical logic starts with propositional calculus and first-order logic. Topics covered include syntax, semantics, soundness, completeness, independence, normal forms, vertical paths through negation normal formulas, compactness, Smullyan's Unifying Principle, natural deduction, cut-elimination, semantic tableaux, Skolemization, Herbrand's Theorem, unification, duality, interpolation, and definability. The last three chapters of the book provide an introduction to type theory (higher-order logic). It is shown how various mathematical concepts can be formalized in this very expressive formal language. This expressive notation facilitates proofs of the classical incompleteness and undecidability theorems which are very elegant and easy to understand. The discussion of semantics makes clear the important distinction between standard and nonstandard models which is so important in understanding puzzling phenomena such as the incompleteness theorems and Skolem's Paradox about countable models of set theory. Some of the numerous exercises require giving formal proofs. A computer program called ETPS which is available from the web facilitates doing and checking such exercises. * Audience: This volume will be of interest to mathematicians, computer scientists, and philosophers in universities, as well as to computer scientists in industry who wish to use higher-order logic for hardware and software specification and verification. * For ordering information see: http://www.wkap.nl/prod/b/1-4020-0763-9 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT Reasoning About Uncertainty Joseph Y. Halpern 8 x 9, 456 pp., 12 illus., cloth, ISBN 0-262-08320-5 * Uncertainty is a fundamental and unavoidable feature of daily life; in order to deal with uncertaintly intelligently, we need to be able to represent it and reason about it. In this book Joseph Halpern examines formal ways of representing uncertainty and considers various logics for reasoning about it. While the ideas presented are formalized in terms of definitions and theorems, the emphasis is on the philosophy of representing and reasoning about uncertainty; the material is accessible and relevant to researchers and students in many fields, including computer science, artificial intelligence, economics (particularly game theory), mathematics, philosophy, and statistics. * Halpern begins by surveying possible formal systems for representing uncertainty, including probability measures, possibility measures, and plausibility measures. He considers the updating of beliefs based on changing information and the relation to Bayes' theorem; this leads to a discussion of qualitative, quantitative, and plausibilistic Bayesian networks. He considers not only the uncertainty of a single agent but also uncertainty in a multi-agent framework. Halpern then considers the formal logical systems for reasoning about uncertainty. He discusses knowledge and belief; default reasoning, and the semantics of default; reasoning about counterfactuals, and combining probability and counterfactuals; belief revision; first-order modal logic; and statistics and beliefs. He includes a series of exercises at the end of each chapter. * Joseph Y. Halpern is Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the ACM and coauthor of Reasoning About Knowledge (MIT Press, 1995). * "Halpern presents a masterful, complete and unified account of the many ways in which the connections between logic, probability theory and commonsensical linguistic terms can be formalized. Terms such as 'true,' 'certain,' 'plausible,' 'possible,' 'believed,' 'known,' 'default,' 'relevant,' 'independent,' and 'preferred are given rigorous semantical and syntactical analyses, and their interrelationships explicated and exemplified. An authoritative panoramic reference for philosophers, cognitive scientists and artificial intelligence researchers." - Judea Pearl, Computer Science Department, University of California, Los Angeles * For more information please visit: http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262083205 ACTA INFORMATICA SPECIAL ISSUE ON TYPES IN CONCURRENCY Proposed by IFIP Working Group 2.2 on Formal Description of Programming Concepts (http://www.irisa.fr/s4/wg22) Guest Editors: R. De Nicola, Univ. Firenze and D. Sangiorgi, Univ. Bologna. Both research and tutorial/surveys papers are welcome. * Dates. Authors are invited to send a pdf or a ps file with their paper to denicola@dsi.unifi.it AND davide.sangiorgi@cs.unibo.it by 15 January 2004. Authors are also requested to email us a title and a short abstract in plain text as early as possible (ideally before end October). * Meeting. Apart for publication on Acta Informatica, some of the submitted papers will be also considered for presentation at the meeting of the IFIP Working group 2.2 that will take place in Bertinoro (Italy) 12-17 September 2004. * Details: http://www.cs.unibo.it/people/faculty/sangio/acta_issue.txt PHD & POSTDOC VACANCIES AT VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT, AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS Agent Systems Research Group Department of Artificial Intelligence Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam http://www.cs.vu.nl/ai * The Department of Artificial Intelligence within the Faculty of Sciences has a number of postdoc and PhD student vacancies for four years in Multi-Agent Organisation Dynamics, in particular in the Agent Systems Research Group, headed by dr. C.M. Jonker. * For further information contact Dr. C.M. Jonker, tel. 020-44 47743/47700, e-mail jonker@cs.vu.nl, or prof. dr. J. Treur, tel. 020-44 47763/47700, e-mail treur@cs.vu.nl. CHAIRS, READERS AND LECTURERS AT UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM, UK Department of Computer Science Chairs, Readers and Lecturers * The Department of Computer Science at the University of Durham is to make up to 10 appointments at the level of Chair, Reader and Lecturer. These are non-fixed-term positions and are tenable from 1st January 2004 or from a mutually acceptable date thereafter. * Applicants should have research interests in software engineering, distributed computing or theoretical computer science (under a broad interpretation), although strong candidates with research interests in other areas of Computer Science are welcome to apply. Candidates with research interests relating to e-Science and inter-disciplinary research are particularly encouraged to apply. Indeed, one Lectureship will be reserved exclusively for such a candidate. * The Department's web-pages can be found at: http://www.dur.ac.uk/computer.science and further details as regards the positions at: http://www.dur.ac.uk/Personnel/vacancies/A2401.htm * Potential candidates are strongly encouraged to contact Professor Iain Stewart (Head of Department) for informal discussions: e-mail: i.a.stewart@durham.ac.uk, tel: +44 (0)191 334 1720. * The closing date for applications is 1st November 2003
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