(DBWORLD) ACAI-97, Last CfP, 23-28.6.97, Vilnius

Saulius Maskeliunas (Mask@ktl.mii.lt)
Mon, 19 May 1997 12:38:53 -0500 (CDT)

Last Call for Participation. EXTENDED DEADLINE: May 30, 1997

The 7th Advanced Course on Artificial Intelligence, ACAI-97
"Artificial Intelligence and Information Systems: Integration Aspects"
June 23-28, 1997, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

http://neris.mii.lt/ACAI/ACAI-97.html

INVITED SPEAKERS

- Matthias Jarke (RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany)
"Cooperative Information Systems: A Research Agenda"
- Finn V. Jensen (Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark)
"Decision Support Systems Based on Bayesian Networks"
- Georg Lausen (Universitaet Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany)
"Deductive Rules in Active Databases"
- Olga Perevozchikova (Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics,
Kiev, the Ukraine)
"Automated Software Design Using Domain-Specific
Knowledge: A Method and Tools"
- Rob L.W. van de Weg (University of Twente, Enschede,
the Netherlands)
"The Role of Knowledge in Production Automation"

GENERAL INFORMATION

ACAI is a biannual advanced course organised under the
auspices of the European Coordinating Committee for
Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI). ACAI-97 is supported by
ECCAI, as well as the European Union's TEMPUS PHARE project
S_JEP-09752-95 "Introduction of courses in information
systems" (see http://www.maf.vu.lt/projects/jep09752.htm).

ACAI-97 is open to all interested persons, from academia or
industry. It is planned to be useful to young researchers
and students (including Ph.D. students), but appeals also to
more experienced people as a survey of the field and a place
to exchange ideas. ACAI-97 aims at answering the question:
`what is an intelligent information system?'.

The course is organised by:
- Vilnius University (VU)
- Vilnius Technical University (VTU)
- Institute of Mathematics and Informatics (IMI), Vilnius
- The AI section of the Lithuanian Computer Society (LIKS-AIS)

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

- Vytautas Cyras (Chairperson), VU, Vilnius, Lithuania,
Vytautas.Cyras@maf.vu.lt
- Albertas Caplinskas, IMI, Vilnius, Lithuania,
alcapl@ktl.mii.lt
- Janis Grundspenkis, Riga Technical University,
Riga, Latvia, jgrun@itl.rtu.lv
- Ricardas Kudzma, VU, Vilnius, Lithuania,
Ricardas.Kudzma@maf.vu.lt
- Audrone Lupeikiene, IMI, Vilnius, Lithuania,
audronel@ktl.mii.lt
- Saulius Maskeliunas, IMI, Vilnius, Lithuania,
mask@ktl.mii.lt
- Jaan Penjam, Tallinn Technical University,
Tallinn, Estonia, jaan@cs.ioc.ee
- Olegas Vasilecas, VTU, Vilnius, Lithuania,
Olegas.Vasilecas@fm.vtu.lt

VENUE: Theatre Hall of Vilnius University, in the city
centre. Venue and registration desk: Universiteto Street 3.

REGISTRATION FEE. Regular: 200 USD. Student: 150 USD.
Eastern: 100 USD (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Belorussia, Russia, the Ukraine).

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: May 30th, 1997.

The registration fee includes: admission, course materials,
lunches, refreshments during breaks and welcoming reception.

The Organising Committee will provide FREE OF CHARGE
registration for a limited number of students and teachers
from ESTONIA, LATVIA and LITHUANIA. This registration
includes: admission, course materials and refreshments.
Please apply to the organisers.

LITHUANIAN VISA FORMALITIES:
For many nationals no entry visa to Lithuania is required.
Please ask your travel agent or the Lithuanian Embassy.

CURRENCY: Lithuanian Litas (Lt). You may buy Litas on
arrival to Vilnius airport. You may also sell unused Litas
at your departure. The loss is less than 5%. Hard currencies
are bought and sold at banks and exchange offices. Major
credit cards are accepted in banks, most hotels, shops and
many restaurants. The Litas is fixed to the US Dollar:
1 Lt = 0.25 USD.

CONTACT ADDRESS

Vytautas Cyras, ACAI-97 Secretariat
Vilnius University
Faculty of Mathematics Tel.: (370-2)-636035, 620011
Naugarduko 24 Fax: (370-2)-223563, 729209
LT-2600 Vilnius, Lithuania E-mail: acai-97@conf.vu.lt

SCHEDULE: Monday-Friday: 9:00-17:00, Saturday: 9:00-12:00.

9:00-10:00 lecture, 10:00-10:30 coffee break,
10:30-11:30 lecture, 11:30-12:00 coffee break,
12:00-13:00 lecture, 13:00-14:30 lunch break,
14:30-15:30 lecture or presentations of participants,
15:30-16:00 coffee break,
16:00-17:00 lecture or presentations of participants.

Participants wishing to make a presentation please apply to
the organisers.

ABSTRACTS OF INVITED TALKS

1. Matthias JARKE, (Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technische Hochschule
Aachen, Germany)
"Cooperative Information Systems: A Research Agenda"

Modern systems development has to consider a triangle of tensions
between formal organizations and their conceptual models, the
work practice in human teams empowered by loosely defined group
workspaces, and the distributed, database-intensive information
systems infrastructure. In the past, only individual corners or
sides of this triangle have been studied. The emerging research
agenda of Cooperative Information Systems is to investigate the
implications of looking at all the three aspects together. The
presence of continuous change in technology, people, and
organizations highlights the importance of intelligent tools and
methods to assess, develop, and preserve organizational knowledge
bases and information flows.

The course will present a framework of thinking for Cooperative
Information Systems developed in an European-Canadian project
over the past few years. It will then use this framework to
review existing research results, prototypical solutions, and
remaining challenges. The concepts will be illustrated with
detailed case studies from production and service industries.

2. Finn V. JENSEN (Aalborg University, Denmark)
"Decision Support Systems Based on Bayesian Networks"

Bayesian networks are used for systems giving advice when
decisions based on estimates are to be taken, and they have
attracted more and more attention in industry over the past five
years.

Bayesian networks is fundamentally a language for modelling
domains where cause-effect relations are stochastic or dependent
on factors not known to the decision maker. The models are
directed graphs with conditional probabilities attached. The
models are easily loaded to a computer through specific B-N-
editors, which also take care of calculating new probabilties
given evidence. Bayesian networks are extended to include actions
and utilities, and then they are called influence diagrams.

Contents: causal networks and d-separation; basic probability
theory for sets of variables; Bayesian networks and the chain
rule; how to build Bayesian network models (primer); some
modelling tricks; learning and adaptation; probability updating,
junction trees and HUGIN propagation; actions, utilities and
influence diagrams.

The course uses as a reference the book: Finn V. Jensen "An
Introduction to Bayesian Networks", UCL Press, London 1996.

3. Georg LAUSEN and Bertram LUDAESCHER (Universitaet Freiburg,
Germany) "Deductive Rules in Active Databases"

Traditional database systems are passive, i.e., they only execute
queries or transactions explicitly submitted by the user or an
application program. In contrast, active database systems (ADBs)
allow to define (re)active behavior by means of active rules
resulting in a quite flexible and powerful formalism. ADBs
support automatic triggering of data manipulating operations or
more general actions as a response to external or internal
events, and are attractive for several reasons. A number of
advanced database features like checking and enforcing integrity
constraints, incremental view maintenance, (view) updates, access
and version control, and many others, can be expressed naturally
and uniformly by active rules. From a software engineering
perspective, it is advantageous that functionality can be moved
from application programs to the ADB. Thus, more code can be
shared by different application programs, thereby facilitating
development and maintenance of applications. Moreover, an ADB can
be more efficient for monitoring tasks compared to a passive
system which would have to be polled frequently by the
application program. Finally, active rules can be used in
advanced applications like workflow management and data
warehousing applications, the latter requiring maintenance of
huge materialized views.

Although the area of active databases has been quite active
indeed, and produced a huge amount of literature as well as a
number of prototypes, theoretical foundations are still rare and
there is no generally accepted framework. This is in contrast to
the area of deductive databases with its well-established logical
foundations. While deductive rules allow to express knowledge on
the current state of the modeled world, they lack the ability to
define automatic (re)actions as a response to external or
internal (database) events like previously executed updates.
Therefore, it is highly desirable to integrate active
capabilities with the declarative semantics from the area of
deductive databases and logic programming.

In the first part of the course, active and deductive rules are
introduced and compared wrt. their distinctive features like
updates vs. queries, execution models, and theoretical
foundations. In the second part we present a logical framework
integrating the core features of active rules with the
declarative semantics of deductive databases, and compare it with
related approaches from the literature.

4. Olga PEREVOZCHIKOVA, Valeri GRECHKO and Vadim TULCHINSKY
(Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics, Kiev, the Ukraine)
"Automated Software Design Using Domain-Specific Knowledge:
A Method and Tools"

Many languages, tools and techniques are used for the development
of software systems, including database and knowledge-based
systems. In this lecture, an automated database and knowledge-
based systems development method using MikroPoisk is presented.
MikroPoisk is both a development environment and a run-time
system. Domain-specific knowledge is essential in this approach.
Conceptual modelling techniques, algebraic methods and grammars
are combined to model an application domain. A number of systems
have been developed using MikroPoisk (for example, a
multifunctional data analysis and decision-support system FACTOR;
a geological research data analysis and interpretation system
GeoPoisk, a cardiology diagnostic system, the Ukraine phone
network design system, etc.).

5. Rob L.W. van de WEG (University of Twente, the Netherlands)
"The Role of Knowledge in Production Automation"

Production automation is becoming more and more a factor of
survival in the fierce international competition. Production
automation is very different from developing business information
systems. Two main issues in production control systems are:
coordination and cooperation of hardware components, and failures
of hardware components. In existing development methods for
technical real-time systems there is not enough attention for
these problems.

Another important issue is the reuse of earlier product designs
and production designs (hardware as well as software designs) in
order to reduce the throughput time of the design process and to
increase the quality.

In this talk we will discuss the following aspects of knowledge
with respect to production automation:

- Knowledge involved in the software development process. It
will be shown how a method for the software development process
and related software tools can be constructed (method
engineering). First, concepts are to be identified needed for
modelling and design. It turned out that our approach is
applicable to the design of as well robots as workflow management
systems. Furthermore, our approach can be also used to establish
what kind of implementation can be used (e.g. case-based or
model-based reasoning, or a database implementation).

- Reuse of knowledge on earlier developed software or hardware
for production automation. This will increase the productivity of
the software and hardware development processes.

- Retrieval and reuse of knowledge of earlier product designs.
The accessibility and reuse of so-called organizational memories
is of paramount importance for a company, for instance, to avoid
the continuous reinvention of the wheel, to improve the bid
process in the competition with other companies. We will discuss
the (re)design of organizational memories and discuss some
implementations (e.g. application of WWW).

Of course the talk is not restricted to production automation
only, but will be broadened to the lessons that can be learned
for other types of automation.

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APPLICATION FORM

I shall participate in the Advanced Course on Artificial
Intelligence, ACAI-97, June 23-28, 1997, in Vilnius.

SURNAME: FIRST NAME:

DATE OF BIRTH: CITIZENSHIP:

MALE [ ] / FEMALE [ ]

INSTITUTION:

POSITION:

MAILING ADDRESS:

TELEPHONE: FAX:

E-MAIL:

ACCOMPANYING PERSON(S):

REGISTRATION FEE
Regular: [ ] 200 USD
Student: [ ] 150 USD
Eastern: [ ] 100 USD
Extra welcoming reception ticket: [ ] 20 USD
Excursions: Kaunas City, Sunday, June 22nd [ ] 20 USD
Trakai Castle, Saturday, June 28th [ ] 15 USD
------------------------------------------------------------
Total: ... USD

HOTEL ACCOMODATION (to be paid at the hotel)

Please book me from .......... to ..........
a single [ ] or a double [ ] room.
I wish to share: NO [ ] YES [ ] with ................... .

1. Three star: [ ] 70-120 USD
2. Two star: [ ] 40-70 USD
3. Season hotel: [ ] 20-40 USD
4. Student hostel (1-2 pers./room): [ ] 5-20 USD

Reservations will be made on a "first-come, first-served" basis.

Remarks (special diet, etc.): ............................ .

DATE: SIGNATURE:

=== cut here ===============================================

Please send the Application Form with a payment document to:
Vytautas Cyras, ACAI-97 Secretariat
Vilnius University, Faculty of Mathematics
Naugarduko 24, LT-2600 Vilnius, Lithuania
Fax: (370-2)-223563 (or 729209)

Payment in US Dollars please pay to:
Vilniaus Bankas AB, Vilnius, SWIFT: CBVI LT 2X,
correspondent account no. 36016952 with Citibank, New York,
SWIFT: CITI US 33
for further credit to Vilnius University, Universiteto 3,
LT-2734, Vilnius, account no. 57089123,
details of payment: ACAI-97 registration fee.

Payment in Litas (e.g. participants from Lithuania) pay to:
Vilniaus Bankas AB, Vilnius, bank code 260101777,
for credit to Vilnius University, account no. 142712,
details of payment: ACAI-97 registration fee.

Credit cards cannot be accepted. All money transfers must be
free of charge for the recipient. Payment must accompany the
registration form. On-site registration is considered as an
exception to be agreed upon with organisers.

=== end CfP: ACAI-97 ========================== 10 May 1997

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