ALIFE LIST: Artificial Life Research List Number 34 Tuesday, August 28th 1990
 
             ARTIFICIAL LIFE RESEARCH ELECTRONIC MAILING LIST
    Maintained by the Indiana University Artificial Life Research Group

Contents:
 
                                 Call for Papers
                       TR announcement (hardcopy and ftp)
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 90 08:57:30 -0400
From: "Paul Fishwick" <fishwick@fish.cis.ufl.edu>
Subject: Call for Papers

                           ** CALL FOR PAPERS **

                        Second Annual Conference on
                        AI, SIMULATION AND PLANNING 
                          in High Autonomy Systems

                           University of Florida
               (in cooperation with the University of Arizona)

                             Conference Theme:
                           
                                INTEGRATING
                        QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE
              KNOWLEDGE FOR COMPLEX SYSTEM AND SIMULATION MODELS
                   April 1-2, 1991, Cocoa Beach, Florida

Conference Description
---------------------

This annual conference is concerned with integrated methods in simulation
and planning that serve to help automate basic decision making processes
in computer systems. Current and future decision making tools will rely
heavily on the ability to reason with sophisticated models that are designed, 
planned and simulated in real time. This year's conference will be held at 
the beginning of the Florida AI Research Conference (FLAIRS) at the same 
location.

There is a strong need to integrate the qualitative system structures
often found in expert systems, reasoning systems, logic and social science 
with the quantitative knowledge found in physical science and engineering. 
Qualitative structures help define high-level (i.e. decision making) control 
knowledge while quantitative structures define unambiguous operations for 
well known physical and engineering systems. The interplay between qualitative
and quantitative modeling is critical in the area of computer simulation 
modeling where a variety of models are created to solve different problems 
and provide different levels of response. Future simulation models will 
require this multi-facetted approach involving model knowledge bases 
containing different levels of system abstraction. This conference will 
serve to bring together researchers interested in using simulation models 
that have well-integrated qualitative and quantitative components.

Scope/Sample Topics
-------------------

Papers can be either conceptual or application-oriented. Some sample
topics are listed below:

* Formalisms for Unification of Qualitative/Quantitative Simulation Models.
* Simulating Engineering Designs using Multiple Levels and Models.
* Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Reasoning about Systems.
* Abstraction in Combined Planning, Simulation and Diagnostic Systems.
* Simulation Model Engineering: From Qualitative to Quantitative Models.
* Multiple Abstraction Levels and Mappings for System Descriptions.
* Software Tools for Qualitative/Quantitative Simulation.
* Process Abstraction Networks and Hierarchies.
* Representing Uncertainty in Simulation Models.
* Decision Making Tools for Integrated Simulation Modeling.

Co Chairs
---------

Dr. Paul A. Fishwick   Dr. Jerzy Rozenblit         Dr. Bernard P. Zeigler
University of Florida  University of Arizona       University of Arizona
Dept. of CIS           Dept. of ECE                Dept. of ECE 
Bldg. CSE, Room 301    Tucson, AZ 85721            Tucson, AZ 85721 
Gainesville, FL 32611  rozenblit%evax2@arizona.edu zeigler%evax2@arizona.edu
fishwick@ufl.edu

Program Committee
-----------------

Harold Abelson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Varol Akman, Bilkent University, Turkey
Kenneth Anderson, Siemens Corporation
Howard Beck, University of Florida
David Castillo, McDonnell Douglas
Francois Cellier, University of Arizona
Silvano Colombano, NASA Ames Research Center
Marc Courvoisier, Universite Paul Sabatier, France
Michael Eisenberg, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Li-Min Fu, University of Florida
Frank Grange, Martin Marietta
Werner Horn, University of Vienna, Austria
Yumi Iwasaki, Stanford University
Witold Jacak, Technical University of Wroclaw, Poland
Tag Gon Kim, University of Kansas
Benjamin Kuipers, University of Texas at Austin
Theo Lutzeler, Siemens Corporation
Sanjai Narain, Rand Corporation
Franz Pichler, University of Linz, Austria
Ethan Scarl, Boeing Computer Services
Suleyman Sevinc, University of Sydney, Australia
Jon Sticklen, Michigan State University
Oryal Tanir, Bell Canada
Daniel Weld, University of Washington
Ben Wise, McDonnell Douglas

Submission of Papers
--------------------

Authors must submit five (5) copies of an extended abstract not to
exceed five pages, including figures and citations. Abstracts will 
be fully refereed and must be received no later than October 15, 1990. 
Accepted papers will be determined by December 15, 1990, and
camera-ready copy sheets will be sent to authors of accepted papers.
After the conference, selected authors may be requested to submit 
a paper on their paper topic in special issues of archival journals 
relating to the conference theme. Inquiries regarding technical 
content should be directed to one of the co-chairs of the conference. 
Registration questions and all abstracts should be directed to:

Dr. Joanne East
AI Simulation Conference
Dept. of Continuing Education
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611
PHONE: (904)-392-1701
FAX: (904)-392-6950

Important Dates:
----------------
Extended Abstracts Due: October 15, 1990     Papers Due: February 15, 1991
Author Notification: December 15, 1990       Conference Dates: April 1-2, 1991



------------------------------
 
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 90 15:18:46 PDT
From: schraudo%cs@ucsd.edu (Nici Schraudolph)
Subject: TR announcement (hardcopy and ftp)

The following technical report is now available in print:

--------

        Dynamic Parameter Encoding for Genetic Algorithms
        -------------------------------------------------

           Nicol N. Schraudolph       Richard K. Belew

The selection of fixed binary gene representations for real-valued
parameters of the phenotype required by Holland's genetic algorithm
(GA) forces either the sacrifice of representational precision for
efficiency of search or vice versa.  Dynamic Parameter Encoding (DPE)
is a mechanism that avoids this dilemma by using convergence statistics
derived from the GA population to adaptively control the mapping from
fixed-length binary genes to real values.  By reducing the length of
genes DPE causes the GA to focus its search on the interactions between
genes rather than the details of allele selection within individual
genes.  DPE also highlights the general importance of the problem of
premature convergence in GAs, explored here through two convergence
models.

--------

To obtain a hardcopy, request technical report LAUR 90-2795 via e-mail
from office%bromine@LANL.GOV, or via plain mail from

	Technical Report Requests
	CNLS, MS-B258
	Los Alamos National Laboratory
	Los Alamos, NM 87545
	USA

--------

As previously announced, the report is also available in compressed
PostScript format for anonymous ftp from the Artificial Life archive
server.  To obtain a copy, use the following procedure:

$ ftp iuvax.cs.indiana.edu   % (or 129.79.254.192)
login: anonymous
password: <anything>
ftp> cd pub/alife/papers
ftp> binary
ftp> get schrau90-dpe.ps.Z
ftp> quit
$ uncompress schrau90-dpe.ps.Z
$ lpr schrau90-dpe.ps

--------

The DPE algorithm is an option in the GENESIS 1.1ucsd GA simulator, which
will be ready for distribution (via anonymous ftp) shortly.  Procedures
for obtaining 1.1ucsd will then be announced on this mailing list.

--------

Nici Schraudolph, C-014                nschraudolph@ucsd.edu
University of California, San Diego    nschraudolph@ucsd.bitnet
La Jolla, CA 92093                     ...!ucsd!nschraudolph

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End of ALife Digest
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