UMBC AGENTNEWS NEWSLETTER V5 N3             Sat Feb  5 21:18:34 2000
      
The past seven days of news from AgentWeb (http://agents.umbc.edu)
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                               .   "Seek simplicity and distrust it." 
                                            -- Alfred North Whitehead 

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-- LATEST NEWS ITEMS ----------------------------------------------

PDAs learn to listen up -- Lernout and Hauspie has demonstrated a
prototype voice-controlled PDA named Nuk (Nukulu is Hawaiin for echo)
with three innovations: a large-vocabulary speech-recognition engine,
runninq on a mobile version of Linux, and it uses Intel's StrongArm II
low-power chip for handheld devices. (2/5)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/02/07/000207hndemohand.xml>

2000 Complex Systems Summer School -- Offered by the Santa Fe
Institute, this is an intensive four-week introduction to complex
behavior in mathematical, physical and biological systems, intended
for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.  No tuition is
charged. (2/3)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/education/csss/summerSchool00.html>

Nagoya University develops robot monkey -- Robo-monkey has 14 motors
controlling a fully-articulated body and a computer brain to direct
all its movements. The robot will swing like a gibbon from branch to
branch - or rung to rung on a horizontal ladder set up in the
laboratory. (2/2)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_628000/628270.stm>

Human-Like Behavior in Interactive Animated Agents -- Workshop on
Achieving Human-Like Behavior in Interactive Animated Agents, held in
conjunction with The Fourth International Conference on Autonomous
Agents, June 3, 2000 Barcelona, Spain (2/2)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://agents.umbc.edu/x/aaaa.shtml>

dotcomma AI Bots project -- The goal of the AI Bot Project is to allow
participants to create their own 'bots' that act as if they have
artificial intelligence. (2/2)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.dotcomma.org/projects/aibots/>

Artificial Life VII -- The Seventh International Conference on the
Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, Reed College, Portland,
Oregon, USA,1-6 August 2000 (2/2)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://alife7.alife.org/>

Agents/DB job at MCC -- We are looking for people with backgrounds in
agent technology, distributed systems, databases, information
retrieval, workflows, and AI. (2/1)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://agents.umbc.edu/x/mccjob.shtml>

Workshop on Autonomous Agents in Health Care -- A workshop held in
conjunction with Autonomous Agents 2000, Submission Deadline March
10th 2000. (2/1)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.iiia.csic.es/agents2000/#12>

Open Ratings gets first round funding -- Open Ratings, a service for
online buyers and sellers that enables each group can find out
information about the other, announced its launch. OpenRatings also
said it received $2 million in its first round from Atlas Ventures and
other private investors.  The funds will be used for technology
development and hiring staff.  (2/1)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.openratings.com/>

Robot Takes First Solo Ride -- An AP story about CMU's Nomad
autonomous robot exploring the Antactic and finding meteorites. (2/1)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000130/sc/exp_nomad_robot_1.html>

IMASE 2000 -- Intelligent MAS for ecommerce -- Workshop at the Genetic
and Evolutionary Computation Conference ( GECCO-2000), Las Vegas,
Nevada, USA, 8-14 July 2000.  Intial submissions due 23 March 2000
(2/1)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.cwi.nl/~bill/imase/>

JASSS Volume 3, Issue 1. Jan 2000 -- Journal of Artificial Societies
and Social Simulation v3n1 includes two peer reviewed papers, an
essay, an account of using the Matlab package for teaching social
simulation and four book reviews. (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/3/1/contents.html>

thinkview.com -- ThinkView, developer of system that analyzes,
displays, and categorizes content in real-time using linguistic
algorithms and human editors, said it received approximately $2
million in first-round funding from the XMLFund. (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.thinkview.com>

CMU Sphinx Transition to Open Source -- CMU Sphinx, supported by
grants from DARPA and the NSF for many years, is being transitioned to
open source under a BSD-style license. .  Sphinx2, the first component
to be released, is a speech recognizer and library, suitable for
real-time applications. (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=5494>


-- LATEST DIRECTORY ADDITIONS --------------------------------------------
 
Tutorial on Agent Communication Languages -- Tutorial on Agent
Communication Languages Tim Finin and Yannis Labrou, University of
Maryland Baltimore County, First International Symposium on Agent
Systems and Applications and the Third International Symposium on
Mobile Agents, ASA/MA'99, (featuring the Third Dartmouth Workshop on
Transportable Agents), October 3 - 6, 1999, Rancho Las Palmas Marriott
Resort and Spa, Palm Springs, California, U.S.A. (approximately
1M). (2/5)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~finin/papers/asama99tutorial.shtml>

Conscious Software Research Group (Memphis) -- "By a "conscious"
software agent we mean a cognitive agent (an autonomous agent with
human-like cognitive features) designed within the constraints of
Baars' global workspace theory of consciousness. " (2/5)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.msci.memphis.edu/~csrg/>

Constraints and Agents -- A page from UNH's Constraint Computation
Center. (2/5)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.cs.unh.edu/ccc/ca/>

Snake Robots -- Let's hope these don't become autonomous. (2/5)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.snakerobots.com/>

Haptek -- VirtualFriend -- Haptek has two products for creating 3D
interactive animated characters -- a stand alone application and a
browser plugin. *softwear* (2/4)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.haptek.com/downloads/>

CollECTeR (USA) 2000 -- An electronic commerce conference, April 11,
2000, Breckenridge, Colorado, USA with a focus on the application of
AI techniques, including agents, knowledge management, KR, etc. (2/4)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.collecter.org/collecter2000.htm>

Machine Learning in Automated Text Categorisation -- Fabrizio
Sebastiani, Machine Learning in Automated Text Categorisation, 1999,
submitted for publication. *paper* (2/4)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://faure.iei.pi.cnr.it/~fabrizio/Publications/ACMCS00/ACMCS00.ps>

Saffron Technology -- A startup working on machine learning for
personalization. *company* (2/4)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.saffrontech.com/index.htm>

2000 Complex Systems Summer School -- Offered by the Santa Fe
Institute, this is an intensive four-week introduction to complex
behavior in mathematical, physical and biological systems, intended
for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.  No tuition is
charged. (2/3)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/education/csss/summerSchool00.html>

Intelligent Software Agents (UMBC/Labrou) -- The course will cover
topics in Distributed Artificial Intelligence and Multi Agent Systems,
Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) Agents and Agent Theories, Interface
Agents, Mobile Agents, and Agent Communication Languages. Some of the
significant agent-related topics that will be discussed are
ontologies, recommender systems and auctions. Commercial platforms for
agent applications and commercial agent implementations will also be
covered. I (2/3)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~jklabrou/courses/spring2000_691a/CourseSpring2000_691A.htm>

Layered Learning in Multi-Agent Systems -- Peter Stone, CMU PhD
dissertation, December 1998. This dissertation addresses multi-agent
systems consisting of teams of autonomous agents acting in real-time,
noisy, collaborative, and adversarial environments. Because of the
inherent complexity of this type of multi-agent system, this thesis
investigates the use of machine learning within multi-agent
systems. (2/3)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pstone/thesis/index.html>

Learning Agents & Systems Research Group -- The Learning Agents &
Systems group, headed by Dr Pete Edwards, is based in the Department
of Computing Science, at the University of Aberdeen. In recent years,
the group has developed and applied machine learning and intelligent
information agent technologies to a variety of real-world
problems. (2/3)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~pedwards/res/las.html>

Human-Like Behavior in Interactive Animated Agents -- Workshop on
Achieving Human-Like Behavior in Interactive Animated Agents, held in
conjunction with The Fourth International Conference on Autonomous
Agents, June 3, 2000 Barcelona, Spain (2/2)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://agents.umbc.edu/x/aaaa.shtml>

Java Applets for Alife -- Maintained at AIST, MITI, Japan. (2/2)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.aist.go.jp/NIBH/~b0616/Lab/Links.html>

Zooland, "The Artificial Life Resource" -- A collection of Alife
resources accessible via the Internet (2/2)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://alife.santafe.edu/~joke/zooland/>

Individual-Based Models -- Links to pages on "Individual-based models"
-- simulations based on the global consequences of local interactions
of members of a population. (2/2)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.red.com/cwr/ibm.html>

Open ratings -- Open Ratings offers a sophisticated, fraud-busting
independent rating service that is designed to dramatically increase
the level of trust, reliability and brand recognition between buyer
and seller. Based in Cambridge, Mass., Open Ratings was co-founded in
1999 by a team including MIT Media Lab e-commerce guru Pattie Maes of
Firefly fame and is backed by Atlas Ventures and industry leaders
including Nicholas Negroponte. Its service is offered as a neutral
Web-wide, co-branded service presented through major online
partners. It is based on technology that was developed after two years
of research at the MIT Media Lab.  With the Open Ratings solution,
buyers gain trust, sellers make more sales, and the Web becomes a
safer environment for transactions. (2/1)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.openratings.com/>

Systems -- Constraint systems -- (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.cs.unh.edu/ccc/archive/constraints/systems/>

Practical Applications of Constraint Programming -- Wallace M G,
Practical Applications of Constraint Programming, in Constraints
Journal, Vol 1 No 1, Kluwer, 1996 (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www-icparc.doc.ic.ac.uk/papers/practical_applications_of_constraint_pro.ps>

Manta -- Manta is a MAS simulation tool aimed at simulating ant
societies.  It has been designed to be used by ethologists or
biologists (species can be configured with a script file, there is a
nice UI, etc.). But it can be used to explore self-organizing
multi-agent systems, with sets of agents (or simulated robots)
designed after Konrad Lorenz's model of behavior and a stimulus-based
communication system. Three different versions can be freely
downloaded (one for Win 3.1, the other ones for Win 95/98). The source
(in Delphi) is available on request. (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www-poleia.lip6.fr/~drogoul/Research/Manta/manta.htm>

Eco-Problem-Solving -- A small object-oriented framework for
investigating distributed problem solving with small, reactive
agents. Written in Java. the sources are freely downloadable, and
there is a demonstration applet as well (solving the N-Puzzle with
agents). (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www-poleia.lip6.fr/~drogoul/Research/Eco/eco.htm>

U Paris -- The 1999/2000 course for graduate students of the DEA IARFA,
at the University of Paris 6. Provides a complete overview of
Multi-Agent Systems and Collective Problem Solving. Slides are
downloadable (in french) (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www-poleia.lip6.fr/~drogoul/Courses/DEA_IARFA/infos.htm>

MIRIAD (U. Paris) -- MIRIAD is a research team at the University of
Paris 6, which focuses on multi-agent simulation, reactive agents,
collective problem solving and collective mobile robotics. (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://miriad.lip6.fr/>

Communicating Neural Network Knowledge between Agents in a Simulated
Aerial Reconnaissance System -- Quirolgico, Canfield, Finin and Smith,
"Communicating Neural Network Knowledge between Agents in a Simulated
Aerial Reconnaissance 1st Int Symp on Agent Systems and Applications
(ASA99), 1999. (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~finin/papers/asa99q.pdf>

Nomadic Pict -- A project at Cambridge studying communication
primitives for interaction between mobile agents has developed Nomadic
Pict as an extension to Pict with the notion of locations, agents,
migration, distribution, and failures.  Pict is a concurrent
programming language based on the pi-calculus. (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/pes20/nomadicpict.html>

Security in Mobile Agent Systems -- Karnik, Neeran: Security in Mobile
Agent Systems, PhD dissertation.  Computer Science and Engineering,
University of Minnesota, 1998 (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.cs.umn.edu/Ajanta/papers/nmk_thesis.ps>

The Mobile Agent List -- A comprehensive list of mobile agent systems
maintained by Fritz Hohl (Stuttgart) that can be added to via a web
form. (1/31)
<http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://mole.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/mal/mal.html>

--
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1996-2000, Timothy W. Finin. ISSN 1090-306.