"Much of the fervor for XML seems to come from contrasting it with HTML. If the only formal language you have ever seen is HTML, then indeed XML looks wonderfully elegant. If you have never tasted sugar, honey seems like heaven. But one doesn't get good cooking by just adding sugar to everything." -- Pat Hayes

Latest News Items

USPTO issues patent for "Universal machine translator of arbitrary languages" -- The USPTO has issues (Jan 22, 2002) a patent for technology of amazing breadth and scope -- intelligent machines -- to William Datig. (2/17)

reproducing robots -- You make my heart beep -- Scientists are experimenting with robots that will eventually be able to reproduce (Guardian). (2/16)

Algorithm makes tongue tree -- To date, unlike us, computers have struggled to differentiate a page of Jane Austen from one by Jackie Collins. Now researchers in Italy have developed a program that can spot enough subtle differences between two authors' works to attribute authorship. (1/27)

Reputation helps solve tragedy of common -- The problem of sustaining a public resource that everybody is free to overuse -- the 'tragedy of the commons' -- emerges in many social dilemmas, such as our inability to sustain the global climate. (1/27)

The Urge to Punish Cheats: Not Just Human, but Selfless -- Only recently have researchers realized that a willingness, even eagerness, to punish transgressors of the social compact is at least as important to the maintenance of social harmony as are regular displays of common human decency. In an article titled "Altruistic Punishment in Humans," which appears in the Jan. 10 issue of the journal Nature, Dr. Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich and Dr. Simon Gachter of the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland offer evidence that people will seek to punish a cheat even when the punishment is costly to them and offers no material benefit -- the very definition of altruism. The researchers propose that the threat of such punishment may have been crucial to the evolution of human civilization and all its concomitant achievements. (1/27)

When Nerds Collide: Bots in the Ring -- There are now at least three television shows with battling robots, including two versions of "Robot Wars" on CNN and "Robotica" on The Learning Channel. In Japan, robot sumo is so popular that the championship draws thousands of people. David Calkins, president of the Robotics Society of America and an unabashed proselytizer for robot competition, said of the world of fighting bots, "In 10 years, it will be bigger than Nascar." (1/24)

Teaching Robot Dogs New Tricks (SciAm) -- Aibo, the Sony Corporation's popular robot dog, has delighted scores of critics and consumers since its introduction. But the plastic pup has also caused its creators some grief. Sony is currently struggling to resolve a copyright dispute that centers on the work of a quirky hacker known only as AiboPet. The controversy poses serious questions about the proper use of robots in homes and exposes a potentially stifling effect of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. (1/23)

Search method melds results TRN 010902 -- "Researchers at Columbia University have come up with an automated engine that promises to take the search a step further by comparing the returns. The engine finds a set of documents, defines the query term in natural sentences using text pulled from those documents, and summarizes their hyperlinks, allowing the user to see both the information present in a set of documents and what is unique to each hit, according Min-Yen Kan, a computer science researcher at Columbia." (1/21)

400 naked Furbys: All staring at you -- "When you walk in front of Kelly Heaton's sculpture, dozens of eyes snap open, beaks whir and click, and voices chirp in mechanical chatter. The sculpture is, in a sense, alive — if you consider Furbys to be a life-form. Heaton, 29, who conceived the project while she was a student at MIT's Media Laboratory, sees them that way." (1/21)

Cyber Emissaries To Serve Online -- "Computer scientists and tech professionals are preparing a brave new world of software-based, intelligent agents that will act as virtual support staffs for any human being willing to trust them. The main difference: They'll work 24/7, won't take a lunch break and never utter a gripe." (1/21)

Agentsmity.com -- Baltimore based agentsmith.com has developed software that uses AI techniques to help television station managers better plot and price commercial time (1/21)

Computer augmented therapy for depression and anxiety -- An innovative new computer program called Beating the Blues claims to be able to help patients suffering from depression and anxiety. But can a machine really be a replacement for face-to-face treatment? (1/21)

Virtual lies face foolproof software -- The SAS Institute has developed software that it says can sift through e-mails and other electronic text to discern falsehoods. "The patterns in people's language change when they are uncertain or lying," says Peter Dorrington, business solutions manager at SAS. "We can compare basic patterns in words and grammatical structures versus benchmarks to detect likely lies." For instance, over-use of the word "or" and too many adjectives can be giveaways, according to Aldert Vrij's book, "Detecting Lies and Deceit." (1/21)

Latest Directory Additions

Exploring Emergence -- Mitchel Resnick and Brian Silverman (Epistemology and Learning Group, MIT Media Laboratory) maintain an "active essay" that explores the idea of emergence of global regularities arising from simple interactions and examines how objects and patterns can arise from simple interactions in ways that are surprising and counter-intuitive (2/17)

Artificial Life 2000 -- Prof. Dr. R. Pfeifer and Hanspeter Kunz have written a comprehensive illustrated monograph (free online in pdf) titled Artificial Life which covers pattern formation, distributed intelligence, agent-based simulations, and artificial evolution. (2/17)

Econ 308X: Agent-Based Computational Economics (Tesfatsion) -- "The primary objective of this course is to introduce, motivate, and explore through concrete applications the potential usefulness of agent-based computational economics (ACE), a new methodology for the study of economies as complex adaptive systems." (2/17)

Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier -- EDWARD CASTRONOVA, Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier, CESifo Working Paper Series No. 618, California State University at Fullerton, December 2001. Economics researcher Edward Castronova has studies the people, customs, and particularly the economy of the world of Norrath, the virtual playground of Everquest role-players. (2/2)

The IDL That Isn't -- An xml.com that discusses some of the shortcomings of WSDL (Web Services Description Language). (2/2)

UDDI explained -- UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration) is a global, comprehensive industry initiative that aims to enable developers of web services on one platform available to those developed on other other platforms. Microsoft have published a description with links to a number of resources to help get started in using UDDI. (2/2)

Oxford Encyclopedia of Evolution -- Mark D. Pagel (Editor), Oxford University Press; ISBN: 0195122003 . From the classic work of Darwin to developments in such fields as psychology and biology is an increasingly powerful tool for understanding the natural world. Here in two volumes is a comprehensive, accessible, and authoritative guide to what we know about evolutionary biology, from "The Origins of Species" to "The Selfish Gene" and beyond (1/27)

Knowledge engineering and knowledge management -- 13th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2002) will be held in Siguenza (Spain) 1-4 October 2002. EKAW is concerned with all the aspects of eliciting, acquiring, modeling and managing knowledge, and their role in the construction of knowledge-intensive systems for the Semantic Web, Knowledge Management, e-business, Natural Language Processing, Intelligent Integration of Information, etc. (1/24)

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy -- The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy was founded by James Fieser of the University of Tennessee at Martin. Articles include original contributions by specialists, and adaptations of classroom material and public domain sources. (1/22)

Complexity in Social Science Summer School -- The Complexity in Social Science (COSI) Summer School will be held in Chania, Crete from the 30th June - 6th July 2002. The Summer School will provide an introduction to the essential concepts of complex systems theory, such as non-determinism, emergence, self-organization, chaos, etc. Using examples from the social sciences, speakers will illustrate the practical application of complex systems theory and show the benefits that such an approach may bring. Techniques for analyzing, modeling and simulating complex social systems will be presented. The Summer School is intended for doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers from all disciplines who are interested in understanding the fundamental concepts of complex systems theory and its practical application in the social sciences. (1/22)

Metadata: Selected papers from Dublin Core 2001 -- The Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) have published a special issue on metadata which includes selected papers from the Dublin Core 2001 Conference (DC-2001) held in Tokyo, Japan. The eight papers selected from a possible 50 presented at the conference have been re-written and focus on metadata models, querying of metadata, an architecture for a specific application area, and a first empirical study of experiences with metadata creation. (El.pub) (1/21)

Game Theory .net - Resource for educators and students -- A resource for educators and students of game theory. The site contains lecture notes, links to text books, and interactive applets and games. A number of the lecture notes and texts are oriented at computer science. (1/21)

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