12 January 2001, Drinks at the new CCSOM/MoL head quarters

Friday January 12, you are invited for a drink at the new head quarters of CCSOM and the Master of Logic students: rooms 2.27 - 2.39 at the second floor of Building B; Nieuwe Achtergracht 166 (Roeterseiland). The happening starts at 16.30.

Reasons for this party:

• the new year
• the new accommodation of CCSOM and the Master of Logic students
• the introduction of some new members of staff
• the arrival of 6 international students from Turkey, Iran, Iceland, Finland and Germany
• the DIP Colloquium that will take place from 15 - 16.30 that afternoon

12 January 2001, DIP Colloquium
Speaker: Paul Dekker (University of Amsterdam)
Title: Peirce puzzle
Place: Euclides Building, P3.27
Date: Friday January 12th, 2001
Time: 15.00-16.30

ABSTRACT:
A puzzle due to (and solved by) Charles Sanders Peirce has recently regained the interest of semanticists. The puzzle has been reformulated by Stephen Read and Brendan Gillon against the background of the following situation.

One-thousand people can participate in a sweep-stakes, and each participant is required to bring in one dollar. It seems the following two sentences can be asserted truthfully in this situation:
  (1) Someone wins $1.000 if everyone takes part.
  (2) Someone wins $1.000 or someone will not take part.
However, it seems the following two sentences are difficult to accept in the very same situation:
  (3) Someone wins $1.000 if he takes part.
  (4) Someone wins $1.000 or he will not take part.
Surprisingly, the natural translations of the four sentences in first order logic are fully equivalent. Apparently, something must be dubious somewhere. Are our intuitions about (1)-(4) dubious? Is the natural translation of (1)-(4) into first order logic dubious? Or is first order logic dubious itself?

In my talk I will answer both of the three questions. I will argue that Peirce's own, intuitively correct, observations about the puzzle can be seen to follow from independently motivated principles governing the use of conditional sentences and that of indefinite noun phrases.

19 January 2001, ACCS seminar Quantum Computing

On january 19, 2001, from 14:30 - 17:00 o'clock, the Amsterdam Centre for Computational Science organizes a seminar on "Quantum Computing".
Speakers:
Prof. H. Buhrman, "Quantum Communication Complexity" (ILLC and CWI)
Prof. P. Stamp, "Decoherence and Quantum Entanglement" (UU)
Prof. H. Mooij, title to be announced (TUD)
Location: University of Amsterdam, Institute of Computer Science, Kruislaan 403, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, Room F013

For more information on ACCS, see http://www.science.uva.nl/research/accs/

15 january - 21 february 2001, guest lectures of Saul Kripke
Titel: Gödel's Theorem & Recursive Functions, An exposition of the elementary theory from a logical and philosophical standpoint.
Speaker: Saul Kripke, Philosophy/CKI, Utrecht
Dates: 15 january - 21 february 2001, mondays and wednesdays
Time: Mondays 15.30 - 17.30, wednesdays 9.00 - 11.00

New Location: Due to the large number of people showing an interest in this course, new accomodations had to be found. All classes will be held at the Uithof in Utrecht. Please visit this page for the exact location of each weeks lectures.

For more information, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~jjoosten/krip/krip.html.

27 April 2001, Colloquium on Mathematical Logic, Rosalie Iemhoff
Speaker: Rosalie Iemhoff (University of Amsterdam)
Title: to be announced
Location: Room 465, Bestuursgebouw, Heidelberglaan 8, Utrecht (bus 12 from Utrecht Central Station).
Date and Time: Friday April 27 2001, 14.00-16.00

For further information, see http://www.math.uu.nl/people/jvoosten/seminar.html.

18-19 May 2001, the Utrecht-Münster Contact.
Joint meeting of the Colloquium on Mathematical Logic with guests from the Institut für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagenforschung.

Location: Rooms 043 (friday) and 036 (saturday), Bestuursgebouw, Heidelberglaan 8, Utrecht (bus 12 from Utrecht Central Station).
Date and Time: Friday 18 May 2001, 13.00-17.30, and Saturday 19 May 2001, 10.00-12.30

For further information, see http://www.math.uu.nl/people/jvoosten/seminar.html.

1 June 2001, Colloquium on Mathematical Logic, Jan Willem Klop et. al
Speakers: Jan-Willem Klop, Inge Bethke, Roel de Vrijer and Henk Barendregt
Title: to be announced
Location: Room 465, Bestuursgebouw, Heidelberglaan 8, Utrecht (bus 12 from Utrecht Central Station).
Date and Time: Friday June 1 2001, 14.00-16.00

For further information, see http://www.math.uu.nl/people/jvoosten/seminar.html.

25 January 2001, Computational Linguistics and Logic workshop
Title: Linear Logic and Linguistics
Speakers: Christian Retore, Francois Lamarche, Gianfranco Mascari and Gerhard Jaeger
Topics: Proof theory, category theory, linear logic, substructural logic, categorial grammar, Petri Nets
Location: Utrecht, Trans 10, room 1.01
Date and Time: Thursday 25 January 2001, 13.00 - 17.00

Thursday 13.00 -17.00 a workshop on Linear Logic and Linguistics will take place. The workshop is organised by the group of Computational Linguistics of the UiL-OTS in collaboration with the Mathematics Department on the occasion of Quintijn Puite's promotion. For the whole program and further background information, look at: http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/conferences/workshop_CLL.html.

26 January 2001, DIP Colloquium, Bernhard Schwarz (IMS Stuttgart)
Canceled!
Speaker: Bernhard Schwarz (IMS Stuttgart)
Title: Saying "Even" in German
Former Date and Time: Friday January 26th, 2001, 15.00-17.00

Abstract:
It is known that in certain contexts even gives rise to ambiguity. For example, I doubt that he even knows Italian can be taken to suggest either that Italian is hard or that Italian is easy. Some have credited this ambiguity to the scope taking options for even, whereas others have posited a lexical ambiguity. Both accounts have been taken to carry over to German, where the two readings are expressed with different lexical items, namely sogar for the "hard" reading and auch nur for the "easy" reading. I first show that none of the accounts in question correctly applies to German in that they fail to capture the meaning of auch nur. I then argue that auch nur marks its host sentence as the most informative among the alternative assertions and discuss how various restrictions on the use of auch nur might come about.

More information can be found on the DIP (Discourse Processing) homepage, or by contacting the DIP Colloquium organizing committee at DIP@hum.uva.nl

2 february 2001, Debat over de toekomst van de logica (Debate on the Future of Logic)
Date and Time: Friday 2 february 2001, from 13.00 onwards, with drinks afterwards.
Location: Stadskasteel Oudaen, Oude Gracht 99, Utrecht
Organisers: VvL, with SIKS and OzsL.

Na een lange radiostilte nodigt de VvL u hierbij uit voor een groots evenement: een VvL thema middag over De Toekomst van de Logica, nu niet op de traditionele zaterdag, maar op vrijdag 2 februari 2001, in de Theaterzaal van Stadskasteel Oudaen, Oude Gracht 99, Utrecht. Stadskasteel Oudaen bevindt zich op 10 minuten loopafstand van Utrecht CS. Mede-organisatoren van deze middag zijn de onderzoeksscholen OzsL en SIKS. Programma en verdere informatie over VvL en over de vragen die ter tafel liggen is te vinden op de web site van de Vereniging voor Logica. Alle belangstellenden zijn van harte welkom. De toegang is gratis. Komt allen! Een voorzet tot discussie wordt gegeven in een pamflet dat u vindt op de web site.

16 February 2001, Computational Logic Seminar
Title: Equational Binary Decision Diagrams
Speaker: Jaco van der Pol (CWI)
Location: ILLC, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam, Room P.327
Date and Time: Februari 16, 2001, 13.30-14.30

Abstract:
How to decide boolean combinations of equalities? As an alternative to Shostak's congruence closure, we extended binary decision diagrams with equalities. Combined with Ackerman's function elimination this does the job. We describe how EQ-BDDs provide a "canonical enough", albeit not unique, representation of propositions over equalities. Then, using wishful thinking, we describe how to extend EQ-BDDs with algebraically defined functions.

For more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/~mdr/ACLG/Local/seminar01-1.html.

6 June 2001, Computing with LLI seminar, Jean-Yves Beziau
Speaker: Jean-Yves Beziau (Stanford)
Title: On some connections between paraconsistent and modal logics
Date and Time: Wednesday June 6 2001, 16.00-17.00
Location: Room P.327, Euclides Building, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam

For abstracts and more information, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~mdr/CALG/Local/seminar01-1.html#June6.

8 June 2001, Computing with LLI seminar, Reiner Hähnle
Speaker: Reiner Hähnle
Title: Design Pattern-Driven Generation of Formal Specifications
Date and Time: Friday June 8, 2001, 13:00
Location: Room P.327, Euclides Building, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam

For abstracts and more information, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~mdr/CALG/Local/seminar01-1.html#June8.

15 June 2001, Computing with LLI seminar, Gertjan van Noord
Speaker: Gertjan van Noord (Groningen)
Title: Alpino: Wide-coverage Computational Analysis of Dutch
Date and Time: Friday June 15, 2001, 13.15
Location: Room P.327, Euclides Building, Plantage Muidergracht 24 Amsterdam

For abstracts and more information, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~mdr/CALG/Local/seminar01-1.html#June15.

8-10 July 2001, TARK VIII, Siena, Italy

The eight conference on Theoretical Aspects Of Rationality And Knowledge will take place at the University of Siena, Certosa di Pontignano, Italy, on July 8-10 2001. Information, a program, and registration forms are available at the TARK website, at http://www.econ-pol.unisi.it/tark/.

23 February 2001, DIP Colloquium, Gerhard Jaeger (Utrecht University)
Speaker: Gerhard Jaeger (Utrecht University)
Title: On the semantics of as and be
Place: Philosophy Department, MFR ground floor (a.k.a. Room 001)
Date and Time: Friday February 23th, 2001, 15.00-17.00

Abstract:
This paper deals with a series of semantic contrasts between the copula be and the preposition as two functional elements that both head elementary predication structures. It will be argued that the meaning of as is a type lowering device shifting the meaning of its complement NP from generalized quantifier type to property type (where properties are conceived as relations between individuals and situations), while the copula be induces a type coercion from (partial) situations to (total) possible worlds. Paired with van der Sandt's (1992) theory of presupposition accommodation, these assumptions will account for the observed contrasts between as and be.

More information can be found on the DIP (Discourse Processing) homepage, or by contacting the DIP Colloquium organizing committee at DIP@hum.uva.nl

23 February 2001, Computational Logic Seminar, Felix Costa (Lisbon)
Speaker: Felix Costa(Lisbon)
Title: Analog Computation in Continuous Time
Date and Time: February 23, 2001, 13.00
Location: Room P.327, ILLC, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam

Abstract
We consider various extensions and modifications of Shannon's General Purpose Analog Computer, which is a model of computation by differential equations in continuous time. We show that several classical computation classes have natural analog counterparts, including the primitive recursive functions, the elementary functions, the levels of the Grzegorczyk hierarchy, and the arithmetical and analytical hierarchies.

For more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/~mdr/ACLG/Local/seminar01-1.html.

1 March 2001, Computational Logic Seminar, Edwin Mares
Speaker: Edwin Mares (Victoria University of Wellington)
Title: Provability and Relevance
Date and Time: March 1, 2001, 15.15
Location: Room P.327, ILLC, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam

Abstract:
R# is a version of Peano arithmetic based on the relevant logic R. A startling feature of R# is that it can be shown using a finite model that 0=1 is not provable in it. This raises the question of the status of Goedel's second incompleteness theorem in R#. Unfortunately, this question has proved extremely difficult to answer. This paper will explore this problem and a series of related problems to do with provability predicates in relevant arithmetic. These results show that Loeb's theorem is particularly dangerous from a relevant point of view.

This talk will presuppose no knowledge of relevant logic -- everything you need to know about relevance will be explained. It will, however, assume some basic familiarity with Peano arithmetic and Goedel's incompleteness theorems.

For more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/~mdr/ACLG/Local/seminar01-1.html.

2 March 2001, Second ILLC Alumni Event
Date and Time: Friday March 2nd, 2001, 16:00-22.00
Location: Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 231, Amsterdam
Target: ILLC alumni and current ILLC staff/students

Friday March 2nd, 2001, ILLC organizes its second Alumni Event.
You are cordially invited for this event, which promises to be even more successful than last year's.

The aim of the ILLC Alumni Event is to bring former and present staff, PhD students and MSc students together in an informal atmosphere. Besides the social get-together, there is a program of information and celebration, which you can find below.

The meeting takes place in the Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 231 in Amsterdam. A route description will be sent to you after registration.

Program
16.00 - 16.30 Coffee and Tea
16.30 - 18.00 Project Presentations: ILLC and Industry
18.00 - 19.15 Cold Buffet
19.15 - 20.15 Special session for ILLC's prize and project winners
20.15 - 21.00 Henk Barendregt, Nijmegen University: "Beyond Truth and Meaning"
21.00 - 22.00 Drinks

We look forward to your participation!

13-24 August 2001, ESSLLI XIII, Helsinki

The 13th Summer School in Logic, Language and Information will take place at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, during two weeks in August, from August 13 until 24.
For information, see http://www.helsinki.fi/esslli/.

23-25 August 2001, Workshop GOTTLOB FREGE, Leiden
Date: 23-25 August 2001
Location: Leiden University, WSD Complex, building 1175, room 148.
Organized by the Chair of Logic, Faculty of Philosophy, Leyden University

Those who are interested to participate, please notify Göran Sundholm (b.g.sundholm@let.LeidenUniv.nl) before August 20th. For more information, see the program at http://www.illc.uva.nl/NewsandEvents/frege2001.html

27 August 2001, work-in-progress presentation Stanford visitors
Data and Time: Monday August 26, 15:00
Location: Euclides building, room to be announced

The Stanford Ph.D. students and post-docs visiting the ILLC at this time will present work in progress, in particular on modal logic and graph theory. Details will follow as soon as possible.

For more information, and for any suggestions, please contact Boudewijn de Bruin at debruin@science.uva.nl.

9 March 2001, Computational Logic Seminar, Djoerd Hemstra
Speaker: Djoerd Hiemstra (UTwente) Title: Statistical Language Models for Information Retrieval
Date and Time: March 9, 2001, 13.30
Location: Room P.327, ILLC, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam

Abstract:
Information Retrieval (IR) probably was the first area of natural language processing in which statistics were successfully applied. Two models of ranked retrieval developed in the late 60s and early 70s are still in use today: Salton's vector space model and Robertson/Sparck-Jones' probabilistic model. However, the real breakthrough of statistical models in natural language processing did not come from the IR community, but from the speech recognition community in the 70s and 80s. Many of the statistical techniques that were first successfully applied for speech, like Shannon's noisy channel model, n-gram models and hidden Markov models are used today in all sorts of applications, like e.g. part-of-speech tagging, optical character recognition, statistical translation, stochastic context free grammars, etc.

In this talk I will show that statistical language models originally developed for speech can be used to model ranked retrieval as well. The application to IR has characteristics of both the vector space model and the probabilistic model of IR and gives a probabilistic interpretation of:

• tf.idf term weighting
• relevance weighting of query terms
• Boolean-structured queries

The model can easily be extended with additional statistical processes, like for instance statistical translation to model cross-language information retrieval, i.e. to search for documents in a language other than the query.

For more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/~mdr/ACLG/Local/seminar01-1.html.

13 March 2001, Computational Logic Seminar, Luciano Serafini
Speaker: Luciano Serafini (Trento)
Title: A Logic for context: Syntax, semantics and calculus
Date and Time: March 13, 2001, 13.30
Location: Room P.327, ILLC, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam

Abstract:
The importance of the notion of context has emerged in several disciplines (e.g. philosophy of language, AI, computer science, cognitive linguistics, theories of mental representation) with different motivations. In the last ten years, the Mechanized Reasoning Group, leaded by Fausto Giunchiglia, has been developing a formal logic of contextual reasoning, which was successfully applied to many problems arising in the above disciplines. The goal of this talk is to give an introductory view of this work, focusing on the formal aspects. We briefly introduce, some of the most well-known approaches to modeling context (and contextual reasoning) in Philosophy, AI and Cognitive Science. We then introduce the general principles of contexts, called *Locality* and *Compatibility* We introduce a semantics for locality and compatibility called Local Models Semantics (LMS) and a calculus for LMS, called Multi-Context Systems (MCS). The above formalism support propositional contestual reasoning. We therefore propose a generalization to the quantified case.

For more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/~mdr/ACLG/Local/seminar01-1.html.

16 March 2001, Computational Logic Seminar, Marco Aiello
Speaker: Marco Aiello
Title: Intervening at the Right Moment: Ontological Overhearing
Date and Time: March 16, 2001, 13:30
Location: Room P.327, ILLC, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam

Abstract:
The collaboration between two intelligent agents can be greatly enhanced if a third agent, who has some understanding of the communication between the first two, intervenes with appropriate information or by acting helpfully. The behavior of the latter agent, which is quite common in human interaction, is called overhearing. We present an agent architecture modeling the overhearing behavior. In particular, we focus on overhearing based on ontological reasoning, that is, the overhearer semantically selects pieces of communication according to his own knowledge (ontologically organized) and goals. Internally, the overhearer is split in two sub-agents. One is the overhearing agent which, using a formal ontology, classifies the overheard communication. The other one is the suggester agent whose goal is to make appropriate suggestions at the appropriate time point. We present a formal language for the interaction of the two sub-agents.

A prototype of the architecture implemented using Jack Intelligent Agents is briefly described and preliminary experimental results are discussed.

For more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/~mdr/ACLG/Local/seminar01-1.html.

6 September 2001, talk by Alistair Butler
Speaker: Alistair Butler (University of York)
Title: Control and Exhaustification
Date and Time: Thursday 6 September 2001, 13.15-15.00
Location: Philosophy Department, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15, room to be announced.

7 September 2001, DIP Colloquium, Rick Nouwen
Speaker: Rick Nouwen (Utrecht University)
Title: A resolution logic for plural pronouns
Date and Time: Friday September 7 2001, 15.00-17.00
Location: Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Room B2.40
Abstract: available at http://home.student.uva.nl/balder.tencate/dip/dip070901.html

7 September 2001, Computing with LLI seminar, Katsumi Sasaki
Speaker: Katsumi Sasaki (Nanzan)
Title: Cut-free sequent systems for interpretability logics
Date and Time: Friday 7 September 2001, 13:30
Location: Room B2.28, Gebouw B, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam

For abstracts and more information, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~kamps/CLLI/seminar01-2.html#September7.

22 March 2001, Computational Logic Seminar, Rosella Gennari
Speaker: Rosella Gennari
Title: Soft Constraint Frameworks
Date and Time: Thursday March 22, 2001, 16:00
Location: Room P.327, ILLC, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam

Abstract:
Due to their 2-valued semantics, in some real-life situations, hard constraints may not be sufficient to model a problem:

• information is incomplete, undetermined or uncertain, in that we can only set a preference on values up to a certain degree of knowledege/ignorance;
• there exist no solutions to the problem, because the whole hard constraint set is inconsistent;
• the problem is too difficult to solve, yet we need to find an instantiation for all variables that satisfies the given constraints, ``as many/much as possible''; in particular, that happens whenever there are fixed resource bounds.

Hence, ``soft'' constraints come to be handy: loosely speaking, given a domain variable, a soft constraint is just like a hard one except that the former can assign, to each domain tuple, a ``preference'' or ``uncertainty'' degree further than 0 or 1. Fuzzy and semiring-based constraints are examples of soft constraints.

Different authors have cooked up their own frameworks to define and compute with soft constraints. The best known is the semiring-based framework, by Bistarelli et al., Journal of ACM '97 - a semiring is just a universal algebra with two binary functions and two constants. In their seminal paper, Bistarelli et al. claim that all existing soft constraint frameworks can be translated into their semiring-based one; above all, partial and fuzzy constraint frameworks. Unfortunately, the semiring that they use to translate fuzzy and partial constraints is not the correct one; a simple example explains what goes wrong and why.

Lately, I've been working on a general framework for soft constraints and, above all, on a translation between constraint frameworks for `preserving solution sets'.

For more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/~mdr/ACLG/Local/seminar01-1.html.

Friday 23 March 2001, NVTI Theory Day 2001

The Dutch Society for Theoretical Computer Science (NVTI) will hold their annual Theory Day on Friday 23 March 2001. The meeting will take place in the Jaarbeurs Utrecht conference hall, close to the CS Utrecht train station.

As in previous years, a number of prominent speakers will speak on recent and significant developments in the field of theoretical computer science. This year, the speakers will be:

• Prof.dr. R. Milner (University of Cambridge)
• Prof.dr. D. Harel (The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel)
• Prof.dr. K. Apt (CWI, Universiteit van Amsterdam)
• Prof.dr. A. Siebes (Universiteit Utrecht)

In addition to the scientific contents the Theory Day will also have an informative component, namely a general meeting in which the most relevant information concerning the NVTI will be given, as well as presentations of the Research Schools associated with the NVTI.

For more information, see the homepage of the NVTI.

30 maart 2001, Colloquium on Mathematical Logic, Arnold Beckman
Speaker: Arnold Beckmann (University of Münster)
Title: The use of well-foundedness principles in weak arithmetics
Location: Room 465, Bestuursgebouw, Heidelberglaan 8, Utrecht (bus 12 from Utrecht Central Station).
Date and Time: Friday March 30 2001, 14.00-16.00

Abstract:
Well-foundedness principles play an important role in the study of provability strength for a lot of mathematical theories like (fragments of) arithmetic or set theory. We will summerize what is known about well-founded principles in weak arithmetic like Buss's bounded arithmetic.

For further information, see http://www.math.uu.nl/people/jvoosten/seminar.html.

30 March 2001, DIP Colloquium, Anton van der Wouden
Speaker: Anton van der Wouden (Groningen University)
Title: Particles in Dutch
Place: Philosophy Department, MFR ground floor (a.k.a. Room 001), Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15, Amsterdam
Date and Time: Friday March 30th, 2001, 15.00-17.00

Abstract:
We present preliminary results from our investigations into the particles of Dutch. After giving an overview of the general framework, we elaborate on two sub-topics:
1. modal particles and the mental lexicon;
2. variation vs. protypicality in focus particles.

More information can be found on the DIP (Discourse Processing) homepage, or by contacting the DIP Colloquium organizing committee at DIP@hum.uva.nl

13 September 2001, Annual boat trip to welcome 17 new international Logic students
Place of departure: Nieuwe Achergracht (back side of Plantage Muidergracht 24)

To welcome 17 new international Logic students (see below) ILLC organizes its annual boat trip on Thursday September 13. The boat leaves at 4pm from the back side of the Euclides Building, and will return there around 5.30pm. Drinks and snacks are served on board.

13 September 2001, talk by Anton Benz
Speaker: Anton Benz (Humboldt University)
Title: Perspectives and Mutual Updates for Dialogue
Location: Room P.327, Euclides, Plantage Muidergracht 24
Date and Time: Thursday September 13 2001, 12.30 - 14.30

14 September 2001, Computing with LLI seminar, Heinrich Wansing
Speaker: Heinrich Wansing (Dresden)
Title: Anti-realism, the Knowability Paradox, and Constructive Negation
Date and Time: Friday 14 September 2001, 13:30
Location: Room B2.28, Gebouw B, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam

For abstracts and more information, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~kamps/CLLI/seminar01-2.html#September14.

5-6 April 2001, Workshop 'Tableaux for Dynamic and Modal Logics'
Title: Tableau for Dynamic And Modal Logics.
Date and Time: Thursday April 5 and Friday April 6, 2001, starting at 10:00.
Location: (Thursday) Euclides Building, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Room P.016; (Friday) Roetersstraatcomplex, Roetersstraat 15, Room A.102

The Computational Logic and Dissemination of Logic groups at ILLC, University of Amsterdam are holding a small informal workshop on 'Tableau Methods With Applications To Dynamic And Modal Logics. The aim of the workshop is explore links between recent local work and recent work elsewhere and to exchange ideas. The workshop is to be held in Amsterdam, at ILLC, on Thursday April 5 and Friday April 6.

'We would like to invite you to come over and take part in this event. Thanks to sponsorship from the Spinoza project Logic in Action, we can cover your local expenses and part of your travel expenses. Also, if you wish, we can book your hotel for you. We realize this is rather short notice, but please note that this is an informal event.'

Further details, with a schedule of the program and electronic links to draft papers, can be found at: http://www.cwi.nl/~jve/tableaux/. This workshop is sponsored by the Spinoza project Logic in Action.

12 April 2001, Colloquium on Mathematical Logic, Volodya Shavrukov
Speaker: Volodya Shavrukov
Title: Branches of the $E$-tree and jump pseudo-hierarchies
Location: Room 467(!), Bestuursgebouw, Heidelberglaan 8, Utrecht (bus 12 from Utrecht Central Station).
Date and Time: Thursday April 12 2001, 13.00-15.00
Abstract: available at this link

For more information, see http://www.math.uu.nl/people/jvoosten/seminar.html.

20 April 2001, DIP Colloquium, Helen de Hoop
Speaker: Helen de Hoop, Leiden University
Title: Optional Word Order Variation in Dutch
Date and Time: Friday April 20th, 2001, 15.00-17.00
Location: Philosophy Department, MFR ground floor (a.k.a. Room 001)
Abstract: available at http://home.student.uva.nl/balder.tencate/dip/dip200401.html

More information can be found on the DIP (Discourse Processing) homepage, or by contacting the DIP Colloquium organizing committee at DIP@hum.uva.nl

20 April 2001, Computational Logic Seminar Double Talk, Andrew Bagdanov, Gabriel Gaston Infante
Speaker: Andrew Bagdanov (ISIS, UvA)
Title: Content-free Document Genre Classification using First Order Random Graphs
Date and Time: April 20, 2001, 13.30
Location: Room P.327, ILLC, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam

Speaker: Gabriel Gaston Infante (University of Twente)
Title: Continuous Time Logic with Average Time
Date and Time: April 20, 2001, 15:00
Location: Room P.327, ILLC, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam

For abstracts and more information, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~mdr/ACLG/Local/seminar01-1.html#April20.

11 May 2001, Abductive Reasoning In Science symposium, University of Groningen
Location: Room 2.01 of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen, Aweg 30.

The program is as follows:
10.00 reception/coffee
10.30 Paul Thagard : Emotion in abductive inference
11.30 John Woods: A conceptual map for abduction
12.30 lunch
13.30 Atocha Aliseda: Lacunae and empirical progress
14.15 Joke Meheus: Formal logics for abductive reasoning
15.15 break/tea
15.30 Dov Gabbay: Abduction and Antiformulas
16.30 Continuation of discussion with Alexander van den Bosch (*)
17.15 Drinks

(*) Alexander van den Bosch will defend his dissertation on the day before: this event has a separate entry.

If you intend to come to the symposium, please send an e-mail before April 10 to Theo@philos.rug.nl. For the location of the Faculty/Aula consult the homepage at http://www.philos.rug.nl/aweg/index.htm

Monday 14 May, 16.00, new reading group on Ariel Rubinstein's Modeling Bounded Rationality
Location: Multifunctionele Ruimte, Dept. of Philosophy, Vendelstraat 8, Amsterdam
Date and Time: Monday, 14 May, 16.00
Reading: Introduction, Chapters 1,2, last Chapter with comments by Herbert Simon.

The reading material will be made available for xeroxing at the Euclides library. Although the group is more or less a follow-up of earlier game theory meetings, we would like to welcome new interest in particular. For more information, please send a mail to Jaap Kamps (kamps@ccsom.uva.nl) or Boudewijn de Bruin (debruin@science.uva.nl). Information on the book may be found at http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/book-home.tcl?isbn=0262681005 and http://www.princeton.edu/~ariel/books.html.

Monday 14 May, 15.00, talk on temporal logic, Denis Therien
Title: Decidability questions in temporal logic
Speaker: Denis Therien (McGill; on leave at University of Tubingen)
Date and Time: Monday, May 14, 15.00 hours (sharp)
Location: Room P.327, Euclides Building, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam

Abstract:
Linear temporal logic is the most fundamental formalism used in computer-aided verification for specifying properties of both hardware and software. Much attention has been devoted to classifying temporal properties according to their syntactical complexity. For example, one defines a fragment of the global logic, e.g. by restricting which operators are allowed, and then tries to understand the expressive power of that fragment. An important question is thus to decide for a given property if it is expressible or not in a given fragment. Such problems are in general very difficult to resolve. Recently, natural subclasses of temporal formulas have been algebraically characterized. We will survey some of these results. In particular, we will show that the levels of the Since/Until hierarchy are decidable, using algebraic methods.

For further information, please contact Yde Venema, yde@science.uva.nl.

Tuesday 15 May 2001, 11.00, Computing with LLI Seminar, Joseph Halpern
Speaker: Joseph Halpern (Cornell)
Title: Plausibility Measures and Default Reasoning
Date/Time: May 15, 2001, 11:00
Location: Room P.017, Euclides Building, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam;

Abstract:
We introduce a new formalism for reasoning about uncertainty that we call {\em plausibility}. Plausibility is a generalization of probability: the plausibility of a set is just an element of some arbitrary partial order (instead of being an element of [0,1], as in the case of probability). We believe that plausibility will provide a reasonable generalization of probability that will allow more qualitative reasoning. We focus on one application of plausibility measures: default reasoning.

Defaults are statements like ``Birds typically fly''. In recent years, a number of different semantics for defaults have been proposed---involving such things as preference rankings, extreme probabilities, and possibility measures---that have been shown to be characterized by the same set of axioms, known as the KLM properties (for Kraus, Lehmann, Magidor). The fact that such disparate approaches were all characterized by the same axioms was viewed as quite surprising. We show that the KLM properties are almost inevitable, given some minimal properties. In the framework of plausibility measures, we can give a necessary condition for the KLM axioms to be sound, and an additional condition necessary and sufficient to ensure that the KLM axioms are complete. This additional condition is so weak that it is almost always met whenever the axioms are sound. In particular, it is easily seen to hold for all the proposals made in the literature.

In the literature, the focus has been on propositional default reasoning. We briefly consider the first-order case as well. Here it turns out that there are significant differences between the various proposals. Again, using plausibility helps us understand what is going on.

The talk is completely self-contained. (In particular, no previous knowledge of default reasoning is presumed.) It represents joint work with Nir Friedman.

22 May 2001, Algebraic Logic Meeting
Date and Time: 22 May 2001, 10.00 - 17.00
Location: ILLC, Plantage Muidergracht 24, Amsterdam, Room P327

Speakers and Titles:

For further information, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~yde/activities/alm.html.

28 May - 1 June 2001, SIKS PhD Course 'Combinatory Methods and Intelligent Systems' (B4/B5)
Target group: SIKS PhD students
Time: Monday May 28 to Friday June 1st, full day program
Location: Conference Center 'de Queeste', Dodeweg 8, Leusden
Costs: none for SIKS PhD students, f 1200,- for other SIKS members or PhD students
Early registration deadline: April 26th, 2001

More information, a provisionary program and a registration form are now available at http://www.siks.nl/act/b4b501.html

8 June 2001, DIP Colloquium, Raffaella Bernardi and Oystein Nilsen
Speakers: Raffaella Bernardi and Oystein Nilsen (UiL OTS, Utrecht university)
Title: Quantifier Scope and Adverb Order in Type Logic Grammer
Date and Time: Friday June 8th 2001, 15.00-17.00
Location: Philosophy Department, MFR ground floor (a.k.a. Room 001) Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15, Amsterdam
Abstract: available at http://home.student.uva.nl/balder.tencate/dip/dip080601.html

More information can be found on the DIP (Discourse Processing) homepage, or by contacting the DIP Colloquium organizing committee at DIP@hum.uva.nl

15 June 2001, DIP Colloquium, Reinhard Muskens
Speaker: Reinhard Muskens (Tilburg University)
Title: Combining Signs
Date and Time: Friday June 15 2001, 15.00-17.00
Location: Philosophy Department, MFR ground floor (a.k.a. Room 001) Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15, Amsterdam
Abstract: available at http://home.student.uva.nl/balder.tencate/dip/dip150601.html

More information can be found on the DIP (Discourse Processing) homepage, or by contacting the DIP Colloquium organizing committee at DIP@hum.uva.nl

4 July 2001, Launch of the Book 'Modal Logic' by Patrick Blackburn, Maarten de Rijke and Yde Venema
Location: Room E020, Faculty of Economics and Econometric, Roetersstraat 11, Amsterdam
Date and Time: Wednesday, July 4, 2001, 14.30-17.45

After years of preparation, the text book Modal Logic by Patrick Blackburn, Maarten de Rijke and Yde Venema has finally appeared (with Cambridge University Press). To celebrate this, the authors are organizing a Book Launch! At this event, three leading researchers in modal logic and its neighbours will give talks surveying the state of the art, and there will be an opportunity to buy the book at a 35% discount.

Program:
  14.30 - 15.15 Mai Gehrke
  15.15 - 16.00 Erich Graedel
  16.00 - 16.30 break + book sell
  16.30 - 17.00 Johan van Benthem
  16.30 - 17.00 Johan van Benthem
  17.00 - 17.45 drinks

For more information, please contact Maarten de Rijke (mdr@science.uva.nl) or Yde Venema (yde@science.uva.nl).

12 July 2001, Bèta lecture by Dr. Jasper Stokman, UvA
Title: "Many Body Systems in Mathematics and Physics"
Speaker: Dr. Jasper Stoknan, Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics, UvA
Date and Time: Thursday 12 July 2001, 4.45 to 5.45 p.m. (reception afterwards)
Location: Plantage Muidergracht 24, room 227

Please refer to http://www.science.uva.nl/org/Nieuws/Evenementen/betalecture/doc_en.html for more information about the lecture and the curriculum of Dr. Stokman. We kindly ask you to let us know if you will attend this lecture, by sending an email to info@science.uva.nl.

In October 1996, the Dutch national research organization NWO awarded one of its annual Spinoza grants to Johan van Benthem, professor of logic at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. This grant led to the project 'Logic in Action', whose general aims were the study of information flow and the promotion of logic within the information sciences.

5 years and 2 million guilders later the project is coming to an end. On December 20 there will be a one-day event to officially close 'Logic in Action' and reflect on the future. We are pleased to invite you to attend.

The full text of this announcement may be found at here. For more information and registration, please contact Ingrid van Loon at ingrid at science.uva.nl.

ABSTRACT: We describe the process of building the first tree-bank for Modern Hebrew texts. A major concern in this process is the need for reducing the cost of manual annotation by the use of automatic means. To this end, the joint utility of an automatic morphological analyzer, a probabilistic parser and a small manually annotated tree-bank was explored. An initial tree-bank that consists of 500 annotated sentences from a daily newspaper is described. The annotation scheme that underlies the tree-bank analyses integrates morphology and syntax. An existing morphological analyzer and a language-independent probabilistic parser were applied to this tree-bank. Based on the results of some experiments with these tools, a semi-automatic procedure for future enlargement of the tree-bank is outlined.

For abstracts and more information, see http://lit.science.uva.nl/News/seminar01-2.html#December19

In 1918 Brouwer published a principle that was basic for the theory of choice sequences: the continuity principle, which says that all mappings from choice sequences of natural numbers to natural numbers are continuous. A foundational argument for the principle was not given. Since then a number of arguments have been put forward to provide a foundational basis for the principle. None of these have been absolutely successful to the degree that we accept the axioms for arithmetic. We will look into this matter and see what can be done. Also the case of the lawlike sequences is considered. Furthermore a pedestrian proof of the Kreisel-Lacombe-Shoenfield-Tscheitin theorem (all functions from recursive functionals to natural numbers are continuous) will be sketched, using a technique, now known as Ishihara's trick.

The Thirteenth Amsterdam Colloquium will be held from December 17-19 at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. The Amsterdam Colloquia aim at bringing together linguists, philosophers, logicians and computer scientists who share an interest in the formal study of semantics of natural and formal languages. The spectrum of topics covered ranges from descriptive (semantic analyses of all kinds of expressions) to theoretical (logical and computational properties of semantic theories, philosophical foundations).

For more information, see the conference website at http://www.illc.uva.nl/ac2001

Provisional Programme
13.30-13.45 Reception with tea, coffee
13.45-14.00 Introduction by the chairman of the Arend Heyting Foundation
14.00-15.00 F. Richman, Constructive algebra (1st Arend Heyting Lecture)
15.00-15.45 Tea
15.45-16.45 A. Simpson, After the Interval
16.50-17.35 J. van Oosten, Modified realizability

For more information, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~anne/heyting.html

For abstracts and more information, see http://lit.science.uva.nl/News/seminar01-2.html#December13

Our planned seminar with Joe Halpern (Cornell) on A computer scientist looks at game theory, will now be part of the workshop on Games and Logic, on December 12.

For a program and abstracts of the talks, see here.

Recently an approach to NP-coNP problem based on proof systems using the Nullstellensatz was developed and there were shown complexity lower bounds for the proofs in such systems. In the talk a stronger proof system which relies on the Positivstellensatz is introduced and complexity lower bounds for several problems like the knapsack or the parity principle are established. These results could be also treated independently of the complexity theory as the lower bounds in the Positivstellensatz.

For more information, see http://ssor.twi.tudelft.nl/~dima

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.math.uu.nl/people/jvoosten/seminar.html

The one-day symposium is aimed at bringing together people working on topics related to multimodal conversation with embodied agents. We wish to keep the event informal and interactive, but of high professional level. Selected participants will have the opportunity to present and/or demo their current work. We expect participants working in different fields, including (but not limited to) computer graphics, image processing, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, speech technology and psychology.

For more information and a program, see the symposium webpage at http://fdlwww.kub.nl/~krahmer/workshp.htm.

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.math.uu.nl/people/jvoosten/seminar.html

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/dip/.

The "2001 CIVI Afstudeerprijs voor de Industrie" in the area of Computer Science has been granted to the UvA student M.G. de Graaf. The prize of fl. 25.000 will be presented at a ceremony in the building of the Hollandse Maatschapij voor Wetenschappen in Haarlem on Friday November 30 2001

For more information, contact Peter van Emde Boas at peter at science.uva.nl.

The workshop Methods for Modalities' (M4M) aims to bring together researchers interested in developing proof tools and reasoning methods for modal logic broadly conceived, including description logic, hybrid logics, feature logic, temporal logic, etc.

Deadline for submissions: 12 october 2001

For more information, see the conference website at http://staff.science.uva.nl/~m4m.

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.math.uu.nl/people/jvoosten/seminar.html

On Friday, November 2001, a workshop "Learning Logic and Grammar" is held in Amsterdam. The aim of the workshop is to find and establish cross-connections between the OTS (Utrecht) and ILLC (Amsterdam) research groups.

For more information and a preliminary program, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/LLaG/.

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.math.uu.nl/people/jvoosten/seminar.html

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/dip/.

For abstracts and more information, see http://lit.science.uva.nl/News/seminar01-2.html#November16 .

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.math.uu.nl/people/jvoosten/seminar.html

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/dip/.

For abstracts and more information, see http://lit.science.uva.nl/News/seminar01-2.html#November9 .

For abstracts and more information, see http://lit.science.uva.nl/News/seminar01-2.html#November7 . The thesis of Gwen Kerdiles and an extended abstract of it are available online at http://www.science.uva.nl/~kerdiles.

Alexander Esenin Volpin has worked from the seventies and eighties on a very radical approach to the Foundations of Mathematics: ultra-intuitionism (see e.g. "The ultra-intuitionistic criticism and the anti-traditional program for foundations of mathematics" in "Intuitionism and Proof Theory", Kino, Myhill, Vesley eds., North-Holland, 1970). Although highly onorthodox and never fully understood, his work did inspire a considerable number of people, among which Parikh, Ehrenfeucht, Vopenka to logical work realizing some of his ideas in formal settings.

For abstracts and more information, see http://lit.science.uva.nl/News/seminar01-2.html#November5 .

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/dip/.

For abstracts and more information, see http://lit.science.uva.nl/News/seminar01-2.html#November2 .

The CGN focuses on creating of a databank for the contemporary dutch language, as it is spoken in Vlaanderen and the Netherlands. In connection with the intermediate evaluation of the CGN that takes place this year, a workshop will be organized. The program, location and other information will be made available in september. Participation will be free of charge.

For more information, see http://www.elda.fr.

The 13th Belgian-Dutch Conference on Artificial Intelligence (BNAIC'01) is organised by the University of Amsterdam under the auspices of BNVKI/AIABN (Belgian-Dutch Association for AI) and SIKS (School for Information and Knowledge Systems), in close collaboration with the Foundation for Neural Networks (SNN). BNAIC is an annual conference and will in 2001 be held on Thursday 25 October and Friday 26 October at "De Rode Hoed" in Amsterdam.

For more information, see the conference website at http://www.swi.psy.uva.nl/bnaic01/.

The OzsL Schoolweek/Accolade 2001 takes place from October 21--26 in Hotel Dennenhoeve in Nunspeet. The aim of the event is to bring together the Dutch logic community and to provide an up-to-date overview of the projects carried out within the school. The varied program includes tutorials, workshops, short presentations and discussion sessions.

For more information, a preliminary program and an online registration form, see http://www.ozsl.uva.nl/Archive/2001/schoolweek.html.

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/dip/.

For abstracts and more information, see http://lit.science.uva.nl/News/seminar01-2.html#October19 .

RELMICS 6: Relational Methods in Computer Science, together with a workshop of the COST action TARSKI: Theory and Applications of Relational Systems as Knowledge Instruments.

The purpose of this series of international workshops is to bring together researchers from various subdisciplines of Computer Science, Mathematics and Philosophy, all of whom use relational methods as a conceptual and methodological tool in their work.

For more information, see http://cwis.kub.nl/~fsw_2/fww/home/swart/rmcs.htm.

Vrijdag de 12e oktober 2001, des namiddags om 2.30 uur, zullen de Hooggeleerde Heren dr. F.J.M.M. Veltman, benoemd tot Hoogleraar in de Logica en Cognitiewetenschap, & dr. M. van Lambalgen, benoemd tot Hoogleraar in de Logica en Cognitiewetenschap, hun hoogleraarsambt openlijk aanvaarden door het uitspreken van een rede in de Aula der Universiteit, Singel 411, hoek Spui.

For abstracts and more information, see http://lit.science.uva.nl/News/seminar01-2.html#October12 .

For more information, please contact the coordinator of the Team Hoger Onderwijs, drs Carla Laan (tel: 020-5251287, email: carlalaan at educ.uva.nl) or visit the CNA website at http://www.cna.uva.nl/universitaire%20didact.%20ondersteuning.htm

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/dip/.

For abstracts and more information, see http://lit.science.uva.nl/News/seminar01-2.html#October5 .

The goal of the Masterclass is to inform SIKS Ph D students and other interested persons about work that has been done in the USA, particularly at NASA, in the area of modelling and simulating work practice at a level of detail that permits a more dynamic analysis and representation. The presentations will be given by Dr. William J. Clancey and Maarten Sierhuis (who will defend his thesis on this subject the next day). The Masterclass will be a mixture of theoretical and practical/operational issues. As the masterclass is part of the "advanced components stage" of SIKS' educational program, all SIKS- Ph.D- students are strongly encouraged to participate.

Deadline for registration: September 20, 2001

For more information and a program, see http://www.siks.nl/act/dehoog.html. To register, please send an email to Mrs. S.M. van Loo at vanloo at swi.psy.uva.nl.

The fourth Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation will be held in the mountain resort Likani, situated in the Borjomi Canyon, from 23 to 28 September. The Symposium is organized by the Centre for Language, Logic and Speech at the Tbilisi State University in conjunction with the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam.

Deadline for registration was August 22. For more information, an online registration form and a preliminary program, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/Borjomi

For further information and abstracts, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~debruin/Logic_tea.

For further information and abstracts, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~debruin/Logic_tea.

For further information and abstracts, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~debruin/Logic_tea.

For further information and abstracts, see http://staff.science.uva.nl/~debruin/Logic_tea.

13-24 August 2001, ESSLLI-2001 Student Session, Helsinki, Finland
Thirteenth European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information, Student Session
First Call for Papers
Deadline: February 18th, 2001

We are pleased to announce the Student Session of the 13th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI 2001) organized by the University of Helsinki under the auspices of the European Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI). ESSLLI 2001 will be held at the University of Helsinki in August 2001. We invite submission of papers for presentation at the ESSLLI 2001 Student Session and for appearance in the proceedings.

Purpose:
This sixth ESSLLI Student Session will provide, like the other editions, an opportunity for ESSLLI participants who are students to present their own work in progress and get feedback from senior researchers and fellow-students. The ESSLLI Student Session encourages submissions from students at any level, from undergraduates (before completion of the Master Thesis) as well as postgraduates (before completion of the PhD degree). Papers co-authored by non-students will not be accepted. Papers may be accepted for full presentation (30 minutes including 10 minutes of discussion) or for a poster presentation. The accepted papers will be published in the ESSLLI 2001 Student Session proceedings, which will be made available during the summer school.

For more information, see the Student Session webpage and the main ES SLLI 2001 website.

20-24 August 2001, ESSLLI Workhop on Logic and Games, Helsinki, Finland
Call for Papers
New Deadline: April 9th, 2001

Games have been utilized within logic for a variety of different purposes such as semantic evaluation games, model comparison games, and proof games. On the other hand, logic has become increasingly important in game theory, in particular for the epistemic foundation of game-theoretic solution concepts. As the TARK and LOFT conferences show, interaction between logic and game theory has become more diverse in recent years, exploring game logics, the use of game-theory in multi-agent systems, game-theoretic accounts of natural language phenomena, and the role of language in defining preferences.

The workshop is part of the 13th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) which takes place at the University of Helsinki from August 13 until August 24, 2001 (http://www.helsinki.fi/esslli). The workshop aims to provide a forum for advanced Ph.D. students and other researchers from game theory and logic to present their research on (1) game- theoretic techniques applied to logic, and (2) logical models or analyses of games and game-theoretic problems. We specifically invite presentations in any of the following areas:

1. Logical analysis of games, e.g. modeling knowledge, belief, and information flow in games; applications of epistemic and dynamic logic to games
2. Logic games, e.g. model comparison games, semantic evaluation games, Independence-friendly logic
3. Game logics, e.g. extensions of program logics and modal logics to investigate the structure of games in general
4. The role of language and logical definability in games, and connections between natural language and games generally
5. Logical approaches to multi-agent systems with a special focus on game-theoretic aspects

For more information, see http://www.cwi.nl/~pauly/GameLogic/call-esslli.

23 - 28 September 2001, The Fourth International Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation, Borjomi, Georgia
Call for Papers
Deadline: 30 April

The fourth Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation will be held in the mountain resort Likani, situated in the Borjomi Canyon, from 23 to 28 September. The Symposium is organized by the Centre for Language, Logic and Speech at the Tbilisi State University in conjunction with the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam.

The Symposium welcomes papers on current research in all aspects of Linguistics, Logic and Computation, including but not limited to:

• Natural language semantics/pragmatics
• Algebraic and relational semantics
• Natural language processing
• Logic in AI and natural language
• Natural language and logic programming
• Automated reasoning
• Natural language and databases
• Information retrieval from text
• Natural language and internet
• Constructive and modal logic

For more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/ borjomi

16 - 21 October 2001, RELMICS 6, Oisterwijk (near Tilburg), the Netherlands
Deadline: August 15, 2001

The purpose of this series of international workshops is to bring together researchers from various subdisciplines of Computer Science, Mathematics and Philosophy, all of whom use relational methods as a conceptual and methodological tool in their work.

For more information, see http://cwis.kub.nl/~fsw_2/fww/home/swart/rmcs.htm.

Monday 15 January 2001, 16:00
Master of Logic Defense of Jason Mattausch
Place: PCHH 319
Title: Optimisation in Discourse Generation
Supervisor: Henk Zeevat

Thursday 25 January 2001, 10:00
PhD Defense of Maria Aloni
Place: Oude Lutherse Kerk, Singel 411, Amsterdam.
Title dissertation: Quantification under Conceptual Covers

Wednesday 9 May 2001, 12:00
PhD Defense of Erik de Haas
Place: Oude Lutherse Kerk, Singel 411, Amsterdam.
Title dissertation: Logics For OO Information Systems: a Semantic Study of Object Orientation from a Categorial Substructural Perspective
Promotor: Peter van Emde Boas
Co-promotor: Pieter Adriaans

Thursday 10 May 2001, 14:15
PhD Defense of Alexander van den Bosch
Place: the Aula of the University of Groningen, Broersstraat 5, Groningen
Title dissertation: Rationality in Discovery - A Study of Logic, Cognition, Computation and Neuropharmacology
Promotores: Th.A.F. Kuipers, R. Vos
Abstract: see http://www.philos.rug.nl/~vdbosch/thesis.html

Tuesday 15 May 2001, 12:00
PhD Defense of Rosalie Iemhoff
Place: Oude Lutherse Kerk, Singel 411, Amsterdam.
Title dissertation: Provability Logic and Admissible Rules
Promotor: Anne Troelstra
Co-promotores: Dick de Jongh, Albert Visser

Friday 18 May 2001, 10:00
Master of Logic Defense of Rasa Leijting-Paulekaite
Place: Room 105, Department of Philosophy, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15
Title: Intentional Identity and the Edelberg Asymmetry
Supervisors: Paul Dekker, Henk Zeevat

Wednesday 20 June 2001, 12:00
PhD Defense of Eva Hoogland
Place: Oude Lutherse Kerk, Singel 411, Amsterdam.
Title dissertation: Definability and Interpolation: Model-theoretic investigatio ns
Promotor: Dick de Jongh
Co-promotor: Yde Venema

Wednesday 27 June 2001, 16:00
Master of Logic Defense of Jon Ragetli
Place: Room 3.27, Euclides Building, Plantage Muidergracht 24
Title: Towards Concept-based Structuring of Electronic Scientific Information
Supervisor: Maarten de Rijke

Tuesday 3 July 2001, 15:00
Master of Logic Defense of Benjamin Rodenhäuser
Place: Room 3.27, Euclides Building, Plantage Muidergracht 24
Title: to be announced
Supervisor: Johan van Benthem

Friday 20 July 2001, time to be announced
Master of Logic Defense of Alexander Bergo
Place: Room 3.27, Euclides Building, Plantage Muidergracht 24
Title: to be announced
Supervisor: Maarten de Rijke

Thursday 6 September 2001, 12:00
PhD Defense of Ronald de Wolf
Place: Oude Lutherse Kerk, Singel 411, Amsterdam
Title dissertation: Quantum Computing and Communication Complexity
Promotores: Prof.dr. H.M. Buhrman, Prof.dr.ir. P.M.B. Vitányi

In the "NWO open competition" (round 2000), the following projects in which ILLC staff is involved have been approved of:

• K.R. Apt (Uva/CWI): ALMA-0 and New Foundations for Declarative Programming (2 PhD students + 0.4 fte non-scientific personnel for 4 years, total of kf 604)
• K.R. Apt (Uva/CWI), F. Arbab(CWI), E.B.G. Monfroy (CWI): Coordination-Based Parallel Constraint Solving
• P.M.B. Vitanyi(CWI): Universal Learning (1 postdoc for 4 years + 1 PhD student + 0,25 fte non-scientific personnel for 4 years, total of kf 680)
• M. de Rijke (UvA), K.R. Apt (Uva/CWI): Simulation and Testing for Feature Interaction (1 postdoc for 4 years + 1 PhD student + 0,5 fte non-scientific personnel for 4 years, total of kf 597)
• Y.Venema (UvA), B.P.F. Jacobs (KUN), J.J.M.M. Rutten (CWI): Coalgebraic Model Logic: Theory and Applications
• J.F.A.K. van Benthem (UvA): "De kennis en rationaliteitsaannamen van speltheoretische oplossingsconcepten" (1 PhD student, B. de Bruin)

Furthermore Maarten de Rijke obtained an NWO grant of Kf 25 to subsidize the replacement of his lecturing duties.

NWO has granted both ILLC proposals in the "Vernieuwingsimpuls":

• Paul Dekker: Formal Language Games
• Rens Bod : Towards a Unifying Model for Linguistic, Musical and Visual Processing

The projects consist of 1 senior researcher and approximately a Postdoc and a Ph.Dstudent or 2 PhD-students plus extra computer support each.

Robert van Rooy (Theory of interpretation) has received a KNAW fellowship; the title of his project is

Games, Relevance, and Meaning

The goal of the research project is to develop a quantitative theory of interpretation of natural language as a generalization and refinement of current qualitative perspectives, and to use it to determine the relevance and interpretation of a wide range of communicative acts. Two mutually dependent subordinate objectives are distinguished:

1. to define appropriate quantitative notions of RELEVANCE of sentences in both cooperative and non-cooperative settings of communicative interactions;
2. to determine the OPTIMAL interpretation of sentences in terms of game theoretical equilibria of interactive situations between speakers and hearers who try to maximize communicative relevance, while minimizing their effort to do so.

Johan van Benthem is 1 van de 4 prijswinnaars van de landelijke essay competitie "Wetenschap in Beweging" van de 'Hollandse Maatschappij van Wetenschappen' (een oud geleerd genootschap uit 1752), tezamen met James MacAlester, Herman Philipse (Leiden) en Arie Rip (Twente). Met deze essays wordt in 2002 een breed debat gestart over toekomstige wetenschapsindeling, en nieuwe contacten tussen wetenschap en maatschappij.
Meer informatie: http://www.holmij.nl/Uitslag.htm.
Een ps.file van het stuk van Johan van Benthem is te vinden op: http://staff.science.uva.nl/~johan/H-mij.ps.

Johan van Benthem has been selected to become a member of the Institut International de Philosophie in Paris. Other members of this prestigeous society are, amongst others, Apel, Gadamer, Habermas, Lenk.

The ILLC is pleased to announce that Rosalie Iemhoff, Wim van Dam and Ronald de Wolf have all won a NWO TALENT stipendium. Rosalie will go to Sam Buss in San Diego and both Wim and Ronald will become postdocs at Prof U. Vazirani's EECS Department of the Univ. California at Berkeley.

As part of long-term UVA cooperative education projects, there are funds available for student or teacher exchanges with the Freie Universitaet Berlin, University College London and New York University.

2e ronde Vernieuwingsimpuls
De 2e ronde Vernieuwingsimpuls wordt versneld uitgevoerd. De UvA mag in deze ronde 16 aanvragen indienen.

Zoals als eerder meegedeeld heeft NWO besloten de tweede tranche Vernieuwingsimpulsgelden vervroegd en verhoogd ter beschikking te stellen. Gezien onze uitermate goede ervaringen in de eerste ronde is het aanbevelingswaardig goed na te denken hoe wij de inhoud van deze ruif verder op onze bordjes terecht kunnen doen komen.

Het slechte nieuws is dat de randvoorwaarden zijn aangescherpt. Zo is onder meer de volgende (nieuwe!) passage in de brochure opgenomen:

"Met de voordracht van een kandidaat geeft de universiteit tevens aan bereid te zijn deze bij toekenning van een Vernieuwingsimpuls premie als wetenschapper bij deze universiteit aan te stellen. Voort impliceert dit ook dat de betreffende universiteit de kandidaten na afloop opneemt in de vaste wetenschappelijke staf, tenzij de evaluatie in het voorlaatste jaar negatief uitvalt".

Een andere wijziging is de grotere nadruk op bewezen ervaring met het formuleren en uitvoeren van een onderzoekprogramma. Dit was m.i. in de vorige ronde impliciet reeds een belangrijk criterium, gelet op het feit dat zich onder de gelukkigen veel onderzoekers met veel ervaring bevonden (KNAW-fellows en dergelijke). Een derde noviteit is de mogelijkheid om aanbevelingsbrieven in het Engels toe te voegen.

Ten overvloede: het betreft projecten uit te voeren door een jonge, veelbelovende, gepromoveerde en en verder zijn/haar sporen reeds verdiend hebbende onderzoeker die leiding kan geven en wetenschappelijk risico wil nemen. Omvang per project: ongeveer Mf 1.5 (zegge anderhalfmiljoen gulden), uit te geven in 5 jaar.

De aanvragen, die relatief bescheiden van omvang kunnen zijn, moeten bij de FNWI op 8 januari 2001 ten burele gearriveerd zijn en bij de FGW op 11 december 2000.

Indien u een kandidaat heeft, laat het Martin Stokhof of mij z.s.m. weten. Wij zijn gaarne behulpzaam bij het uitwerken van de plannen en begroten van het budget. Voor informatie en de orginele call kunt u ook bij mij terecht.
Peter Blok

Summer Fellowships for Innovative research on Information Technology
The Social Science Research Council announces the availability of Summer Fellowships for innovative research on information technology, international cooperation and global security.
date of submission: January 22nd.
Information: Peter Blok

Uitnodiging tot indiening van subsidieaanvragen
Het gebiedsbestuur Exacte Wetenschappen (GBE) van NWO nodigt onderzoekers in de disciplines astronomie, informatica en wiskunde hierbij uit om onderzoeksvoorstellen in te dienen in het kader van de projectruimte voor de Open Competitie 2001. Het betreft:

• onderzoeksvoorstellen zonder programmatische randvoorwaarden, eventueel inclusief de voor het onderzoek benodigde apparatuur.
• onderzoeksvoorstellen op het terrein van drie informatica-prioriteitsthema's, eventueel inclusief de voor het onderzoek benodigde apparatuur.
• investeringsvoorstellen voor apparatuur tussen de kf 100 en Mf 2.

De deadline is 1 februari 2001. Onderzoekers in de natuurkunde kunnen hun voorstel indienen bij FOM, volgens de richtlijnen die FOM daarbij hanteert. Meer informatie is te vinden in de aparte Call for Proposals (als PDF-file), en tevens op de NWO/EW- en FOM websites.

ILLC leden die een voorstel willen indienen worden verzocht Peter Blok hiervan op de hoogte te brengen.

DESCARTES Prize for High-Level Research Work, Deadline 6 April 2001
The Descartes Prize is one the activities of the Improving human potential. programme (IHP) which, in turn, is one of the specific programmes of the Fifth Framework programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (1998-2002). The Descartes Prize rewards outstanding scientific and technological achievements resulting from European collaborative research. It is open to all fields of scientific endeavour.

Participants must be teams from, at a minimum, two institutes established in two different Member States (or in a Member State and an Associated State). As an indicative guide the monetary awards should amount to an average of some 50,000 euro per team associated in the Descartes Prize winning work. (Up to a total of 1,000,000 euro in prize money may be awarded in any given year).

More information on proposal submissions and guidelines for the Descartes prize can be obtained from

European Commission
Directorate-General Research
Descartes Prize
rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 200
B-1049 Brussels
Fax +32-2-2963270
E-mail: improving@cec.eu.int

or at the following URL: http://www.cordis.lu/improving/calls/descartes_200002.htm. Deadline for submissions is 6 April 2001.

NIAS research fellowships
Applications for NIAS research fellowships for the academic year 2002/2003 have to be submitted to the institute before July 1st, 2001. Application forms can be obtained from the secretary to the Scholarship Committee, drs J.J.M. Hooghuis (email: Hooghuis@nias.knaw.nl). More information on NIAS can be found at the NIAS website at http://www.nias.knaw.nl.

We are very happy to announce that Khalil Simaan has been awarded a KNAW-fellowship on his project "Beyond Tree-Banks: Ambiguity Resolution by Distributional Similarity-based Performance Models".

For equipment costing more than 250 guilders you can apply for funding from the NWO equipment funding programme. The deadline for applications for the 2000-2001 programme is september 2001.

For more information, see http://www.nwo.nl/alw/programmas/investeringen.

The NGI (platform for ICT-professionals) offers a price of 10.000,- Dutch Guilders for the best computer science student thesis. All entries have to be submitted by 1 October 2001.

For more information and contest rules, see the NGI website at http://www.ngi.nl.

The guide "Beurzen die je op weg helpen" ("scholarships that can help you") of the NUFFIC is available for perusal at Peter Blok's room. The information in the guide is mainly of interest for promovendi.

The director has decided that all current ILLC PhD-students will from now on have free admission to all scientific events which are organized with ILLC funding. This does not mean that the PhD-students do not have to register. They will be filed as paying participants and should only register if they are really present.

The management is aware of the fact that ILLC's financial contributions will have to increase a bit, but the measure prevents us from pumping money around and may encourage PhD-students to participate in more events than before.

The admission fee for ESSLLI will be refunded if no other funding is found; ILLC pays maximally the reduced registration fee for early registration.

The KNAW will not subsidize visits to conferences abroad in 2001. However, the budget for organizing conferences has been enlarged.

For more information, contact Peter Blok at pblok at science.uva.nl.

PostDoc position "Formal Language Games", ILLC/University of Amsterdam

The ILLC/Department of Philosophy of the University of Amsterdam offers a two and a half year research position, for a PostDoc to work on the project "Formal Language Games." The PostDoc will work an NWO Vernieuwingsimpuls project, with Dr. Paul Dekker as the principal investigator. A description of the project is available in Postscript and PDF format.

We sollicit applications for this position from candidates with a PhD. (now, or soon) in natural language semantics, pragmatics, discourse and dialogue, and/or game theory, and with proven expertise in the areas covered by the project.

The application should comprise:

• a short (up to one page) proposal for a research project that falls within the confines of the general project
• a curriculum vitae
• one or two relevant publications (or references to
• such publications)
• reference(s) for recommendation

Submissions packages should be here in Amsterdam before April 16, 2001. Applications should be sent to:

Dr. Paul Dekker
ILLC/Department of Philosophy
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15
NL 1012 CP, Amsterdam
The Netherlands
email: dekker@hum.uva.nl

Notice: Second Call! Extended Deadline!
For the ILLC the faculty has two PhD positions available. Research of vacancy number 18124 will either focus on Bioinformatics or Quantum computing. Vacancy number 18125 will be in the field of Constructive and Intensional Logic.

Deadline for applications: July 7th, 2001.
For more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/NewsandEvents/openpos-apr2001.html.

Two Fully Funded PhD Positions in the Computational and Applied Logic Group
Project: 'Computing with Meaning'
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, Universiteit van Amsterdam

The Computational and Applied Logic Group at the University of Amsterdam is searching for highly motivated candidates with a first degree in computer science, computational linguistics, or a related discipline, for two fully funded four-year PhD positions, one in each of the following research areas:

• computational logic (with an emphasis on implementation and evaluation of automated reasoning systems)
• natural language processing (with an emphasis on logic-based approaches to information retrieval tasks such as question-answering, navigation, and summarization)

Deadline for applications: July 15, 2001.
For more information, see the original notice at http://staff.science.uva.nl/~mdr/Projects/ComputingwithMeaning/phdpositionsad.html.

Two Postdoc Positions in the Computational and Applied Logic Group
Project: 'Computing with Meaning'
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, Universiteit van Amsterdam

The Computational and Applied Logic Group at the University of Amsterdam is searching for highly motivated candidates with a PhD in computer science, computational linguistics, or a related discipline, for two postdoc positions, one in each of the following research areas:

• computational logic (with an emphasis on implementation and evaluation of automated reasoning systems)
• natural language processing (with an emphasis on logic-based approaches to information retrieval tasks such as question-answering, navigation, and summarization)

Deadline for applications: July 15, 2001.
For more information, see the original notice at http://staff.science.uva.nl/~mdr/Projects/ComputingwithMeaning/postdocpositionsad.html.

Two PhD Positions and one Postdoc Position in the Cognitive Systems and Information Processing Group
Project: 'Towards a Unifying Model for Linguistic, Musical and Visual Processing'
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, Universiteit van Amsterdam

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam is searching for highly motivated candidates for two fully funded four-year PhD positions and one two-year Postdoc position, in the following research areas:

• Postdoc position in linguistic processing
• PhD position in musical processing
• PhD position in visual processing

Deadline for applications: July 28, 2001.
For more information, see the original notice at http://www.illc.uva.nl/NewsandEvents/openpos-27jun2001.html.

Fulltime Lecturer Position available in the Logic and Cognitive Science Group
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, Universiteit van Amsterdam

The `Logic and Cognitive Science' group of the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation seeks to employ a fulltime lecturer. The `Logic and Cognitive Science' group teaches courses, both introductory and advanced, in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence, and participates in the international Master's programmes `Master of Logic' and `Master of Logic, Language and Argumentation'. The group's research is concerned with cognitive processing, in particular perception, natural language processing and reasoning, and involves logic, linguistics, psychology and artificial intelligence.

Deadline for applications: August 31st, 2001.
For more information, see http://www.illc.uva.nl/NewsandEvents/openpos-9jul2001.html.

Fulltime Assistant Professorship available in the Computational and Applied Logic Group
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, Universiteit van Amsterdam

The `Computational and Applied Logic' group of the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation seeks to employ a fulltime assistant professor. The group's research interests range from automated reasoning, constraint programming, satisfability checking, and formal verification to digital libraries, information retrieval, computational semantics, and knowledge engineering. The group is strongly internationally oriented, and currently consists of 15 people; it is expected to grow substantially over the next year.

Deadline for applications: August 31, 2001.
For more information, please visit http://www.illc.uva.nl/NewsandEvents/openpos-12jul2001.html.

The Computational and Applied Logic Group at the University of Amsterdam is searching for a highly qualified candidate with a PhD in computer science or mathematics for a postdoc position in the following research area:

• computational logic, with an emphasis on both theoretical research on description logics as well as implementation and evaluation of automated reasoning systems for description logics.

The full text of this announcement can be found at here. Applicants should submit an application letter together with a full resume including a list of publications, a statement of research interests, and the names and email addresses of at least three references to Maarten de Rijke at mdr at science.uva.nl by October 22, 2001.

Within the section Logic and Computer Science of the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation of the University of Amsterdam two 4-year Ph.D. research positions are available in a project on imperfect information games recently granted by the Dutch National Science foundation NWO.

The full text of this announcement can be found at here. Applications, should be sent before November 5th. For more information and applications please contact Peter van Emde Boas (peter at science.uva.nl) or Johan van Benthem (johan at science.uva.nl). A project description is available upon request.

EU-fellowship to Japan for Community researchers

The EU grants 24 month bursaries to carry out research in Japan in any of the natural or exact sciences. The bursary will also include intensive Japanese language training"

Objective and Approach:
The objective is to enable young researchers and engineers from the Community (and Associated States) to participate in high-level industrial research in public and private laboratories in Japan. The approach is to grant bursaries for a period of 24 months to carry out research in any of the natural or exact sciences. The bursary will also include intensive Japanese language training. Applications from female scientists will be encouraged.

Deliverables:
Increased level of participation of young European researchers in Japanese industrial research activities, leading to the construction and strengthening of links between that country and the Community.

Specific criteria:
Eligibility criteria: candidates should be nationals of, and established in, an EU member state or a state associated to the 5th Framework Programme and not be more than 32 years of age.

Selection criteria:
The selection will be made based on the relevance of the subjects to Community RTD policy, the industrial interest of the projects and the experience and professional training of the candidates.

Dates:
De eerst volgende deadline is 1 maart 2001. Start van de fellowship is dan (vermoedelijk) rond september 2001. Binnen het 5e kaderprogramma is er dan nog 1 volgende deadline, namelijk 1 maart 2002 (met dan weer een start rond 2002).
Let op: Op de sluitingsdatum moet het voorstel uiterlijk om 17.00 uur in Brussel zijn, ongeacht de manier van verzenden of bezorging. De poststempeldatum is niet meer relevant!

De oproep, Werkprogramma, de Guide for Proposers deel I en II en andere documenten die u nodig hebt voor het voorbereiden en schrijven van een voorstel kunt u downloaden van http://www.cordis.lu/inco2/calls/199907.htm. Voor advies en verdere informatie kunt U zich wenden tot Liaison & Contracten i.o., Carolien Zijderveld, Tel. 6931/2092

Open Position for UD Artificial Intelligence at the VU
The Faculty of Exact Sciences of the VU (Amsterdam) is looking for an UD Artificial Intelligence (v/m) for the Department of Artificial Intelligence, for a two year period. Applications should be submitted before June 21. For more information, see the original vacature text (in dutch).

Under the auspices of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the German overnment's Program for Investment in the Future and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the University of Leipzig invites applications for ten post-doctoral fellowships of between one and three years in the period April 2002-March 2005. Fellows will be required to be resident in Leipzig. They will work on a highly innovative interdisciplinary project in formal ontology involving philosophers, computer scientists and medical information scientists. The work of the project will be carried out in English.

Please send a CV, three letters of reference, and a writing sample giving evidence of strong formal skills to the director of the project: Barry Smith, Department of Philosophy, 135 Park Hall, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150. The deadline for applications for fellowships beginning in 2002 is December 15, 2001. Further information is available at: http://www.ontology.uni-leipzig.de.

PhD and postdoc positions are available in the area of formal methods for object-oriented languages, at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
The emphasis lies on using proof tools (esp. PVS) for Java(Card) program verification.

More information can be found at: http://www.cs.kun.nl/~bart/LOOP/vacancies/.

There are open positions at the OMEGA Group of the AG Siekmann Department of Computer Science, Saarland University & German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Saarbrücken, Germany.

The full text of this announcement can be found at here. For more information, see http://www.ags.uni-sb.de/~chris/jobs/job.html.

Applications can be submitted for Visiting research fellowships of the University of Edinburgh for fellowships of between two and six months, tenable in the period May 2001-September 2003.

For more information, contact Peter Blok at pblok at science.uva.nl.

The university has appointed Michiel van Lambalgen and Frank Veltman as full professor in the field of Philosophical Logic and Cognitive Science, in the faculty of humanities. They will together occupy the chair formerly held bij Hans Rott. Congratulations to both!

Harry Buhrman has been appointed full professor Algorithmics and Complexity Theory, in particular of physical systems. His speciality is Quantum Computing. The size of the appointment is 0.2 fte; he will stay at CWI for 0.8 fte.

Jaap Maat (leerstoelgroep Taalfilosofie) has been granted an NWO postdoc position for research into Leibniz's opinions on formal and natural languages.

Carlos Areces and Maarten Stol have joined us on January 1, 2001.
As most of you know, Carlos defended his PhD thesis here at ILLC in October last year. Maarten studied artificial intelligence at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. You can read a few paragraphs he has written to introduce himself.

Both Carlos and Maarten will be working on the NWO funded project Simulation and Testing for Feature Interaction (STeFI) for 2 and 4 years, respectively. For the time being their office is 322 at Plantage Muidergracht 24.

Prof. dr. Felix Costa from the Instituto Superior Tecnico (Lisbon, Portugal) is a guest of Peter van Emde Boas this week (February 21-25, 2001). He will meet with several people in our institute.

Drs Gertjan van der Hoeven has joined us on February 1st, 2001.
After completing his undergaduate studies in mathematics here in Amsterdam, Gertjan worked in industry as a programmer and consultant. He is returning to academia to work as a programmer on the NWO funded project Simulation and Testing for Feature Interaction (STeFI). His office is room 328 in the Euclides building, Plantage Muidergracht 24.

1 March 2001, Mr. Joop Niekus, Leraar-in-Onderzoek (Teacher in Research) program of NWO

Starting March 1, Mr. Joop Niekus will be working at the ILLC. He will be conducting research here during two years for 1 day a week in the Leraar-in-Onderzoek (Teacher in Research) program of NWO. His subject is Brouwer's Choice Sequences. Joop Niekus finished his master studies (doctoraal) with Troelstra in 1984 and has been a high school teacher since. The contact person at the ILLC for this project is Dick de Jongh. For the time being Mr. Niekus' office will be Plantage-Muidergracht 24, rm. 328.

1 March 2001, Caterina Caracciolo, PhD student

As of March 1 the ILLC crew has been extended with Caterina Caracciolo. She has joined us as a PhD student working on the Logic and Language Links project. Prior to her current position Caterina was affiliated with the University of Pisa and with the Text Mining and Lexical Systems Lab. Synthema s.r.l. Caterina's background is in logic and philosophy. As a student she spent a year in Amsterdam as an exchange student. After graduating she specialized in data mining, with a special interest in text mining issues. Caterina's email is ccaracci@science.uva.nl, and her office is room P.325 in the Euclides Building.

New Professor Pure Mathematics and Foundations of Mathematics

Dick de Jongh has taken over the chair in Pure Mathematics and Foundations of Mathematics from Anne Troelstra. Dick has been member of staff since 1968 and till recently he was associate professor in the same group. He will be project leader in the ILLC project Intensional and Constructive Logic, together with Johan van Benthem. He is also Deputy Scientific Director of ILLC.

Herewith we introduce Menno van Zaanen who is one of our new staff members and will be working in the Innovation-Impulse Project with Rens Bod. Menno's email is mvzaanen at science.uva.nl: his office will be room B-539.

Menno has written a small introduction of himself, which you can read at here. Menno's homepage can be found at http://www.science.uva.nl/~mvzaanen/.

As of November 1, the ILLC crew has been extended with Gabriele Musillo. He has joined us as a PhD student working on the Pionier project "Computing with Meaning." Gabriele's email is musillo at science.uva.nl; his office will be room B.234 in Gebouw B.

We are happy to announce that Mr. Maarten Smakman, student business economics at the UvA, will be working at the ILLC-office during the next few months. Maarten will work in room P 3.29 (tel: 020-5256051), and can be contacted at msmakman at science.uva.nl.

We are very happy to announce that dr. Leen Torenvliet has been appointed associate professor, starting July 1, 2001. Leen has been with de department since February 1st 1983. His research and teaching activities concern Algorithmics and Complexity theory. He is leader of this ILLC-project, and additionally contibutes to ILLC's administration by supervizing the budget for computational equipment. Apart from all that, he is a Dilbert-fan!

Giovanna Corsi (Bologna, Firenze) will be a guest of the ILLC from September to December 2001. She is an authority on quantified modal logic. She will reside at Plantage-Muidergracht 24.

See here for more information.

A number of Stanford Ph.D. students and post-docs will visit ILLC from August 26 through the beginning of September. They would like to meet with ILLC staff and Ph.D. students informally. I have suggested that they arrange this privately by contacting you via email. In addition, there will be a more general meeting where they present work in progress on Monday August 27, at 3 p.m.

For more information, and for any suggestions, please contact Boudewijn de Bruin at debruin at science.uva.nl.

We now have a local mirror of the Stanford Encyclopedi a of Philosophy.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is the first dynamic encyclopedia. In a dynamic encyclopedia, each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field (the authors are given direct electronic access to a copy of their entry). Unlike static reference works which are fixed on the printed page or on CD-ROM and which often become outdated soon after they are published, this reference work is responsive to new research, for it constantly changes with the addition of new entries and the modification of existing entries. (You can, however, cite fixed editions which are made and archived on a quarterly basis.) Moreover, the entries and subsequent updates are refereed by the members of a distinguished Editorial Board before they are put online. Whenever an author uploads a new entry or modifies an existing entry, the new material is stored off-line until it is approved by the Editorial Board member in charge of that entry.

Editor: Edward N. Zalta. Contact person for the local mirror: Maarten de Rijke.

Two documents relevant for `meerjarenplanning 2001-2004' can be found here and here.

ILLC business cards:
In case you wish to obtain ILLC business cards or if you would like to order more of the cards you already received, please send an e-mail to: illc@science.uva.nl.

The FoLLI Outstanding Dissertation Award Committee has revealed the names of the two winners of the year 2000. They are:

• Jelle Gerbrandy, Bisimulation on Planet Kripke, University of Amsterdam
• Khalil Sima'an, Learning Efficient Disambiguation, University of Amsterdam.

ILLC Promotion Steps Information Page Available
The procedure for promotions at the University of Amsterdam is a long and somewhat complicated one, starting years before the actual PhD defense. The ILLC now has a page available at http://www.illc.uva.nl/SupportandInfo/promotion.html which aims to give an overview of the steps involved, and some of the pitfalls to be avoided. The information here is aimed at ILLC promovendi, and covers not only UvA formal procedures, but also ILLC regulations, the process of printing the dissertation, compensations which you are elegible to receive, etcetera, etcetera.

Important Note: this page also contains information about things you should do (or should have done) at the _start_ of your tenure, so please read it even if you are not yet working on preparing your PhD defense.

The following papers by Rohit Parikh and others are available at the ILLC office:

• Language as Social Software - a Contribution from Computer Science to Philosophy (Parikh)
• On the Impossibility of Rational Learning in the Santa Fe Bar Problem (Greenwald, Mishra & Parikh)
• Approximate Belief Revision - A Preliminary Report (Chopra, Parikh & Wassermann)
• Frege's Puzzle and Belief Revision (Parikh)
• Belief Revision - Some old and new results (Parikh)
• Relevance Sensitive Belief Structures (Chopra & Parikh)
• Reasoning about Knowledge (lecture notes) (Parikh)
• Sock Sorting (Parikh, Parida & Pratt)
• Notes on Conditional Semantics (Stalnaker)
• Ignoring Ignorance and Agreeing to Disagree (Samet)
• Belief Revision: An Introduction (Gardenfors)

11 May 2001, Workshop Research and the financial future for PhD students
Target group: Foreign english speaking PhD students
Time: Friday 11 may 2001 from 13.00-16.00 hour
Location: room 2.04, Service & Informatiecentrum, Binnengasthuisstraat 9
Costs: none
Information: sdvtraining@bdu.uva.nl
telefoon: 525 2595
Trainer: Bureau Liaison & Contracten i.o.
Subscription deadline: 17 April 2001

This workshop focuses on the opportunities for finance for present, but also future research. Topics in the workshop are: organization of finance in research, finance opportunities (like fellowships, patent, subsidy), strategy and method for obtaining finance, networking and self employment. The language is English

For more information, consult the webpage of the Career Advice Centre (LAC) at http://www.uva.nl/voorzieningen/lac/training.workshop.html.

18 May 2001, Workshop Octrooi
Target group: UvA promovendi (note: workshop will be in dutch)
Time: Friday 18 may 2001 from 13.00-16.00 hour
Location: room 2.04, Service & Informatiecentrum, Binnengasthuisstraat 9
Costs: none
Information: sdvtraining@bdu.uva.nl
telefoon: 525 2595
Trainer: Bureau Liaison & Contracten i.o.
Subscription deadline: 8 May

Kennis die aan de universiteit gegenereerd wordt, kan naast een wetenschappelijke waarde ook een maatschappelijke waarde vertegenwoordigen. Zo kunnen bijvoorbeeld bedrijven de nieuwe kennis gebruiken om innovaties van hun producten te realiseren. Bij de overdracht van kennis naar zulke bedrijven is het belangrijk dat het eigendom daarvan goed geregeld is met behulp van bijvoorbeeld de auteurswet of door middel van een octrooi. Daarbij zijn een aantal belangrijke beslispunten van belang waarvan de eerste al in het begin van het onderzoekstraject liggen. In deze workshop komen de vele aspecten van bescherming van onderzoeksresultaten aan de orde. In de vorm van een door het Bureau voor de Industriële Eigendom (de Octrooiraad) ontwikkelde management simulatie wordt op een interactieve manier over de voor- en nadelen en eventuele valkuilen van (octrooi-)bescherming gediscussieerd.

For more information, consult the webpage of the Career Advice Centre (LAC) at http://www.uva.nl/voorzieningen/lac/training.workshop.html.

11 July 2001, Workshop 'Universities and the Research Enterprise: Contracts and Negotiations'
Target group: project leaders and senior management of research institutes
Time: Wednesday July 11th, 14:00-18:00
Location: Location: room 2.04, Service & Informatiecentrum (building BG3), Binnengasthuisstraat 9, Amsterdam
Information: graces@bdu.uva.nl
telefoon: 525 2595
Trainer: drs Lotte Jaspers (University of Amsterdam, i.o. Liaison & Contracten) and Richard Tomlin (University of Newcastle, GB/Community of Science Inc., Baltimore, USA)
Subscription deadline: July 2nd (Max. 20 applicants)

Universities are increasingly internationally oriented, and contract activities are more and more an integral part of the university setting. Managing research contracts in an international context puts specific demands on an organization. In this workshop, we analyze the role and function of the university as executor of contract research, and consider the various (contract) relationships which might result, with an eye to related legal notions.

The November issue of the Newsletter of the Association of Symbolic Logic is out. It is available online from the ASL website at http://www.aslonline.org/.

Studio NL (BVN-TV/Wereldomroep) has done a segment on L.E.J. Brouwer, featuring interviews with Johan van Benthem, Dick de Jongh and Dirk van Dalen.

The program can be viewed online as a Realplayer movie. You can also view the Brouwer segment separately as an AVI movie (posted with permission). For more information, see the Studio NL webpage at http://www.bvn.nl/html/studio_nl.html.

Neurowetenschappers, cognitieve psychologen en logici gaan intensief samenwerken in het nieuwe Cognitive Science Center Amsterdam (CSCA).

Het persbericht van 12 oktober 2001 kunt u vinden op http://www.uva.nl/actueel.

10 copies of the following book are available at a discount price of 40 Dutch guilders:

Johan van Benthem
"Language in Action: categories, lambdas, and dynamic logic"
Elsevier Science Publishers Amsterdam, 1991

For information: e-mail to boeken at uvastudent.org or visit the 'Oude Bibliotheek', Nieuwe Achtergracht 170 (Diamantslijperij), and ask for the Weis balie. Opening hours: Monday-Wednesday 12:00-14:00.

For more information, please contact Ans Renkers (tel: 020-5252469, email: a.rekers at bdu.uva.nl) or see http://www.uva.nl/onderzoek/workshops_trainingen.cfm.

Registration: by email to a.rekers at bdu.uva.nl specifying 'Promovendi-media'. For more information, please contact Ans Rekers (tel: 020-5253469, email: a.rekers at bdu.uva.nl) or see http://www.uva.nl/onderzoek/workshops_trainingen.cfm

The course schedule can be found on the GPiL website at http://www.illc.uva.nl/gpil/index.php?contents=courses/trimester2001_1.html .

We have received a copy of the CTAN CD-ROM set from the Dutch TeX Users Group, containing many (freeware and shareware) TeX and LaTeX systems and utilities, for multiple platforms. People interested in borrowing this CD-Rom should contact the ILLC Buro.

This set of 3 CD ROMs is a nearly complete mirror of the "Comprehensive TeX Archive Network" (CTAN). CTAN is a network of several ftp servers containing a collection of TeX software. Here you will find complete TeX systems for various operating systems, macro packages like LaTeX, and utilities and tools around TeX.

The CTAN backbone servers are the ftp servers ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk in UK, ftp://ctan.tug.org in the USA and ftp://ftp.dante.de in Germany. This set of CD ROMs was produced in September 2000 from ftp://ftp.dante.de by DANTE, Deutschsprachige Anwendervereinigung TeX e.V.

As happens every year during the holiday season (15 juli-31 august) the Euclides building and the other buildings of the Roeterseilandcomplex will be closed during the evenings. Closing times are as is normal for fridays.