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January 98

This file is a list of items added to the UMBC agents pages this month and is in maintained chronological order.
1999: July,
1998: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, June, July, Aug,
1997: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, June, July, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec,
1996: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, June, July, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec,
1995: Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec.

PAAM98

PAAM98, the Third International Conference and Exhibition on The Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology will be held Monday 23rd March - Wednesday 25th March 1998, London, UK. Featured tutorials include Dr. Danny Lange on "An overview: Mobile agents and Java", David Martin and Adam Cheyer on "Building and Using Practical Agent Applications", Michael Huhns on "Cooperative Information Systems: Where Agents Meet Databases", and Joerg Mueller on "Intelligent Agents in Information and Process Management Applications". INvited talks will also be given by Michael Huhns, Danny Lange, Mike Lynch, and Jeffrey Rosenschein. 2/12/98

Intelligent User Interfaces 199

IUI99, the 1999 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces will be held at Redondo Beach, Los Angeles, California January 5-8, 1999. The 1999 IUI meeting will have the thematic focus: "Bridging Science and Applications". Motivated by an increasing societal need for interfaces that mitigate application complexity and information overload, it is becoming increasingly important to connect the steady flow of research developments into commercial practice. Accordingly, IUI 99 will emphasize the discovery of new scientific and technological advances and their transition to real world applications. Submitted papers are due July 1, 1998. 2/12/98

FIPA

FIPA held it's most recent quarterly meeting at HP Labs in Palo Alto this past January. The FIPA97 specification was approved and initial work was done on the FIPA98 specification based on the twenty-two responses submitted in response to FIPA's third call for proposals that was issued at the Munich meeting. On analyzing this response in Palo Alto, basic agreement on the scope of specification items has been reached. A number of more specific areas have been identified requiring further work. FIPA therefore invites further proposals for technologies in several categories, including agent management, FIPA ontology service, and human/agent interaction. The proposals are intended to be used in the further development of specifications for component technologies that may be used by application developers. The first draft of the FIPA 98 specification will be produced at the 9th meeting in Osaka in April 1998, the second draft in July 1998 and a final specification approved and issued at its 11th meeting in October 1998. Those intending to submit a proposal(s) should notify their intention to submit a proposal on or before 6 April 1998, and send the proposal in electronic form on or before 13 April 1998. Proponents are invited to attend the meeting on 21-25 April 1998. 2/12/98

Agent-mediated Electronic Commerce

MIT's Agent-mediated Electronic Commerce (AmEC) Initiative investigates how software agent technologies can expedite the electronic commerce revolution. Issues addressed include distributed component-based marketplaces, open and extensible languages and protocols for locating and defining goods and services, merchant differentiation, value-based product comparisons, buying decision aids, negotiation protocols, visualization of marketplace data and activities, and issues of trust, reputation, security, marketing, intermediaries, as well as the socioeconomic implications of next generation agent-mediated electronic commerce systems. 2/12/98

Evaluation of Intelligent Systems

Evaluation of Intelligent Systems (EIS) is an online resource that provides "one-stop shopping" for researchers, managers, system-builders, and users who wish to study the empirical behavior of intelligent systems. it covers: exploratory data analysis; hypothesis testing; modeling; and statistical terminology. EIS will also serves a community-building function through announcements of meetings, publications, funding opportunities, and research projects; an advice column that provides timely responses to specific methodological questions from users; and linksq to external resources such as data repositories, bibliographies, and publications. 2/11/98

Webmate

CMU's WebMate is a personal agent for World-Wide Web browsing and searching. It accompanies you when you travel on the internet and provides you what you want. You can download the Java program and get a paper describing it -- Liren Chen and Katia Sycara, WebMate: a Personal Agent for WWW Browsing and Searching, Autonomous Agents'98. 2/11/98

Integrating GIS and Multi-Agent Modelling Techniques

The Santa Fe Institute will host a workshop on Integrating GIS and Multi-Agent Modelling Techniques on March 20-22, 1998. The workshop will "bring together researchers with a mutual interest in the science and technology of dynamic and multi-agent modelling in the context of spatial data, in order to inform ourselves about the full spectrum of modelling expertise and technology available to us, and, hopefully, to discover ways in which we can collaborate in our modelling efforts to promote general purpose, reusable modelling tools, and to reduce duplication of effort." For more information contact Irene Anne Lee . 2/11/98

RESINA KQML software

CMU is making available its RETSINA Middle Agent Software which uses KQML to support building MAS. "The RETSINA approach relies on well-known agents and some basic interactions with them. It uses middle agents such as, matchmakers and Agent Name Servers. Agents request matchmakers for the names of agents that can provide the required service and use Agent Name Servers to send TCP/IP based messages. The RETSINA Agent Message Communication architecture is totally independent of the RETSINA agent system. The RETSINA Agent Name Server is a set of java programs that allows your software agents to communicate over the internet." 2/11/98

Intel inside Barbie

"Intel is working with Mattel and other toy makers to develop technical standards for creating interactive toys. The toys would hook up to a PC and could be programmed to talk, for instance, by parents or children. This latest move is part of Intel's strategy to expand the use of its microprocessors beyond PCs used strictly for spreadsheets, word processing and Net surfing." Edupage, 8 February 1998 reporting on an article in the NYT 6 Feb 98. There is also an article in Wired online. 2/8/98

NSF's KDI research program

NSF's foundation wide program on Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) is out. NSF expects to fund approximately 60 to 75 standard three year research awards ($1M/year max) with $50 million available for KDI in FY 1998. Letters of intent are due April 1 and full proposals May 8 (electronically!). Proposals are solicited from individuals or groups for research that is inherently multidisciplinary or that, while lying within a single discipline, has clear impact on at least one other discipline. There are three foci for 1998:
  • KNOWLEDGE NETWORKING will focus on attaining new levels of knowledge integration, information flow, and interactivity among people, organizations, and communities.
  • LEARNING AND INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS will emphasize research that advances basic understanding of learning and intelligence in natural and artificial systems and supports the development of tools and environments to test and apply this understanding in real situations.
  • NEW COMPUTATIONAL CHALLENGES will emphasize new computational approaches to frontier science and engineering problems as well as problems involving data intensive computations and simulations.
2/2/98


AgentWeb is maintained at the UMBC Lab for Advanced Information Technology by Tim Finin (finin@umbc.edu).