We present the Bayesian Echo Chamber, a new Bayesian generative model for social interaction data. By modeling the evolution of people's language usage over time, this model discovers latent influence relationships between them. Unlike previous work on inferring influence, which has primarily focused on simple temporal dynamics evidenced via turn-taking behavior, our model captures more nuanced influence relationships, evidenced via linguistic accommodation patterns in interaction content. The model, which is based on a discrete analog of the multivariate Hawkes process, permits a fully Bayesian inference algorithm. We validate our model's ability to discover latent influence patterns using transcripts of arguments heard by the US Supreme Court and the movie "12 Angry Men." We showcase our model's capabilities by using it to infer latent influence patterns from Federal Open Market Committee meeting transcripts, demonstrating state-of-the-art performance at uncovering social dynamics in group discussions.

Dr. Lucien Mehl, born 1919 in Paris, studied at the University, Paris where he obtained his degrees in Philosophy and Law, and a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Political Economy and at the National School of Administration. He is now'Maitre des Requetesi to the Council of State and Director of external training at the National School of Administration. He is a member of the International Fiscal Association, the International Cybernetics Association and the French Operational Research Society. He has published a number of articles on administrative science, law, cybernetics and operational research. INTRODUCTION I. It may seem an ambitious step to try to apply mechanization or automation to the legal sciences. However, a machine for processing information can be an effective aid in searching for sources of legal information, in developing legal argument, in preparing the decision of the administrator or judge, and finally in checking the coherence of solutions arrived at.

Dr. Francois Paycha, born at Narbonne, studied medicine at the University of Montpellier. His first researches were concerned with the embryology of the eye, later using the distribution of radioactive phosphorus P32 to study the structure of the tissues and for the detection of tumours. He was then appointed to the National Centre of Scientific Research. While in charge of a hospital clinic, he noted the considerable differences in the diagnoses of conscientious and knowledgeable practitioners and those advanced by the hospital. In view of the special need for exact diagnosis in medicine he made a study of the causes of these differences. After theoretical research, he made the first "Medical Memory' in 1953 with the help of Bull and later of I.B.M. He studied the structure of a three-symbol logic which is applicable to medical' problems and in general. After a year in the service of Prof. G. E. Jayle, he abandoned pure research and entered industry. SUMMARY I am going to analyse ...

Biology seems to be a science in its own right, or set of sciences having common aims, and so it should have its own language and explanatory concepts; yet when any specifically biological concept is suggested and used as an explanatory concept it seems to be unsatisfactory and even mystical. There are many biological concepts of this kind: Purpose, Drive, elan vital, Entelechy, Gestalten.* Physicists and engineers seem, on the other hand, to have clearly defined concepts having great power within biology.

If ability to perform complex calculations were a sufficient criterion, then even a conventional digital computor could lay claim to more intelligence than any of usand perhaps we had better let it make away with the word and be done with it.

In either view, typical examples are closer where (only) positive examples ought to exceptional cases, case memory, analogy, to the prototype, and atypical examples and be.

In this short note, we discuss several aspects of "dimensions" and the related construct of "factors". We concentrate on those aspects that are relevant to articles in this special issue, especially those dealing with the analysis of the wild animal cases discussed in Berman and Hafner's 1993 ICAIL article. We review the basic ideas about dimensions, as used in HYPO, and point out differences with factors, as used in subsequent systems like CATO. Our goal is to correct certain misconceptions that have arisen over the years.

In this paper we discuss a hybrid approach combining Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) .

We discuss several aspects of legal arguments, primarily arguments about the meaning of statutes. First, we discuss how the requirements of argument guide the specification and selection of supporting cases and how an existing case base influences argument formation.

We focus on realistic, complex domains where the concepts, terms and predicates used by domain rules or by rule-based models are not well-defined. Often, in such inherently ill-defined domains the rules do not encompass all the situations they are asked or assumed to cover, admit tacit exceptions, or can be contradicted and annulled by other rules. Interpretation is therefore required of the terms and predicates used. The law is a prototypical example of such an area, where terms used in legal statutes are not completely defined by legal regulations. The use of case-based reasoning (CBR) to complement and supplement other types of reasoning involves many computational questions of system architecture and control. The key focus of this work is how and when to interleave CBR with other modes of reasoning in the context of applying a rule or model to a new set of facts in light of a corpus of cases of past application. The goal is to generate an explanation or argument as to how the new fact situation might be interpreted. In particular, we report on a system called CABARET (CAse-BAsed REasoning Tool), a hybrid architecture we have built to study and experiment with these issues.