A general game playing system is one that can accept a formal description of a game and play the game effectively without human intervention. Unlike specialized game players, such as Deep Blue, general game players do not rely on algorithms designed in advance for specific games; and, unlike Deep Blue, they are able to play different kinds of games. In order to promote work in this area, the AAAI is sponsoring an open competition at this summer's Twentieth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. This article is an overview of the technical issues and logistics associated with this summer's competition, as well as the relevance of general game playing to the long range-goals of artificial intelligence.

Today, approximately 10 percent of the world's population is over the age of 60; by 2050 this proportion will have more than doubled. Moreover, the greatest rate of increase is amongst the "oldest old," people aged 85 and over. While many older adults remain healthy and productive, overall this segment of the population is subject to physical and cognitive impairment at higher rates than younger people. This article surveys new technologies that incorporate artificial intelligence techniques to support older adults and help them cope with the changes of aging, in particular with cognitive decline.

The thirteenth AAAI Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition was once again collocated with AAAI-2204, in San Jose, California. As in previous years, the robot events drew competitors from both academia and industry to showcase state-ofthe- art mobile robot software and systems in four organized events.

RoboCup is an international initiative with the main goals of fostering research and education in artificial intelligence and robotics, as well as of promoting science and technology to world citizens. The idea behind RoboCup is to provide a standard problem for which a wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined, as well as being used for project-oriented education, and to organize annual events open to the general public, at which different solutions to the problem are compared. The eighth annual RoboCup -- RoboCup 2004 -- was held in Lisbon, Portugal, from 27 June to 5 July. In this article, a general description of RoboCup 2004 is presented, including summaries concerning teams, participants, distribution into leagues, main research advances, as well as detailed descriptions for each league.

(EDOC 2005). Moscow State University, Russia, King's Email: patrick.hung@uoit.ca In cooperation with the American Association for Artificial Intelligence General Chairs The 19th International FLAIRS Conference (FLAIRS 2006) will be held May 11-13 Philip Chan, Debasis Mitra 2006, in Melbourne Beach, Florida, USA. Coast" (centered around NASA's Kennedy Space Center), and has easy access to Florida Institute of Technology Orlando and the Disney World attractions. Submission of papers for presentation at the conference is now invited.

Not bad in the cash department, The items in this collage were selected (www.newscientist.com). 'In financial News" collection that can be found--complete than humans can track it--in whose Christie's spokeswoman Bendetta Roux When it comes to emerging technologies, aaai.org/aitopics/ Some items sold for well we know what we're afraid of, even Please note that: (1) an excerpt may not beyond what Christie's expected. Others though we may not know why. There is reflect the overall tenor of the item, nor didn't sell at all." no shortage of public debate about genetically contain all of the relevant information; modified crops, nanotechnology and and, (2) all items are offered "as is" and cloning.

Techniques in this symposium series were he calls the "twenty-first century for analyzing terrorist networks (1) AI Technologies for Homeland Security; strategic threat triad," which consists were reported by Alphatech (2) Challenges to Decision of failed states, global terrorism, and and the University of Arizona. Popp noted that and retrieving information for Robots: Verbal Interaction with convergence of these three elements counter intelligence was demonstrated Embodied Agents and Situated Devices; is highly destabilizing and a key by Jim Hendler of the University (5) Knowledge Collection from strategic concern to the national security of Maryland. They also aimed to chart out future from Stanford University, Lawrence For example, systems that are research agenda by identifying specific Livermore Laboratories, SRI International, based on probabilistic or decisiontheoretic interesting issues in various and Syracuse University. Homeland security applications for unable to cope with change by themselves, The recurrent themes from data mining and mobile robots were as neither probability theory the presentations included the following: reported by Alphatech and the University nor decision theory says much about of South Florida, respectively. How do The highlights of the symposium let alone how they should be modified.

Every year four new councilors are Raymond J. Mooney, University of elected to serve three-year terms on Chair: Thomas Roth-Nominating Committee encourages Conference Chair is Bruce Porter, Berghofer (trb at dfki.uni-kl.de), Committee, in turn, will nominate to miss 2006! From Reactive to Anticipatory eight candidates for councilor The calls for papers for both conferences, Cognitive Embodied Systems in the spring. Cochairs: Cristiano recommendations, the committee workshop proposals, student abstracts, Castelfranchi (c.castelfranchi at will actively recruit individuals in intelligent systems demonstrations, istc.cnr.it), Christian Balkenius order to provide a balanced slate of and the robot competition will (Christian.Balkenius at lucs.

A general game playing system is one that can accept a formal description of a game and play the game effectively without human intervention. Unlike specialized game players, such as Deep Blue, general game players do not rely on algorithms designed in advance for specific games; and, unlike Deep Blue, they are able to play different kinds of games. In order to promote work in this area, the AAAI is sponsoring an open competition at this summer's Twentieth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. This article is an overview of the technical issues and logistics associated with this summer's competition, as well as the relevance of general game playing to the long range-goals of artificial intelligence.

After rigorous evaluation, 150 papers were accepted for oral presentation, and 79 for poster presentation. The analogical and case based reasoning category features 6 papers; auctions and market-based systems features 5 papers, and automated reasoning ... out over the Ocean, the winter State University), Amy Greenwald features 12 papers. Twenty papers sky is brilliant panoply of (Brown University), Marti Hearst will be published in constraint stars and comets, beckoning to (University of California, Berkeley), satisfaction and satisfiability; game adventurers... who seek to divine Sridhar Mahadevan (University of theory and economic models features its mysteries. Machine his year marks the twenty-fifth for Artificial Intelligence pioneer and visionary Jay M. ("Marty") learning, the category with the and the twentieth National Tenenbaum4 who will speak on largest number of papers, has 35, Conference on AI (AAAI-05).1 The "The Future of AI and the Web"; while machine perception has 6.