The last few years have seen a surge in interest in the use of techniques from Bayesian decision theory to address problems in AI. Decision theory provides a normative framework for representing and reasoning about decision problems under uncertainty. Within the context of this framework, researchers in uncertainty in the AI community have been developing computational techniques for building rational agents and representations suited to engineering their knowledge bases. This special issue reviews recent research in Bayesian problem-solving techniques. The articles cover the topics of inference in Bayesian networks, decision-theoretic planning, and qualitative decision theory. Here, I provide a brief introduction to Bayesian networks and then cover applications of Bayesian problem-solving techniques, knowledge-based model construction and structured representations, and the learning of graphic probability models.

We describe an application of a dynamic replanning technique in a highly dynamic and complex domain: the military aeromedical evacuation of patients to medical treatment facilities. Doctrinally, patients requiring extended treatment must be evacuated by air to a suitable medical treatment facility. In early 1993, the DoD tasked USTRANSCOM to consolidate the command and control of medical regulation and aeromedical evacuation operations. The ensuing analysis led to TRAC2ES (TRANSCOM regulating and command and control evacuation system), a decision support system for planning and scheduling medical evacuation operations.

TACAIR-SOAR is an intelligent, rule-based system that generates believable humanlike behavior for large-scale, distributed military simulations. The system is capable of executing most of the airborne missions that the U.S. military flies in fixed-wing aircraft. It accomplishes its missions by integrating a wide variety of intelligent capabilities, including real-time hierarchical execution of complex goals and plans, communication and coordination with humans and simulated entities, maintenance of situational awareness, and the ability to accept and respond to new orders while in flight. The system is currentl y deployed at the Oceana Naval Air Station WISSARD (what-if simulation system for advanced research and development) Lab and the Air Force Research Laboratory in Mesa, Arizona.

Turbine engine diagnostics (TED) is a diagnostic expert system to aid the M1 Abrams tank mechanic find-and-fix problems in the AGT-1500 turbine engine. TED was designed to provide the apprentice mechanic with the ability to diagnose and repair the turbine engine like an expert mechanic. Limited fielding began in 1994 to select U.S. Army National Guard units and complete fielding to all M1 Abrams tank maintenance units started in 1997 and will finish by the end of 1998. The development and fielding of the TED program represents the Army's first successful fielded maintenance system in the area of AI.

The National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc., regulation advanced-detection system (ADS) monitors trades and quotations in The Nasdaq Stock Market to identify patterns and practices of behavior of potential regulatory interest. More important, it has greatly expanded surveillance coverage to new areas of the market and to many new types of behavior of regulatory concern. ADS combines detection and discovery components in a single system that supports multiple regulatory domains and shares the same market data. ADS makes use of a variety of AI techniques, including visualization, pattern recognition, and data mining, in support of the activities of regulatory analysis, alert and pattern detection, and knowledge discovery.

We describe an AI system (CTSHIV) that connects the scientific AIDS literature describing specific human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) drug resistances directly to the customized treatment strategy of a specific HIV patient. Rules in the CTSHIV knowledge base encode knowledge about sequence mutations in the HIV genome that have been found to result in drug resistance to the HIV virus. Rules are applied to the actual HIV sequences of the virus strains infecting the specific patient undergoing clinical treatment to infer current drug resistance. A rule-directed search through mutation sequence space identifies nearby drug-resistant mutant strains that might arise.

In conjunction with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's Hall of Champions exhibit, the Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence held a panel discussion entitled "AI Game-Playing Techniques: Are They Useful for Anything Other Than Games?" This article summarizes the panelists' comments about whether ideas and techniques from AI game playing are useful elsewhere and what kinds of game might be suitable as "challenge problems" for future research.

The expert system maintains a stable kiln temperature and has facilitated the standardization of control procedures. American Airlines (Fort Worth, Tex.) consortium representing 60 percent of Irvine Sensors (Costa Mesa, Calif.) has utilized speech-recognition technology all newspapers circulated in the United has received a contract from the U.S. to enhance its automated Kingdom, has developed an intelligent Army Space and Missile Defense Command flight information system, The technology will be used to classified ads. Calif.) has initiated a fingerprintbased to improve its underwriting process. Cooper Tire & Rubber (Findlay, that provides participants with access The company's rule-based paperless Ohio) has implemented a genetic to online banking services. The biometric personal lines processing application algorithm-based system to optimize software matches the fingerprint automates the procedure for evaluating its supply chain.

Tinsley admirably overcomes this obstruction, how Tinsley's sacrifice enables his ultimate defeat, and how vided more than a glimpse of the Tinsley deals with the end of his domination University of Alberta set out to intense process it described. One Jump Ahead was written by the On a sad note, the community He succeeded. Even though One Jump Ahead is human nature. Schaeffer had to unfortunate because the world checkers the human aspects of Schaeffer's journey Finally, Kidder's book, The Soul of a New nearly unbeatable world champion of Schaeffer had to deal with However, One Jump Ahead is We also get to know many of his about and what the consequences of quite different and, in my opinion, friends and rivals, including Asa Long, this success were. We and turns has lessons to be learned was written by an outsider-- one who see these checkers players not just as about human nature.

The conference will be held July 18-22, 1999, at the Omni Rosen Hotel and the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. National Conference on Artificial by two keynote addresses: (1) AAAI is pleased to announce the Intelligence. This award will honor the author(s) of of AI in other organizations (for example, AAAI is happy to announce its sponsorship paper(s) deemed most influential, CRA, ACM, IEEE); or influential of the CHIKids program during chosen from a specific conference service as a government agency contract AAAI-99. The 1999 award will be given to monitor or program director, provides child care for conference the most influential paper(s) from the resulting in positive effects on the attendees' children, first started two First National Conference on Artificial field of AI. Nominees must be current years ago at the SIGCHI-96.