This study presents a process model of very long-term episodic memory. The process presented is a reconstructive process. The first is used to direct search to appropriate conceptual categories in memory. The other two are used to direct search within the chosen conceptual category. A fourth type of strategy, called executive search strategies, guide search for concepts related to the one targeted for retrieval.

Almost all game tree search procedures used in artificial intelligence are variants on minimaxing. Until recently, it was almost universally believed that searching deeper on the game tree with such procedures would in general yield a better decision. However, recent investigations have revealed the existence of many game trees and evaluation functions which are ‘pathological’ in the sense that searching deeper consistently degrades the decision. This paper extends these investigations in two ways. First, it is shown that whenever the evaluation function satisfies certain properties, pathology will occur on any game tree of high enough constant branching factor.

An extention of the alpha-beta tree pruning strategy to game trees with ‘probability’ nodes, whose values are defined as the (possibly weighted) average of their successors' values, is developed. These ‘*-minimax’ trees pertain to games involving chance but no concealed information. Based upon our search strategy, we formulate and then analyze several algorithms for *-minimax trees. An initial left-to-right depth-first algorithm is developed and shown to reduce the complexity of an exhaustive search strategy by 25–30 percent. An improved algorithm is then formulated to ‘probe’ beneath the chance nodes of ‘regular’ *-minimax trees, where players alternate in making moves with chance events interspersed.

In response to a world in which cancer is a growing global health challenge, there is now a greater need for US Medical Physicists and other Radiation Oncology professionals across institutions to work together and be more globally engaged in the fight against cancer. There are currently many opportunities for Medical Physicists to contribute to alleviating this pressing need, especially in helping enhance access to Medical Physics Education/training and Research Excellence across international boundaries, particularly for low and middle-income countries (LMIC), which suffer from a drastic shortage of accessible knowledge and quality training programs in radiotherapy. Many Medical Physicists aremore » not aware of the range of opportunities that even with small effort could have a high impact. Faculty at the two CAMPEP-accredited Medical Physics Programs in New England: the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Harvard Medical School have developed a growing alliance to increase Access to Medical Physics Education/training and Research Excellence (AMPERE), and facilitate greater active involvement of U.S. Medical Physicists in helping the global fight against cancer and cancer disparities. In this symposium, AMPERE Alliance members and partners from Europe and Africa will present and discuss the growing global cancer challenge, the dearth of knowledge, research, and other barriers to providing life-saving radiotherapy in LMIC, mechanisms for meeting these challenges, the different opportunities for participation by Medical Physicists, including students and residents, and how participation can be facilitated to increase AMPERE for global health.

This book describes a theory of memory representation, organization, and processing for understanding complex narrative texts. The theory is implemented as a computer program called BORIS which reads and answers questions about divorce, legal disputes, personal favors, and the like. The system is unique in attempting to understand stories involving emotions and in being able to deduce adages and morals, in addition to answering fact and event based questions about the narratives it has read. BORIS also manages the interaction of many different knowledge sources such as goals, plans, scripts, physical objects, settings, interpersonal relationships, social roles, emotional reactions, and empathetic responses. The book makes several original technical contributions as well.

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AI Magazine 84:7

We describe a program for verifying that a set of rules in an expert system comprehensively spans the knowledge of a specialized domain. The program has been devised and tested within the context of the ONCOCIN System, a rule-based consultant for clinical oncology. The stylized format of ONCOIN's rule has allowed the automatic detection of a number of common errors as the knowledge base has been developed. This capability suggests a general mechanism for correcting many problems with knowledge base completeness and consistency before they can cause performance errors.

Today, surrounded by so many automatic machines industrial robots, and the R2-D2's of Star wars movies, most people think AI is much more advanced than it is. But still, many "computer experts" don't believe that machines will ever "really think." I think those specialists are too used to explaining that there's nothing inside computers but little electric currents. And there are many other reasons why so many experts still maintain that machines can never be creative, intuitive, or emotional, and will never really think, believe, or understand anything.

We describe a program for verifying that a set of rules in an expert system comprehensively spans the knowledge of a specialized domain. The program has been devised and tested within the context of the ONCOCIN System, a rule-based consultant for clinical oncology. The stylized format of ONCOIN's rule has allowed the automatic detection of a number of common errors as the knowledge base has been developed. This capability suggests a general mechanism for correcting many problems with knowledge base completeness and consistency before they can cause performance errors.