PITCH EXPERT was developed to make expertise available to mill-site engineers to solve pitch problems in kraft pulp mills. These problems have been estimated to cause losses to the Canadian pulp and paper industry in excess of $80 million each year. The design of the system took into account not only the complexity of the process interactions and the need for accuracy and completeness of recommendations but also the ongoing need for training mill personnel and the requirement that the system be maintainable and expandable without the constant involvement of the developers. PITCH EXPERT is now accessible by modem, and the savings achieved through use of the system covered the development costs within six months of release.

This article describes Compaq QUICKSOURCE, an electronic problem-solving and information system for Compaq's line of networked printers. A major goal in designing this system was to empower Compaq's customers with expert system technology, allowing them to solve advanced network printer problems entirely on their own. This process minimizes customer down time; reduces the number of telephone calls to the Compaq Customer-Support Center (resulting in monetary savings); improves customer satisfaction; and, perhaps most importantly, differentiates Compaq printers in the market-place by providing the best and most technologically advanced customer-support facility. This approach also represents a reengineering of Compaq's customer-support strategy and implementation. In its first-generation system, SMART, the objective was to provide expert knowledge to Compaq's help-desk operation to better and more quickly answer customer calls and problems. QUICKSOURCE is a second-generation system in that the customer-support function is put directly in the hands of the consumers (an example of knowledge publishing). As a result, its design presented a number of different and challenging issues. Because the product would be used by a diverse and heterogeneous set of users, a significant amount of human factors research and analysis was performed as part of system design and implementation. The analysis also dictated certain decisions about the organization and design of the expert system component. Since September 1992, Compaq has shipped more than 3000 copies of QUICKSOURCE.

Prairie Virtual Systems Corp. play the resulting changes. Control Ocean Surveillance Center (Chicago, Ill.) has developed a barrier-free Harvest Software Inc. (Sunnyvale, (San Diego, Cal.) is conducting sea trials design virtual reality system Cal.) has integrated a neural networkbased of a multi-beam acoustic signal detection that checks building access. The which helps designers meet the into its Harvest Operator software Navy is evaluating the neural network-based requirements of the American with system. Harvest Operator automates system's ability to operate Disabilities Act, assists in the design the entire process of receiving faxed in real time, and to detect and classify of interiors that are accessible and forms. The neural network adds intelligent acoustic signals.

These original contributions provide a current sampling of AI approaches to problems of with an analysis program for structural biological significance; they are the first to treat the computational needs of concrete design, and design sessions the biology community hand-in-hand with appropriate advances in artificial were performed to demonstrate intelligence. Focusing on novel technologies and approaches, rather than on how redundant analysis could be proven applications, they cover genetic sequence analysis, protein structure representation and prediction, automated data analysis aids, and simulation avoided and examine different of biological systems. A brief introductory primer on molecular biology and aspects of the reasoning and propagation AI gives computer scientists sufficient background to understand much of the strategies provided. Interval biology discussed in the book.

Remember, these are only the winners. It is reducing customers' software (KBS) vendor were touted as a natural fit for AI I think It is interesting to note that other $200,000 in personnel costs; other not. I believe it is more a sign of the AI techniques, beyond traditional benefits include increased product (downsizing) times and the need for representation and reasoning, are sales from higher customer satisfaction increased visibility for the conference. In I saw many good signs at the conference systems. In particular are multiple addition, AT&T reports increases in that applied AI is alive and uses of fuzzy logic, case-based reasoning, the quality of work produced and job healthy.

Parole board date order received three different parole dates. On the changes, probation judgments, and new laws earliest of these parole dates, he would be eligible and sentencing guidelines enacted each year for release from prison to serve the remainder by the state legislature also affect sentence calculations. of his sentence in the community. Finally, Because offenders are often sentenced because of overcrowding in the prison, Doe under multiple laws, these changes can received a safety valve date, which is a fraction create a complex equation for judges and of his time to serve until parole.

The First International Workshop on Rough Sets: State of the Art and Perspectives was held on 2-4 September 1992 in Kiekrz, Poland. To stimulate the discussion, the participation was limited to 40 researchers who are involved in fundamental research in rough set theory and its extensions, logic for approximate reasoning, machine learning, knowledge representation and transfer, and applications of rough set methodology. The workshop focused primarily on applications of the basic idea of the approximate definition of a set and its consequences in other areas of science and engineering. Applications discussed at the workshop included machine learning, medical diagnosis, fault detection, medical image processing, neural net training, database organization, drug research, and digital circuit design.

AAAI News the edge of technology now, but we'll be at the point where we can Terry Weymouth of The University of Michigan was cochair and ringmaster for the performances. Grosz, Gordon conferences carried on with quiet the robots managed to perform this McKay Professor of Computer excitement in Washington in July, reasonably well. Science at Harvard, is the new President, AAAI's Autonomous Mobile Robot The third event proved the hardest, succeeding Patrick Hayes of the Competitions drew a stream of rousing and none of the robots completed the University of Illinois. The of MIT is President-Elect. The two events drew competitors robots were asked to select four "In the last several years," Grosz and spectators.

We have expanded review criteria for the technical program, effectively increasing the number of ways in which a submitted paper can qualify for acceptance. Most importantly, we have revised the review procedure to encourage acceptance of a larger number and broader range of papers, as discussed below.

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) held its 1993 Spring Symposium Series on March 23-25 at Stanford University. This article contains summaries of the eight symposia that were conducted: AI and Creativity, AI and NP-Hard Problems, Building Lexicons for Machine Translation, Case-Based Reasoning and Information Retrieval, Foundations of Automatic Planning, Innovative Applications of Massive Parallelism, Reasoning about Mental States, and Training Issues in Incremental Learning. Technical reports of the symposia AI and Creativity, Building Lexicons for Machine Translation, Case-Based Reasoning and Information Retrieval, Foundations of Automatic Planning, Innovative Applications of Massive Parallelism, Reasoning about Mental States, and Training Issues in Incremental Learning are available from AAAI.