In this international collection of papers there is a wealth of knowledge on artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive science (CS) techniques applied to the problem of providing help systems mainly for the UNIX operating system. The research described here involves the representation of technical computer concepts, but also the representation of how users conceptualise such concepts. The collection looks at computational models and systems such as UC, Yucca, and OSCON programmed in languages such as Lisp, Prolog, OPS-5, and C which have been developed to provide UNIX help. These systems range from being menu-based to ones with natural language interfaces, some providing active help, intervening when they believe the user to have misconceptions, and some based on empirical studies of what users actually do while using UNIX. Further papers investigate planning and knowledge representation where the focus is on discovering what the user wants to do, and figuring out a way to do it, as well as representing the knowledge needed to do so. There is a significant focus on natural language dialogue where consultation systems can become active, incorporating user modfelling, natural language generation and plan recognition, modelling metaphors, and users' mistaken beliefs. Much can be learned from seeing how AI and CS techniques can be investigated in depth while being applied to a real test-bed domain such as help on UNIX.

Access Versus Ownership to Word Formation in Language and Computation

This volume contains the papers selected for presentation at the 14th International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, ISMIS 2003, held in Maebashi City, Japan, 28–31 October, 2003. The symposium was organized by the Maebashi Institute of Technology in co-operation with the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence. It was sponsored by the Maebashi Institute of Technology, Maebashi Convention Bureau, Maebashi City Government, Gunma Prefecture Government, US AFOSR/AOARD, the Web Intelligence Consortium (Japan), Gunma Information Service Industry Association, and Ryomo Systems Co., Ltd. ISMIS is a conference series that was started in 1986 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Since then it has been held in Charlotte (North Carolina), Knoxville (Tennessee), Turin (Italy), Trondheim (Norway), Warsaw (Poland), Zakopane (Poland), and Lyon (France). The program committee selected the following major areas for ISMIS 2003: active media human-computer interaction, autonomic and evolutionary computation, intelligent agent technology, intelligent information retrieval, intelligent information systems, knowledge representation and integration, knowledge discovery and data mining, logic for artificial intelligence, soft computing, and Web intelligence.

User modeling researchers look for ways of enabling interactive software systems to adapt to their users-by constructing, maintaining, and exploiting user models, which are representations of properties of individual users. User modeling has been found to enhance the effectiveness and/or usability of software systems in a wide variety of situations. Techniques for user modeling have been developed and evaluated by researchers in a number of fields, including artificial intelligence, education, psychology, linguistics, human-computer interaction, and information science. The biennial series of International Conferences on User Modeling provides a forum in which academic and industrial researchers from all of these fields can exchange their complementary insights on user modeling issues. The published proceedings of these conferences represent a major source of information about developments in this area.