You are here: SRA > Local Seminars > 2002 (first half)

The seminars usually take place on Thursdays at 11:00am in the SRA Seminars room (Sala Riunioni, room 127, Edificio Est, seminterrato).

Jump ahead to one of the following dates for details:

January 3 January 10[!] [!]January 16 January 17 January 24[!] January 31 February 7[!] February 14 February 21 February 28

March 7[DT] [!] March 11 March 14 March 21 March 28 April 4 April 11 April 18 April 25

May 2 May 9 [!]May 16 May 23 May 30 June 6[DT] June 13[!] June 20 June 27[DIT]

Important: [!] before the link means that the day of the seminar is not Thursday. [!] after the link means that one among the location (room) or the time is not as expected. Combinations are possible! Please check details with care. [DT] means "Double Talk", click here for details. [DIT] marks the seminars organized in collaboration with the Department of Information and Communication Technology of the University of Trento, click here for details.

• January 3, 2002
  No meeting.

• January 10, 2002; 11:00 hrs, [!] room 392 (Sala Conferenze IRST)
  Corrado Priami (DIT, Universita` di Trento) will talk about Global Applications: Design Environments and Case Studies.

  Abstract: The talk introduces the main challanges in the design and development of applications composed of many autonomous entities that run on a geographically dispersed network with incomplete information on the executing environment and with potentially high rates of faults and disconnection time. The techniques adopted to cope with this complexity will be discussed and a way to hide the formal details to users will also be taken into account. Some examples of these applications will be illustrated both in the field of computer science and biomolecular processes.

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://www.science.unitn.it/~priami/

• [!] January 16, 2002; 11:00 hrs, [!] room 392 (Sala Conferenze IRST)
  Marco Annaratone (Net-Partners) will talk about Il Venture Capital.

  Abstract:Vengono presentati in modo informale le tematiche del venture capital, i suoi obiettivi, le tipiche strutture organizzative. Il processo che porta alla decisione di investimento e la relazione con la societa' in cui si e' investito vengono discussi presentando alcuni casi concreti. Le considerazioni vengono fatte con particolare attenzione al mondo della information technology e all'interno di una logica di investimento in societa' ad alto contenuto tecnologico.

• January 17, 2002
  No seminar.

• January 24, 2002; 11:00 hrs, [!] room 392 (Sala Conferenze IRST)
  Matteo Villa (TXT Italia) will talk about L' approccio di TXT al Knowledge Management.

  Abstract: Dal 1989 TXT e-solutions ha sviluppato soluzioni software complete che rispondono alle esigenze di un ampia gamma di imprese. I nostri prodotti sono suddivisi in tre principali aree: Supply Chain & Customer Management, online Content Management, Testing & Monitoring. Con 12 anni di esperienza nella ricerca e sviluppo e una forte presenza internazionale TXT partecipa a molti progetti aziendali e internazionali di ricerca. Le finalita` principali di queste iniziative sono rappresentate dal continuo aggiornamento dell'offerta ai clienti, lo sviluppo di nuovi prodotti e la creazione di nuove competenze tecnologiche. La presentazione, tenuta dal dott. Matteo Villa (Project Manager) in particolare tocchera` i seguenti aspetti: - Presentazione azienda TXT; - Knowledge Management in TXT: progetti esterni (progetti di KM aziendali e di ricerca passati e presenti); - KM all'interno di TXT (portale aziendale, problematiche di KM dovute alla crescita dell'azienda).

• January 31, 2002
  No seminar.

• February 7, 2002; 11:00 hrs, [!] room 392 (Sala Conferenze IRST)
  Giuliano Armano (DIEE, Universita` di Cagliari) will talk about The Guarded-Experts Framework.

  Abstract: In this seminar, a novel framework for soft computing -i.e., guarded experts- is presented. It entails utilizing a population of experts, each embodying two components: a guard and a local classifier (or a predictor, depending on the application task). The latter is devoted to perform classification (or prediction) on the subset of inputs acknowledged by the former. Given a population of guarded experts, suitable mechanisms for performing experts selection, fitness updating, and outputs blending must be defined and adopted, according to the generic constraints imposed by online systems (i.e., learning systems, in the reinforcement learning terminology). In this way, the proposed framework can be suitably specialized into actual systems. Experiments have been performed on financial time series forecasting by utilizing a population of hybrid, genetic-neural, experts. In fact, guards are implemented by XCS classifiers, whereas local predictors are implemented by artificial neural networks. Information retrieved from technical analysis is supplied as input to guards, whereas past stock market prices -together with other relevant data- are used as input to predictors. The resulting system has been tested on several stock market indexes (i.e., S&P500, NASDAQ, and COMIT), also taking into account trading commissions. The results point to the good forecasting capability of the proposed approach, which allowed outperforming the buy-and-hold strategy, as well as predictions obtained using locally-recurrent artificial neural networks.

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://www.diee.unica.it/~armano/

• February 14, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Fausto Giunchiglia (DIT, Universita` di Trento and ITC-IRST) will talk about The local relational model (or: how to apply the local model semantics to the formalization of P2P DB integration).

  Abstract: In this talk I'll provide the intuitions underlying the use of context-related ideas to the formalization of the integration of DB's in a P2P Environment. The formalization is based on an evolution of Giunchiglia and Ghidini's Local models semantics (AIJ 2001). The talk will concentrate on intuitions rather than on formalities.

  [Joint work with: Luciano Serafini, John Mylopolous, Phil Bernstein.]

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://dit.unitn.it/~fausto/

• February 21, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Luciano Serafini (ITC-IRST) will talk about Distributed Description Logics: First results - Part 1.

  Abstract: Information integration has been and remains one of the major challenges of information processing. Description logics can capture the content of information sources as well as their inter-connections, and have been shown to provide useful tools to support integration. We illustrate the need for a more refined approach in those cases where the original sources form a loosely federated information system, with each one wishing to maintain its own independent view of the world. We formalize this using the notion of Distributed Description Logics, and provide some initial results which explore their properties.

  [Joint work with: Alexander Borgida.]

  RELEVANT PAPERS:

  "Distributed First Order Logics," by C. Ghidini and L. Serafini; http://sra.itc.it/people/serafini/distribution/frocos-98.ps.gz

  "The Local Relational Model: Model and Proof Theory," by L. Serafini, F. Giunchiglia, J. Mylopoulos, P.A. Bernstein; http://sra.itc.it/people/serafini/distribution/pods-02.pdf

  "Local Model Semantics, or Contextual Reasoning = Locality + Compatibility," by C. Ghidini and F. Giunchiglia; http://sra.itc.it/tr/GG97b.ps.gz

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://sra.itc.it/people/serafini/

• February 28, 2002; [!] 11:30 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Luciano Serafini (ITC-IRST) will talk about Distributed Description Logics: First results - Part 2.

  Abstract: This is Part 2 of the SRA Thursday seminar given on February 21. While Part 1 was dedicated to preliminary concepts and notions, most of them on Description Logics, this second part will enter into the specific framework and the "first results". Anyone with some elementary background in Description Logics can appreciate this seminar, even if not present to the first part.

• March 7, 2002; [!] 11:30 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Anna Perini (ITC-IRST) and Adolfo Villafiorita (ITC-IRST).

  Double Talk Topic: Object Oriented vs. Agent Oriented Methodologies for Analysis and Design.

  PRESENTATION (slides):
  Anna Perini: [Download PPT, 1405K];
  Adolfo Villafiorita: [Download PPT, 203K]

  Anna Perini WEB-PAGE: http://sra.itc.it/people/perini/
  Adolfo Villafiorita WEB-PAGE: http://sra.itc.it/people/adolfo/

• [!] March 11, 2002; [!] 10:00 hrs, [!] room 392 (Sala Conferenze IRST)
  Demetrio Zenti (Universita` di Trento) will present his undergraduate thesis on Un sistema P2P per l'interrogazione di basi di dati distribuite.
  Advisor: Prof. Fausto Giunchiglia. Co-advisor: Dr. Luciano Serafini

  Abstract: Nel campo dell'integrazione delle basi di dati stanno emergendo delle nuove esigenze: autonomia delle basi di dati, decentralizzazione delle informazioni, trasparenza all'utente, e flessibilita' del sistema. Gli approcci esistenti (Global Schema Integration, Federated Database, Multidatabase Language) non sono in grado di soddisfare contemporaneamente queste richieste, per cui risulta necessario cercare la soluzione altrove. Sta comparendo un paradigma nuovo per la condivisione di informazioni, basato su "diritti uguali" per tutti i partecipanti al sistema di condivisione: il Peer-to-Peer (P2P). Poiche' non esiste un sistema analogo nel campo delle basi di dati, questa tesi cerca di costruire un sistema P2P per l'interrogazione di basi di dati distribuite. Sfruttando il Local Relational Model (LRM) e' possibile caratterizzare a livello formale una rete P2P di basi di dati, e dare una definizione di interrogazione globale in un sistema siffatto. In base a questo modello viene determinata un'architettura globale possibile del sistema. Il cuore della tesi e' la caratterizzazione delle corrispondenze tra gli oggetti (attributi e relazioni) dei diversi DB, per arrivare a definire un algoritmo per la traduzione e propagazione delle interrogazioni. Il sistema descritto viene infine testato su tre DB per valutarne i pregi e i limiti.

  NB! By historical tradition dating back to the early 1990s, students may find here useful feedback and guidance to improve their work and presentation skills. All senior researchers are warmly welcome to attend Demetrio's talk. The talk will be given in Italian.

• March 14, 2002
  No seminar. (Presso la Sala Conferenze ITC-IRST viene presentato il Contratto Nazionale della Ricerca 1998-2001, dalle 10.00 alle 12.00).

• March 21, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Paolo Bresciani (ITC-IRST) will talk about A knowledge-based visual query system for biological databases.

  Abstract: An important task faced by bioinformatics is data and scientific knowledge management. This activity involves several aspects, like, for example, storing, extracting, organizing, analyzing, and make data and knowledge assets easily usable and accessible. In particular, the availability of intuitive interfaces that really may help the user represents a necessary condition to gain user's acceptance and confidence in the provided data and knowledge resource. We tried to tackle this problem by means of a first prototypical realization of a knowledge-based flexible tool for query formulation against relational and object-oriented databases. Its most interesting features are based on its capability of reasoning on the semantics of the queries. These features are aimed at improving the interaction between inexpert users and complex databases, thanks to advanced knowledge reasoning algorithms. In particular, it provides a simple, flexible, and intuitive visual interface that allow the user to: - interactively and iteratively build queries, exploring the semantic of database schemas via refinement and generalization of terms; - be prevented from building semantically inconsistent queries; - be gradually introduced only to those part of the conceptual model relevant for the query formulation; - be provided with simple, but effective, features for query refinement and query generalization.
  In the present seminar we will try to demonstrate these concepts by presenting an ongoing prototypical implementation of the system applied to one case of biological databases, the Muscle TRAIT (ref. muscle.cribi.unipd.it) maintained by C.R.I.B.I. (Interdepartmental Research Center of Biotechnology) of Padua University, supported by Telethon Foundation. Future development include the customization of the system for the database of the genoma of Vitis vinifera, as part of the activities of the project "GENOMA VITE", of IASMA.

  [Joint work with: Paolo Fontana (ITC-IRST).]

  PRESENTATION (slides):
  [Download PDF, 2791K]

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://sra.itc.it/people.epl?name=Paolo+Bresciani

• March28, 2002
  No seminar.

• April 4, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Marco Pistore (ITC-IRST) will talk about NuSMV2: an OpenSource tool for symbolic model checking. [Postponed to Thursday May 2, 2002.]

• April 11, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Paolo Traverso (ITC-IRST) will talk about Automated Software cEngineering: 5 Steps towards a Dream. [Postponed. New date to be announced.]

• April 18, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Paolo Busetta (ITC-IRST) will talk about Pervasive agents.

  Abstract: This seminar presents a vision driving current and future research, rather than results of past research. Therefore, it will be very informal and kept at an intuitive level. Pervasive, or ubiquitous, computing is quickly becoming one of the hottest buzzword in both research and engineering. Hardware, driven from the continuous improvement in traditional computing and communication equipment as well as new and astonishing developments in the so-called nanotechnologies, is apparently disappearing from view to be embedded everywhere, from the clothes we wear to any sort of everyday object that sorrounds us. An important part of this picture are some communication technologies, such as powerlines and wireless links, which promise to connect everything with everything else. Integration is the great challenge to be faced in this scenario. The issue is not simply connectivity - i.e. defining the required interfaces - but taking advantage from, and dealing with, a large and continuously changing number of sensors and actuators that come in contact with each other and with humans while they move in an environment. We envision that most devices will be equippend with some sort of ``intelligence'', varying from simple adaptation rules to sophisticated recognition capabilities and goal-driven behaviour, thus they can be called ``agents'' without abusing the latter notion. In this scenario, integration is not by the usual composition of elementary components in a hierarchy, but rather by the formation of estemporary organizations of agents with complementary capabilities. Within the PEACH project, we are building a communication infrastructure whose goal is to tackle some of the problems that arise in the vision outlined above. We will describe the underlying idea, based on group communication and overhearing; we will discuss some of the principles behind the architecture and engineering process being defined; finally, we will present the current state of the project and some expected future developments.

  [Joint work with: Massimo Zancanaro (ITC-IRST).]

  RELEVANT PAPERS:

  "Extending Multi-Agent Cooperation by Overhearing," by P. Busetta, L. Serafini, D. Singh, and F. Zini. IRST Technical Report 0101-01, January 2001 http://sra.itc.it/tr/BSSZ01.ps.gz. Also in: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS 2001), volume 2172 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Trento, Italy, September 2001. Springer Verlag.

  "Channeled Multicast for Group Communications," by Paolo Busetta, Antonia Dona', and Michele Nori. IRST Technical Report 0111-21, November 2001, http://sra.itc.it/tr/BDN01.ps.gz. To appear in: Proceedings of the 1st International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems (AAMAS02), Bologna, Italy, July 15-19, 2002.

  "Dagstuhl Seminar on Ubiquitous Computing." On-line collection of papers and presentations, http://www.inf.ethz.ch/vs/events/dag2001/

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://sra.itc.it/people/busetta/

• April 25, 2002
  No seminar: Festa della Liberazione.

• May 2, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Marco Pistore (ITC-IRST) will talk about NuSMV2: an OpenSource tool for symbolic model checking.

  Abstract: NuSMV is a symbolic model checker originated from the reengineering, reimplementation and extension of SMV, the first BDD-based model checker developed at CMU. The NuSMV project aims at the development of a state-of-the-art symbolic model checker, designed to be applicable in technology transfer projects, well structured, open, flexible and documented. One of the most interesting feature of NuSMV is that it integrates the "classical" BDD-based model checking techniques with model checking techniques based on propositional satisfiability (SAT), that are currently enjoying a substantial success in several industrial fields. Starting from version 2.0 of NuSMV, we are adopting an OpenSource development and license model. NuSMV is distributed under the LGPL license, that allows anyone interested to freely use the tool and to participate in its development. The aim of the NuSMV OpenSource project is to provide to the model checking community a common platform for the research, the implementation, and the comparison of new symbolic model checking techniques. In this seminar, I will present the main features of the NuSMV model checker. Moreover, I will describe our experience in OpenSourcing the development of NuSMV.

  RELEVANT PAPERS AND LINKS:

  Papers in: http://nusmv.irst.itc.it/NuSMV/papers.html;

  Home page NuSMV: http://nusmv.irst.itc.it/.

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://sra.itc.it/people/pistore/

• May 9, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Piergiorgio Bertoli (ITC-IRST) will talk about Solving Power Supply Restoration Problems with Planning via Symbolic Model Checking.

  Abstract: The past few years have seen a flurry of new approaches for planning under uncertainty, but their applicability to real-world problems is yet to be established since they have been tested only on toy benchmark problems. To fill this gap, the challenge of solving power supply restoration problems with existing planning tools has recently been issued. This requires the ability to deal with incompletely specified initial conditions, fault conditions, unpredictable action effects, and partial observability in real-time. This paper reports a first response to this nontrivial challenge, using the approach of planning via symbolic model-checking as implemented in the MBP planner. We show how the problem can be encoded in MBP's input language, and report very promising experimental results on a number of significant test cases.

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://sra.itc.it/people/bertoli/

• [!] May 16, 2002; 11:00 hrs, [!] room 392 (Sala Conferenze IRST)
  Rosella Gennari (ILLC, Universiteit van Amsterdam) will talk about Constraint satisfaction via propagation. [Brought backward to Monday May 13, 2002. Please consult the SRA Seminars page for details on this seminar.]

  RELEVANT PAPERS:

  "General Properties and Termination Conditions for Soft Constraint Propagation," by S. Bistarelli, R. Gennari and F. Rossi; http://staff.science.uva.nl/~rgennari/special.ps Accepted for publication in the special issue of the Constraints Journal (Kluwer) on soft constraints, 2001.

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://staff.science.uva.nl/~rgennari/

• May 23, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Floriano Zini (ITC-IRST) will talk about Economy-Based Optimisation of File Access and Replication on a Data Grid.

  Abstract: We have been working on a system for the optimised access and replication of data on a Data Grid. Our approach is based on the use of an economic model that includes the actors and the resources in the Grid. Optimisation is obtained via interaction of the actors in the model, whose goals are maximising the profits of data resource management. In the system, local optimisation results in global optimisation through emergent marketplace behaviour. This talk gives an overview of our model, describes the auction-based protocol we use to select data replicas, and presents the economic reasoning required to support optimised replication strategies.

  [Joint work with: Mark Carman, Luigi Capozza and Luciano Serafini (ITC-IRST); Kurt Stockinger (CERN, Ginevra).]

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://sra.itc.it/people/zini/

• May 30, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Roberta Cuel (PhD student, Universita` di Udine and DISA, Trento) will talk about Knowledge Nodes: the building blocks of distributed knowledge management. [Postponed. New date to be announced.]

• June 6, 2002
  No double talk: the Forth MRG/SRA Symposium takes place in Levanto on June 5-7.

• June 13, 2002; 11:00 hrs, [!] room 392 (Sala Conferenze IRST)
  Francesco Ricci (ITC-IRST) will talk about Travel Advisory Systems.

  Abstract: There is a continuously growing number of web sites that support a traveler in the selection of a travel destination or service (e.g. flight or hotel). Actually, planning a travel towards a tourism destination is a complex problem solving activity. Therefore, major eCommerce web sites dedicated to travel and tourism have recently started to better cope with leisure travel planning, incorporating recommender systems, i.e. applications that provide advice to users about products they might be interested in. Recommender systems for travel planning try to mimic the interactivity observed in traditional counselling sessions with travel agents. In this talk I'll present a web based recommender system aimed at supporting a user in information filtering and product bundling. The system enables the selection of travel locations, activities and attractions, and supports the bundling of a personalized travel bag. A travel bag is composed in a mixed initiative way: the user poses queries and the recommender exploits an innovative technology that helps the user, when needed, to reformulate the query. Travel bags are stored in a memory of cases, which is exploited for ranking travel items extracted from catalogues. A new 'collaborative' approach is introduced, where user past behaviour similarity is replaced with session (travel bag) similarity.

  PRESENTATION (slides):
  [Download PDF, 2132K]

  RELEVANT PAPERS:

  "Intelligent query managment in a mediator architecture," by Francesco Ricci, Nader Mirzadeh, Adriano Venturini; [PDF, 272K]. To appear in: Proceedings of the 1st IEEE International Symposium "Intelligent Systems", Vladimir Jotsov (ed.), 2002.

  "ITR: a case-based travel advisory system," by F. Ricci, B. Arslan, N. Mirzadeh, A. Venturini; [PDF, 623K] To appear in: Proceedings of 6th European Conference on Case Based Reasoning (ECCBR), S. Craw (ed.), Springer Verlag, 2002.

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://ectrl.itc.it/home/laboratory/people/peopleResult.jsp?lastname=Ricci&username=ricci

• June 20, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room
  Bernardo Magnini (ITC-IRST) will talk about Using Lexical Knowledge Bases for NLP Applications.

  Abstract: In this seminar I will briefly review the use of Lexical Knowledge Bases in Natural Language Processing. I will focus on WordNet, probably the most popular repository of word meanings. I will introduce the basic relations in WordNet and I will give an overview of current attempts aiming at enriching WordNet with new information, including multilingual versions of WordNet. Then, I will report recent approaches that use WordNet to address content-based processing of open-domain text collections. I will mention both successes and drawbacks in Word Sense Disambiguation, Question/Answering, query expansion for Information Retrieval and Conceptual Indexing. Finally, I will talk about the use of WordNet for Meaning Negotiation, a new scenario recently proposed in the context of the Edamok project.

  RELEVANT PAPERS AT:

  http://tcc.itc.it/research/textec/topics/multiwordnet/english/pub-frame.html

  http://tcc.itc.it/research/textec/topics/disambiguation/index.html

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://tcc.itc.it/people/magnini.html

• June 27, 2002; 11:00 hrs, SRA Seminars room [DIT]
  Peter H. Schmitt (Karlsruhe University, Germany) will talk about The KeY Project: Formal Methods in the Software Engineering Process.

  Abstract: Research in the field of Formal Methods, and in particular in the area of program verification by mathematical proofs, has produced surprising progress during the last five years. Practical feasability has been documented by numerous case studies on real world problems. Nevertheless, the use of formal methods is still for the greatest part restricted to academic projects. We believe that one of the main obstacle to wide spread use is the lack of integration into the processes, methods and tools used in everyday software development. The KeY project, a joint effort by the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, and Chalmers University, Goteborg, Sweden, aims at improving this situation. I will start with a short overview of the KeY system and then zoom in on two topics in greater detail: (1) The extension of Dynamic Logic by non-static function symbols and the constructs refering to values before program execution. (2) The translation of UML/OCL specifications into Dynamic Logic. At the end there will be a demo (around 30') on the integration of the techniques in the state-of-the-art UML/SwEng tool Together.

  SPEAKER WEB-PAGE: http://i12www.ira.uka.de/~pschmitt/