CiE Newsletter No.28, February 17, 2010: ___________________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS: 1. Call for papers: special Issue of Studia Logica on Logic and Natural Language 2. THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MEMBRANE COMPUTING 3. CCA 2010 second call for papers 4. The 5th Conference on Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication, and Cryptography - TQC 2010 5. 26th British Colloquium for Theoretical Computer Science (BCTCS) 6. 5th International Computer Science Symposium in Russia, June 16-20, 2010, Kazan, Russia 7. 7th workshop on QUANTUM PHYSICS AND LOGIC (QPL) 8. EmergeNET 4: Engineering Emergence - Call for participation =========================================================================== =========================================================================== 1. (from Ian Pratt-Hartmann) Call for papers: special Issue of Studia Logica on Logic and Natural Language: Call for papers: special Issue of Studia Logica on Logic and Natural Language Perhaps the most fundamental characteristic of the twentieth century revolution in mathematical logic is the central role assumed by formal, rather than natural, languages. For the founding fathers of the new logic, natural language was a barrier to progress---one to be swept aside by the new, logically perspicuous syntax of the Predicate Calculus. This dissociation of formal logic from natural language was subsequently compounded by the rise of theoretical linguistics, which---notwithstanding its early stress on the relationship between grammar formalisms and models of computation---developed in relative isolation from mathematical logic. Only towards the end of the twentieth century did work on the relationship between natural and formal languages begin to gather pace. Two convergent trends can be discerned. The first is a growing realization that the characteristics of natural languages that most clearly differentiate them from formal languages---oddly restricted expressive power, redundancy, vagueness, ambiguity---are themselves worthy objects of logical study. The second is an ever livelier interest among formal linguists in logical aspects of grammar---a development which is itself a manifestation of the deepening relationship between logic and the theory of computation. Today, researchers in Logic, Linguistics, Philosophy and Computer Science face a constellation of questions on the relationship between natural language and logic. What logical resources are required to articulate formal grammars of various sorts? What formal systems best account for the logical relations between sentences in natural language? What light can formalization of natural language shed on the difficulty of language-processing tasks? How does the treatment of quantification (time, modality) in natural and formal languages differ? Studia Logica invites contributions to a special issue on "Logic and Natural Language", edited by Nissim Francez (Technion, Haifa) and Ian Pratt-Hartmann (University of Manchester). It is envisaged that the issue will comprise papers in two broad areas: (i) the use of logical techniques in the presentation and analysis of grammar formalisms; (ii) investigation of the logical characteristics (expressiveness, complexity, proof-theory) of natural language. We specifically, though not exclusively, invite submissions on the following topics: - Logical analyses of NL syntax and semantics (e.g. model-theoretic syntax, type-logical grammars, abstract categorial grammars) - The connection between NL, substructural logics and higher-order logics - Type-theory and NL - Logics for non-indicative sentences (questions, commands, ...) - Dynamic logics for discourse - Logics of plurality (plural predication, plural quantification) - Logics of ambiguity - Modal, temporal and spatial logics in NL - Complexity-and proof-theoretic analysis of fragments of NLs - Logics capturing valid NL arguments ("natural logics"), - Criticism of traditional mathematical logic based on arguments originating from NL - Modern formalization of Classical and Mediaeval logics. Submitted papers should not exceed 25 pages (including bibliography), formatted according to the Studia Logica LaTeX style (for detailed instructions, see http://www.studialogica.org/), and should be accompanied by a title page containing the following information: paper title, authors' names, email address and telephone number of the contact author, a short abstract and up to five keywords. Authors' names should not appear on the paper itself. Only electronic submissions will be accepted. The authors should send an email with subject "Studia Logica Special Issue on Logic and Language" to the issue editors (ipratt@cs.man.ac.uk), with the file of the paper as an attachment. Deadline for submission of manuscripts to the issue editors: 3rd September, 2010. =========================================================================== =========================================================================== 2. (from George Paun) THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MEMBRANE COMPUTING: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Recently appeared THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MEMBRANE COMPUTING, edited by Gheorghe Paun, Grzegorz Rozenberg, Arto Salomaa, Oxford Univ. Press, 2010, 672+xviii pages ISBN 978-0-19-955667-0 More details can be found at http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199556670.do ---------------------------------------------------------------------- =========================================================================== =========================================================================== 3. (from Ning Zhong) CCA 2010 second call for papers: Second Call for Papers CCA 2010 Proceedings Seventh International Conference on Computability and Complexity in Analysis (CCA 2010) will take place in Zhenjiang, China, June 21 - 25, 2010. (http://cca-net.de/cca2010) The CCA 2010 Program Committee cordially invites researchers in the area of computability and complexity theory to submit papers for presentation at the conference. Topics: - Computable analysis - Complexity on real numbers - Constructive analysis - Domain theory and analysis - Theory of representations - Computable numbers, subsets and functions - Randomness and computable measure theory - Models of computability on real numbers - Realizability theory and analysis - Real number algorithms - Implementation of exact real number arithmetic Submissions: Authors are invited to submit a PDF version of an extended abstract (typically 10-12 pages) on the following web page: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cca2010 These extended abstracts need to be prepared with EPTCS style file http://style.eptcs.org/ Proceedings: Accepted papers will be published as CCA 2010 proceedings in Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science (EPTCS). It is planned to publish a special issue in Logical Methods of Computer Science (LMCS) dedicated to CCA 2010 after the conference. Dates: Submission deadline: March 8, 2010 Notification of authors: April 12, 2010 Final version: May 10, 2010 Invited Speakers: Klaus Ambos-Spies (Heidelberg, Germany) Ding-Zhu Du (Dallas, USA) Stefano Galatolo (Pisa, Italy) Hajime Ishihara (Ishikawa, Japan) Ker-I Ko (Beijing, China and Stony Brook, USA) Robert Rettinger (Hagen, Germany) Klaus Weihrauch (Hagen, Germany) Program Committee: Andrej Bauer (Ljubljana, Slovenia) Douglas Bridges (Canterbury, New Zealand) Vasco Brattka (Cape Town, South Africa) Douglas Cenzer (Gainesville, USA) Martín Escardó (Birmingham, UK) Peter Gacs (Boston, USA) Daniel Graca (Faro, Portugal) Vladik Kreinovich (El Paso, USA) Angsheng Li (Beijing, China) Elvira Mayordomo (Zaragoza, Spain) Mathias Schröder (Munich, Germany) Dieter Spreen (Siegen, Germany) Kaile Su (Beijing, China) Hideki Tsuiki (Kyoto, Japan) Xizhong Zheng, co-chair (Glenside, USA) Ning Zhong, co-chair (Cincinnati, USA) Martin Ziegler (Darmstadt, Germany) =========================================================================== =========================================================================== 4. (from Viv Kendon) The 5th Conference on Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication, and Cryptography - TQC 2010: ======================================================================= *** Registration now open! *** The 5th Conference on Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication, and Cryptography ---- TQC 2010 ---- ======================================================================= Registration is now open for TQC 2010, which will be held at the University of Leeds from 13th to 15th of April next year. Quantum computation, quantum communication, and quantum cryptography are subfields of quantum information processing, an interdisciplinary field of information science and quantum mechanics. TQC 2010 focuses on theoretical aspects of these subfields. The objective of the conference is to bring together researchers so that they can interact with each other and share problems and recent discoveries. The conference will be held from April 13-15, 2010, at the University of Leeds. It will consist of invited talks, contributed talks, and a poster session. <> Invited Speakers: * Julia Kempe (Tel-Aviv University) * Kae Nemoto (NII, Tokyo) * Frank Verstraete (University of Vienna) * Ronald de Wolf (CWI, Amsterdam) * Anton Zeilinger (University of Vienna) The scope of the conference includes, but is not limited to: * quantum algorithms * models of quantum computation * quantum complexity theory * simulation of quantum systems * quantum cryptography * quantum communication * quantum estimation and measurement * quantum noise * quantum coding theory * fault-tolerant quantum computing * entanglement theory <> Post Proceedings: As has happened for previous TQCs, a post-conference proceedings volume will be published in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science, to which selected speakers (both invited and contributed) will be invited to contribute. <> Program Committee: Dagmar Bruß (Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf) Andrew Childs (University of Waterloo) Matthias Christandl (Ludwig-Maximilians-University) Wim van Dam (University of California, Santa Barbara; Chair) Nilanjana Datta (University of Cambridge) Aram Harrow (University of Bristol) Peter Høyer (University of Calgary) Rahul Jain (National University of Singapore) Elham Kashefi (University of Edinburgh) Debbie Leung (University of Waterloo) Hoi-Kwong Lo (University of Toronto) Juan Pablo Paz (University of Buenos Aires) Francesco Petruccione (University of KwaZulu-Natal) David Poulin (Université de Sherbrooke) Martin Rötteler (NEC, Princeton) Miklos Santha (Université Paris Sud) Simone Severini (University College London; Co-chair) Seiichiro Tani (NTT, Tokyo) Jean-Pierre Tillich (INRIA, Rocquencourt) Pawel Wocjan (University of Central Florida) <> Local (University of Leeds) organising committee: Martin Aulbach (Physics and Astronomy) Dave Bacon (University of Washington; International Advisor) Stephen Bartlett (University of Sydney; International Advisor) Katie Barr (Physics and Astronomy) Stephen Brierley (University of York) Katherine Brown (Physics and Astronomy) Barry Cooper (Maths) Peter Crompton (Maths) Vladimir V. Kisil (Maths) Viv Kendon (Physics and Astronomy; Chair) Neil Lovett (Physics and Astronomy) Stefano Pirandola (University of York, Computer Science) Mike Stannett (University of Sheffield) Rob Wagner (Physics and Astronomy) <> Conference series steering committee: Yasuhito Kawano (NTT, Tokyo, Japan) Michele Mosca (IQC, University of Waterloo, and Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada) Vlakto Vedral (CQC, University of Oxford, UK, and CQT, National University of Singapore) To receive announcements, calls for papers, and reminders of deadlines, subscribe to the mailing list by following this link: http://lists.leeds.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/tqc2010 (You may also use this link to unsubscribe at any time.) To contact the organisers, please send emailto: tqc2010@leeds.ac.uk =========================================================================== =========================================================================== 5. (from BCTCS) 26th British Colloquium for Theoretical Computer Science (BCTCS): We should be grateful if you would pass this message to students and colleagues in your departments. PLEASE NOTE that we advise early registration. If the number of attenders significantly exceeds normal levels, we may have to restrict numbers, owing to hard constraints on accommodation and the Colloquium Dinner venue. 26th British Colloquium for Theoretical Computer Science (BCTCS) 6th to 9th April 2010 University of Edinburgh http://www.bctcs.ac.uk/BCTCS2010/ SCOPE The purpose of the BCTCS is to provide a forum in which researchers in theoretical computer science can meet, present research findings, and discuss developments in the field. It also aims to provide an environment in which PhD students can gain experience in presenting their work, and benefit from contact with established researchers. The conference will consist of invited keynote presentations by distinguished researchers and a number of contributed talks. LOCATION AND SCHEDULE BCTCS 2010 will be held at the University of Edinburgh, in the centre of Edinburgh. Talks will be at the Informatics Forum, and accommodation will be in the Pollock Halls of Residence nearby. Edinburgh is easily accessible by train from most of the U.K., and has air connections to most UK and many European airports. The event will start on Tuesday afternoon and will end with a lunch on Friday. INVITED SPEAKERS BCTCS 2010 will include invited lectures by the following distinguished speakers: * Erik Demaine (MIT) * Johan Håstad (KTH Stockholm) * Gil Kalai (HU Jerusalem) * Kim Guldstrand Larsen (Aalborg) * Catuscia Palamidessi (INRIA / École Polytechnique) * Ulrike Sattler (Manchester) CONTRIBUTED TALKS Participants at the colloquium are encouraged to present a contributed talk. If you wish to present a contributed talk, please give the title when you register for the Colloquium. You will be asked to provide an abstract, using a provided LaTeX template, at a later stage. The abstracts of accepted contributed talks will be published in the Bulletin of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science. STUDENT GRANTS The BCTCS steering committee has obtained ongoing funding to support the participation of up to 45 graduate students at BCTCS. The grants cover registration including accomodation and meals, but not travel. Those enrolled as Ph.D. students may apply for these grants on the registration form. REGISTRATION The registration fee is £275, which includes all accommodation and meals. Registration is via the Colloquium website. Registration closes on 2 MARCH 2010, or when numbers reach capacity. ORGANISATION AND FURTHER INFORMATION The conference is being organised by Julian Bradfield and Mary Cryan of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. More information about the meeting including updates are available from the conference webpages at: http://www.bctcs.ac.uk/BCTCS2010/ We hope to see you there! -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. =========================================================================== =========================================================================== 6. (from Edward Hirsch) 5th International Computer Science Symposium in Russia, June 16-20, 2010, Kazan, Russia: CALL FOR PARTICIPATION - CSR 2010 5th International Computer Science Symposium in Russia June 16-20, 2010, Kazan, Russia Organized by Institute of Informatics of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, and Kazan State University http://csr2010.antat.ru/ *** WE STRONGLY ADVICE TO REGISTER BEFORE MARCH 1 *** CSR 2010 is the fifth conference in the series of regular events spanning all areas of computer science. This year it is mainly focused on its theoretical aspects. The program of CSR 2010 consists of 30 contributed papers, an opening lecture by Alexander Razborov (University of Chicago and Steklov Mathematical Institute) and 8 invited lectures by Susanne Albers (Humboldt-Universität, Germany) Fedor Fomin (University of Bergen, Norway) Juraj Hromkovic (Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland) Richard Jozsa (University of Bristol and University of Cambridge) Prabhakar Raghavan (Yahoo! Labs and Stanford University) Miklos Santha (Université Paris Sud and National University of Singapore) Uwe Schöning (Universität Ulm, Germany). The list of accepted papers can be found at the conference web site. The preliminary program is coming soon. Two workshops in Kazan and one in Moscow are organized in conjunction with CSR-2010. Pre-conference Workshop on Program Semantics, Specification and Verification: Theory and Applications (PSSV 2010) in Kazan will be held on June 14-15. Post-conference Workshop on High Productivity Computations (HPC 2010) in Kazan will be held on June 21-22. It is intended to organize the discussions about high productivity computing means and models, including but not limited to high performance and quantum information processing. Note also that Franco-Russian Workshop "Complexity in algorithms, dynamics and bioinformatics" is organized in Moscow on June 13-15; one may find it convenient to attend before CSR-2010: http://www.mccme.ru/~anromash/workshop/fr-alg-workshop.html Regarding this one, please contact its organizers directly. The main accomodation site is the hotel "Korston" which offers conference discounts to participants (the number of rooms is limited, accomodation requests will be considered on a first-come-first-served basis). The early registration fee of 300 euros (150 euros for students) should be paid before March 1, 2010 via bank transfer. The late registration fee is 390 euros (240 euros for students). Participants registered after May 13 will be required to pay upon arrival. There are also reduced fees for participants working in Russia. To register for participation, please fill in the form at http://csr2010.antat.ru/CSR2010RegistrationForm.pdf and send it to info(at)antat.ru. If you plan to participate and need a *Russian visa*, please contact the organizers before March 1 since it takes more than a month just to issue the official invitation. Symposium chair: Farid Ablayev (Kazan State University). Further information and contacts: Web: http://csr2010.antat.ru/ Email: csr2010.kazan(at)gmail.com =========================================================================== =========================================================================== 7. (from Bob Coecke) 7th workshop on QUANTUM PHYSICS AND LOGIC (QPL): 7th workshop on QUANTUM PHYSICS AND LOGIC (QPL) Oxford University, May 29-30, 2010. http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/people/Bob.Coecke/QPL_10.html The workshop succeeds a Spring School marking the end of the EU FP6 STREP QICS on Foundational Structures in Quantum Computation and Information, Oxford University, May 24-28, 2010. http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/people/Bob.Coecke/QICS_School.html Invited Speakers at QPL: Antonio Acin (Barcelona; TBC) John Baez (UCR & Singapore) Louis Crane (Kansas State) QPL Organizers: Bob Coecke (co-chair) Prakash Panangaden (co-chair) Peter Selinger (co-chair) QPL Program Committee: Howard Barnum (Los Alamos) Dan Browne (UCL - London) Bob Coecke (Oxford) Andreas Doering (Oxford) John Harding (NMSU) Viv Kendon (Leeds) Keye Martin (NRL - Washington) Prakash Panangaden (McGill) Simon Perdrix (Grenoble) Peter Selinger (Dalhousie) Alex Wilce (Susquehanna) Deadlines: March 28: Submission April 13: Notification of authors May 16: Corrected papers due Description: This event has as its goal to bring together researchers working on mathematical foundations of quantum physics, quantum computing and spatio-temporal causal structures, and in particular those that use logical tools, ordered algebraic and category-theoretic structures, formal languages, semantical methods and other computer science methods for the study physical behaviour in general. Over the past couple of years there has been a growing activity in these foundational approaches together with a renewed interest in the foundations of quantum theory, which complement the more mainstream research in quantum computation. A predecessor of this event, with the same acronym, called Quantum Programming Languages, was held in Ottawa (2003), Turku (2004), Chicago (2005) and Oxford (2006). The first QPL under the new name Quantum Physics and Logic was held in Reykjavik (2008) and the second in Oxford (2009); with the change of name and a new program committee we emphasise the intended much broader scope of this event, aiming to nourish interaction between modern computer science logic, quantum computation and information, models of spatio-temporal causality, and quantum foundations. Submission: Prospective speakers are invited to submit a 2-5 pages abstract which provides sufficient evidence of results of genuine interest and provides sufficient detail to allows the program committee to assess the merits of the work. Submissions of works in progress are encouraged but must be more substantial than a research proposal. We both encourage submissions of original research as well as research submitted elsewhere. Submissions should be in Postscript or PDF format and should be sent to Bob Coecke by March 28, with as subject line QPL Submission. Receipt of all submissions will be acknowledged by return email. Extended versions of accepted original research contributions will be published as a special issue of a jounal - we are currently still exploring the options. =========================================================================== =========================================================================== 8. (from Paul Andrews) EmergeNET 4: Engineering Emergence - Call for participation: We would like to bring to your attention this call for workshop participation for EmergeNET4: Engineering Emergence that you may have missed. We are continuing to accept 1 page abstracts until the end of Friday 19th February if you or any of your colleagues would like to submit. ==================== EmergeNET 4: Engineering Emergence Call for participation St William's College, York, UK Mon 19 - Tues 20 April 2010 The EmergeNET network promotes interest in complex systems and emergence by bringing together established researchers, those new to the area, and the public. EmergeNET4 is the fourth workshop in the network series. EmergeNET4: Engineering Emergence, aims to provide a forum for discussing all aspects of the engineering of emergence in complex systems. Complex systems are characterised by low-level components that communicate and interact with and within an environment, resulting in the emergence of high-level system behaviours. Complex systems are often designed to help understand emergence or to exploit emergent behaviours to help solve problems in the real world. Emergent behaviours are by definition a function of the system rather than any individual component, which makes the engineering of these behaviours a non-trivial activity. Engineering of emergence covers, amongst other aspects, abstract modelling (in diagrams or mathematics), simulation in hardware or software, verification and validation, and engineering tools, techniques and workflows. This two-day workshop at York will be a combination of keynote speakers, oral presentations, posters sessions, and discussion sessions to explore in depth the ideas of Engineering Emergence. Keynote Speakers: Rene Doursat, Director of the Complex Systems Institute, Paris (ISC-PIF) and researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Russell J. Abbott, Department of Computer Science, California State University, Los Angeles. To propose a presentation or a poster, please submit a 1 page abstract, to emergenet-4@cs.york.ac.uk Submission: 19 Feb 2010 Notification: 28 Feb 2010 Presenters will later be invited to submit a technical paper, that will be peer reviewed, for a postproceedings special issue of the journal Natural Computing. Find out more about EmergeNET at www.emergenet.org =========================================================================== =========================================================================== Items for the next CiE Newsletter should be sent in plain text to s.b.cooper@leeds.ac.uk to arrive by March 1st, 2010 ___________________________________________________________________________ ASSOCIATION COMPUTABILITY IN EUROPE http://www.computability.org.uk CiE Conference Series http://www.illc.uva.nl/CiE CiE 2010 http://www.cie2010.uac.pt/ CiE Membership Application Form http://www.cs.swan.ac.uk/acie ALAN TURING YEAR http://www.turingcentenary.eu/ ___________________________________________________________________________