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Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of March 21 to 28, 2006.

  1. Three Research Positions - Foundations of Distributed Computation
  2. Two Master By Research Studentships in Computational Intelligence for Next Generation Web Design
  3. 2006 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on ML
  4. CVS-release309 production-ready?

Three Research Positions - Foundations of Distributed Computation

Archive: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32547

Peter Sewell announced:
We'd be grateful if you could draw this to the attention of any
suitable candidates - OCaml implementation expertise would be
especially welcome.  Thanks,
Peter

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE/RESEARCH ASSISTANT (THREE POSTS)
Foundations of Distributed Computation

Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/pes20/advert2.html

Ref No: NR60
Grade: NRAS Salary: £20,044 - £30,002 pa. 
Grade: RAST Salary: £20,044 - £22,289 pa

Limit of tenure: Up to two years for two Research Associate positions;
one year for one Research Assistant position.

Three Research Assistant/Research Associate positions are available in
the foundations of distributed computation, funded by EPSRC grants
EP/C510712 (Sewell, Gibbens, Norrish) and GR/T11715 (Sewell, Pitts).

The work spans several areas:

    * Design, semantics and implementation of programming language
       constructs for distribution - covering type-safe communication,
       naming, version change, module systems, and dynamic linking.
    * Formal specification, automated testing and proof about
       real-world network protocols.
    * Tool support for mechanisation of large semantic definitions.
    * Reasoning about executable distributed programs.

It builds on previous work on the experimental Acute programming
language, on the NetSem semantics of real-world network protocols, and
on the concerns of the POPLmark challenge problem in semantic
mechanisation. Details of all these can be found at
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/pes20/index.html#PAPERS.

For the two-year positions you should have a PhD in Computer Science,
with a strong background in one or more of the following:

    * Programming Language Semantics
    * Programming Language Implementation (especially with respect to OCaml)
    * Automated proof assistants (especially one or more of HOL,
       Isabelle, Coq, and Twelf).
    * Network Protocols
    * Distributed Systems

The one-year appointment may be either at the postdoctoral level
(Research Associate) as above, or at a post-graduate level (Research
Assistant). For the latter you should have a good first-class degree
in Computer Science. For a suitably experienced candidate it may be
possible to upgrade to a Senior Research Associate appointment.

Enquiries about the project should be addressed to Dr Peter Sewell,
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/pes20/.

To apply please send as soon as possible a letter of application
including a brief statement of the particular contribution you would
make to the project, a CV, a completed PD18 form
(http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/personnel/forms/pd18/) and the
names and contact details (postal and email addresses) of 2 referees to

  Kate Ellis
  University of Cambridge
  Computer Laboratory
  15 JJ Thomson Avenue
  Cambridge
  CB3 0FD
  United Kingdom

or by e-mail (with documents in PDF format) to personnel-admin@cl.cam.ac.uk.
Closing date: 20 April 2006.
        

Two Master By Research Studentships in Computational Intelligence for Next Generation Web Design

Archive: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32615

Richard Jones announced:
NEW RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES AT CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY

Two Masters by Research Studentships in
Computational Intelligence for Next Generation Web Design

Industrial Collaborator: Merjis – Web Marketing Technology and Services

Duration: 12 Months

Start Date: As Soon As Possible

Cranfield University is now advertising for TWO FULLY FUNDED MASTERS
BY RESEARCH STUDENTSHIPS in ‘Computational Intelligence for Next
Generation Web Design’. Cranfield University is a leading centre in
the application of Soft Computing for engineering decisions. Soft
Computing is a paradigm that offers a consortium of techniques for
handling real-life complexities such as imprecision and
uncertainty. Leveraging on Cranfield’s expertise in these areas, this
project will expand the boundary of Soft Computing research to the
domain of Web Design.

The focus of the two inter-linked Masters by Research projects will be
as follows:

(i) Intelligent Keyword Discovery: This project will analyse known
keywords and web server log files to find combinations of keywords to
bring in more customers. Computational intelligence techniques such as
Genetic Programming will be applied to yield fast results. This
project will explore natural language research (synonyms and
conceptual meanings) to increase the range of keywords represented
faster than web server log trawls.

(ii) Automated Evolution of Text Adverts: The aim of this project is
to apply classical engineering design support tools to develop more
successful adverts. This will be achieved by ‘intelligently’ combining
a catalogue of product related phrases and applying the
learnings. This project will explore a number of research avenues,
such as graphical advert evolution and the learnings required to
differentiate adverts for different networks and sites.

These studentships are available to UK and EU students
only. Applicants should have a First or Upper Second Class Honours
degree (or its equivalent) in Computer Science / IT or Engineering
disciplines. Interested Graduate students with Computer Science / IT
or Engineering background are invited to submit their detailed CV and
application form.

Stipend between £9,000 to £15,000 per year (tax free) is available to
suitably qualified UK and EU students only. In addition, tuition fees
will be paid by the project.

Application form is available at:
http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/prospectus/app/pgappform.pdf

Please send your detailed CV and application form to:
Dr Ashutosh Tiwari / Prof Peter Sackett

Enterprise Integration, School of Industrial and Manufacturing Science, 
Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UK
Email: a.tiwari@cranfield.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 1234 754250, Fax: +44 (0) 1234 750852

APPLY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
        

2006 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on ML

Archive: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32628

Francois Pottier announced:
*********************************************************************
*               The 2006 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on ML                 *
*                                                                   *
*                      September 16, 2006                           *
*                                                                   *
*              Colocated with the 11th ACM SIGPLAN                  *
*  International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP 2006),  *
*                      Portland, Oregon.                            *
*                                                                   *
*                       Call for Papers                             *
*                                                                   *
*                 http://gallium.inria.fr/ml2006/                   *
*********************************************************************

Important dates

* Submission deadline:        Saturday  3rd June 2006.
* Notification of acceptance: Saturday  8th July 2006.
* Final paper due:            Saturday 29th July 2006.

Scope

The ML family of programming languages, whose most popular variants
are SML and OCaml, has inspired a tremendous amount of computer
science research, both practical and theoretical, and ML continues to
underpin a variety of applications, ranging from compilers and theorem
provers to low-level system software. This workshop aims to provide a
forum for discussion and research on existing and future ML and
ML-like languages.

We seek papers on any ML-related topic, including (but not limited to):

  * applications.
  * extensions:     objects, classes, concurrency, distribution
                    and mobility, semi-structured data handling, etc.
  * type systems:   inference, modules, specification, error reporting, etc.
  * implementation: compilers, interpreters, partial evaluators,
                    garbage collectors, etc.
  * environments:   libraries, tools, editors, debuggers,
                    cross-language interoperability, etc.
  * semantics.

Both experimental and theoretical papers are welcome. Each paper
should explain its contributions in both general and technical terms,
clearly identifying what has been accomplished, explaining why it is
significant, and comparing it with previous work. In order to
encourage lively discussion, submitted papers may describe work in
progress.

Papers must be submitted in either PDF format or as PostScript
documents that are interpretable by Ghostscript. They must be
printable on US Letter sized paper. Papers should be formatted using
the ACM SIGPLAN style guidelines available at

  http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigplan/authorInformation.htm

The length should be no more than 12 pages.

Proceedings will be published by ACM Press and will appear in the ACM
Digital Library. Authors of accepted papers will be required to sign
the ACM copyright form.

General Chairs and Program Chairs

Andrew Kennedy
Microsoft Research Ltd,
7 JJ Thomson Ave,
Cambridge CB3 0FB, UK
akenn@microsoft.com

François Pottier
INRIA Rocquencourt
BP 105
78153 Le Chesnay Cedex
FRANCE
francois.pottier@inria.fr

Programme Committee

Derek Dreyer (Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago)
Matthew Fluet (Cornell University)
John Harrison (Intel Corporation)
Haruo Hosoya (University of Tokyo)
Andrew Kennedy (Microsoft Research Cambridge, co-chair)
Eugenio Moggi (Università di Genova)
Michael Norrish (National ICT Australia)
François Pottier (INRIA Rocquencourt, co-chair)
Ian Stark (University of Edinburgh)
Alley Stoughton (Kansas State University)
Jérôme Vouillon (CNRS and Université Paris 7)
Stephanie Weirich (University of Pennsylvania)
        

CVS-release309 production-ready?

Archive: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/32626

Markus Mottl asked and Xavier Leroy answered:
> I'd like to know whether the current CVS-release of OCaml with tag
> release309, which contains two recent bug fixes that are important to us
> (I/O and signals related), is considered safe by INRIA for production
> use.  The patches for the two bug fixes seem correct to me, but there
> are a couple of other changes (e.g. in code generation, etc.) about
> which I don't know much about.  Are these other patches still going to
> see more testing before official release?

We got no negative feedback about the recent changes in the 3.09 branch.
We will do some more testing before the 3.09.2 release, which will
probably take place in April.  But I'm reasonably confident that the
current CVS 3.09 branch is usable.
        

Using folding to read the cwn in vim 6+

Here is a quick trick to help you read this CWN if you are viewing it using vim (version 6 or greater).

:set foldmethod=expr
:set foldexpr=getline(v:lnum)=~'^=\\{78}$'?'<1':1
zM

If you know of a better way, please let me know.


Old cwn

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Alan Schmitt