books Books received Expert systems for the technical profession D D Wolfgram, T J Dear and C S Galbraith, John Wiley & Sons Ltd (1987) 330pp £31.80 This book aims to be a practical reference explaining the technical aspects of expert systems, and aims to serve as a managerial guide to interfacing expert system technology in any organization. The authors show how to construct an expert system and how to tailor that system for specific business applications. A thorough examination of knowledge engineering, including a discussion of conventional processing vesus symbolic processing, is provided. The approach is multidisciplinary, bringing together the most up-to- date information from a variety of disciplines, including computer science, psychology, engineering and management. Chapters on hardware and software tools or 'shells' and prepacked expert systems are also included. Interpreting anaphors in natural language texts D Carter, John Wiley and Sons Ltd (1987) 292pp £39.50 Representing and using world or domain knowledge is a major obstacle to the development of computer programs capable of sophisticated natural language processing. The book tackles the problem of interpreting anaphors by means of a 'shallow processing' approach, in which linguistic know- ledge is exploited to minimize reliance on world knowledge. The reported ideas are implemented in a program which is capable of resolving anaphoric and other linguistic ambiguities, and generating paraphrases to show what interpretations it has selected. Input takes the form of semantic structures, derived automatically from single sentences, which are integrated into a network-style text representation. The author considers the need to resolve several anaphors in the same sentence and extends Sidner's framework to allow focus- based processing to interface more flexibility with processing based on other types of knowledge. He also develops Wilks' treatment of common sense inference, to in- corporate a wide range of inference types. Wilks' primitive-based formalism for word sense meaning is modified in the interests of economy, accuracy and ease of use. The book is intended for those in the fields of artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, cognitive science, psycholinguistics, expert systems and knowledge engineering. Arms and artificial intelligence: weapon and arms control applications of advanced computing A M Din (ed), Oxford University Press (1988) 229pp £25.00 The importance of IT in the field of military decision making has been steadily growing since the beginning of the 1980s. Its potential role in modern weapon systems, such as the 'Star Wars' Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), have made it a focus of interest. The book outlines the prospects for machine intelligence in the context of international security, analysing in detail the technical, strategic and political perspectives of the subject. Possible applications to arms control verification and modelling are discussed by 13 'experts' and the work includes a section on the coinceptual and technical framework of AI. The book promises to be of interest to AI researchers and students, as well as members of the public with an interest in the subject. Managing expert systems N Bryant, John Wiley and Sons Ltd (1988) 180pp £11.95 In general, the potential for improving organizations and man- agement by using expert systems remains unrealized. The majority of managers have litlte knowledge of what expert systems are, what they can do and how they will affect their work. Starting with a description of the component parts of an expert system, this book reviews the stages involved in developing and applying an expert system. Although not package or machine specific, it does give examples developed using cur- rently available equipment. A list of available shells is given, along with current suppliers, applications and a glossary of Ai and expert systems terminology. The book provides a useful introduction to the subject for managers, or for those involved in purchasing or implementing a new system. Readings in human--computer inter- action: a maltidisciplinary approach R M Baeker and W A S Buxton (eds), Morgan Kaufmann (1988) 752pp £18.95 The effectiveness of user-computer interface becomes increasingly important as computer systems pervade more and more environ- ments, becoming useful tools for those not trained in computer science. Drawing on research from fields such as industrial design, system design and interactive tech- nologies, this collection focuses on the importance of the user interface. Three major sections focus on : the historical, socio-political and physical-for-human computer inter- action; the user and use of interactive computer systems; and the process of system design-interaction tech- niques and design methodologies. Artificial intelligence and tutoring systems: Computational and cognitive approaches to the communication of knowledge E Wenger, Morgan Kaufmann Inc (1987) 486pp £29.95 The author addresses practical issues involved in designing instructional systems, as well as theoretical ques- tions raised by investigating computational methods of know- ledge communications. The books provides a comprehensive survey of research since the early 1970s, high- lighting major themes and assessing the current state of the art. Divided into three sections, it concentrates in section two on systems and developments, with shorter sections one and three on an introduction to the field and the state of the art respectively. This book should be of interest to researchers and students in AI. Vol 1 No 5 December 1988 311