CFP Errors & Uncertainty in Molecular Biology Computations

[lloyd allison]

                           Call for Papers

          Methods for Dealing with Errors and Uncertainty in
            Molecular Biology Computations and Data-Bases.

          A minitrack in the Biotechnology Computing track
       Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 26
                   Kauai, Hawaii - January 5-8 1993

Molecular Biology problems are of "the real world" in that data are
likely to contain mutations, natural variations, errors and omissions.
Some of these uncertainties are inherent in the biology, and some are
experimental errors; noisy data is a fact of life.  Errers and
uncertainties in data complicate computation in several ways:

  * increasing the space of possible solutions to many problems,
    requiring efficient algorithms, heuristics and hardware;

  * increasing the number of plausible solutions to a problem, which
    can be difficult to summarise for the Molecular Biologist;

  * conclusions and links can be conditional, tenuous and provisional,
    creating representational difficulties and the need for reliable
    `figures of merit' - such as scores, likelihoods or probabilities
    - on possible solutions.

We are soliciting papers that report on efficient and robust methods
that get around such difficulties by using clever algorithms and
data-structures, good heuristics, plausible simplifying assumptions,
sound statistical methods or other techniques.  Papers should report
on methods that have been applied to real data or to realistic
simulated data (with explicitly stated assumptions) or to both.

Application areas of interest include but are not limited to:
   sequence analysis, genome analysis, mapping problems, structure analysis
   and prediction, database organisation and search, relevant pattern
   matching problems.

Deadlines and Instructions to Authors:
  * 300 word abstracts & expressions of interest:               26 April   1992
  * feedback to authors on abstracts:                           10 May     1992
  * 6 copies of full paper due to minitrack chairman:            5 June    1992
  * notification of acceptances by:                             31 August  1992
  * camera-ready copy of accepted papers to minitrack chairman:  1 October 1992

Initial submissions can be in single column, double spaced layout
(about 22-26 pages), or in camera-ready format.
The first page should include the title of the paper,
the name(s) of the author(s), affiliation(s), complete mailing and
electronic address(es), telephone number(s) and a short abstract.
   Papers must not have been previously presented or published, nor
currently be submitted for publication elsewhere.  Each paper will be
reviewed by at least five reviewers.
   Any member of the community willing to serve as a referee should send
his or her name, electronic and physical address, phone number, and areas of
interest to Lloyd Allison. Authors of submissions to this minitrack
may not serve as referees for it.

Send submissions and questions on the `Errors and Uncertainty' minitrack to:
    Lloyd Allison,
    Department of Computer Science, Monash University, AUSTRALIA 3168.
    tel: 61 3 565 5205   fax: 61 3 565 5146     lloyd at cs.monash.edu.au

NB. Use air-mail or a courier service and allow adequate time for delivery.
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The full Biotechnology Computing track is made up of 8 `minitracks', being
full or half-day sessions:
 * Computer Support for Genome Mapping and Sequencing.
 * Methods for Dealing with Errors and Uncertainty in
   Molecular Biology Computations and Databases.  (see above)
 * Alternative Approaches to Sequence Representation.
 * Sequence Analysis Algorithms based on Physicochemistry
   and Thermodynamics.
 * Computer-Aided Drug Design.
 * Protein Structure Prediction.
 * AI Technologies for Molecular Biology Analysis.
 * Simulation Methods in Computational Neuroscience.

The Biotechnology Computing track is chaired by
 Lawrence Hunter,   (hunter at nlm.nih.gov)
 National Library of Medicine, Building 38A, M.S. 54, Bethesda, MD 20894 , USA.
 phone: (301) 496 9300   fax: (301) 496 0673