1 [apologies for any cross-posting]
   2 
   3 ========================================================================
   4    ==================================================================
   5 
   6               Fifth Answer Set Programming Competition 2014
   7 
   8                      Call for Participant Systems
   9 
  10      Aalto University, University of Calabria, University of Genova
  11 
  12                          Spring/Summer 2014
  13 
  14                 https://www.mat.unical.it/aspcomp2014
  15 
  16                       aspcomp2014@mat.unical.it
  17 
  18    ==================================================================
  19 
  20  Special edition of the ASP Competition series -system track- part of the
  21  Olympic Games (http://vsl2014.at/olympics/) of the Vienna Summer of Logic 
  22  2014 (http://vsl2014.at/).
  23 
  24  == Important Dates ==
  25 
  26  * March 1st, 2014: Participant registration opens
  27  * March 31st, 2014: Participant registration closes (NEW)
  28  * April 15th, 2014: The competition starts (EXTENDED)
  29 
  30  * July 2014: Awards are presented at FLoC (22nd) and at ICLP (19th-22nd)
  31 
  32 ========================================================================
  33 
  34 Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a well-established paradigm of declarative
  35 programming with close relationship to other declarative modeling
  36 paradigms and languages, such as SAT Modulo Theories, Constraint Handling
  37 Rules, FO(.), PDDL, CASC, and many others.
  38 
  39 The ASP Competition is usually a biannual event for evaluating declarative
  40 knowledge representation systems on hard and demanding AI problems. Past
  41 ASP Competition editions were held at the University of Potsdam (Germany)
  42 in 2007, the University of Leuven (Belgium) in 2009, the University of
  43 Calabria (Italy) in 2011 and the Vienna University of Technology (Austria)
  44 in 2013.
  45 
  46 As anticipated during the 2013 presentation, in order to join the Vienna
  47 Summer of Logic, which is expected to be the largest event in the history
  48 of logic, ASP Competition departs, this year, from the "usual" timeline,
  49 and the Fifth ASP Competition will be run in the first half of 2014, 
  50 jointly at Aalto University (Finland), University of Calabria (Italy) and
  51 University of Genova (Italy). The event is affiliated with the 30th
  52 International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP). Another reason for
  53 having an event just one year after the 4th ASP Competition is the fact
  54 that the new ASP-Core-2 language standard has been introduced in 2013,
  55 but, unfortunately, it was not fully supported by most participant to the
  56 2013 edition, and/or submitters did not succeed at supporting the new
  57 language features in a completely satisfactory way, due to limited time
  58 resources. Thus, an "early" event can be an opportunity to push the usage
  59 of the new standard, and draw a more complete picture about the approaches
  60 that can efficiently solve problems with various features.
  61 
  62 
  63 == Call for Participant Systems ==
  64 
  65 Participants of the Answer Set Programming Competition will compete on a
  66 selected collection of benchmark problems, taken from a variety of
  67 benchmark problem domains as well as real-world applications.  These
  68 include, but are not limited to:
  69 
  70  * Classic and application-oriented graph problems
  71  * Scheduling, Timetabling, and other resource allocation problems
  72  * Sequential and Temporal Planning
  73  * Combinatorial Optimization problems
  74  * Deductive Database tasks on large data-sets
  75  * Puzzles and Combinatorics
  76  * Ontology reasoning
  77  * Automated Theorem Proving and Model Checking
  78  * Constraint Programming problems
  79  * Other AI problems
  80 
  81 The competition consists of a System Track (as called in past 
  82 competitions), which compares dedicated solvers on ASP benchmarks.
  83 Participants compete with solving systems for the ASP-Core-2 language.
  84 Some more details are given in the following:
  85 
  86 - The benchmark domains are taken from past editions.
  87 
  88 - Systems of the 2013 edition will be considered. (Developers will have
  89   the chance of submitting up-to-date versions of their solvers.)
  90 
  91 - Submissions of new solvers are encouraged.
  92 
  93 The competition will not be limited to sub-tracks based on
  94 "complexity" of problems (as in past events), but rather will take
  95 into consideration language features: sub-tracks will range from a
  96 basic language, to (by adding features such as aggregates and choice
  97 rules) to the ASP-Core-2 language.  The aim is to clearly indicate what
  98 (combinations of) techniques work for a particular (set of)
  99 feature(s), and also widening the participation to teams that cannot
 100 (yet) support the full standard.  The final sub-track design will depend
 101 on the availability of benchmarks as well as systems.  Participants are
 102 encouraged to inform us about any limitations or requirements of their
 103 systems so that we can take them into account in the sub-track design.
 104 
 105 We welcome the submission of parallel and portfolio systems making use of
 106 multiple cores or multiple algorithms for solving the given instances.
 107 These solvers will have dedicated tracks, assuming a sufficient number of
 108 submissions in each track.  Of course, we also welcome the submission of
 109 any kind of solvers, e.g., SAT solvers, SMT solvers, CP systems, FOL
 110 theorem provers, Description Logics reasoners, Planning reasoners, or any
 111 other that can be adapted/applied to the evaluation of logic programs
 112 encoded in ASP-Core-2.
 113 
 114 == Important Dates ==
 115 
 116  * March 1st, 2014: Participant registration opens
 117 
 118  * March 31st, 2014: The competition starts
 119 
 120  * July 2014: Awards are presented at FLoC (22nd) and at ICLP (19th-22nd)
 121 
 122 
 123 For further information and submission instructions please visit the
 124 competition web site
 125 
 126             https://www.mat.unical.it/aspcomp2014
 127 
 128 or contact us by email: aspcomp2014@mat.unical.it
 129 
 130 
 131 The official VSL announcement follows.
 132 
 133 ========================================================================
 134    ==================================================================
 135 
 136 **Vienna Summer of Logic Announcement**
 137 
 138 In the summer of 2014, Vienna will host the largest event in the history of logic. The Vienna Summer of Logic (VSL) will consist of twelve large conferences and numerous workshops, attracting an expected number of 2500 researchers from all over the world. 
 139 
 140 The conferences and workshops will deal with the main theme, logic, from three important aspects: logic in computer science, mathematical logic and logic in artificial intelligence. 
 141 
 142 This unique event will be organized by the Kurt Goedel Society at Vienna University of Technology from July 9 to 24, 2014 (see website for more details: http://vsl2014.at) 
 143 
 144 *Keynote Speakers*
 145 The VSL keynote speakers are Franz Baader (Technische Universitaet Dresden), Edmund Clarke (Carnegie Mellon University), Christos Papadimitriou (University of California, Berkeley) and Alex Wilkie (University of Manchester). Dana Scott (Carnegie Mellon University) will speak in the opening session. 
 146 
 147 *Logic in Computer Science / Federated Logic Conference (FLoC)*
 148 - 26th International Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV)
 149 - 27th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF)
 150 - 30th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP)
 151 - 7th International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning (IJCAR)
 152 - 5th Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP)
 153 - Joint meeting of the 23rd EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL) and the 29th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS)
 154 - 25th International Conference on Rewriting Techniques and Applications (RTA) joint with the 12th International Conference on Typed Lambda Calculi and Applications (TLCA)
 155 - 17th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing (SAT)
 156 - FLoC Workshops
 157 - FLoC Olympic Games (System Competitions)
 158 
 159 *Mathematical Logic*
 160 - Logic Colloquium 2014
 161 - Logic, Algebra and Truth Degrees 2014 
 162 - The Infinity Workshop
 163 - Kurt Goedel Fellowship Competition
 164 
 165 *Logic in Artificial Intelligence*
 166 - 14th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR)
 167 - 27th International Workshop on Description Logics (DL)
 168 - 15th International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning (NMR)
 169 - International Workshop on Knowledge Representation for Health Care 2014 (KR4HC)
 170 
 171 
 172 *Kurt Goedel Research Prize Fellowship Competition*
 173 At the Vienna Summer of Logic, the Kurt Goedel Society will award three fellowship prizes endowed with 100.000 Euro each to the winners of the Kurt Goedel Research Prize Fellowship Competition "Logical Mind: Connecting Foundations and Technology." 
 174 
 175 *FLoC Olympic Games - Citius, Maius, Potentius*
 176 The Federated Logic Conference (FLoC) 2014 will host the 1st FLoC Olympic Games.  Intended as a new FLoC tradition, the Games will bring together a multitude of established solver competitions by different research communities. In addition to the competitions, the Olympic Games will facilitate the exchange of expertise between communities, and increase the visibility and impact of state-of-the-art solver technology. The winners in the competition categories will be awarded Kurt Goedel medals at the FLoC Olympic Games award ceremonies.