[alife] 2nd CFP: ECAL 2005 - VIIIth European Conference on Artificial Life

[Mathieu Capcarrere]

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                        Call for Papers
VIIIth European Conference on Artificial Life - ECAL 2005
                      5-9 September 2005
               University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

                       www.ecal2005.org

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Painter:
       It is a pretty mocking of the life.
Here is a touch; is't good?

Poet:
       I will say of it,
       It tutors nature: artificial strife
       Lives in these touches, livelier than life.
Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act I, Scene 1.


Artificial Life seeks to understand, extract, use and abuse
the organisational principles and information processing of
natural living systems. Interdisciplinary by nature, it
involves researchers in Computer Science, Biology, Physics,
Chemistry, etc. The 8th European Conference on Artificial
Life, to be held in Canterbury, England, in September 2005,
wishes to gather all these communities to present the
latest advances, through a technical track, and discuss the
main directions for the future, through a conceptual track.

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IMPORTANT DATES:
Submission deadline: Monday 4th April 2005
Notification to author: Monday 16th May 2005
Camera-ready deadline: Monday 30th May 2005
Conference: Monday 5th to Friday 9th. September 2005
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SCOPE:
------
The conference encompasses, but is not limited to, the
following domains

Self-organisation, Origins of life, Prebiotic evolution,
RNA systems, Autocatalytic systems, Evolutionary chemistry,
Fitness landscapes, Natural selection, Artificial evolution,
Ecosystem evolution, Artificial development, Developmental
algorithms, Ontogenetic systems, Multicellular development,
Natural and artificial morphogenesis, Learning and
development, Bio-morphic engineering, Artificial worlds,
Artificial organisms, Artificial (virtual and robotic)
humanoids, Intelligent autonomous robots, Evolutionary
Robotics, Applications of Alife Technologies, Self-repairing
hardware, Evolvable hardware, Emergent collective behaviours,
Swarm intelligence, Evolution of social behaviours, Evolution
of communication, Epistemology, Bio-inspired Art...


PAPER SUBMISSION AND PROCEEDINGS:
---------------------------------

We invite the submission of original, high-quality papers
in the field of Artificial Life.

Each paper will undergo double blind reviews, i.e., reviewers
will not know the identity of the authors. Hence, the name
and affiliation of the authors cannot appear on the paper and
authors cannot identify themselves in any other way. For
instance, if the authors need to quote their own work explicitly,
e.g.: "in our previous work [1]", the corresponding reference
should be described as follows in the References section:
[1] DETAILS REMOVED FOR THE PURPOSE OF DOUBLE BLIND REVIEW

The name and affiliation of the authors will be given at the
time of the electronic submission process, via the following
address: http://www.ecal2005.org/submit.html

During this process, the authors will also be required to
indicate whether the paper is:

       * a technical paper or
       * a conceptual paper.

Note that these two kinds of paper have different purposes, and
will be evaluated accordingly. Technical papers are expected to
provide detailed descriptions of a system or algorithm,
experiments/tests/evaluations, and show significant results. In
contrast, conceptual papers should discuss important conceptual
issues for which results are not applicable. Examples of conceptual
paper styles are well-articulated position papers about core issues
and/or the foundations of Artificial Life, papers that propose novel
research directions or paradigm shifts in Artificial Life, etc.
Incomplete or premature work should NOT be submitted as conceptual
paper. All papers should be previously unpublished work.

Submitted papers must follow Springer Verlag's Lecture Notes in
Computer Science style (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs).
Springer's instructions for authors and the corresponding style
files can be downloaded from:
http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.

Submitted papers can have a maximum length of 10 pages.


Papers must be submitted electronically as a ".pdf" file, via
the following address:

http://www.ecal2005.org/submit.html


PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
------------------

The complete programme committee list is available on:
http://www.ecal2005.org/progcom.html


VENUE:
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Canterbury is a town of great historical interest, classified
as a UNESCO world heritage site, and conveniently placed for
visits to both London and Paris. The conference will be hosted
on the grounds of the cathedral which was built in 1070 and
many parts of the city, including the city walls, are Medieval
and pedestrian. Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales" was written
here -- the first piece of English Literature -- and the city
remains England's second-most visited city. This high tourist
activity and its university makes it a vibrant city in terms
of bars and restaurants.

As it is located South East of London in the South East of
England, UK, it is normally warm (20-25°C/70-80°F) in early
September, but UK weather is always changeable.


CONFERENCE HISTORY:
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17 years ago the term "Artificial Life" was coined at a seminal
workshop at the Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, USA. 13 years
ago, in 1991, the first European Conference on Artificial Life
was held in Paris. Since then, alternatively with the International
Conference on Artificial Life traditionally held on even years,
ECAL toured Europe on odd years: 1993, Brussels, Belgium; 1995,
Granada, Spain; 1997, Sussex, England; 1999, Lausanne,
Switzerland; 2001, Prague, Czech Republic and finally in 2003,
Dortmund, Germany. For its 15th year of existence, we are glad
to welcome the European Conference in Artificial Life in
Canterbury, England.


Mathieu Capcarrere
Conference chair

Alex Freitas
Program chair

Peter J. Bentley, Jon Timmis, Colin Johnson
Program co-chairs