The Eighth International Workshop on Deontic Logic in Computer Science (DEON 2006), will take place in Utrecht, The Netherlands, from 12-4 July 2006.

Argumentation has evolved from its original study primarily by philosophers to emerge in the last ten years as an important sub-discipline of Artificial Intelligence. Among the significant contributions resulting have been approaches to modelling and analysis of defeasible reasoning, formal bases for negotiation and dialogue processes in multiagent systems, and the use of argumentation theory in A.I. applications whose nature is not best described through traditional logics, e.g. legal reasoning, evaluation of conflicting beliefs, etc. The process of interpreting and and exploiting classical treatments of Argumentation Theory in effective computational terms has led to a rich interchange of ideas among researchers from diverse disciplines such as Philosophy, Linguistics, A.I. and Economics.

Argumentation related workshops are now well-established events at the major Artificial Intelligence related Conferences, e.g. the workshop series on Computational Models of Natural Argument held in conjunction with IJCAI and ECAI, and the series of ArgMAS workshops held in conjunction with AAMAS.

While work over the past five years has done much to consolidate diverse contributions to the field, many new concerns have been identified and form the basis of current research. Among such concerns are: approaches to coping with intractability issues; representation of argument structures in multiagent system settings; developing robust treatments of dynamically evolving argumentation frameworks; semantics for capturing concepts such as "persuasiveness", "credibility" and "impact" of arguments; computational bases for distinguishing classes of ``acceptable'' arguments, etc.

This special issue of Artificial Intelligence Journal on the theme of Argumentation in A.I., is intended to present the current state-of-the-art in argumentation to a general audience, thus increasing awareness of the possibilities that argumentation offers among specialists in areas of A.I. which have not yet considered this as a way of addressing their problems. Equally it will present opportunities for those not currently involved with argumentation to consider new perspectives from which to tackle problems. In sum, the special issue aims both to spread the dissemination of argumentation ideas, and to widen the boundaries of the argumentation community.

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Thomson Legal & Regulatory (TLR) is a leading provider of integrated information solutions to legal, tax, accounting, intellectual property, compliance, business and government professionals around the world. With 17,000 employees, TLR has business operations in 24 countries.

The Research & Development department for Thomson Legal and Regulatory would like to invite qualified applicants to apply for an open Research Scientist position in their Eagan, MN offices.

Please contact Khalid Al-Kofahi, at khalid.al-kofahi@thomson.com, to apply, or for further information.

NIST and The Sedona Conference® are seeking "a few good lawyers" (as well as law clerks, legal assistants, and staff of legal tech firms of all types) to contribute to world-class research into the evaluation of competing search methodologies, as outlined in greater detail below. This is the first year that NIST has targeted litigation demands related to search and retrieval of documents as a new field of research. For the TREC legal track to be a success, between 25 and 50 responsible individuals will be needed to participate in an overall document review process which is to take place later this summer. The results of the research effort will be reported at the 15th Annual TREC conference to be held at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland during the third week of November 2006. The Sedona Conference asks that you consider having one or more individuals at your firm or company volunteer their time to assist in this very important and research endeavor. For further information see the TREC Call for Participation.

The Call for Papers for the the 19th International JURIX conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, to be held in Paris (France) from 7-9 December 2006, has been published.