Geoffrey Simmons

On the basis of a semantic analysis of dimension terms, this book develops a theory about knowledge of spatial objects, which is significant for cognitive linguistics and artificial intelligence. This new approach to knowledge structure evolves in a three-step process: - adoption of the linguistic theory with its elements, principles and representational levels, - implementation of the latter in a Prolog prototype, and - integration of the prototype into a large natural language understanding system. The study documents interdisciplinary research at work: the model of spatial knowledge is the fruit of the cooperative efforts of linguists, computational linguists, and knowledge engineers, undertaken in that logical and chronological order. The book offers a two-level approach to semantic interpretation and proves that it works by means of a precise computer implementation, which in turn is applied to support a task-independent knowledge representation system. Each of these stages is described in detail, and the links are made explicit, thus retracing the evolution from theory to practice.

HUMOR FOR ROBOTS ONLY Departing from his usual style, Dr. Simmons writes about the zany adventures of Dr. Alan Rossum, the world's first robotic doctor. The style of the story has been compared to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Rossum is a handsome, always helpful, extremely humanlike doctoroid, yethe is also fireproof, wrinkle-proof, germ-retardant, buoyant, fearless, battery-powered, and shrink-resistant. He is the ultimate answer to both the high cost of medicine and to grumpy physicians whotend to run late. Not only can he treat every affliction known to man and some extraterrestrials in a timely manner, but he can perform any operation at record speed. He can also jump higher and run faster than any doctor at Mt. Sinai Hospital, in El Cemento, California. This is his first month on staff and there are a number or bizarre and sinister forces afoot to block his successes. Indeed, to prevent the evolution of robotic medicine.

Billions of Missing Links

Endorsed by William Dembski, Ph.D., the scientist at the forefront of the intelligent-design movement. Darwin might have thought twice about publishing his theories if he had had access to today's medical and microbiological discoveries. Drawing on years of research, Dr. Simmons demonstrates that the almost infinite complexity of the human anatomy simply could not have developed by chance. For example: the body runs on "battery power"...from the hundreds of mitochondria in each cell the two sexes-evolutionary theory cannot explain why they exist every cell is its own pharmacist, chemist, and metallurgist Accessible, clearly presented, and utterly fascinating, What Darwin Didn't Know shows the human body to be a marvelous system constructed by an infinitely wise Designer.