The gain of failures: Using side-effects of anaphora resolution for term consistency checks -- An agent model for NL dialog interfaces -- Constraint solving in Logic Programming and in Automated Deduction: A comparison -- An extension of SATPLAN for planning with constraints -- Reasoning about generalized intervals -- Formalizing belief reports — The approach and a case study -- Extension calculus and query answering in prioritized default logic -- Study of symmetry in qualitative temporal interval networks -- A blackboard architecture for guiding interactive proofs -- Combining nonmonotonic reasoning and belief revision: A practical approach -- Modelling uncertainty with kripke's semantics -- Using linear temporal logic to model and solve planning problems -- Tailorable interactive agents for scheduling meetings -- Planning diagonalization proofs -- Theories and proofs in fault diagnosis -- Nonmonotonic reasoning under uncertain evidence -- Multicontext systems with importing contexts -- Planning via model checking in determistic domains: Preliminary report -- Acquisition of useful lemma-knowledge in automated reasoning -- Constructing translations between individual vocabularies in multi-agent systems -- Belief reconstruction in cooperative dialogues -- Model theoretic semantics for information integration -- A classification learning algorithm robust to irrelevant features -- Knowledge assimilation and proof restoration through the addition of goals -- Learning multiple predicates -- Modal reasoning and rough set theory -- Overcoming incomplete information in NLP systems — Verb subcategorization -- A framework for inductive learning based on subsumption lattices -- Dynamic learning — An approach to forgetting in ART2 neural networks -- A new approach to linguistic negation of nuanced information in knowledge-based systems -- SAT-based decision procedures for normal modal logics: A theoretical framework -- Version space retraction with instance-based boundary sets -- A new abstract logic programming language and its quantifier elimination method for disjunctive logic programming -- A new approach to learning Bayesian Network classifiers from data: Using observed statistical frequencies -- Abstraction as a form of elaboration tolerance -- System architecture of a distributed expert system for the management of a national data network -- Strategy selection for automated theorem proving -- An agent system for intelligent situation assessment -- Knowledge granularity and action selection -- Towards lifetime maintenance of case base indexes for continual case based reasoning.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, Applications, AIMSA'98, held in Sozopol, Bulgaria, in September 1998. The 40 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 90 submissions. The papers address the whole spectrum of current topics in AI, in particular case-based reasoning, multi-agent systems, planning and temporal reasoning, decision procedures, inductive reasoning, abduction, constraint-based reasoning, knowledge acquisition, knowledge-based systems, learning, natural language processing, temporal and causal reasoning, etc.