Promoting the Application of SCILAB

and

Broadcasting the Scientific Spirit

2008 SCILAB Contest in China and International Workshop on Open Source Software Research, Development and Industrial Application

31 Oct.--2 Nov. 2008
Liuzhou, Guangxi, PR China

2008 SCILAB Events

Main Theme

2008 SCILAB Contest and Workshop will pursue the spirit of “Freedom, Sharing, and Cooperation”; advocate the application of open source software, and promote the development of open source software in China.

Major Events

(i)SCILAB Awards Ceremony Opening and Awards Ceremony

(ii)International Workshop

Objectives

• To advocate the spirit of freedom and co-creation in scientific research.
• To promote the application of scientific computation software in education throughout China.
• To promote the use of legal software in China.
• To accelerate the development of open source software in China.
• To enhance the exchange and collaboration between France and China.
• To explore new cooperation models between industries and universities.

Arrangement of 2008 SCILAB Events

The events will be held from October 31st to November 2nd, 2008, The major events include:The Opening and Awards Ceremony of the SCILAB Contest as the main event, it will be held in the morning of November 1st, 2008 at Huatian Century Hotel,Liuzhou, Guangxi province, and explore deeply on issues like “the industrial application of SCILAB”, “the application of open source software”, and “the developing trend of open source technology” , etc.

The success of the last six China SCILAB Contests has resulted in wide and significant impact among research institutes and universities throughout the country. Guests of Honor will be invited form the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Education, French Embassy, LIAMA, and Ecole Centrale de Pekin to deliver Keynote Speeches at the Conference.

Representatives from industrial organizations and enterprises which have successfully applied Open source software and technology in their production environments will be invited to present their cases in the Conference. These representatives would be mainly coming from China, France, Japan, India and USA. The Conference Organizating Committee will also invite domestic and overseas media to report on the Conference events. Internet media including various portal websites will broadcast live news on various SCILAB events.

Official website: http://www.scilab.org.cn/scilab2008/index.htm

Background

SCILAB is the famous open source software for scientific computing taken in charge since 2003 by Scilab Consortium (www.scilab.org). SCILAB has been extensively received by scientists, engineers and technicians, and practitioners in both academia and industry. It has been recognized as the best substitute for commercial software like Matlab, Xmath and Matrix, and distributed currently at the rate of more than30,000 copies per month all over the world.

SCILAB has brought us not only powerful functions in scientific computing, but also its free spirit of open source. At present, Scilab Consortium is devoted to promoting the open source software to the world, particularly in China. The free spirit of open source software and technology makes far-reaching sense to China's software industry in terms of liberalization from the international commercial software companies. Therefore, research institutes and government organizations concerned in China and France have co-developed and been supporting SCILAB activities in China. Evidences would show that SCILAB promotion in China has set up a link between researchers in both China and France, and provides the opportunities for Chinese researchers, engineers and students to study and to express their talent by means of competition and communication with industrial partners in both countries. Since 2002, the SCILAB competition has been arranged in China once a year under the auspices of LIAMA, SCILAB university partners, and INRIA in France. The six annual events were held in Shanghai, Xi'an, Xiamen, Wuhan, Hangzhou and foshan respectively.

2008 SCILAB Contest in China and International Workshop on SCILAB Research Development and Industrial Application (SCC-IWSRDIA'08) will be held at Huatian Century Hotel,Liuzhou, Guangxi province, China.

Competition Purposes

The competition is sponsored for Chinese students and technicians to improve the ability to study and manage SCILAB, and it can also provide an opportunity and a stage to express your own talent in computer programming. What’s more, it is a competition that exhibits the demeanor of college students in science and technology and enhance the intercommunication and cooperation of own college student with one another. The competition advocates the time spirit of "freedom, share and creation". This competition campaign is conducted by the technicians from France and China, and the main target of the competition is to improve the communication and cooperation between two countries.

2008 SCILAB Contest & SCC-IWSRDIA'08 Workshop

Eligibility:
Academic staff and students of university and research institute, engineers of industrial and business organizations, and all other professionals.

Requirement of Contest Works:

• Contest works should be based on free SCILAB toolboxes. Please refer to the latest toolboxes and source codes released;
• Contestants may select any topic for their work. The work should include demonstrations, examples, online assistants and documents.
• Demonstration program is to be written in SCILAB and other language, for example, FORTRAN, C++, Java, and so on. Toolbox should run on SCILAB 4.1.2 or higher.

Submission of the toolbox

For each toolbox the contestant has to give:

• One page in English with the name of the toolbox, the authors and their affiliation, and a brief description of the toolbox.
• A paper in English which describes the requirements for using the toolbox such as the operating system (Windows, Linux…), the compilers (C, C++…), the libraries (JAVA…), Scilab version and other relevant information if needed, together with a small user’s guide which explains how to install the toolbox with Scilab.

Important Technical points

The purpose of following technical points is that your toolbox can be used by other people using Scilab. After the requirements for using the toolbox are fulfilled, the user must be able to use the toolbox with his standard Scilab version. This is an important point because then your toolbox can be put on Scilab Web site and so be easily available for all Scilab community.

• The Scilab distribution that must be used for the contest is the official stable version 4.1.2. It can be downloaded from Scilab Web site www.scilab.org or other mirror sites.

• The toolbox will be given as a compressed file using standard file compressor such as zip or gzip. The compressed file must only include the toolbox and possibly all what is necessary to use it (such as additional libraries for instance): the toolbox must work with standard Scilab versions already installed.

• The toolbox must include on-line help files describing its purpose and the on-line help of each user callable Scilab function if any. The help files must be written using the standard XML language using Scilab DTD.

• A demonstration of the toolbox, using for instance Scilab “demo” files, will be appreciated.

• For building and loading toolboxes into Scilab, standard “builder.sce” and “loader.sce” files can be defined using the “get_absolute_file_path”, “genlib”, “ilib_build”, etc… Scilab functions. These functions allow, in most cases, to create system independent “loader.sce” and “builder.sce” files.

The Award Selection process includes three stages:
(i) shortlist of entries by an Expert Team,
(ii) peer-evaluation on the Internet, and
(iii) final selection by French and Chinese Scientists.

In the first stage, 22 works will be shortlisted from all the received submissions. Peer-evaluation on the Internet will be made by all contestants. Finally, the French and Chinese Scientist Team will decide on the awards to be given, taking into consideration the results of the first and second stages.

1. First prize: up to TWO awards will be given. (For each Award, a maximum of one students and one academic advisor will be invited to visit the SCILAB team for one week,and then the students will be invited to visit LIAMA for two months).
2. Second prize: up to TEN awards will be given. (Each Award: RMB 1000).
3. Third prize: up to TEN awards will be given. (Each Award: RMB 500).
   

2. International Workshop on SCILAB Research Development and Industrial Application (SCC-IWSRDIA'08)

Prospective authors are invited to submit papers reporting original and previously unpublished work. Papers are to be submitted electronically, as WORD files. The required format for the paper is shown in Appendix I. Only full papers received before the deadline will be considered for review. The maximum length of each paper is limited to Six A4 pages. Proposals of special sessions and tutorials on hot topics are welcome.

Topics to be covered include (but are not limited to):

• Numerical Analysis
• Scientific Computation
• Computational Mathematics
• Mathematical Software
• Programming Techniques and Languages
• Parallel Algorithms and its Applications
• Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation
• Neural Networks
• Fuzzy Logic
• Evolutionary Computing
• Analysis of Algorithms
• Problem Complexity
• Mathematical Logic
• Formal Languages
• Data Structures
• Data Bases
• Information Systems
• Artificial Intelligence
• Expert Systems
• Simulation and Modeling
• Computer Graphics
• Software Engineering
• Image Processing
• Computer Applications & Organization Software
• Computing Methodologies
• Communications Network Technology
• Robot Technology
• Sensors and Applications
• Manufacturing Systems
• Intelligent Transportation Systems
• Virtual Reality Technology
• Human Computer Interfacing
• Multimedia Technology
• Computer Vision
• Voice Recognition
• Engineering Diagnostics
• Software Quality & Security Management

All technical papers, in accordance with the Author Guidelines shown below, should be submitted in electronic format to the SCILAB 2008 Contest Committee through Dr.Shi Lee, the Email address is: scilab2008@gmail.com

The proceedings of SCC-IWSRDIA'08 Workshop will be published in a hard copy form.

3. Organization

Sponsors:

• LIAMA
• Scilab Consortium/DIGITEO - France
• INRIA - France
• Ecole Centrale de Pekin
• Guangxi University of Technology ,China
• People's Government of Liuzhou Municipality ,China

Co-sponsored by:

• French Embassy in China
• Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIA)
• OW2 Consortium
• Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence
• Intelligent Automation Committee
• Chinese Association of Automation
• Robot Competitions Working Committee, Chinese Association of Automation
• Guangxi Association of Automation

In Cooperation with:

• France Telecom, R & D Beijing
• Thomson Broad Hand R & D Beijin
• Bull Information Systems Beijing
• Ecole Centrale de Pékin, China
• Communication Bureau of Liuzhou Government
• Liuzhou Education Bureau
• Liuzhou Science and Technology Committee
• Liuzhou Bureau of the Information Industry
• Liuzhou Administration of Radio Film and Television
• Liuzhou Association of Science and Technology
• Liuzhou Daily
• Liuzhou Doctors Association
  
  

International committee:

International Advisory committee:

SCC-IWSRDIA'08 Workshop organizing committee:

Contact Information:

Yujie Lai, Liuzhou Association of Science and Technology(responsible for workshop)
13707729089
Feng Kong, Guangxi University of Technology
13633093071
Cai KANG, LIAMA
13260300095 scilab2008@gmail.com

Hotel information

Hotel Name:Huatian Century Hotel
Address: No. 5, Jie Fang North Road, Liuzhou,Guangxi, China (Post Code: 545001)
Tel: +86 - 772 - 3988888
Fax: +86 - 772 - 3988889
NOTE:
    Huatian Century Hotel is two kilometers away from Guangxi University of Technology
    we arrage cars during the workshop.

Guangxi University of Technology

Address: No. 268, Donghuan Avenue, Liuzhou,Guangxi, China (Post Code: 545006)
Contact :Feng Kong( Tel:13633093071)

Schedule of SCILAB 2008 :

Program of SCILAB 2008 : (PDF)

Important Dates:

Deadline of registration: 1, May. 2008
Deadline of Contest Works Submission: 30 Sept. 2008
Deadline of paper submission for (SCC-IWSRDIA'08) Workshop: 30 Sept. 2008
Workshop Registration: 31 Oct. 2008
Workshop : 1-2 Nov. 2008

Important Venue:

SCILAB Workshop will be held at Huatian Century Hotel,Liuzhou, Guangxi province, China.

Official Language :

The official language will be English.