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Book and Journal Discounts for ASL Members

Several publishers now offer discounts on books and journals to ASL members. For a detailed description of these discounts, visit http://www.aslonline.org/members-discounts.html on the ASL website, or write to the ASL Business Office.

Access to Current JSL and BSL for ASL Members via Project Euclid

Access to the full-text of current issues of The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic and The Journal of Symbolic Logic is available to all ASL members electronically via Project Euclid. Individual members who wish to gain access should follow these instructions: (1) go to http://projecteuclid.org; (2) click on `Log in' in the top right-hand corner of the screen; (3) click on "create a profile here'' in the center of the login page; (4) fill in at least the required fields in the top half of the form, setting Euclid ID and Password to anything you wish, but remember these for future logins; (5) go to the bottom half of the form ("Personal Subscription Registration''); (6) select the Association for Symbolic Logic Journals and in the subscriber code box enter your individual membership ID number (you will find this number on your journal mailing label); (7) at the bottom of the form, click the `Create Profile' button, at which point users should then see a confirmation screen and should have access to full-content of the BSL and JSL. If you need help obtaining your membership ID number, contact our membership fulfillment agent at the American Mathematical Society at asl-service@ams.org. If you have any trouble using the Personal Subscription Registration form, please contact Euclid-L@cornell.edu.

Reduced Dues for Individuals and Institutions in Developing Economies

The ASL offers reduced dues for individual and institutional members in developing economies. For 2012, the reduced dues are US$18 for individuals and US$130 for institutional basic membership, US$180 for full membership. These dues apply to individuals and institutions residing in countries whose economies are classified as `upper middle income' or below on the World Bank's annual list for four of the last five years. For further information, visit the webpage below or contact the ASL Business Office: ASL, Box 742, Vassar College, 124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie, New York 12604, USA; Tel: 1-845-437-7080; Fax: 1-845-437-7830; email: asl@vassar.edu.
https://www.aslonline.org/membership_outreach.html

Reduced Dues for Unemployed Members

The ASL offers reduced dues for individual members who are unemployed. For 2012, the reduced dues are US$44. For further information, visit the webpage below or contact the ASL Business Office: ASL, Box 742, Vassar College, 124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie, New York 12604, USA; Tel: 1-845-437-7080; Fax: 1-845-437-7830; email: asl@vassar.edu.
http://www.aslonline.org/membership-individual.html

Access to JSL and BSL back issues for ASL Members via JSTOR

Access to the full-text of The Journal of Symbolic Logic for the years 1936 - 2007 is available to all ASL members via JSTOR. Access to the full-text of The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic for the years 1995--2011 also is available to all ASL members via JSTOR. Instructions for activating a new or existing account will be emailed to you directly from JSTOR User Services (support@jstor.org) within a week of your new ASL membership or renewal. If you do not receive this email, or have not provided the ASL with an email address, please contact the ASL Member Service provider at the American Mathematical Society (asl-service@ams.org).

Rules for Abstracts

The rules for abstracts of contributed talks at ASL meetings (including those submitted "by title'') may be found at http://www.aslonline.org/rules_abstracts.html. Please note that abstracts must follow the rules as set forth there; those which do not conform to the requirements will be returned immediately to the authors submitting them. Revised abstracts that follow the rules will be considered if they are received by the announced deadline.

Emeritus ASL Individual Membership

The ASL offers retired individual members two membership options. Emeritus membership includes all the privileges of regular individual membership and is available to retired individuals who have been members of the ASL for 15 years. The dues for Emeritus membership for 2012 are US$44. The privileges attached to Retired membership (previously called emeritus membership) include the ASL Newsletter and the right to vote in ASL elections, but do not include subscriptions to the ASL journals. Retired membership is offered to retired individuals who have been members of the Association for 20 years and is free. For more information about both options, visit the webpage below.
http://www.aslonline.org/membership-individual.html

Older ASL Books Available Online at Project Euclid

The ASL has made available online via Project Euclid those older volumes of Lecture Notes in Logic and Perspectives in Logic owned by the ASL and published in collaboration with Springer-Verlag. The available Lecture Notes in Logic books (volumes 1-12) can be found at http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.lnl, and the available Perspectives volumes (those owned by the ASL) can be found at http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.pl. The ASL continues to sell original hard copies of those Lecture Notes and Perspective volumes of which there is sufficient stock; information about purchasing these volumes can be found at the website below.
http://www.aslonline.org/books.html

Discounted Dues for New ASL Individual Members

The ASL now offers a 50% discount on dues for new individual members during each of the first two years of membership. For more information, visit the website below.
http://www.aslonline.org/membership-individual.html

In Memoriam: Horacio Arló-Costa

Horacio Arló-Costa, professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, died unexpectedly in New York City on July 14, 2011, at age 54. A renowned logician and philosopher, Arló-Costa's innovative research crossed many different fields, including formal epistemology, artificial intelligence, behavioral decision research, and cognitive neuroscience. Arló-Costa received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1997 and joined Carnegie Mellon's Philosophy Department as a post-doctoral fellow the same year. Over the past fifteen years, he rose to the rank of professor and recently helped to found Carnegie Mellon's Center for Formal Epistemology (CFE) with Kevin T. Kelly. Additionally, Arló-Costa served as editor for The Review of Symbolic Logic, as area editor in epistemology for Synthese, and as member of the editorial board for the Journal of Philosophical Logic. Arló-Costa's work focused on different branches of philosophical logic, formal epistemology, decision theory, and behavioral decision theory. His main line of research centered on probabilistic models for conditionals and non-monotonic notions of consequence, epistemic logic, first-order modal logic, and belief revision. More recently, Arló-Costa's focus shifted boldly from the realm of ideal rationality to the more realistic world of bounded rationality and fast and frugal heuristics for decision making, which resulted in a number of theoretical articles and behavioral studies. Arló-Costa's greatest influence may have been on the many students he taught, mentored, and with whom he collaborated. The Center for Formal Epistemology will host a commemorative colloquium in his honor on November 18-19, 2011; see http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/org/cfe/cfe-page.html.

The 2011 ASL Election

The ASL membership has elected Martin Grohe (Humboldt University of Berlin) and Michael Rathjen (Leeds) to the Executive Committee, and Deirdre Haskell (McMaster) and Rosalie Iemhoff (Utrecht) to the Council. Their terms of office are for three years beginning January 1, 2012. The Nominating Committee consisted of Toshiyasu Arai, Michael Benedikt, Carlos DiPrisco, Mirna D\v zamonja, David Marker, Yiannis Moschovakis (Chair), and Richard Zach.

In Memoriam: Ernst Specker

Ernst Specker passed away unexpectedly on December 10, 2011, aged almost 92. He began his studies in the department of mathematics of ETH Zurich in 1940, and received his M.Sc. degree in 1945 and his Ph.D. (Dr. sc. math.) in 1948, with theses in topology supervised by Heinz Hopf. During this period Specker also studied logic with Paul Bernays. Among his other teachers were Michel Plancherel, Frederic Gonseth, and Beno Eckemann, who was only slightly older than he was. At the University of Zurich he took courses with Paul Finsler. During the years 1948-1950 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. After his return to Switzerland he taught at the Universities of Geneva and Neuchatel and at ETH Zurich. In 1955 he was appointed professor for mathematics and logic at ETH Zurich, the position he held until his retirement in 1987, heading the Zurich Logic School founded by Paul Bernays. After his retirement he continued to chair the Logic Seminar until a few years ago, and he followed the latest developments in logic and algorithmics with unabated interest until his last days.

Although compared to the records of many researchers of today Specker's papers are few, each one is a landmark in its respective field. The Selecta Ernst Specker, published on the occasion of his 70th birthday bears witness to this. So did the international conferences held in honor of his 60th, 80th and 90th birthdays.

His work covered algebraic topology, set theory, models of arithmetics, recursion theory, the foundations of quantum mechanics, finite and infinite combinatorics, algorithmics, and complexity. Much of his most influential work has been on Quine's New Foundations, a set theory with a universal set, but he is most famous for the Kochen-Specker theorem in quantum mechanics, showing that certain types of hidden variable theories are impossible. With the recent emergence of quantum information theory this work again plays a central role in the debate around the foundations of quantum computations. Specker's paper on recursive analysis, published in 1949, pioneered research in this field, and his paper on recursive versions of Ramsey's Theorem anticipates the Paris-Harrington-Kirby Theorem. His paper on the application of logic to combinatorics was the first to introduce model theoretic methods into finite combinatorics. In 1970, together with Volker Strassen, he founded a seminar on logic and algorithmics, one of the first of its kind in Europe, and a whole generation of leading theoretical computer scientists was formed in these seminars.

Ernst Specker was a challenging personality, as a teacher to his students and to his colleagues, but foremost as a human being who always questioned conventions and accepted only what withstood his own critical judgment. An example of this can be found in the mediating role he played during the 1968 youth unrest, where he co-authored, together with the renowned sculptor Gottfried Honegger, the "Zurich Manifesto'', warning the frightened citizens of overreaction and calling for a dialogue between the generations. Another example is his public---and later published---lectures on biblical themes in which he offered inspiring and unexpected new angles of interpretation of biblical texts.

Ernst Specker, in his gently teasing way, forced everyone entering his orbit to reconsider accepted opinions. His questioning mind will live on in the memory of his family, his friends and his many direct and indirect students.

Student Travel Awards: The 2012 ASL European Summer Meeting and other ASL or ASL-Sponsored Meetings

The ASL will make available modest travel awards to graduate students in logic and (for the European Summer Meeting only) to recent Ph.D.'s so that they may attend the 2012 ASL European Summer Meeting in Manchester, England; see the ASL Meetings webpages for information about this meeting. Student members of the ASL also may apply for travel grants to other ASL or ASL-sponsored meetings. To be considered for a Travel Award, please (1) send a letter of application, and (2) ask your thesis supervisor to send a brief recommendation letter. The application letter should be brief (preferably one page) and should include: (1) your name; (2) your home institution; (3) your thesis supervisor's name; (4) a one-paragraph description of your studies and work in logic, and a paragraph indicating why it is important to attend the meeting; (5) your estimate of the travel expenses you will incur; (6) (for citizens or residents of the USA) citizenship or visa status; and (7) (voluntary) indication of your gender and minority status. Women and members of minority groups are strongly encouraged to apply. In addition to funds provided by the ASL, the program of travel grants is supported by a grant from the US National Science Foundation; NSF funds for meetings outside of North America may be awarded only to students at USA universities and to citizens and permanent residents of the USA. Air travel paid for using NSF funds must be on a US flag carrier. Application by email is encouraged; put "ASL travel application'' in the subject line of your message.

For the 2012 ASL European Summer Meeting, applications and recommendations should be received before the deadline of March 23, 2012, by the Organizing Committee: LC2012, c/o Alex Wilkie, School of Mathematics, The Alan Turing Building, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK; email: lc2012@manchester.ac.uk.

For ASL student member travel grants to ASL or ASL-sponsored meetings (other than the 2012 European Summer Meeting), applications and recommendations should be received at least three months prior to the meeting at the ASL Business Office: ASL, Box 742, Vassar College, 124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie, New York 12604, USA; Fax: 1-845-437-7830; email: asl@vassar.edu. Decisions will be communicated at least two months prior to the meeting.

ASL January 2012 Newsletter

For the current ASL Newsletter, click on the link below.
Adobe PDF

2012 ASL North American Annual Meeting Program

For the 2012 ASL North American Annual Meeting Program, click on the appropriate link .
Adobe PDF