PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES.

This article presents information about several events related to the computer industry. The ACM (Association for Computing machinery) SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN Symposium on Practical Software Development Environments is scheduled for April 23-25, 1984, at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The National Bureau of Standards and Office of Naval Research are co-sponsoring the meeting. Papers are invited, with particular emphasis on new implementation schemes for interactive program design, construction, debugging, and testing. The Fourth International Conference on Information Systems, which will be organized during December 15-17, 1983, in Houston, Texas, is soliciting papers describing research in such areas as the theory of IS effectiveness; techniques for systems design; societal impact; management of technological innovation, transfer, and diffusion; office systems and the professional workstation; information centers and other approaches to the user interface; and cross-cultural comparisons of national and multi-national systems.