NIST has released its Special Database 20, the Scientific and Technical Document Database of 23,468 high-resolution binary images (400 dpi) from 104 copyright-expired scientific and technical journals and books. The images contain graphs, tables, equations, two-column text, maps, pictures, footnotes, annotations, and arrays of such elements. No ground truth. The database and software utilities come on four ISO-9660 CD ROMs for $1,000. Standard Reference Data , NIST, Building 221, Room A323, Gaithersburg, MD 20899; (301) 975-2208, (301) 926-0416 Fax. For technical details contact Patrick Grother , (301) 975-4157. [connectionists, 5/19/95.]

A McDonnell Douglas physicist says he has a fast-training "creativity machine" based on one neural network learning from the breakdown of another. Starting with 30 years' Top 10 recordings, he has generated 11,000 new tunes (to which he holds copyright). [SciAm, 5/95, p. 24. EDUPAGE.]

For leads to AI techniques in finance, see Mark Coleman's . [, comp.ai, 5/14/95. David Joslin.]

Commercial and shareware neural-network simulation software is listed in the Usenet neural-network group FAQ. See comp.answers, or FTP it from rtfm.mit.edu (/pub/usenet/news.answers/comp.ai.neural-nets) or src.doc.ic.ac.uk. If you do not have anonymous FTP access, send "help" and "index" messages to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu. An HTML version can be found on . [Lutz Prechelt , Neuron Digest, 5/23/95.]

A list of 13 neural-net applications for MS Windows 3.x has been compiled by Constantin May. Most are demos, unable to save the results of a run. See for the binaries. [, Neuron Digest, 5/23/95.]