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Mycin
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<p>MYCIN was an early <a href="/facts/Backward_chaining/St5dtGYq">backward chaining</a> <a href="/facts/Expert_system/CUCzSEaX">expert system</a> that used <a href="/facts/Artificial_intelligence/lJGauQwX">artificial intelligence</a> to identify bacteria causing severe infections, such as <a href="/facts/Bacteremia/J0C082Sg">bacteremia</a> and <a href="/facts/Meningitis/4m4STzJB">meningitis</a>, and to recommend <a href="/facts/Antibiotic/sF1kIfxg">antibiotics</a>, with the dosage adjusted for patient's body weight — the name derived from the antibiotics themselves, as many antibiotics have the suffix "-mycin". The Mycin system was also used for the diagnosis of blood clotting diseases. MYCIN was developed over five or six years in the early 1970s at <a href="/facts/Stanford_University/JEQeF9z2">Stanford University</a>. It was written in <a href="/facts/Lisp_/xJHA3CrX">Lisp</a> as the doctoral dissertation of <a href="/facts/Edward_Shortliffe/h3t9PXJ7">Edward Shortliffe</a> under the direction of Bruce G. Buchanan, <a href="/facts/Stanley_N._Cohen/PnP8rbfR">Stanley N. Cohen</a> and others. </p><p>MYCIN emerged from the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project. MYCIN demonstrated the potential for expert systems in building high-performance medical reasoning programs. MYCIN is often viewed as a pioneer in the field of expert systems, even being referred to as the "grandaddy of them all-the one that launched the field" by Dr. <a href="/facts/Allen_Newell/61yUQ647">Allen Newell</a>. </p><p>MYCIN led to the EMYCIN <a href="/facts/Inference_engine/oLlNX14Q">expert system shell</a> ("essential MYCIN") for acquiring knowledge, reasoning with it, and explaining the results, without the specific medical knowledge. It can be described as "EMYCIN = <a href="/facts/Prolog/r5h66Qh1">Prolog</a> + uncertainty + caching + questions + explanations + contexts - variables". An introduction is in Chapter 16 of <i><a href="/facts/Paradigms_of_AI_Programming/AUv6vK82">Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming</a></i> (PAIP). </p>