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CSLI Calendar, 29 April 1998, vol. 13:31
C S L I C A L E N D A R O F P U B L I C E V E N T S
______________________________________________________________________
29 April 1998 Stanford Vol. 13, No. 31
______________________________________________________________________
A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
____________
ACTIVITIES DURING 29 APRIL TO 8 MAY 1998
WEDNESDAY, 29 APRIL
3:15pm ME297: Design Theory and Methodology Seminar
Motor Workshop: The Role of Interactivity in Promoting
Learning
Derek Reamon
Ph.D. Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Design Division Stanford University
Abstract below
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
SuperComputers from CyberBricks?
Jim Gray
Microsoft Research
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 30 APRIL
12 noon CSLI CogLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
The Perception of Cross-Modal Simultaneity
(or The Greenwich Observatory Problem Revisited)
Daniel Levitin
visiting Stanford, Psychology / Interval Research
Abstract below
2:00pm International Computer Science Institute
Main Lecture Hall at ICSI, 1947 Center Street, Berkeley
Roomware and Cooperative Buildings: Extending the Scope
of Interaction and Cooperation beyond Desktops
Norbert A. Streitz
GMD - German National Research Center for Information
Technology
Darmstadt, Germany
Abstract below
4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium, Xerox PARC
Delivery, Deployment, and Use of Digital Images:
Lessons from a major University/Museum Consortial Project
Howard Besser
UC Berkeley
Abstract below
4:15pm AI-Vision-Robotics Division Colloquium
Gates 104
Topological Reasoning in Two Dimensions
Christos Papadimitriou
U.C.Berkeley
Abstract below
4:15pm Frontiers of Neuroscience Seminars
Munzer Auditorium
Cross-correlation in the auditory system: brain and
behavior
Masakazu Konishi
California Institute of Technology
Host: Dr. Eric Knudsen
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/nbio/Spring98.html
4:15pm CS548: Distributed Systems Research Seminar
Gates B01
(Tentative) Economics of the Push Model
Dale Skeen
Vitria
http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs548/
FRIDAY, 1 MAY
all day History of Science Conference
Materializing Cultures: Science, Technology, and Medicine
in a Global Context
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/
12 noon Logic Lunch
Room 380:383N
Information-Theoretic Logic and Transformation-Theoretic
Logic
John Corcoran
SUNY Buffalo
Abstract below
12:30pm Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Gates B03 (NEC classroom)
The Architecture of Identity
Phil Agre
UC San Diego
Abstract below
3:15pm Cognitive Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
Aging and Speaking: Some Puzzling Findings
Dr. Rose Zacks
Michigan State
3:15pm Computer Science Database Seminar
Gates B-12
The Architecture Required for Applications on the Web
Adam Bosworth
Microsoft
Abstract below
SATURDAY, 2 MAY
all day History of Science Conference
Materializing Cultures: Science, Technology, and Medicine
in a Global Context
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/
MONDAY, 4 MAY
3:30pm Psychology Social Lab
Jordan Hall 420:100
Effects Of A Provocative Mass Media Anti-Smoking
Campaign Targeting Young Women: The Impact Of Normative
Context
Leif E. Aaroe
4:30pm Stanford Digital Libraries Seminar
Gates B08
Title to be announced
Barbara Simons
ACM US Public Policy Committee
http://diglib.stanford.edu/diglib/seminars/seminars.html
TUESDAY, 5 MAY
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium
Bldg. 420:050 (Jordan Hall)
Modularity of Visual Recognition: Faces and Places
Nancy Kanwisher
MIT
WEDNESDAY, 6 MAY
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Academic Computer Architecture Research Refocused
New Challenges, New Technology, and Old Architectures
David Patterson
UC Berkeley
Abstract below
4:15pm Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation (SCLA)
Gates 100
To be announced
Chandra Reddy
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
THURSDAY, 7 MAY
12 noon CSLI CogLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Compositionality and the Alleged Explanatory Role of a
Compositional Semantics
Thomas Hofweber
Stanford, Philosophy
4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium, Xerox PARC
Title to be announced
Steve McCanne
UC Berkeley
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum
4:15pm AI-Vision-Robotics Division Colloquium
Gates 104
Title to be announced
Fausto Giunchiglia
IRST, Trento Italy
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/aicolloq/
4:15pm Frontiers of Neuroscience Seminars
M106, Medical Center
THE SECOND ANNUAL STEPHEN W. KUFFLER LECTURE
Learning to See: The Language of Vision
Dr. Dale Purves
Duke University
Host: Dr. U. J. McMahan
Abstract below
4:15pm CS548: Distributed Systems Research Seminar
Gates B01
To be announced
http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs548/
7:30pm Phonology Workshop
Margaret Jacks Hall, 460:146
title to be announced
Brett Kessler
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/Linguistics/pinterest/
FRIDAY, 8 MAY
12:30pm Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Gates B03 (NEC classroom)
Captology
BJ Fogg
Sun Microsystems
http://hci.stanford.edu/html/body_cs547.html
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium
Bldg. 90:92Q (Philosophy)
Platonic Souls as Persons
Anthony Long
Professor of Classics, UC Berkeley
Co-Sponsored with Classics
3:15pm Computer Science Database Seminar
Gates B-12
To be announced
Alon Levy
University of Washington
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
4:15pm AI-Vision-Robotics Division Colloquium
Gates 104
Exploiting Structure in Solving Planning Problems
or
Coping with the Blooming and Buzzing World that
Surrounds Us
Tom Dean
Brown University
special colloquium
Abstract below
____________
ME297: DESIGN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 29 April 1998, 3:15pm
http://cdr.stanford.edu/DD/Courses/me297/
Motor Workshop: The Role of Interactivity in Promoting Learning
Derek Reamon
Ph.D. Student
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Design Division
Stanford University
I will discuss the design, development, deployment and testing of two
pieces of courseware focused on teaching mechanical engineering
undergraduates about the fundamentals of direct-current (DC) motor
physics and selection. We were motivated to develop materials on
motors because they are a common engineering design element, and yet
their coverage in engineering curriculum is often cursory or poorly
integrated. Standard mechanical systems texts do not cover this
topic, and comprehensive motor texts are typically too detailed and
lengthy to be suitable for mechanical designers. Further, we hoped
that a multimedia presentation would allow for inclusion of
information that is difficult to convey in a conventional text format.
The two versions of Motor Workshop courseware cover the same basic
materials on motors, but differ in the level of interactivity between
the students and the courseware. In one case, the students navigate
through the information which is organized by topic, reading text and
viewing embedded video clips; we refer to this as the "low-level
interactivity" courseware. In the other case, the students are given a
task to accomplish: they must design a small motor-driven 'virtual'
vehicle that competes against computer-generated opponents. The
interaction is guided by the courseware which offers advice from
'experts' and provides contextual information; we refer to this as the
"high-level interactivity" courseware. 105 mechanical engineering
undergraduate students used one of the two versions of the courseware
in the winter of 1998 as part of a senior level course entitled
"Elements of Machine Design." Assessment results, including pre- and
post- performance tests and questionnaire responses, will be presented
and interpreted in terms of their implications for the role of
interactivity in students' learning.
If time and resources allow I may show some video clips of the two
pieces of software in action to demonstrate qualitative differences
between the two.
Biography: Derek is a 3rd-year PhD student working with Sheri Sheppard
to study the effects of technology on education. He hopes to complete
his dissertation on the Role of Interactivity in Engineering
Educational Software this summer. He also holds BS ME and MS ME
degrees from Stanford. Other interests include mechatronics design,
basketball and Norse mythology.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 29 April 1998, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03), Gates Computer Science Building
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/
Can you really Build SuperComputers from Commodity CyberBricks?
Jim Gray
Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research,
http://research.microsoft.com/barc/gray/
Fat servers are the dual of thin clients. Many forces are pushing us
to build huge compute and storage servers. The hardware to build such
servers is from commodity components is available today. Even more
extraordinary hardware is expected soon. The required software has
been slow to arrive. There are a few success stories: transaction
processing systems, parallel database systems for datamining, and more
recently web servers. This talk explains the key properties that
enabled these successes: a simple programming model and parallelism
that comes from many small requests or from massive dataflows.
Biography: Dr. Gray is a specialist in database and transaction
processing computer systems. At Microsoft his research focuses on
scalable computing: building super-servers and workgroup systems from
commodity software and hardware. Prior to joining Microsoft, he worked
at Digital, Tandem, IBM and AT&T on database and transaction
processing systems. He is editor of the Performance Handbook for
Database and Transaction Processing Systems, and coauthor of
Transaction Processing Concepts and Techniques. He holds doctorates
from Berkeley and Stuttgart, is a Member of the National Academy of
Engineering, Fellow of the ACM, a member of the National Research
Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, Trustee of
the VLDB Foundation, and Editor of the Morgan Kaufmann series on Data
Management.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 30 April 1998, 12 noon
Cordura Hall, Room 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli/Coglunch/
The Perception of Cross-Modal Simultaneity
(or "The Greenwich Observatory Problem Revisited")
Daniel J. Levitin
Interval Research Corporation
Stanford University
One of the oldest questions in experimental psychology concerns the
perception of simultaneous events, particularly when input arrives
through two different sensory channels (such as sight and sound). How
far apart do two events have to be before they are perceived as
sequential? It was this problem in the Greenwich Observatory in 1795
that led to the first experiments in perceptual thresholds in the
1830s, and the development of psychophysics. Laboratory experiments
in this century have yielded contradictory results about the temporal
distance that gives rise to the perception of successiveness.
Levitin will report data from his new experiments in which he created
a cross-modal simultaneity task to have greater ecological
validity. The results indicate that the threshold for successiveness
is smaller than that found in previous experiments, suggesting that
people are more accurate at discriminating temporal asynchrony than
has been previously thought. The present findings are relevant to
theories of time and order perception (e.g., Sternberg, Fraisse,
Sherrick) and consciousness (e.g., Dennett, Churchland).
____________
BERKELEY INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER SCIENCE INSTITUTE
on Thursday, 30 April 1998, 2:00pm - 3:30pm
Main Lecture Hall, ICSI, 1947 Center Street, Sixth Floor, Berkeley
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/talks/
Roomware and Cooperative Buildings:
Extending the Scope of Interaction and Cooperation beyond Desktops"
Norbert A. Streitz
GMD - German National Research Center for Information Technology
IPSI - Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute
Darmstadt, Germany
In this talk, I will report about our new ideas on extending the scope
of collaboration not only from desktops to meeting room support but
taking a more comprehensive perspective resulting in highly flexible
and dynamic work environments. This perspective is provided by the
notion of "cooperative buildings" which addresses the issues of how to
integrate information technology, new work practices resulting from
organizational innovation, and the physical environment, the
architectural structures and facility management. It incorporates also
ideas from augmented reality and ubiquitous computing.
In order to illustrate this, we have developed i-LAND: an interactive
landscape for creativity and innovation. i-LAND integrates several
so-called "roomware" components into a combination of real,
architectural as well as virtual, digital work environments for
creative teams. By "roomware", we mean computer-augmented objects in
rooms, like furniture, doors, walls, and others. The current
realization of i-LAND covers an interactive electronic wall
(DynaWall), an interactive table (InteracTable), two versions of
computer-enhanced chairs (CommChairs). More components are planned;
i-LAND is an example application of our vision of the Workspaces of
the Future. At the same time, it is a testbed for developing new forms
of human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work.
____________
XEROX PARC FORUM
on Thursday, 30 April 1998, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
George Pake Auditorium, Xerox
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum/
Delivery, Deployment, and Use of Digital Images:
Lessons from a Major University/Museum Consortial Project
Dr. Howard Besser
UC Berkeley
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~howard
An identical set of 10,000 digital images and accompanying descriptive
metadata were distributed to 7 university campuses. Each university
deployed these on their campus by building a digital repository, and
supporting both classroom and individual use of these images by their
community. The speaker will present some of the lessons learned from
this (Museum Educational Site Licensing) Project including: comparing
different user interfaces and presentation, different search engines,
and different indexing strategies for the same set of data; comparing
the costs of the different technical approaches at the various
campuses; comparing costs and usefulness of conventional university
slide libraries to digital image repositories; and examining faculty
needs in teaching with digital images. In addition, he will
articulate some of the issues exposed in trying to create a cohesive
searchable database out of images and metadata from 7 different
museums (each having its own unique procedures and practices).
Biography: Howard Besser is an Adjunct Associate Professor in UC
Berkeley's School of Information Management & Systems. He has been
involved in image database projects for over a dozen years, and has
published dozens of papers on the subject. He has been active in a
wide variety of activities, including distance learning, teaching with
technology, image and multimedia databases, social and cultural
effects of new information technology, and national and international
metadata standards efforts.
Dr. Besser was one of the founders of the Museum Educational Site
Licensing Project, and is Principal Investigator on a Mellon
Foundation grant to study the cost and use of digital distribution of
images. He also administers a grant that hires masters students to
design websites for UC Berkeley courses. And he is working on an NEH
grant to standardize structural and administrative metadata for the
national Digital Library Federation.
____________
AI-VISION-ROBOTICS DIVISION COLLOQUIUM
on Thursday, 30 April 1998, 4:15pm until 5:30pm
Gates 104
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/aicolloq/
Topological Reasoning in Two
Dimensions
Christos Papadimitriou
Computer Sciences Division
University of California at Berkeley
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/
Suppose that you know the following about four simply connected
regions on the plane: Region A is inside region B, B intersects C, C
is disjoint from D and includes A, while region D touches A on the
boundary and is disjoint from B. Is this possible? If so, we would
like a model, a picture in which four simply connected regions are so
related. If not, we would like a proof. This deceptively simple
problem leads to many intriguing and largely unresolved research
directions, including a redefinition of planarity.
Biography: Christos Papadimitriou studied in Athens Polytechnic (BS in
EE 1972) and Princeton (PhD in CS 1976).
Since then, he has taught at Harvard, MIT, Athens Polytechnic,
Stanford, and UC San Diego. He came to Berkeley in January 1996 (but
was here also in 1978 as a Miller fellow).
He is interested in the theory of algorithms and complexity, and its
applications to databases, optimization, AI, and game theory.
He has written these books:
Elements of the theory of computation (Prentice-Hall 1982, with Harry
Lewis, second edition September 1997)
Combinatorial optimization: algorithms and complexity (Prentice-Hall
1982, with Ken Steiglitz; second printing by Dover, 1998)
The theory of database concurrency control (CS Press 1988)
Computational Complexity (Addison Wesley, 1994)
____________
LOGIC LUNCH
on Friday, 1 May 1998, 12 noon
Math Corner 380:383N
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Information-Theoretic Logic and Transformation-Theoretic Logic
Prof. John Corcoran
SUNY Buffalo
There is a symbiotic relationship between science and logic. The
rational activities of the scientists provide the content of logic.
Logic, after assimilating and codifying that content, provides science
with an account of its logical foundations. But when logic turns its
foundational probings back on itself, it discovers problems it can not
now solve. The opposition between information-theoretic and
transformation-theoretic approaches to the foundations of logic raises
profound ontic and epistemic issues concerning the grounding of two
complementary logical activities: that of determining that a given
conclusion is a consequence of, or is implied by, given premises; and
that of determining that a given conclusion is independent of, or is
not implied by, given premises. Ironically, the two contradictory
approaches grow naturally from the two complementary logical
activities. This expository paper, accessible to a broad audience of
philosophers, mathematicians, scientists and humanists, provides clear
descriptions of the two approaches.
____________
SEMINAR ON PEOPLE, COMPUTER, AND DESIGN
on Friday, 1 May 1998, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03 (NEC Classroom)
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/seminar/
(SITN Channel E2)
The Architecture of Identity
Phil Agre
Department of Communication, UC San Diego
mailto:pagre@weber.ucsd.edu
Privacy issues arise, according to the traditional analysis, when
computers are used to capture and circulate individually identifiable
information. Unfortunately, this theory leads to intractable political
controversies because it only offers two extreme options: complete
identification and complete anonymity. It is well known that new
cryptographic protocols provide a complicated space of options between
these two extremes. Before we can make reasoned political and
technical choices about the adoption of these technologies, however,
we need a much fuller understanding of the "natural history" of
identity in face-to-face and computer-mediated interactions as they
already exist. In this talk, I will sketch some of the cognitive and
institutional aspects of identity. Then I will apply this analysis to
various questions of economics and Internet architecture.
Biography: Phil Agre teaches in the Department of Communication at UC
San Diego. He is perhaps best known as the creator and editor of the
popular on-line information source, the Red Rock Eater, which provides
a wide range of material on computing, technology, and society. He is
also the author of Computation and Human Experience (Cambridge
University Press, 1997), co-editor with Doug Schuler of Computation
and Human Experience (Ablex, 1977) and co-editor with Marc Rotenberg
of Technology and Privacy : The New Landscape (MIT Press, 1997).
____________
COMPUTER SCIENCE DATABASE SEMINAR
on Friday, 1 May 1998, 3:15pm - 4:30pm
Gates B12
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
The Architecture Required for Applications on the Web
Adam Bosworth
General Manager, Microsoft and Weblications Team
This talk focuses on why XML makes sense as a basic building block for
applications on the Web and what things remain to be done. Areas
covered include:
RPC:
XML provides an extraordinary opportunity to build the right
sort of RPC for the Web; one that is open, easy, asynchronous,
and coarse grained. All that is required is a standard grammar
for marshalling the arguments and describing the return
strategy.
Grammars:
Applications require in addition to the application specific
grammars some standard generic XML grammars, which are listed
below.
+ Generic Grammars
+ Rich meta-data and Data-typing
+ Discovery
+ Filtering
+ Updating
+ Presentation
API:
The World Wide Web Consortium is trying to finalize a
recommendation on an API known as the DOM (Document Object
Model) for accessing XML data. This API must be ubiquitous,
optimizable, and efficient to implement.
Stores:
XML will frequently be cached on machines either in queues or
in stores that allow more intelligent and rapid access. Some of
these stores will need to seem to the client code to be virtual
XML documents. Others will appear to be traditional queues.
Converters:
XML will act as an abstraction layer or logical view layer
between the implementation and other interested parties. As
such mapping engines or converters are required between the
actual implementation and the XML itself. There will need to be
at least three types of converters:
+ Converters between relational databases and XML.
+ Converters between objects and XML
+ Converters between XML and other XML including HTML for
presentation.
Biography: Adam Bosworth started at Microsoft in 1989 as a group
program manager. During his tenure at Microsoft, he was instrumental
in building Microsoft Access, he ran ODBC for a period of time, and he
developed the Database Outliner that shipped with Access Developer's
Toolkit. Recently, he led the development effort for Forms3 96, the
HTML forms technology for Microsoft Office '97 and the HTML Layout
Control. In the prior year, Adam was been the General Manager of the
Trident (DHTML in IE 4.0) project. Before coming to Microsoft, Adam
built a set of VAX-based MIS systems at Citicorp, started a company,
Analytica, and built Reflex (which was sold to Borland), and built
Borland's first version of Quattro. Adam graduated from Harvard with a
degree in Far Eastern and American History. Currently Adam is the
General Manager of Weblications which builds core technology for
building applications for the web and among other things is shipping
XML and XSL technology for Microsoft.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 6 May 1998, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03), Gates Computer Science Building
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/
Academic Computer Architecture Research Refocussed
New Challenges, New Technology, and Old Architectures
David A. Patterson
University of California, Berkeley
http://iram.cs.berkeley.edu/
For two decades architecture research has been focussed on desktop or
server machines. As a result of that attention, today's
microprocessors are 1000 times faster than original Berkeley RISC and
Stanford MIPS chips. Given the looming consolidation of desktop
microprocessor architectures, it may be time to declare victory and
look for new research challenges.
One candidate is personal mobile computing, where portable devices are
used for visual computing and personal communications tasks. Such a
device supports in an integrated fashion all the functionalities
provided by a portable computer, a cellular phone, a digital camera
and a video game today. In addition, we believe speech I/O will be the
cornerstone of such devices.
This new challenge brings new demands for architects. This application
cares much more about real-time performance than the performance
target of today's out-of-order microprocessors (average case
performance or SPEC performance). These programs typically operate on
vectors of 8-bit or 16-bit samples of audio and visual data and 32-bit
floating point data, not the 64-bit data of today's machines. In
addition to high performance for multimedia and DSP functions,
requirements include energy efficiency and area efficient, scalable
designs.
As a starting point, we propose reviving vector architectures. Vector
architectures match the narrower widths and real-time demands of
multimedia. They also scale well with increasing number of transistors
and wire-delay challenges of future integrated circuits. Unlike
conventional DSPs, they have a foundation of compiler research which
allows them to be programmed in high-level languages. And unlike the
MMX-style instruction set extensions, vector architectures have an
elegant and fast interface to memory and scale well with vector
length.
A vector machine benefits from a low-latency, high bandwidth memory.
Intelligent RAM, or IRAM, merges processing and memory into a single
chip to lower memory latency, increase memory bandwidth, improve
energy efficiency, and reduce size. Hence IRAM appears to be an
excellent technology for mobile computing. Surprisingly, the
integration of the processor/cache/memory of IRAM with with high-speed
serial I/O lines may also lead to very good I/O performance.
I conclude by describing the design of VIRAM-1, a microprocessor
designed by graduate students that may well have more transistors than
the contemporary Intel microprocessor. The goal is that in 2-3 years
VIRAM-1 will consume less than 2 watts of power, contain 16-32 MBytes
of memory, have about 1 GByte/sec of I/O, and crunches at the rate of
1-2 GFLOPS (64-bit floating point) and 4-16 GOPS (16-bit fixed point).
It may also challenge DSP performance even though programmed in
high-level programming languages.
The repercussions of success extend beyond the architecture research
community. Today's semiconductor industry is sharply divided into
processor and memory camps. If IRAM proves successful, unification may
come to the semiconductor industry. In such a future, its unclear
which company will ship the most processors.
Biography: David A. Patterson (University of California at Berkeley)
has taught computer architecture since joining the faculty in 1977,
and is holder of the E.H. and M.E. Pardee Chair of Computer
Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, is a
Fellow of the Computer Society of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and is also a Fellow of the the
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). His teaching has been
honored by the ACM with the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator
Award, by IEEE with the Undergraduate Teaching Award, by the
University of California with the Distinguished Teaching Award, and by
his department with the Diane S. McEntyre Award for Excellence in
Teaching. He received the inaugural Outstanding Alumnus Award of the
UCLA Computer Science Department as part of its 25th Anniversary and
in 1995 he received the IEEE Technical Achievement Award.
He is past chair of the CS Division in the EECS department at
Berkeley, the ACM Special Interest Group in Computer Architecture, and
the Computing Research Association. He has consulted for many
companies, including Digital, Hewlett Packard, Intel, and Sun
Microsystems, and is also co-author of five books (including two with
John Hennessy.)
At Berkeley, he led the design and implementation of RISC I, likely
the first VLSI Reduced Instruction Set Computer. This research became
the foundation of the SPARC architecture, currently used by Fujitsu,
Sun Microsystems, and Xerox. (In 1996 Microprocessor Report and COMDEX
named SPARC as one of the significant microprocessors as part of the
celebration of the 25th anniversary of the microprocessor.) He was
also a leader of the Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)
project, which led to high performance storage systems from many
companies. These projects led to three distinguished dissertation
awards from the ACM. His current research interests are in large-scale
computing using networks of workstations (NOW) and in building novel
microprocessors using Intelligent DRAM (IRAM).
____________
FRONTIERS OF NEUROSCIENCE
THE SECOND STEPHEN W. KUFFLER LECTURE
Thursday, 7 May 1998, 4:15pm (time unsure)
M106, Stanford Medical Center
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/nbio/Spring98.html
Learning to See: The Language of Vision
Dale Purves, M.D.
George Barth Geller Professor for Research in Neurobiology
and
Chairman, Department of Neurobiology, Duke University
http://www.neuro.duke.edu/faculty/Purves/Purves.htm
The title of Dr. Purves' lecture will be "Learning to see: the
language of vision". As a result of Stephen Kuffler's seminal
observations on the organization of retinal ganglion cell receptive
fields in the early 1950s, much visual research has been predicated on
the idea that perception is built up from the receptive field
properties of cells at different stages in the visual pathway. Based
on the phenomenology of visual perception, Dr. Purves will suggest a
different analysis, the gist of which is that vision, much like
language, depends on learned associations.
Dr. Purves received his undergraduate degree at Yale and medical
training at Harvard, where as a student he first came to know Steve
Kuffler. After postdoctoral work in Kuffler's department, and
subsequently at University College London, he joined the faculty at
Washington University School of Medicine. He remained there until 1990
when he moved to his present position at Duke. Dr. Purves has worked
on the effects of activity on the membrane properties of muscle
fibers, synaptic specificity in autonomic ganglia, trophic
interactions in the formation and maintenance of neural connections,
the role of neuronal geometry in determining convergence and
divergence in the nervous system, the structure of individual synaptic
connections monitored over long periods, the development of the
olfactory system, and the role of neural activity in cortical
development and the allocation of cortical space. In the last few
years he has turned his attention to visual perception.
Dr. Purves was editor-in-chief of The Journal of Neuroscience from
1988 to 1993. In addition to numerous primary research articles, he
has authored five books on neurosciences. He was elected to the
National Academy of Sciences in 1989, and the Institute of Medicine in
1996.
____________
AI-VISION-ROBOTICS DIVISION COLLOQUIUM
special additional colloquium
on Friday, 8 May 1998, 4:15pm until 5:30pm
Gates 104
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/aicolloq/
Exploiting Structure in Solving Planning Problems
or
Coping with the Blooming and Buzzing World that Surrounds Us
Tom Dean
Computer Sciences Department
Brown University
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/tld/
In describing the world for planning purposes, the relevant features
often multiply, seeming to indicate the need for complicated
descriptions of the underlying dynamics. For many decision problems,
however, we can structure our knowledge so as to realize compact,
factored representations of the dynamics [McCarthy and Hayes, 1969]
that take advantage of independence relationships involving the
problem features. Factored representations have long been a mainstay
of AI approaches to planning [Fikes and Nilsson, 1971]. Unfortunately,
the existence of a compact representation does not imply a simple
decision problem. In the first part of this talk, we consider methods
based on model reduction and related to the work of Hartmanis and
Stearns [1966] that attempt to simplify decision making by exploiting
structure implicit in factored representations.
If factored representations constitute the beans and chili peppers of
AI planning, then what's the big burrito, the whole enchilada, and do
you really need beans to put together a satisfying meal? In many
planning and control problems, accurate models are hard to come by. It
may not be necessary to construct a factored representation enroute to
a satisfactory solution to a planning problem. In the second part of
the talk, we re-examine our motives for studying planning and propose
an alternative perspective that combines traditional planning with
learning. The result is an AI version of adaptive control with an
emphasis on factored representations and a distinctly Bayesian flavor.
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END MATERIAL
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