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CSLI Calendar, 3 November 1999, vol. 15:7
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
______________________________________________________________________
3 November 1999 Stanford Vol. 15, No. 7
______________________________________________________________________
A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
____________
ACTIVITIES FROM 3 NOVEMBER TO 12 NOVEMBER 1999
WEDNESDAY, 3 NOVEMBER
12 noon Stanford Computer Industry Project (SCIP)
Littlefield room L107
Personalizing E-Commerce with Interactive Characters
Scott Prevost, Peter Hodgson, Linda Cook
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scip/
Abstract below
12 noon Developmental Brownbag
Jordan Hall, 420:286
The Sociobiology of Early Self Development
Jeff Measelle
Stanford
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html
3:45pm Psychology Colloquium
Jordan Hall, 420:041
Quests for universal principles of cognition, of science,
and of ethics
Roger Shepard
Stanford
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Start-Up Incubation:
The Latest Form of Corporate Research and Development
Charles Wu
Panasonic
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/contents.html
Abstract below
4:15pm CS528: Broad Area Colloquium
TCseq 201
The Digital Michelangelo Project
Marc Levoy
Stanford
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
Abstract below
5:00pm US-Japan Technology Management Center
McCullough 150
Digital Renaissance: A People Friendly Digital Society
"Human-Centered Computing for the 21st Century"
Keynote from Stanford by Prof. Terry Winograd, Computer
Science
"The Impact of Digital Technology on Lifestyles"
Keynote from Tokyo by F. Brown, Pres, MTV Networks Asia
A two way Video Conference
(you must RSVP to viji@stanford.edu as space is limited)
http://www.stanford.edu/~viji/
6:00pm Sociable Syntax Supper Group
Margaret Jacks Hall 126
Copula Absence Without Deletion and Non-Categorical
Constraints in Competence Grammar
Emily Bender
THURSDAY, 4 NOVEMBER
11:00am CCRMA Hearing Seminar
CCRMA Library
Binaural Synthesis
Veronique Larcher
Ircam (Paris)
http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Events/Events.html#hearing
Abstract below
12 noon Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching
CERAS 204
Teaching As Learning:
The Process of Designing a New Course
Prof. Leonard Ortolano
Civil & Environmental Engineering
http://www-ctl.stanford.edu/teach/awt/awtmain.html
4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium, Xerox PARC
Traffic Analysis: the Unspoken Side of Cryptanalysis
Kevin McCurley
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum
Abstract below
4:15pm US-Japan Technology Management Center
Skilling Engineering Auditorium
New Movements of Japanese Science and Technology
Basic Science and Entrepreneurial Technology
Professor Noby Maeda
Kochi University of Technology
http://www.stanford.edu/~viji/
Abstract below
4:30pm Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation (SCLA)
Terman 332
Learning the Structure of Utility Functions
Urszula Chajewska
Computer Science, Stanford
(jointly with the Decision Analysis Working Group, note
change in time and place)
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
FRIDAY, 5 NOVEMBER
12:30pm Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Gates B03 (NEC classroom)
Recent Research at the NYU Media Research Lab
Ken Perlin
NYU Media Research Lab
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:15pm CS545: Infolab Seminar
201 tcSEQ (across from Gates)
Repeating History Beyond ARIES
C. Mohan
IBM Almaden Research Center
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
Abstract below
3:15pm FRISEM: Cognitive Psychology Seminar
Jordan 420:100
Different strokes for different folks: individual
differences in representation
Keith Stenning
CSLI visitor
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html#frisem
Abstract below
MONDAY, 8 NOVEMBER
7:00pm Stanford Presidential Lectures
Law School, room 290
Svetlana Alpers
Art Historian
http://prelectur.stanford.edu/calendar/
TUESDAY, 9 NOVEMBER
4:00pm Nobots
Gates 104
To be announced
Jun Liu
Statistics, Stanford
http://robotics.Stanford.EDU/groups/nobots/
WEDNESDAY, 10 NOVEMBER
all day CSLI conference on Human Computer Interaction
Cordura 100
You must be registered
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/Tutorials/schedule.shtml
10:00am Knowledge on the Web Seminar
Gates 104
Eureka, Using the Web as a Community Knowledge Medium
Daniel G. Bobrow
Research Fellow, Xerox PARC
http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/KnOWS.html
Abstract below
12 noon Stanford Computer Industry Project (SCIP)
Littlefield room L107
To be announced
Rex Briggs
Millward Brown Interactive
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scip/
12 noon Developmental Brownbag
Jordan Hall, 420:286
All Eyes on Me: Assessing What Others Know and Think
About Oneself
Rachel Stewart Johnson
Stanford
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
Gates B3 (NEC Room)
The Digital Michelangelo Project
Marc Levoy
Stanford
(See November 3rd Broad Area Colloquium below)
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/contents.html
4:15pm CS528: Broad Area Colloquium
TCseq 201
To be announced
Judea Pearl
UCLA
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
THURSDAY, 11 NOVEMBER
all day CSLI conference on Human Computer Interaction
Cordura 100
You must be registered
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/Tutorials/schedule.shtml
11:00am CCRMA Hearing Seminar
CCRMA Library
Binaural
Richard O. Duda
San Jose State
http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Events/Events.html#hearing
3:15pm Experiments in Learning at Stanford
Press Warehouse, room 118
Helga Wilde
IRL
http://sll.stanford.edu/
4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium, Xerox PARC
to be announced
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum
4:15pm Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation (SCLA)
Cordura 100
TBA
Eddy Mayoraz
Motorola, Lexicus Division
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
4:15pm US-Japan Technology Management Center
Skilling Engineering Auditorium
Intel Research in China
Dr. Robert Yung
Director & Chief Technologist, Intel China Research
Center
http://www.stanford.edu/~viji/
7:30pm Stanford Phonology Workshop
Building 460, Room 126
Donca Steriade
Linguistics, UCLA
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
FRIDAY, 12 NOVEMBER
all day CSLI conference on Human Computer Interaction
Cordura 100
You must be registered
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/Tutorials/schedule.shtml
12:30pm Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Gates B03 (NEC classroom)
Interactive Storytelling
Abbe Don
Abbe Don Interactive
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
3:15pm CS545: Infolab Seminar
201 tcSEQ (across from Gates)
Data Semantics, Modeling and Ontologies: New Frontiers in
Databases
Robert Meersman
STARLab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
Abstract below
3:15pm Philosophy Colloquium
Building 90, Room 92Q
Non-Humans as Sources of Normativity
Lori Gruen
Philosophy, Stanford University
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
3:15pm FRISEM: Cognitive Psychology Seminar
Jordan 420:100
Paul Lee
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html#frisem
3:30pm Stanford Linguistics Colloquium
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
Donca Steriade
University of California, Los Angeles
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/colloq.html
____________
SPECIAL UPCOMING EVENTS
The 1999-2000 Symbolic Systems Distinguished Speaker Event
"Augmenting the Human Intellect"
Doug Engelbart and Steven Johnson
Thursday, 18 November 1999, 4:00pm to 6:00pm
Annenburg Auditorium
Each year, the Symbolic Systems Student Society hosts a Distinguished
Speaker Event that brings together the Stanford community to engage
with central issues in the cognitive sciences. This year, we are
proud to welcome both Doug Engelbart, a pioneer in human-computer
interaction and the inventor of the mouse, and Steven Johnson,
editor-in-chief of the online magazine FEED and author of the book
_Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create
and Communicate_. These two distinguished speakers will participate
in a dialogue on the future of information technology and the
possibility of augmenting the human intellect. All are invited to
this free event.
____________
STANFORD COMPUTER INDUSTRY PROJECT (SCIP)
on Wednesday, 3 November 1999, 12 noon
Littlefield, room L107
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scip/
Personalizing E-Commerce with Interactive Characters
Scott Prevost, Peter Hodgson, Linda Cook
Headpedal
http://www.fxpal.xerox.com/SmartSpaces/ConversationalCharacters/
E-commerce is the fastest growing segment of the U.S. economy, with
revenues expected to increase to $440 billion by the year 2002. While
business-to-business e-commerce sales revenues have grown
dramatically, business-to-consumer e-commerce sales have not
experienced such expansion. For retail sales, people seem to prefer
doing business with another person rather than a 'point and click' web
interface. In short, the Internet may be a good place to shop, but the
traditional storefront may have the retail sales advantage because it
affords face-to-face contact with the consumer.
In this talk, we describe how interactive animated character
technology will benefit e-commerce by allowing consumers to gather
information and make purchases through face-to-face contact with
virtual sales and support agents. We will present an overview of the
technology, the markets, and our business plans for bringing the
technology to e-commerce.
Biographies: Scott Prevost specializes in speech and character
interfaces. He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of
Pennsylvania, served as a post-doctoral fellow at the MIT Media
Laboratory, and currently holds the position of Senior Research
Scientist at FX Palo Alto Laboratory.
Peter Hodgson specializes in graphic and interaction design. He earned
a Masters degree in Computer Related Design at the Royal College of
Art in London, and currently holds the position of Senior Interface
Design Researcher at FXPAL.
Linda Cook specializes in personality and behaviors for synthetic
characters. She earned a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from the
University of California, a Master's degree in Computer Science, and
was a consultant at FXPAL.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 3 November 1999, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03), Gates Computer Science Building
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/contents.html
START-UP INCUBATION:
The latest form of corporate Research and Development
Charles C. Wu
Panasonic Digital Concepts Center
Charles C. Wu, Managing Director of Panasonic Digital Concepts Center
(PDCC), will be focusing on "START-UP INCUBATION: The latest form of
corporate Research and Development". The Panasonic Digital Concepts
Center was started in November 1998 with financial backing from
Matsushita Electric Inc. (MEI), one of the top five product companies
in the world. PDCC was formed to act as a window into Silicon Valley
trends and startup companies for Matsushita. It provides services to
startup companies ranging from pre-seed incubation services to
mezzanine-stage direct investments. Our goal is to accelerate the
development of technologies into society by combining the innovation
and entrepreneurial strengths of Silicon Valley with the manufacturing
and distribution strengths of Matsushita. To further strengthen the
PDCC team, the Panasonic Internet Incubator has created an Internet
Advisory Board of savvy Silicon Valley insiders to provide
entrepreneurial wisdom and strategic advice to successfully accelerate
the growth of these startup businesses.
Mission
PDCC's critical mission is to develop and invest in emerging
technologies, best-of breed business processes and value-add software
services and applications that drive toward connecting consumer
electronic devices to each other and to the Internet.
Organization
The Panasonic Digital Concepts Center offers the first technology
business incubator directly linked to a corporate venture fund. PDCC
will utilize its team's experience in Silicon Valley and Matsushita's
global resources to identify strategic investment and partnership
opportunities to complement MEI's core business of consumer
electronics. To accomplish its goal, the PDCC possesses the following
core resources:
-Panasonic Internet Incubator
-Panasonic Ventures
-Panasonic Global Network
About the speaker:
Charles C. Wu, Managing Director
An industry veteran with more than 15 years of tech sector financial
experience, including investments, acquisitions, IPOs, corporate
sales, and MBOs, Wu combines his investing acumen, network of contacts
and the backing of Matsushita to help tech start-ups deliver exciting
new products and services.
With direct involvement in 33 tech investments throughout his career
-- acting as principal on 20 -- Wu has helped companies whose
activities range from networking to operating systems and from online
gaming to LCD flat-panel displays.
Before joining PDCC, Wu was a vice president at Vertex Management, a
global venture capital operation with offices in California,
Singapore, and Israel. Vertex is funded by Southeast Asian financial
and corporate institutions. A lead investor, Wu was also responsible
for Vertex Management's marketing message to the US investment
community. The combination of investing and marketing allowed him to
develop relationships with leading venture-oriented investment, legal,
recruiting, consulting, banking, and accounting organizations.
Before joining Vertex Management, Wu was a project manager at RSA Data
Security, the world's leading provider of encryption solutions. He
previously worked in investment banking in the technology group at CS
First Boston, where he was involved in more than $2 billion of West
Coast technology M&A activity. Wu has additional experience as a
software engineer, engineering project manager, and in business
development at Raytheon E-Systems.
Wu holds a Bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Masters in Business
Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Charles Wu is the centerpiece of the PDCC team and he brings an
extensive amount of experience and expertise to the PDCC.
____________
BROAD AREA COLLOQUIUM FOR
AI-GEOMETRY-GRAPHICS-ROBOTICS-VISION
on Wednesday, 3 November 1999, 4:15pm
TCseq201B (across from Gates)
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
** Directions to TCseq201 are available at
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/tcseq201-map.html
The Digital Michelangelo Project
Marc Levoy
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Recent improvements in laser rangefinder technology, together with
algorithms developed in our research group for combining multiple
range images, allow us to reliably and accurately digitize the
external shape of many physical objects. As an application of this
technology, I and a team of 30 faculty, staff, and students from
Stanford University and the University of Washington spent the 1998-99
academic year in Italy digitizing the sculptures and architecture of
Michelangelo.
Our primary acquisition device was a laser triangulation rangefinder
mounted on a large motorized gantry. Using this device and a smaller
rangefinder mounted on a jointed digitizing arm, we created 3D
computer models of 10 statues, including the David. These models range
in size from 100 million to 2 billion polygons. Using a time-of-flight
rangefinder, we also created 3D computer models of the interiors of
two museums, including Michelangelo's Medici Chapel. Finally, using
our rangefinders in conjunction with a high-resolution digital color
camera, we created a light field and aligned 3D computer model of
Michelangelo's highly polished statue of Night. A light field is a
dense array of images viewable using new techniques from image-based
rendering.
As a side project, we also scanned the 1,100 fragments of the Forma
Forma Urbis Romae, the giant marble map of ancient Rome carved circa
200 A.D. Piecing this map together has been one of the great unsolved
problems of archaeology. Our hope is that by scanning the fragments and
searching among the resulting geometry for matching surfaces, we can
find new matches among the fragments.
In this talk, I will outline the technological underpinnings,
logistical challenges, and possible outcomes of this project.
Biography: Marc Levoy is an associate professor of Computer Science
and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He received a
B. Architecture in 1976 from Cornell University, an M.S. in 1978 from
Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1989 from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Levoy's early research
centered on computer-assisted cartoon animation, leading to
development of a computer animation system for Hanna-Barbera
Productions. His recent publications are in the areas of volume
visualization, rendering algorithms, computer vision, geometric
modeling, and user interfaces for imaging and visualization. His
current research interests include digitizing the shape and appearance
of physical objects using multiple sensing technologies, the creation,
representation, and rendering of complex geometric models, image-based
modeling and rendering, and applications of computer graphics in art
history, preservation, restoration, and archaeology. Levoy received the
NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1991 and the SIGGRAPH
Computer Graphics Achievement Award in 1996 for his work in volume
rendering.
____________
CCRMA HEARING SEMINAR
on Thursday, 4 November 1999, 11:00am
CCRMA Library, The Knoll
http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Events/Events.html
Methods for 3D audio spatialization of
multiple sound sources over headphones
Veronique Larcher
Ircam (Paris)
Jean-Marc Jot
Joint Emu/Creative Tech Center (CA)
Binaural technology aims at reconstructing at a listener's eardrum the
signals that would be produced in these two points in a real
situation. This talk will focus on Binaural "Synthesis", a technique
allowing to position a virtual sound source anywhere in 3-D space,
traditionally by use of the 2-channel filtering of the mono input
sound by a pair of Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTF). These
filters have to be updated for each new position, and for each new
virtual source, a new filtering module will be added to the
processing. This 2-channel approach is most often too costly from a
computational point of view for applications requiring a large amount
of sources, such as computer games.
We will discuss an alternative implementation of binaural synthesis,
or "multichannel implementation", that is more suitable for the
spatialization of multiple sources. It relies on the linear
decomposition of a HRTFs database into a finite number of Spatial
Functions, denoted Si(d), and associated Basis Filters, denoted
Hi(f). Thereby approximated HRTF are given by:
HRTF(d,f) = SUMi{Si(d).Hi(f)}
A multichannel binaural encoder consists then in the weighting of a
monaural input signal by the set of Spatial Functions, while the
decoder is a parallel bank of Reconstruction Filters. Several
decomposition methods to come up with the Spatial Functions and Basis
Filters will be described and compared, among with: projection of the
HRTF over spherical harmonics, subset selection of HRTF, and
statistical analysis of HRTF, such as Principal or Independent
Component analysis.
Beyond the advantage of reducing the computational cost of
spatializing multiple sound sources, such decomposition techniques
provide a compact representation of HRTF for the analysis of inter-
individual variations. Such a representation might be useful for
finding out means to adapt the binaural synthesis to the final
listener. We will present preliminary results in this direction.
____________
XEROX PARC FORUM
on Thursday, 4 November 1999, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
George Pake Auditorium, Xerox
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum/
Traffic Analysis: the Unspoken Side of Cryptanalysis
Kevin McCurley
IBM Almaden Research Center
Cryptography is an adversarial science by its very nature. The goal
of a cryptanalyst is to discover information, and the goal of a
cryptographer is to conceal it. One problem that is seldom discussed
in the open literature is that of traffic analysis, which refers to
inferences made about the content of communication based on properties
of the communication. Traffic analysis introduces all sorts of
scalability problems, and also introduces new challenges to the
cryptographer. While this is often used by intelligence agencies and
law enforcement, it may also be used by hackers. In this talk I will
discuss some of the ramifications of traffic analysis, focusing
particularly on security of the Internet and the IP Security protocol
(IPSEC) (the focus on the Internet is not just for buzzword
compliance, because packet switched networks are particularly
vulnerable!).
Biography: Kevin McCurley is a Research Staff Member at IBM Almaden
Research Center. He has previously held positions at Michigan State
University, the University of Southern California, and Sandia National
Laboratories. He is President of the International Association for
Cryptologic Research and a Member of the President's Export Council
Subcommittee on Encryption. He is also the Thief Scientist of
DigiCrime.
____________
US-JAPAN TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT CENTER
on Thursday, 4 November 1999, 4:15pm
Skilling Engineering Auditorium
http://www.stanford.edu/~viji/
New Movements of Japanese Science and Technology:
Basic Science and Entrepreneurial Technology
Professor Noby Maeda
According to the IMD World Competitiveness Report, Japan is dropping
down to 16th position from the No.1 position several years ago. In
this report, however, Science and Technology of Japan is still ranked
as number 2.
As a country with relatively few natural resources, the Japanese
Government, has for more than a century, encouraged enhancement of
Science and Technology. "Science and Technology Based Nation Building"
is a common key word among the Japanese. Development of Science and
Technology Policy is a key concern, and in 1995 Science and technology
Basic Law was set, and in 1996 Science and technology Basic Plan was
decided on at the Cabinet level. In the five years starting from 1996
to 2000, 17 trillion yen (about $160 billion) was earmarked for
science and technology.
A new tide of Globalization, Deregulation and Information Technology
Revolution is arriving all at once. The traditional Japanese
(successful) business model, the so called "Catch Up Model", is no
longer effective in the Information Technology Age of today. And the
Japanese establishment seems at crossroads in the face of such rapid
changes.
On the other hand, it looks like the U.S. is very determined to take
the new value of "E-Business" with the dynamism of the "Silicon Valley
Business Model". Companies are enjoying high profit ratios, with
drastic corporate restructuring, such as concentration of business
domain, huge scale of lay offs and M&A.
Europe, in the meantime is facing the challenges of the common
currency "Euro", which is triggering a drastic restructuring of all
kind of business and business culture. The impact of the new common
currency looks much bigger than the expectations of many people.
No doubt that both "E-Business" and "Euro" will continue to be strong
engines for both US and Europe in next 30-50 years.
In order to re-vitalize the Japanese economy in the coming decades, we
need to find out what Japan's new engine to replace the Catch-up
model can be. This presentation will be based on a Policy Study by
Noby Maeda for NISTEP called "Transformation of Japanese Enterprises'
Strength through New Business Model Creation - A Scenario to realize
Science & Technology based Nation Building"
____________
SEMINAR ON COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING AND ADAPTATION (SCLA)
on Thursday, 4 November 1999, 4:30pm
Terman 332
(note change in place and time)
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
jointly with
Decision Analysis Working Group
Learning the Structure of Utility Functions
Urszula Chajewska
Department of Computer Science
Stanford University
mailto:urszula@cs.stanford.edu
Utility functions are defined over a space which is exponential in the
number of variables on which the utility depends. More compact
representations of the utility are possible if we make certain
assumptions about additive independence among the variables. These
assumptions allow the function to be decomposed into smaller
components, thus reducing the number of parameters needed to specify
it completely. Decomposable utility functions support more efficient
inference and are easier to elicit from people. However, it can be
difficult to know which decomposition is appropriate in a given
setting. We hypothesize that there is some commonality to the
utilities exhibited by a population of users; more precisely, we
assume that the population is divided (in an unknown way) into
subpopulations, each of which is statistically coherent. We can view
the problem of discovering the structure of this distribution over
utilities in a population as a statistical learning task. We show how
we can apply Bayesian learning techniques to learn the distribution
over factored utility functions from a set of fully specified utility
functions elicited from a population of users. Our approach can be
used for a wide range of independence types, including "conditional
additive independence" and "generalized additive independence." We
show how to choose a utility decomposition appropriate to a large
subpopulation by performing statistical model selection, using an
approximation to the Bayesian score. The factorization of the
utilities in the learned model facilitates utility elicitation by
allowing fully specified utility functions to be assessed using a
significantly smaller number of questions. The generalization
obtained from learning a model for a population of similar people
allows smoother estimates of the utility function, thereby reducing
the noise unavoidable in utility assessment.
____________
SEMINAR ON PEOPLE, COMPUTER, AND DESIGN
on Friday, 5 November 1999, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03 (NEC Classroom)
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Recent Research at the NYU Media Research Lab
Ken Perlin
NYU Media Research Lab
I'll be showing a very diverse set of our research projects, including
various experiments in interactive improvisational animation, which
will feature synthesis of emotive facial and body expression, and a
view of a live theatrical performance first presented in the
SIGGRAPH98 Electronic Theatre, in which all the actors are virtual
agents.
I will also show new work in zooming user interfaces, including some
"100% Java Applet" zoomable componentware for Web Browsers. Also
research in true autostereoscopic displays, four dimensional
visualization, very low inertia robotic links, interactive "painterly"
rendering, rapid text entry for PDAs, interactive procedurally
textured planets implemented in Java (a "Webwide World"), and a new
approach for foveated displays approaching human eye resolution.
Biography: Ken Perlin is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Computer Science and the director of the Media Research Laboratory at
the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University.
He is also the director of the NYU Center of Advanced Technology,
sponsored by the New York State Science and Technology Foundation.
He completed his Ph.D. in 1986 from the New York University Department
of Computer Science. His dissertation received the Janet Fabri award
for outstanding Doctoral Dissertation. He received his B.A. in
theoretical mathematics at Harvard University in 1979. His research
interests include graphics, animation, and multimedia. In 1991 he was
a recipient of a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the
National Science Foundation. In 1997 he was a recipient of a Technical
Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
for his noise and turbulence procedural texturing techniques, which
are widely used in feature films and television.
Dr. Perlin was Head of Software Development at R/GREENBERG Associates
in New York, NY from 1984 through 1987. Prior to that, from 1979 to
1984, he was the System Architect for computer generated animation at
Mathematical Applications Group, Inc., Elmsford, NY. TRON was the
first movie for which his name got onto the credits. He has served on
the Board of Directors of the New York chapter of ACM/SIGGRAPH, has
been a member of ACM and ACM SIGGRAPH, and has been a senior reviewer
for a number of technical conferences.
____________
CS545: INFOLAB SEMINAR
on Friday, 5 November 1999, 3:15pm - 4:30pm
201 tcSEQ (across from Gates)
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
Repeating History Beyond ARIES
C. Mohan
IBM Almaden Research Center
In this talk, I describe first the background behind the development
of the original ARIES recovery method, and its significant impact on
the commercial world and the research community. Next, I provide a
brief introduction to the various concurrency control and recovery
methods in the ARIES family of algorithms. Subsequently, I discuss
some of the recent developments affecting the transaction management
area and what these mean for the future. In ARIES, the concept of
repeating history turned out to be an important paradigm. As I examine
where transaction management is headed in the world of the internet, I
observe history repeating itself in the sense of requirements that
used to be considered significant in the mainframe world (e.g.,
performance, availability and reliability) now becoming important
requirements of the broader information technology community as well.
Biography: Dr. C. Mohan joined the Computer Science Department of the
IBM Almaden Research Center as a Research Staff Member in 1981. In
1997, Mohan was named to IBM's highest technical position of an IBM
Fellow for being recognized worldwide as a leading innovator in
transaction management. He received the ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award
in 1996 in recognition of his innovative contributions to the
development and use of database systems. At VLDB99, he was honored
with the 10 Year Best Paper Award for the impact of his work on the
ARIES family of algorithms. In 1992, Mohan was elected a member of the
IBM Academy of Technology. Since late 1996, Mohan has been leading the
Dominotes project whose goal is to enhance Lotus Domino/Notes's
scalability and fault tolerance by introducing transactional recovery
in Domino R5. Earlier, Mohan led the Exotica project which was focused
on advanced transaction management and on IBM's workflow product
FlowMark, messaging product MQSeries and groupware product Lotus
Notes. During 1998-99, he was on a sabbatical at INRIA, Rocquencourt
(France). Mohan was a designer and an implementor of the R*
distributed DBMS, the Starburst extensible DBMS and DB2. He is the
primary inventor of the ARIES family of recovery and concurrency
control methods, and the Presumed Abort commit protocol. He has
lectured extensively, and authored numerous conference and journal
papers on concurrency control, recovery, commit protocols, index
management, query optimization, active databases, architectural
support for transaction processing, parallelism, OODBMSs,
client-server computing, remote-site backup, workflow, data sharing
and distributed systems. He is a consultant for numerous IBM database,
transaction processing and workflow product groups. His research ideas
have been incorporated in the IBM products DB2/MVS, DB2 Common Server
(DB2/NT, DB2/6000, ...), SQL/DS, IMS/ESA, MQSeries, S/390Parallel
Sysplex Coupling Facility, Lotus Notes/Domino, VM Shared File System,
AdStar Distributed Storage Manager (ADSM) and Workstation Data Save
Facility (WDSF/VM), in the IBM prototypes R*, Starburst and
QuickSilver, and in IBM's SNA LU6.2 and DRDA architectures.
Mohan is the recipient of several IBM awards: an IBM Corporate Award
for database support for parallel sysplex; an IBM Outstanding
Innovation Award (OIA) for his coinvention of the ARIES recovery
method which is being used in several IBM products, in
Transarc'sEncina Product Suite, and in the University of Wisconsin's
Gamma and EXODUS DBMSs, and SHORE persistent object system; an OIA for
his inventions (ARIES, ARIES/IM, Commit_LSN) and major contributions
to performance, availability and concurrency in DB2/MVS V4; three OIAs
for his algorithmic and hardware architectural coinventions for
supporting the shared disks transaction environment in S/390 and
DB2/MVS; an OIA for his coinvention of the Hybrid Join method which is
implemented in DB2/MVS; an OIA for his coinvention of the Presumed
Abort commit protocol which has been widely adopted in the industry
and which is now part of the ISO-OSI, X/Open and DRDA distributed
transaction processing standards; an IBM Research Division Award (RDA)
for his work on transaction management in R*; an RDA for his
contributions to WDSF/VM; 9th Plateau IBM Invention Achievement Award
for his patenting activities (28 issued and 5 pending patents). Mohan
was named a leading inventor of IBM for 1994 and 1995, and a Master
Inventor in 1997.
Mohan was the Americas Program Chair for the 1996 International
Conference on Very Large Data Bases, the Program Chair for the 1987
International Workshop on High Performance Transaction Systems and a
Program Vice-Chair for the 1994 International Conference on Data
Engineering. He has been on the program committees of the conferences
SIGMOD, PODS, ICDE, ICDCS, VLDB, PDIS, HPTS, ADB and Compcon. He is an
editor of the VLDB Journal and Distributed and Parallel Databases - An
International Journal. He was an Associate Editor of IEEE's Data
Engineering Bulletin. He has been a visiting scientist in
Hahn-Meitner-Institut (Germany). Mohan received a PhD in Computer
Science from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981 and a B.Tech.
in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Madras in 1977.
____________
FRISEM
on Friday, 5 November 1999, 3:15pm
Bldg 420:100 (Jordan Hall)
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html#frisem
Different Strokes for Different Folks:
Individual Differences in Representation
Keith Stenning
visiting CSLI from Edinburgh
Many extant theories of peoples' deductive reasoning attempt to
differentiate themselves on the basis of the mental representations
they posit. But their systems can be shown to be computationally
equivalent for the evidence present. On the other hand, there is good
evidence of strong individual differences in learning with observable
external representations---`All the theories are the same, but the
reasoners are all different'.
This talk will present some evidence that individual differences in
interpretation of quantifiers can be systematically related to
differences in reasoning with quantifiers. These observations lead to
a rational reconstruction of what it is that naive subjects have to
learn about deduction, and the different places that they start from.
The talk will conclude with some discussion of the implications for
theories or reasoning (and cognitive theories more generally) of such
individual differences---the one-true-mental-representation-system
position vs. the representational-supermarket.
____________
KNOWLEDGE ON THE WEB SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 10 November 1999, 10:00am-Noon
Gates 104
http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/KnOWS.html
Eureka, Using the Web as a Community Knowledge Medium
Daniel G. Bobrow
Xerox PARC
Xerox has 25,000 customer service engineers who repair equipment in
the field. Six years ago we built a model-based diagnosis system to
support them in this work. It failed for interesting reasons. As a
result, we engaged with them to build a system that supported their
knowledge-sharing practice. This community knowledge system uses a
semi-structured knowledge-base of cases, distributed community
authoring and warranting, and web distribution of updates to
technicians who usually cannot be connected while they work. This
system has been very successful. Our current focus is to design
support for the continuing management of the quality of this knowledge
base, and other "closed" collections of documents.
____________
CS545: INFOLAB SEMINAR
on Friday, 12 November 1999, 3:15pm - 4:30pm
201 tcSEQ (across from Gates)
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
Data Semantics, Modeling and Ontologies:
New Frontiers in Databases
Robert Meersman,
STARLab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
The semantics, or meaning, of data and information have been a core
issue in databases and information systems for decades, but poses very
tough problems, only partially solved by techniques such as
constraints, rules, etc.. All forms of usable semantics are
necessarily based on agreement among all the system's users, designers
and domain experts present --and future. Such a challenge requires new
tools that we claim are becoming available under the form of
computerized lexicons, thesauri, or more generally ontologies. In the
DOGMA Project at STARLab we study the implications of this. We shall
survey and compare some of the formal definitions of ontologies in the
literature and discuss their crucial importance to systems design,
implementation, interoperability and maintenance. We claim such
ontologies must be made simple, in order to become standardized, and
derive some architectural requirements from this. This leads to
possibly "new old" approaches for information system methodologies,
based on roles and contexts as first-class citizens. We try to
illustrate some of this e.g. in terms of -as well as at the expense
of- the recently released Open Information Model by the Metadata
Coalition.
Biography: Professor Robert Meersman holds the Chair of Applied
Informatics in the Department of Computer Science of the Vrije
Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, since 1995 and heads there the
laboratory for Systems Technology and Applications Research
(STARLab). Previously he was professor at Tilburg University in
Holland. He is member and past Chair of IFIP working group WG2.6 on
Database and of IFIP's Technical Committee (TC-12) on AI. Robert was
one of the original developers of the NIAM (now ORM) methodology and
CASE tools, and has organized a number of conferences on Data
Semantics since 1985. He has a number recent publications on formal
and methodological aspects of data(base) semantics, as well as on more
or less related topics such as data mining, Web-based information
systems and digital libraries. Prof. Meersman's interests also
include the use of "hard" IT in culturally inspired applications such
as education and museum information systems.
____________
END MATERIAL
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