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CSLI Calendar, 8 March 2000, vol. 15:22
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
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8 March 2000 Stanford Vol. 15, No.22
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A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
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ACTIVITIES FROM 10 MARCH TO 24 MARCH 2000
WEDNESDAY, 8 MARCH
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
Gates B03
Commercial Rockets: Optimum Blending of Hardware,
Software and Meatware
Gary Hudson
Rotary Rocket
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380
Abstract below
4:15pm ME297: Design Theory and Methodology Seminar
Building 560
Synthesis Projects:
Thoughts on a School of Design
Moderator: Andrew Milne
http://design.stanford.edu/Courses/me297/
4:15pm Broad Area Colloquium
TCseq201, Lecture Hall B
Heavy-Tail Phenomena in Computational Problems
Bart Selman
Computer Science, Cornell University
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
THURSDAY, 9 MARCH
11:00am CCRMA Hearing Seminar
CCRMA Library, The Knoll
Music-Listening Systems
Eric D. Scheirer
Machine Listening Group
MIT Media Laboratory
http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Events/Events.html
Abstract below
12:45pm Stanford Networking Seminar
Gates 104
Title to be announced
Balaji Prabhakar
Stanford
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at Xerox PARC
Had We But World Enough
Douglas Gordin
SRI International
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum/
Abstract below
4:15pm Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation (SCLA)
Ventura Hall, room 17
An Information-Theoretic Measure of Clustering Accuracy
Byron E. Dom
IBM Almaden Research Center
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
Abstract below
7:30pm Stanford Phonology Workshop
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
The Phonological and Syntactic Conditioning of Elision
in Ancient Greek
Bruce Hedin
Classics, Stanford
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 10 MARCH
8:00am The Fourteenth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics
Ida Sproul Room at the International House,
2299 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley
All day Friday/Saturday event
Various speakers
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS
8:30am Stanford Semantics Fest
Cordura 100
All Day Event
Various Speakers
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/semfest.html
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B01
Social Tele-embodiment: Understanding Presence
Eric Paulos
UC Berkeley
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar
Building 420:100
Emotional Memory and the Amygdala
Etienne Benson
The Effects of Graphical Components on
Diagrammatic Reasoning
Julie Heiser
A Bayesian Approach to Predicting The Future
Tom Griffiths
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html#frisem
MONDAY, 13 MARCH
7:30pm Forsythe Lecture
Gates B01
A Computer Science Concoction: Secrets, Wildcats, and
the Best of Everything
Margaret Wright
Lucent Lab
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/march8/forsythe-38.html
Abstract below
TUESDAY, 14 MARCH
4:15pm Forsythe Lecture
Gates B01
Dispatches from the Interior-Point Revolution
Margaret Wright
Lucent Lab
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/march8/forsythe-38.html
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 16 MARCH
4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at Xerox PARC
Solving the Turbulence Problem
Larry Cornman
National Center for Atmospheric Research
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum/
THURSDAY, 23 MARCH
12noon CSLI Coglunch
The IMC Smart office project: past, now, future
Fumio Mizoguchi
Information Media Center
Science University of Tokyo
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
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ANNOUNCEMENT
First, next week is finals week which is followed by Stanford Spring
break, because of this there may or may not be a Calendar next week
hence I'm including events through March 24.
Second, people may wish to look at
http://calendus.stanford.edu/CogSci/
which I'm experimenting with right now (the CogSci calendar not
calendus itself).
If you run a Cognitive Science event and are a Stanford person with a
sunet id, you can add notices about your events to this calendar.
____________
NOTICES
The US-Japan Technology Management Center will cooperate in a half day
program organized by JETRO, San Francisco on Monday, March 13. It is FREE
and Open to the Public, but *pre-registration is required* due to limited
space. Please pre-register with JETRO.
"Discovering Opportunities in Japan's Internet Market"
Monday, March 13, 7:30 AM - 12:00 noon
Camino Ballroom A at Hyatt Rickey's
4219 El Camino Real, Palo Alto
RSVP: JETRO-SF (415) 392-1333 / sfwebmaster@sf.jetro.org
on-line registration: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaID=4026
More info at http://www.jetro.org/sanfrancisco/seminar_march13.htm
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EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LABORATORY COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 8 March 2000, 4:15pm
Gates B03
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380
Commercial Rockets: Optimum Blending of Hardware,
Software and Meatware
Gary Hudson
Rotary Rocket
The Roton rocket, a reusable, single-stage-to-orbit space vehicle
being developed by the Rotary Rocket Company of Redwood City, is
intended to be the world's first fully-reusable commercial launch
vehicle. Piloted by a crew of two, the Roton takes off vertically like
a conventional liquid-fueled rocket and returns to Earth and lands
like a helicopter, using a nose-mounted rotor and rotor-tip thrusters
to hover and maneuver.
Other than fuel and coolant, no components are discarded or expended
during flight, so minimal servicing and maintenance is required
between missions. A fleet of Roton vehicles would be able to provide
flexible, flight-on-demand service somewhat like today's airfreight
companies, fundamentally changing the economics of the space launch
industry.
This presentation will include a summary of the development and
preliminary approach and landing flight tests of the Roton ATV launch
vehicle, and compare the role of human pilots with that of on-board
computer systems. A videotape of the third translational test flight
will also be shown.
About the speaker:
Gary Hudson is a founder of Rotary Rocket Company, and currently
serves as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the
Board of Directors. He has worked in the field of commercial space for
over 25 years with an emphasis on the development of innovative
low-cost systems. His experience includes both management and
engineering in high-tech, entrepreneurial settings. He is the designer
of the Phoenix VTOL/SSTO family of launch vehicles and has
participated in many Single-Stage-To-Orbit launch vehicle projects
including support for both General Dynamics and Boeing Aerospace
corporation during the SDIO program. He has published numerous papers
on space vehicles and systems and has authored several studies on low
cost and advanced propulsion systems.
In 1994 Mr. Hudson co-founded HMX, Inc. which designs and develops
innovative aerospace propulsion systems. In 1995 HMX developed a
monopropellant rocket engine propulsion system, including engines,
tankage and support systems, for Kistler Aerospace Corporation of
Kirkland, WA. Mr. Hudson had previously been co-founder, President,
and Chief Executive Officer of Pacific American Launch Systems, Inc.;
served as a consultant to the United States Air Force's Project
Forecast II; designed the Percheron 055 experimental launch vehicle;
and spent ten years as a consulting Systems Designer on low cost
commercial space systems.
Mr. Hudson attended the University of Minnesota. He has conducted
seminars for the US Naval Postgraduate School and the Institute for
Space and Astronautical Sciences of Tokyo University, and has taught
graduate-level launch vehicle design at Stanford University. He is a
Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and a Senior Member of
the American Institute of Astronautics and Aeronautics. In January
1994 he received the Laurel Award from Aviation Week & Space
Technology "for the vision, drive and competence that have pushed
[single-stage-to-orbit and reusable launch vehicles] to the front of
the U.S. launcher agenda."
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CCRMA HEARING SEMINAR
on Thursday, 9 March 2000, 11:00am
CCRMA Library, The Knoll
http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Events/Events.html
Music-Listening Systems
Eric D. Scheirer
Machine Listening Group
MIT Media Laboratory
When human listeners are confronted with musical sounds, they rapidly
and automatically orient themselves in the music. Even musically
untrained listeners have an exceptional ability to make rapid
judgments about music from very short (< 5 sec) examples, such as
determining the music's style, performer, beat, complexity, and
emotional impact. However, up to the present time it has proven very
difficult to build computer music-analysis tools with similar
capabilities.
I will describe my dissertation research, which examines the
psychoacoustic origins of these perceptual abilities of humans using
both experimental and computer-modeling approaches. This research
enables the construction of automatic machine-listening systems that
can make human-like judgments about short musical stimuli. The
systems are implemented as signal-processing and pattern-recognition
computer programs that operate directly on complex acoustic signals.
The various models, taken together, form a set of computer
signal-processing tools that can mimic human perceptual abilities on a
variety of musical tasks such as tapping along with the beat, parsing
music into sections, making semantic judgments about musical examples,
and estimating the similarity of two pieces of music.
Biography: Eric D. Scheirer was born in Binghamton, NY in 1971. He
received the M.S. degree from the Media Laboratory at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995 for his work on
constrained automatic polyphonic transcription. He is presently a
researcher in the Machine Listening Group at the Media Lab and will
receive his Ph.D. in June 2000. His dissertation research is on
psychoacoustic models of the perception of complex sound scenes and
the construction of music- listening systems.
Eric was the principal author of the MPEG-4 Structured Audio and
MPEG-4 AudioBIFS specifications and served as an Editor of the MPEG-4
Audio standard. He has a wide range of interests in the application
of new signal processing methods to the creation of multimedia audio
systems, and has published numerous articles on psychoacoustics, music
signal processing, and structured- audio coding.
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XEROX PARC FORUM
on Thursday, 9 March 2000, 4:00pm to 5:00pm
George Pake Auditorium at Xerox PARC
http://www.parc.xerox.com/forum
Had We But World Enough:
Transforming Learning and Travel through the Digital Earth
Douglas Gordin
SRI International
Initially conceptualized as number crunchers and then as symbol
processors, computers now mediate our understanding by transforming
information into visual displays within three dimensional spaces. The
Digital Earth is a broad initiative of this sort that aims to provide
a new space for information and to provide an integrating context for
georeferenced data. This talk sketches the design goals of the digital
earth and how they can aid learners and travelers. A survey of
challenges and opportunities is recounted by looking at how
visualization has been adapted for use by learners and travelers.
Current prototype Digital Earths are described with particular focus
on the one building developed at SRI International under
DARPA-funding. This effort plans to create a new Internet domain,
called .geo, that will provide full and distributed access to
georeferenced meta-data; develop a WWW-based streaming terrain flyover
browser; and create proof of concept education and virtual travel
demonstrations.
Biography: Dr. Douglas Gordin is a Senior Cognitive Scientist at SRI
International. His research program focuses on the design of
visualization systems for teaching and learning. Three current
projects characterize his work. First, he is working with the GLOBE
Program, a large-scale international science education initiative, to
develop visualization learning activities and design visualization
software. Second, Gordin is helping design a Digital Earth prototype
system that will enable virtual tourism of national parks including
terrain flyovers and virtual walks. Third, he is developing a
year-long environmental science curricula for high school students.
Gordin received a Ph.D. in the Learning Science from Northwestern
University (1997). Earlier he received degrees in Electrical
Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon (M.S., 1986) and in Computer Science
from Columbia University (B.A., 1984). Prior to receiving his
doctorate Gordin worked for eight years in research and development at
AT&T Bell Laboratories and IBM T.J. Watson Research Center where he
specialized in applied artificial intelligence and education research.
For more information on his current work see SRI's Visualizing Global
Change WWW site at: http://vgc.sri.com/ .
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SEMINAR ON COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING AND ADAPTATION (SCLA)
on Thursday, 9 March 2000, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
Ventura 17
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
An Information-Theoretic Measure of Clustering Accuracy
Byron E. Dom
Information Management Principles
IBM Almaden Research Center
San Jose, California
mailto:dom@almaden.ibm.com
The most commonly encountered unsupervised learning problem is that of
clustering. The question of how one measures the accuracy of
clustering results does not have a straightforward answer in most
situations however. We propose a measure of clustering quality or
accuracy that is appropriate in situations where it is desirable to
evaluate a clustering algorithm by somehow comparing the clusters it
produces with "ground truth" consisting of classes assigned to the
patterns by manual means or some other means in whose veracity there
is confidence. Such measures are referred to as "external". Our
measure also has the characteristic of allowing partitions with
different numbers of clusters to be compared in a quantitative and
principled way. Our evaluation scheme quantitatively measures how
useful the cluster labels of the patterns are as predictors of their
class labels. In cases where all partitions to be compared have the
same number of clusters, the measure is equivalent to the mutual
information between the cluster labels and the class labels. In cases
where the numbers of clusters are different, however, it computes the
reduction in the number of bits that would be required to encode
(compress) the class labels if both the encoder and decoder have free
access to the cluster labels. To achieve this encoding the estimated
conditional probabilities of the class labels given the cluster labels
must also be encoded. These estimated probabilities can be seen as a
"model" for the class labels and their associated code length as a
"model cost".
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STANFORD PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP
on Thursday, 9 March 2000, 7:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
The Phonological and Syntactic Conditioning of
Elision in Ancient Greek
Bruce Hedin
Department of Classics
A vowel juncture in Greek may be parsed in a number of ways: the
juncture may be allowed to surface intact, the vowels may be merged, a
vowel may be deleted, and so on. In this talk, I examine the factors
that determine when elision (left-hand vowel deletion) is the optimal
parsing of a vowel juncture. The conditions are in part phonological.
Here, I attempt to identify preferences, both regarding optimization
of surface structure and regarding input-output correspondence, that
might account for when elision, rather than an alternative, is the
preferred option. Elision is also syntactically conditioned. Here, I
cite evidence from Greek prose authors regarding the domain of elision
in Greek. The data are evidence of variability in the domain of
elision, with the domain in one author (Demosthenes) being largely
coincident with the major phrase and the domain in another (Isocrates)
being largely coincident with the prosodic word. I conclude with a
discussion of some of the implications of this finding.
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SEMINAR ON PEOPLE, COMPUTER, AND DESIGN
on Friday, 10 March 1999, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03 (NEC Classroom)
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Social Tele-embodiment: Understanding Presence
Eric Paulos
UC Berkeley, Computer Science
mailto:paulos@cs.berkeley.edu
http://www.prop.org/
Current computer mediated communication tools such email, chat, and
video-conferencing have increased our social tele-connectivity. They
allow us to exchange text, images, sound, and video with anyone whose
interests we share, professionally or socially, regardless of
geographic location. But for many applications something important is
still missing. Existing tools fail to provide us with an adequate
interface into the real world in which we live, work, and play. This
talk will describe one such approach towards solving this problem with
simple, inexpensive, internet-controlled, untethered tele-robots or
PRoPs (Personal Roving Presences). PRoPs strive to provide the
sensation of tele-embodiment in a remote real space. The physical
tele-robot provides several verbal and non-verbal communication cues
including: audio, video, mobility, directed gaze, proxemics, and
simple gesturing. PRoPs also enable their users to perform a wide
gamut of human activities in the remote space, such as wander around,
explore, converse with people, and hang out.
Biography: Eric Paulos is a PhD graduate student in Computer Science
at UC Berkeley. His research interests revolve around mediated human
communication and interaction, particularly internet based personal
telepresence. His focus is on the physical, aural, visual, and
gestural interactions between humans and machines and various
permutations of those interactions. He has developed numerous internet
based tele-operated robots since 1995 when he implemented Mechanical
Gaze. Subsequently he designed several small human-sized Space
Browsing helium filled tele-operated blimps, the first tele-operated
laboratory, and ground based Personal Roving Presence (PRoP) devices
that attempt to provide remote tele-embodiment -- the ability of a
user to explore, communicate, and interact freely within a remote
space. He expects to complete his PhD this Fall.
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FORSYTHE LECTURES
Margaret Wright
Lucent Lab
mailto:mhw@research.bell-labs.com
Forsythe lectures promise the best of the computer world
Margaret H. Wright, head of the Computing Sciences Research Center,
Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, will deliver the George and Sandra
Forsythe Memorial Lectures Monday and Tuesday, March 13 and 14. Her
Monday lecture, at 7:30 p.m. in the HP Auditorium, Room B01 of the
Gates Computer Science Building, is titled "A Computer Science
Concoction: Secrets, Wildcats and the Best of Everything." Her talk
will illustrate how computer science research encompasses a wide array
of disparate topics.
Her Tuesday lecture, "Dispatches from the Interior-Point Revolution,"
will begin at 4:15 p.m. in Room B01 of the Gates Building. Wright will
offer an opinionated survey of classical material and recent research
about interior methods for linear, nonlinear and semidefinite
programming.
Wright holds three Stanford degrees: a bachelors in mathematics, and
masters and doctoral degrees in computer science. She was elected to
the National Academy of Engineering in 1997.
Sponsored by the Computer Science Department, the annual Forsythe
lectures honor the memory of computer science pioneers George and
Sandra Forsythe. George played a leading role in the founding of
Stanford's Computer Science Department, and Sandra was a noted
computer science educator and textbook author.
A Computer Science Concoction:
Secrets, Wildcats, and the Best of Everything
Monday, 13 March 2000, 7:30 pm
Gates B01
From its earliest days, computer science has had the desirable
feature of encompassing a wide array of disparate topics.
Continuing this tradition, some of the liveliest research in
computer science today is a blend of areas that might appear at
first to have little in common. Such interactions and their
benefits will be illustrated by three examples of computer
science research combining elements from optimization,
security, network services, algorithms, computational geometry,
visualization, and wireless networks.
Dispatches from the Interior-Point Revolution
Tuesday, 14 March 2000, 4:15 pm
Gates B01
There is little argument that interior-point methods are at the center
of a revolution in constrained optimization that has lasted without
noticeable abatement for almost 16 years. As with other revolutions,
the causes are a mixture of past and present events, and there have
been surprises and revelations along the way. Although the fighting
has mostly stopped, dramatic changes keep happening, with
repercussions far beyond the field of optimization. This talk gives an
opinionated survey of classical material, recent research, and open
questions about interior methods for linear, nonlinear, and
semidefinite programming.
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CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 23 March 2000, 12 noon
Cordura Hall, Room 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
The IMC Smart office project: past, now, future
Fumio Mizoguchi
Information Media Center
Science University of Tokyo
In this talk we intend to give an overview of information media center
projects aimed at providing a variety of services to future office
environment through the use of state-of-art hardware and software
techniques. The aim of this project, is "AI for everyday
things". A smart office, wired with various sensors and controls
are used to experiment with providing convenient and user friendly
services in a flexible and secure manner. Videos will be presented
showing demos of these projects.
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END MATERIAL
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____________