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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 2 October 2002, vol. 18:4
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
______________________________________________________________________
2 October 2002 Stanford Vol. 18, No. 4
______________________________________________________________________
A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
____________
ACTIVITIES FROM 2 OCTOBER 2002 TO 11 OCTOBER 2002
WEDNESDAY, 2 OCTOBER 2002
12 noon SRI STAR-Lab Seminars
EJ 124 (SRI International)
SuperSID: Exploiting High-Level Information for
High-Performance Speaker Recognition
Barbara Peskin
ICSI
http://www.speech.sri.com/cgi-bin/run-cpp?private/seminars.html.cpp
1:00pm Stanford Algorithms Seminar (AFLB)
Gates 498 (may move to Theory lounge)
Competitive Analysis of Buffer Management Policies for QoS Switches
Alex Kesselman
Tel Aviv Univeristy
http://theory.stanford.edu/~aflb/
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Trusted Components: concept and progress report
Bertrand Meyer
Professor of Software Engineering, ETH Zurich
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Abstract below
7:00pm SCIL Futures of Learning Lecture Series
Wallenberg Hall (Bldg. 160)
Realizing the Educational Potential of Technology
Robert Tinker
Concord Consortium
http://scil.stanford.edu/
Information below
THURSDAY, 3 OCTOBER 2002
12:45pm Stanford Networking Seminar
Gates 104
Internet Indirection Infrastructure
Ion Stoica
UC Berkeley
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
4:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series
EJ228, SRI International
Web Services in a Global Marketplace
Frank McCabe
Fujitsu
Abstract below
(the talk announced in last week's calendar has been postponed)
4:00pm PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
Molecular Electronics: Defect Tolerance, Chemical Fabrication
and Quantum-State Switching
R. Stanley Williams
HP Labs
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:15pm Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation (SCLA)
Cordura Hall, room 100
Constrained Clustering for Improved Pattern Discovery
Sepander Kamvar
Scientific Computing/Computational Mathematics, Stanford
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
Abstract below
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
Summaries of Summer Internship Projects
by Symbolic Systems Summer Interns
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Information below
4:15pm Broadband Networks in Asia
Gates B01
Next Generation Network Software Protocols and Network Layers
Vivek Ragavan
President & CEO, Atrica Inc.
http://asia.stanford.edu/events/
4:30pm Personality Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
Personality Area Welcome Reception
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#person_lab
5:15pm Gestures and Dialogue Seminar
Ventura 17
David. P. Wilkins,
Center for Aphasia and Related Disorders, V.A.
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Gestures/
Information below
FRIDAY, 4 OCTOBER 2002
12 noon Logic Lunch
Bldg. 380:383N (math corner)
A proof of topological completeness for S4 in (0,1)
G. Mints, T. Zhang
Stanford
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B01
Seven Slides and a fight: How Extreme Programming improved our
user-centered design process, but not our social skills
Victoria Bellotti, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Mark Howard and Ian Smith
PARC
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium
Bldg. 90:92Q
What is the Value of Science?
David Magnus
Univ. of Pennsylvania
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
4:15pm Brain Research Center Fall Series
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman B060
Addiction and the Brain
E. Nestler, C. O'Brien, G. Koob, H. Breiter, T-K Li, T. Condon,
R. Malenk
5:15pm Archaeology Research Workshop
Bldg. 60:61H
Overlapping Archaeology and Genetics: Radiations of Material
Culture and Modern Genetic Geography
Luca Cavalli-Sforza
Stanford
http://archaeology.stanford.edu/workshop.html
MONDAY, 7 OCTOBER 2002
9:00am History of Science Colloquium
Bender Room, Green Library (9am-noon)
Bits of Culture
New Projects Linking the Preservation and Study of Interactive Media
Tim Lenoir and Henry Lowood, organizers
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/colloquia.html
3:30pm Social Lab
Jordan Hall 420:050
Power and Social Perception: is Instrumentality Mistaken for
Corruption?
Jennifer Overbeck
Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#social_lab
4:15pm Broad Area Colloquium in AI,
Geometry, Graphics, Robotics, and Vision
TCSeq 200
Title to be announced
Edward Adelson
MIT
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
TUESDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2002
4:15pm Logic Seminar
Bldg. 380:381T (math corner)
Little Engines of Proof
Natarajan Shankar
SRI Computer Science Laboratory
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 9 OCTOBER 2002
11:00am Stanford IT Open House
11:00am - 1:30pm
Meyer Library Lobby
Technology information for faculty, staff, & students
http://itopenhouse.stanford.edu/
12 noon Psychology Developmental Brownbags
Jordan Hall 420:100
Preschool Children's Conception of Individuals and Expressions
Referring to Individuals
Christina Sorrentino
Psychology, Stanford University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#dev_brownbag
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium
Jordan Hall 420:041
Cognitive modeling of decision making in the Bechara-Damasio
gambling task with ventromedial frontal cortex lesioned individuals
Jerry Busemeyer
Indiana University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Title to be announced
Stan Williams
Hewlett-Packard Molecular Electronics
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
THURSDAY, 10 OCTOBER 2002
12:15pm CSLI CogLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Automating Human Performance Modeling at the Millisecond Level
Alonso Vera
NASA & CMU
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
12:45pm Stanford Networking Seminar
Gates 104
Title to be announced
David Kotz
Dartmouth
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
Developmental Stability and Evolution: Possible Link Between
Micro- and Macro-Evolution
Aviv Bergman
Center for Computational Genetics and Biological Modeling
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
4:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series
EJ228, SRI International
An Object-Based Interaction for the Operation of Multiple
Field Robots
Hank Jones
Aerospace Robotics Laboratory (ARL), Stanford University
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:15pm Brain Research Center Fall Series
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman B060
The inner workings of a cortical motor system
Stephen Lisberger, UCSF
4:30pm Personality Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
Towards the study of affective decay
Jon Rottenberg
Stanford University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#person_lab
FRIDAY, 11 OCTOBER 2002
12 noon Logic Lunch
Bldg. 380:383N (math corner)
Goedel's Developing Platonism
Martin Davis
Visiting Scholar UC Berkeley
Professor Emeritus, NYU
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B01
Desire in Context
Rich Gold
The Red Shift
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
5:00pm Stanford Phonology Workshop
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
Variable Vowel Epenthesis in Picard
Julie Auger
Indiana University
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
Abstract below
____________
Stanford Blood Bank status: Shortage of A+, B+, B-, AB-. For an
appointment: http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call 650-723-7831.
It only takes an hour of your time.
____________
RESEARCH COLLABORATION OPPORTUNITY
A local company is looking for research collaboration in a DARPA
funded, large scale program on distributed cognition, with elements
involving distributed inference, machine learning, and establishment
of trust. If anyone is interested in pursuing this, please contact me
right away for more details. Keith Devlin (devlin@csli.stanford.edu)
____________
COGLUNCH SERIES
Please join us for CogLunch, every other Thursday, 12:15-1:30! The
CSLI CogLunch will be starting next week, Oct 10, Cordura Room 100.
Our first speaker will be Alonso Vera.
CogLunch is a cognitive science seminar series sponsored by the Center
for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) at Stanford. The
CSLI CogLunch seminar series is a multidisciplinary forum of ideas,
exchanges, and debates. CogLunch speakers address problems of
cognitive science from a variety of perspectives, including artificial
intelligence, biology, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and
psychology.
Fall Schedule
Cordura, Room 100
12:15-1:30
Oct 10 - Alonso Vera, NASA& CMU, "Automating Human Performance
Modeling at the Millisecond Level
Oct 24 - BJ Fogg, CSLI, "What Makes a Web Site Credible? Recent
research findings and a new theory"
Nov 7 - Jef Raskin, Author & consultant, on the Humane Editor
Nov 21 - open
George Lakoff will be speaking, schedule still to be set. It will not
be on a Thursday this fall.
____________
GENERAL CLASS/SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENTS
Cognitive Architectures (SSP 143/243)
Instructors: Dr. Daniel Shapiro and Dr. Michael Freed
3 units
Tuesdays/Thursdays 2:45-4:00
Ventura 17 (Tuesdays) and Cordura 100 (Thursdays)
http://cll.stanford.edu/cogarch.html
An original goal of artificial intelligence was to create
computational systems that demonstrate human levels of intelligence,
and in recent years that goal has seen renewed interest. Cognitive
architectures provide the software infrastructure for creating such
intelligent systems, and they are fast becoming critical for
applications ranging from simulation-based training environments to
autonomous spacecraft to computer games. This class will survey
existing architectures for cognition through readings, discussions,
and demonstrations, with an emphasis on the need for integrated
approaches to knowledge representation, reasoning, problem solving,
sensing, execution, and learning. Students will design and implement a
cognitive system within one of these frameworks, and/or contribute to
materials that will be used for teaching this class in future
years. Prerequisite: A basic course in either artificial intelligence
or cognitive psychology. Programming experience preferred. Grading:
participation 50%, project 50%.
Phonology Workshops
This year Andrew Koontz-Garboden and I will be organizing the Stanford
Phonology Workshop. We will hold several talks each quarter on phonology
and related areas. If you have work that you would like to share with the
Bay Area phonological community, please don't hesitate to volunteer to
present in the SPW. Also, if you know of someone who will be in the are
during the coming academic year and has done or is doing work of interest
to you, please let us know and we will try to invite that person to give a
presentation.
In the future, announcements for the SPW will be sent to
<pinterest@csli.stanford.edu>. If you would like to stay informed, you
can subscribe to that list by sending an e-mail to
majordomo@csli.stanford.edu
and placing the words
subscribe pinterest
(without the quote marks) in the body of the message (not in the
subject line). You can unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe pinterest"
to the same address. More information (including directions and
abstracts for upcoming talks) can be found at
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest .
Our first phonology workshop this year at Stanford will be presented
by Julie Auger of Indiana University during the dinner break on the
Friday of the NWAV conference. So, while you're already at Stanford
for NWAV, come by Margaret Jacks Hall 126 at 5pm for pizza, drinks,
and phonology.
Unix Classes
The Stanford IT Help Desk is offering Fall quarter "Intro to Unix"
classes starting Monday October 7.
The schedule below can also be found at:
http://consult.stanford.edu/introclasses.shtml
All classes are held in Wilbur modular B (see map at URL above). No
sign-up is required, but all participants *must* have an active Leland
account to join the class. Classes start promptly at 12:00pm or
5:30pm.
Monday, October 7
noon -- 1:00 pm: Unix I (part 1)
5:30 -- 6:30 pm: Editors (pico and emacs)
Tuesday, October 8
noon -- 1:00 pm: Unix II (part 2)
5:30 -- 6:30 pm: Unix I (part 1)
Wednesday, October 9
noon -- 1:00 pm: X-Windows
5:30 -- 6:30 pm: Unix II (Part 2)
Thursday, October 10
noon -- 1:00 pm: Newsgroups
5:30 -- 6:30 pm: X-Windows
Questions can be directed to the Sweet Hall consulting desk at
725-2101.
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EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LAB COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 2 October 2002, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03), Gates Computer Science Building
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Trusted components: concepts and progress report
Bertran Meyer
ETH Zurich
"Trusted Components" -- reusable components of guaranteed quality --
hold one of the best hopes for significant progress in software
engineering. The talk will discuss specific steps towards this goal,
some practical, some theoretical, and will report advances in a
current project aimed at achieving it, including: an outline of a
Component Quality Model, a strategy for proving properties of classes
equipped with contracts, and specific mechanisms for important
technical issues such as pointer-rich runtime structures.
About the speaker: Bertrand Meyer is Professor of Software Engineering
at ETH Zurich and founder of Eiffel Software. His books include
"Object-Oriented Software Construction" and "Eiffel: The Language".
____________
SCIL FUTURES OF LEARNING LECTURE SERIES
on Wednesday, 2 October 2002, 7:00pm
Wallenberg Hall (Bldg. 160)
http://scil.stanford.edu/
Realizing the Educational Potential of Technology
Robert Tinker
Concord Consortium
Will the substantial investments we've made in educational
technologies pay off in increased learning? Yes, if we commit to a
coordinated, large-scale research and development effort--including
everything from basic research through large-scale implementation
studies and human resource development. Robert Tinker will detail
this national research agenda and illustrate it with examples drawn
from work on modeling, in-school longitudinal studies, and online
teacher professional development.
About the Speaker: Robert Tinker, president of Concord Consortium,
holds an M.S. in physics from Stanford, and Ph.D. in low-temperature
physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Internationally recognized as a pioneer in constructivist uses of
educational technology, Dr Tinker developed the Microcomputer-Based
Laboratory in the 1980's, widely influential student-scientist
partnership "network science" concepts and projects, the Virtual High
School, and has directed numerous educational research projects.
About the Series
Over the course of the academic year 2002-2003, Stanford Center for
Innovations in Learning will sponsor The Futures of Learning lecture
series, designed to inform members of the Stanford community as well
as local citizens about developments of critical importance in
education today. Speakers include distinguished policy-makers,
technologists, and scientists-innovators and transformers at the
frontiers of education who will wrestle with answers to the question,
"What are the ideas that will transform education?"
____________
STANFORD NETWORKING SEMINAR
on Thursday, 3 October 2002, 12:45pm (lunch 12:15pm)
Gates 104
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
Internet Indirection Infrastructure
Ion Stoica
UC Berkeley
Attempts to generalize the Internet's point-to-point communication
abstraction to provide services like multicast, anycast, and mobility
have faced challenging technical problems and deployment barriers. To
ease the deployment of such services, this talk proposes an
overlay-based Internet Indirection Infrastructure i3 that offers a
rendezvous-based communication abstraction. Instead of explicitly
sending a packet to a destination, each packet is associated with an
identifier; this identifier is then used by the receiver to obtain the
packet. This level of indirection decouples the act of sending from
the act of receiving, and allows i3 to efficiently support a wide
variety of fundamental communication services. To demonstrate the
feasibility of this approach, we have designed and built a prototype
based on the Chord lookup system. To demonstrate its flexibility we
have used i3 to provide support for mobility, and develop a reliable
and scalable multicast protocol.
About the speaker: Ion Stoica received his PhD from the Carnegie
Mellon University in 2000. He is an Assistant Professor in the EECS
Department at University of California at Berkeley, where he does
research on resource management, scalable solutions for end-to-end
quality of service, and peer-to-peer network technologies in the
Internet. Stoica is the recipient the ACM doctoral dissertation award
(2001).
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Thursday, 3 October 2002, 4:00pm - 5:30pm
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Web Services in a Global Marketplace
Frank McCabe
Fujitsu
The promise of Web Services is the application of wildly successful
WEB technologies to the problem of fostering the interoperation of
application systems. However, Business is fundamentally about evolving
relationships in which organizations collaborate over time to complete
tasks. We argue that the true mission of Web Services should be: to
enable software systems, individuals and organizations to confidently
collaborate on shared tasks and transactions in the context of Web
Services. We present a vision of Web services that promises to lay the
foundation for genuine semantically grounded interoperation between
system that cross ownership and trust boundaries.
About the speaker: Frank McCabe has been in the business of designing
Logic Programming systems since 1976. In recent years he has been
strongly involved in a number of standards organizations such as FIPA
and OMG in an effort to promote interoperability standards for
agent-based systems. He is a believer in Semantically Grounded
Communication as the basis for interorganizational communication.
____________
SEMINAR ON COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING AND ADAPTATION (SCLA)
on Thursday, 3 October 2002, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
Cordura 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
Constrained Clustering for Improved Pattern Discovery
Sepander Kamvar
Scientific Computing/Computational Mathematics, Stanford
We present an improved method for clustering in the presence of very
limited supervisory information, given as pairwise instance
constraints. By allowing instance-level constraints to have
space-level inductive implications, we are able to successfully
incorporate constraints for a wide range of data set types. Our method
greatly improves on the previously studied COP-K-means algorithm,
generally requiring less than half as many constraints to achieve a
given accuracy on a range of real-world data. We additionally discuss
an active learning algorithm which increases the value of constraints
even further.
____________
SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 3 October 2002, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Summaries of Summer Internship Projects
by Symbolic Systems Summer Interns
Students who served as SSP-supported interns during the summer of 2002
will give brief summaries of their projects. The students, their
project supervisors, and their project titles are listed below in the
order that they will most likely appear. Each presentation should
last about 5 minutes, and a reception will follow.
Intern Project Supervisor/s Project Title
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben Davidson Dave Barker-Plummer Openproof Project
Albert Liu
John Etchemendy
Randy Gullett Oliver Lemon Spoken Dialogue Systems
Laura Hiatt
Yael Shrager John Gabrieli Flexibility and Awareness in
Alison Preson Human Memory
Brandon Weiss Krista Lawlor Go With Your Gut
Hilary Spencer Pat Langley Design and Implementation of an
Interactive Software Environment
to Support the Construction,
Evaluation, and Revision of
Biological Models
Aria Haghighi Valeria de Pavia Ontology Construction
Guy Isely Reinhard Stolle
Cleo Condoravi
Jeremia Torres Daniel Klein Exploring Heuristics for A*
Christopher Manning PCFG Parsing
Alexis Battle Daphne Koller A Probabilistic Model of
Cellular Processes
Dave Kale Chris Culy Programming for "Babylon"
Matt Bricker Tom Wasow Software Design --
Courseware for Linguistics 120
Louis Eisenberg Todd Davies Interface for Utility Elicitation
Note: This will be the first Fall Quarter meeting of the new course,
Symbolic Systems 10 (1 unit, S/NC). Punctual attendance at 8 or more
forums during the quarter is required for Stanford students to receive
credit for the course. The lectures are also open to non-students and
those not taking the course for credit.
____________
GESTURES AND DIALOGUE SEMINAR
on Thursday, 3 October 2002, 5:15pm
Ventura 17
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Gestures/
David. P. Wilkins,
Center for Aphasia and Related Disorders,
V.A. Northern California Health Care System
We are pleased to announce that our first speaker for this Fall
Quarter is David P. Wilkins, from the Center for Aphasia and Related
Disorders, V.A. Northern California Health Care System.
David Wilkins is well known for his research on Australian aboriginal
languages, particularly Arrernte. In several cross-linguistic studies
of gesture he has put forth a compelling case to challenge the notion
that finger pointing is a gestural universal. In this meeting Wilkins
will discuss some of the implications for his research on pointing and
then the floor will be opened for discussion.
Wilkins has expressed a preference to develop his discussion around
the interests of the participants, and has requested that we contact
him by the September 30th, and if possible by September 23rd, with our
queries. For those who intend to participate, please let us know and
we will forward you copies of two of his papers. Upon reading these,
please contact Wilkins with your questions and concerns for him to
address. -Satinder Gill
I attach a possible abstract for the discussion:
David Wilkins:
"I would like to focus the discussion on two general questions:
(1) what is the relation between 'gesture' and 'language'? and,
(2) how can we fruitfully explore this relationship cross-culturally
(using field observations)?
'Pointing' provides a useful starting point for such a discussion for
a couple of reasons. First, most cultures combine some form of
pointing gesture with spatial language to form gesture-speech
composite signals. Still, we know very little about how uniform or
variable such 'composites' are cross-linguistically. (What is the
relation between the information contributed by the gesture, compared
to the information provided in speech?). Second, pointing with the
index finger has long been identified by many researchers as a
gestural universal, reflecting innate predispositions. Is this really
the case? My research with Arrernte-speaking communities in Central
Australia suggests a real need to re-examine what such a claim would
actually mean. My own experience is that, as part of learning to speak
Arrernte, I also had to (re-)learn how to point (and gesture)
properly. I could no longer use my index-finger point in ways that
seemed natural to me, even though 'index finger' pointing is
ubiquitous in the culture. In my presentation, I will use video to
demonstrate some key cross-cultural differences in pointing behavior."
____________
LOGIC LUNCH
on Friday, 4 October 2002, 12 noon
Math Corner 380:383N
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
A proof of topological completeness for S4 in (0,1)
Grigori Mints, Philosophy, Stanford
Ting Zhang, Computer Science, Stanford
Completeness of modal logic S4 for real line R, real interval (0,1)
etc. (with modality interpreted as interior) was proved by McKinsey
and Tarski. Several attempts to simplify this proof contain gaps.
A new proof presented here combines the ideas in a book by Mints and
paper by Aiello, van Benthem and Bezhanishvili to construct an open
and continuous map of an arbitrary rooted Kripke S4-model onto the
interval (0,1). Existence of such map implies completeness.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 4 October 2002, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B01
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Seven Slides and a Fight:
How Extreme Programming improved our user-centered design process,
but not our social skills
Victoria Bellotti, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Mark Howard and Ian Smith
(PARC)
The subject of this talk is the recent experiences of a small team of
engineers and fieldworkers at PARC of moving from a more conventional
style of user-centered iterative design and prototyping to extreme
programming (XP) as a means to integrate ethnographic fieldwork and
feedback from using prototypes with engineering and design. We
specifically focus on the different perspectives we all have, as user
or customer representatives, designers and engineers, of the pro's and
con's of XP for user-centered design. Normally this causes a fight
about a lot of contentious issues that we have encountered, which we
will be happy to share with you.
About the Speakers: Victoria Bellotti is a Senior Member of Research
Staff in the Computer Science Lab at PARC. She studies current and
prospective technology users trying to understand their work-practice,
their problems and their requirements for future technology. She also
works on analyzing existing or proposed technology design for utility
and usability and on finding ways to improve designs with
user-centered innovations. Victoria studied psychology, ergonomics and
HCI at London University in the UK. After that she worked at Xerox's
Cambridge Research Lab (EuroPARC) for five years. She came to the USA
in 1994 to work in Apple's Advanced Technology Group for three years
before moving back to Xerox to work at PARC in Palo Alto. Her research
interests include Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Computer
Mediated Communication and Ubiquitous Computing.
Nicolas Ducheneaut is a research associate in the Computer Science
Laboratory at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and a Ph.D.
candidate at the School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS),
University of California, Berkeley; his research interests include
computer-supported cooperative work, computer-mediated communication,
and the social impacts of information technologies in organizations.
Mark Howard came to the United States from London, England where he
gained an MS in Computer Science at University College London. He is
now a member of the research staff at PARC, the Palo Alto Research
Center. His primary role is software engineer on projects concerned
with developing experimental software systems.
Ian Smith is a member of the research staff at PARC Incorporated. His
work focuses on the integration of software development tools and
practices with ethnographic techniques in user interface
development. He has published numerous papers in conferences such as
the ACM symposium on user interface software, ACM conference on
computer supported cooperative work, and the ACM conference on human
computer interaction. He currently has eleven United States patents
pending. In 1998, he was granted a Ph. D. in Computer Science from the
Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. He lives in San
Francisco, California with his wife, Valerie.
____________
LOGIC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 8 October 2002, 4:15pm-5:30pm
Math Corner 380:381T
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Little Engines of Proof
Natarajan Shankar
SRI Computer Science Laboratory
The automated construction of mathematical proof is a basic activity
in computing. Since the dawn of the field of automated reasoning,
there have been two divergent schools of thought. One school, best
represented by Alan Robinson's resolution method, is based on simple
uniform proof search procedures guided by heuristics. The other
school, pioneered by Hao Wang, argues for problem-specific
combinations of decision and semi-decision procedures. While the
former school has been dominant in the past, the latter approach has
greater promise. In recent years, several high quality inference
engines have been developed, including propositional satisfiability
solvers, ground decision procedures for equality and arithmetic,
quantifier elimination procedures over integers and reals, and
abstraction methods for finitely approximating problems over infinite
domains. We describe some of these ``little engines of proof'' and a
few of the ways in which they can be combined. We focus in particular
on the combination ground decision procedures and their use in
automated verification. We conclude by arguing for a modern
reinterpretation and reappraisal of Hao Wang's hitherto neglected
ideas on inferential analysis.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 10 October 2002, 12:15pm-1:30pm
Cordura Hall, Room 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Automating Human Performance Modeling at the Millisecond Level
Alonso Vera
Senior Research Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center
and Senior Systems Scientist at Carnegie Mellon University
CPM-GOMS is a modeling method that combines the task decomposition of
a GOMS analysis with a model of human resource usage at the level of
cognitive, perceptual, and motor operations. CPM-GOMS models have made
accurate predictions about skilled user behavior in routine tasks, but
developing such models has been tedious and error-prone. We describe
a process for automatically generating CPM-GOMS models from a
hierarchical task decomposition expressed in a computational modeling
tool called Apex, taking advantage of reusable behavior templates and
their efficacy for generating zero-parameter a priori predictions of
complex human behavior. To demonstrate the process, we present models
of automated teller machine interaction and use of a CAD tool. The
models show that it is possible to string together existing behavioral
templates that compose basic HCI tasks, (e.g., mousing to a button and
clicking on it) in order to generate powerful human performance
predictions. Because interleaving of templates is now automated, it
becomes possible to construct arbitrarily long sequences of
behavior. In addition, the manipulation and adaptation of complete
models becomes dramatically easier. CPM-GOMS is a powerful modeling
method that may have remained underused because of expertise and labor
required. Apex-CPM provides a computational engine for CPM-GOMS,
greatly facilitating the modeling of human performance and the
millisecond level.
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Thursday, 10 October 2002, 4:00pm - 5:30pm
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
An Object-Based Interaction for the Operation of Multiple Field Robots
Hank Jones
Aerospace Robotics Laboratory (ARL), Stanford University
Note: This talk discusses a project that utilizes the Open Agent
Architecture (OAA), developed at SRI. Today's field robots, such as
the Mars Sojourner rover or the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, work
alone to accomplish dirty, dull, or dangerous missions. However, the
design specifications for future missions call for multiple robots to
work together to perform complex tasks. Although the success of this
cooperation certainly will require significant advances in artificial
intelligence and autonomy for the robots, the important role of the
human operator in such a system has been somewhat overlooked. A
user-centered approach to design the human-robot interaction is
desired. Unfortunately, there are no user settings to study because no
multiple-robot systems have been deployed. As an alternative, this
research sought a surrogate setting that could be studied to inform
the early interaction designs for multiple-robot systems. Police
Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams were chosen as this setting,
and an ethnographic study of SWAT commanders was conducted. For
tasking and localization of their units, SWAT commanders were observed
to utilize dialogues based on shared physical objects in their
environment. Concepts from the interdisciplinary field of Remote and
Distributed Work were applied for the first time to robotics. Using
the lessons learned through the surrogate setting, a human-robot
interaction was developed for the Micro Autonomous Rovers platform in
the Aerospace Robotics Laboratory at Stanford University. This
interaction is built around localization and tasking dialogues that
focus on the physical objects sensed by the robots. In this way, a
single operator can readily coordinate the actions of multiple robots.
The presentation will conclude with a video of the robots in operation
using a 3-D graphical user interface to the object-based interaction.
About the speaker: Hank Jones is a soon-to-graduate PhD candidate in
Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, working in the
Aerospace Robotics Laboratory (ARL). He was the co-leader of the ARL's
autonomous helicopter project, where his primary contribution was the
development of a point-and-click task-level interaction for the
operator interface. Hank has recently designed and developed operator
interfaces for three other PhD thesis projects in the ARL through the
course of his own research. His primary interest is the application of
user-centered design principles to robotics and embedded systems.
____________
LOGIC LUNCH
on Friday, 11 October 2002, 12 noon
Math Corner 380:383N
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
G\"odel's Developing Platonism
Martin Davis
Visiting Scholar UC Berkeley
Professor Emeritus, NYU
G\"odel started out almost dismissive of a platonist philosophy of set
theory, and only over many years moved to the fully platonist point of
view with which he is usually identified. By suggesting that his final
position was the one he had always held, G\"odel has made it difficult
to trace his evolving views. In this talk I will point out various
markers on his intellectual odyssey. If time permits, I will say
something about my own views.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 11 October 2002, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B01
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Desire in Context
Rich Gold
The Red Shift
Engineers often conceive of their work as solving problems usually by
reorganizing the physical world, or in the case of computer science,
by writing a program that alters a receptive machine. The literature
is replete with methods for finding such solutions along with metrics
for their efficiency, economy and completeness. But what exactly is
the definition of a problem the supposed target of all this activity?
Where do problems come from, what is their nature and is there a way
of understanding them that will positively impact, not only what we
consider a worthy solution, but what we consider good engineering? In
this talk I will propose the definition for a problem as a desire in a
context and look at the process of engineering through this useful, if
slightly flawed, lens. One difficulty in this definition lies here:
while most engineers are comfortable with the idea of context, desire
is usually relegated to the domain of the designer. This broader
definition, desire in context, conflates what are often treated as two
distinct cultures.
About the speaker: Rich Gold is an engineer, artist, designer, writer
and cartoonist who brings together ideas and methodologies from
different disciplines to create stuff for people to enjoy. He was a
co-founder of the League of Automatic Music Composers, the first
network computer music band (1975). He invented the award winning
Little Computer People program (Activision, 1984) which was the first
artificially intelligent human you could buy. At Mattel Toys he
managed the PowerGlove home VR project (1989) and designed many other
interactive toys. For ten years he was a researcher at Xerox PARC
(1991 2001) on the Ubiquitous Computing Project. He also set up and
managed the PARC Artist in Residence Program (PAIR) and the Research
in Experimental Documents (RED) Group which combined art, science,
design and engineering to create Evocative Knowledge Objects. He
currently is consultant working on the future of reading and knowledge
exchange.
____________
STANFORD PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP
on Friday, 11 October 2002, 5:00pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
Variable Vowel Epenthesis in Picard
Julie Auger
Indiana University
One striking feature of Picard (a language closely related to French)
concerns the regular insertion of epenthetic vowels in order to break
up consonant clusters and syllabify word-initial and word-final
consonants. This corpus-based study focuses on word-initial
epenthesis. It provides quantitative evidence that vowel epenthesis
applies categorically in some environments and variably in
others. Probabilistic analysis reveals that the variable pattern is
constrained by a complex interplay of linguistic factors. Following
Labov (1972) and Anttila & Cho (1998), I interpret this result as
evidence that this variation is a reflection of a grammatical
competence that generates variable outputs. An Optimality Theory
analysis that generates both categorical and variable aspects of vowel
epenthesis is proposed. Finally, an analysis of individual patterns of
epenthesis by members of the community reveals that, even though all
speakers share the same basic community grammar, their use of
epenthesis differs qualitatively as well as quantitatively. This paper
shows that individual grammars can be derived from the community
grammar and that OT thus allows us to formalize the idea that
individual grammars constitute more specific versions of community
grammars.
____________
END MATERIAL
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