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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 6 November 2002, vol. 18:9
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
______________________________________________________________________
6 November 2002 Stanford Vol. 18, No. 9
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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
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
____________
ACTIVITIES FROM 6 NOVEMBER 2002 TO 15 NOVEMBER 2002
WEDNESDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2002
3:00pm Reuters Foundation Digital Vision Program Seminar
Cordura 100
Internet Connectivity for the Developing World
Randy Bush
Internet Engineering Task Force, Bainbridge Island
http://reuters.stanford.edu/seminar_speakers.html
Abstract below
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Extending Publish-Subscribe with Relational Subscriptions
Rob Strom
IBM Research
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 7 NOVEMBER 2002
12:15pm CSLI CogLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
This Talk is Habit Forming: An Unsung Secret
of Good Interface Design.
Jef Raskin
Inventor, author, HCI consultant
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
12:15pm Stanford Networking Seminar
Gates 104
Lucy Cherkasova
Hewlett Packard Labs
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
4:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series
EJ228, SRI International
From Ants and Bees to Robots and Back
Tucker Balch
Georgia Institute of Technology
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:00pm UC Berkeley CIS Seminar
Soda Hall 310, UC Berkeley
What's New in Statistical Machine Translation
Kevin Knight
USC/ISI
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
Abstract below
4:15pm SSP: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
Technology and Personal Identity: Explorations Through Film
Three films from Canada and United Kingdom
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Information below
4:15pm US-ATMC Public Lecture Series
Gates B01 (HP Classroom)
Broadband Networks in Asia
George Chen, Senior VP, H&Q Asia Pacific
Sridhar Jagannathan, Former VP Technology, SEM
http://asia.stanford.edu/events/
Information below
FRIDAY, 8 NOVEMBER 2002
12 noon Philosophy Lecture
Bldg. 380:383N (math corner)
A Fresh Look at Quine's Metaphilosophy: Science itself Teaches
Geert Keil
Humboldt University, Berlin
Abstract below
12:30pm CS547: HCI Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Gates B01 (HP Classroom) and SITN
Beginning with the End in Mind: How
to design for people's real goals
Paul Whitmore
E*Trade
http://hci.stanford.edu/seminar
Abstract below
2:15pm NLP Reading Group
Margaret Jacks Hall, 460:301
Two Papers by Dan Roth
Cindi Thompson, presenter
http://www-nlp.stanford.edu/nlp/nlpgroup.html
Information below
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium
Bldg. 90:92Q
Reasons and Rationality
Derek Parfit
All Souls College, Oxford/NYU
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
3:30pm Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
FrameNet: What, Why, and How
Charles Fillmore, Collin Baker and Beau Cronin
ISI, Berkeley
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/
MONDAY, 11 NOVEMBER 2002
4:15pm Broad Area Colloquium in AI,
Geometry, Graphics, Robotics, and Vision
TCSeq 200
David Mumford
Brown
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
TUESDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2002
4:15pm Logic Seminar
Bldg. 380:383N (math corner)
Decision Procedures for Presburger Arithmetic:
Automata based methods and ILP
Vijay Ganesh and Sergey Berezin
Computer Science
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
7:00pm Emerging Technology Group
Cubberley Community Center, A-3, 4000 Middlefield, Palo Alto
Recent Trends in Programming Languages
Peter Norvig
Google
(free for SDForum members, $15 for non-members)
http://www.wgrosso.com/emerging/
WEDNESDAY, 13 NOVEMBER 2002
3:00pm Reuters Foundation Digital Vision Program Seminar
Cordura 217 (Digital Vision Fellowship Program lounge)
The Future of Search Technology on the Internet
Sergey Brin
Co-Founder and President of Technology, Google
http://reuters.stanford.edu/seminar_speakers.html
Abstract below
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium
Jordan Hall 420:041
Concept Meets Precept in Extrastriate Cortex
Sharon Thompson-Schill
University of Pennsylvania
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
We Know Where You Are: 3D Visual Person Tracking
John Woodfill
Tyzx
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 14 NOVEMBER 2002
12 noon Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
`Before' and `After' are Inverses
David Beaver, Linguistics, Stanford
Cleo Condoravdi, PARC
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/
12:15pm Stanford Networking Seminar
Gates 104
David Rosenthal
Sun Labs
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
4:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series
EJ228, SRI International
Self-Reconfigurable Robots/Systems and Digital Hormones
Wei-Min Shen
ISI, University of Southern California
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:00pm UC Berkeley CIS Seminar
Soda Hall 310, UC Berkeley
Assisted Cognition
Henry Kautz
University of Washington
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
Abstract below
4:15pm SSP: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
Inside Verb Meanings
Beth Levin
Linguistics
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Abstract below
4:15pm Fundamental Themes in Neuroscience Seminar
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman B060
Cortical Patterning
John Rubenstein
UCSF
http://www-med.stanford.edu/sbrc/calendar/
FRIDAY, 15 NOVEMBER 2002
12:30pm CS547: HCI Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Gates B01 (HP Classroom) and SITN
Advanced User-Interface Design for Vehicles
Aaron Marcus
Aaron Marcus and Associates
http://hci.stanford.edu/seminar
Abstract below
TUESDAY, 19 NOVEMBER 2002
5:15pm Gestures and Dialogue Seminar
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Embodied Knowledge
Jurgen Streeck
Communication Studies, U. of Texas at Austin
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Gestures/
Abstract below
____________
Stanford Blood Bank status: Critical shortage of O+, O-, and B+
and a shortage of A+ and A-. For an appointment:
http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call 650-723-7831.
It only takes an hour of your time.
____________
REUTERS FOUNDATION DIGITAL VISION PROGRAM SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 6 November 2002, 3:00pm-5:00pm
Cordura Hall, Room 100
http://reuters.stanford.edu/seminar_speakers.html
Internet Connectivity for the Developing World
Randy Bush
Internet Engineering Task Force, Bainbridge Island, WA
With more than 35 years in the computer, software, and Internet
industry, Randy Bush was, until recently, at AT&T doing research and
network architecture. He was previously a member of Verio's founding
team and most recently served as vice president of engineering for IP
networking. He is a co-chair of the IETF working group on the domain
name system and is currently a member of the IESG, serving as
co-director of the IETF's operations and management area. Mr. Bush is
an author of the 2000 RFC 2870 "Root Name Server Operational
Requirements." He chaired the association for computing machinery
(ACM) Internet governance committee and was a founding member of the
noncommercial domain name holders' constituency of the domain name
supporting organization of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers. Mr. Bush was also a founding board member of the
American registry for Internet numbers.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LAB COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 6 November 2002, 4:15pm-5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03), Gates Computer Science Building
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Extending Publish-Subscribe with Relational Subscriptions
Rob Strom
IBM Research
Traditional publish-subscribe systems simply deliver to subscribers
all messages published on a particular topic or all messages meeting a
particular filtering criterion. If messages are lost, or if the
subscriber is intermittently connected, a more reliable "guaranteed
delivery" quality of service guarantees the eventual ordered delivery
of all messages.
An alternative paradigm is to view a subscription as a request for a
particular state derived from the published messages -- i.e. a
continuous query. What is delivered to the subscriber is not
necessarily the published message stream, but the updates to the state
he is interested in. Now if messages are lost, then after recovery,
the system can deliver the new state rather than a possibly large
number of messages. This paradigm also allows subscribers to
subscribe to derived events that are a function of summaries of
message histories.
We discuss an exploratory effort in IBM's Gryphon publish-subscribe
system to extend our reliable messaging protocols to support
"relational subscriptions." We introduce a Relational Subscription
Language (RSL), adapted from relational algebra, but based upon
monotonic base relations and a monotonic type system. We discuss how
monotonic type analysis allows an efficient "mostly push-based"
implementation that combines timely delivery with scalability and
fault-tolerance.
About the speaker: Rob Strom has been a Research Staff Member at the
IBM TJ Watson Research Center since 1977. His main research interests
have been in programming languages, distributed systems, and
optimistic algorithms. He is known for the design of Hermes, one of
the earliest languages to simultaneously support type-safe
multi-threaded multi-component applications, and of Optimistic
Recovery, an efficient technique for transparent recovery of
applications in a distributed environment. Rob's latest research
interest has been in highly scalable distributed publish-subscribe
systems. His latest research concerns applying techniques from
incremental continuous queries of relational databases to the
implementation of fault-tolerant messaging systems.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 7 November 2002, 12:15pm-1:30pm
Cordura Hall, Room 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
This Talk is Habit Forming:
An Unsung Secret of Good Interface Design.
Jef Raskin
Inventor, author, HCI consultant
It has been known for at least a century that, to use the words of
Alfred North Whitehead, "Civilization advances by extending the number
of important operations which we can perform without thinking about
them." Experimental evidence points to our being able to pay
attention to only one task at a time, with a small maximum number of
tasks that we can quickly cycle through.
When we do perform tasks simultaneously, all but one of them have
become habitual or, to use another term favored by some psychologists,
automatic. The task that we pay attention to is handled by our
cognitive conscious, the automatic tasks are run by our cognitive
unconscious.
This is all well known, but the implications for the design of
products from cars to phones to PDAs to computer software have not
been internalized by most designers and marketers of appliances that
deal with information.
As a consequence, nearly every such product is designed badly, with
features guaranteed to cause human error, error which could have been
avoided by proper design. I will discuss how an $80,000 car, the
BMW745i, nearly killed me with such a design error. I will also
discuss how radically computer interfaces must be redesigned if they
are to permit us to concentrate our limited attention to the task at
hand, and to reduce the operation of the computer itself to habit
safely.
About the speaker: Jef was a key, early Apple designer, is an
influential consultant, and recently wrote The Humane Interface in
Behaviour and Information Technology.
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Thursday, 7 November 2002, 4:00pm
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
From Ants and Bees to Robots and Back
Tucker Balch
Georgia Institute of Technology
Tucker Balch is an assistant professor of computing at the Georgia
Institute of Technology and an adjunct research scientist at CMU's
Robotics Institute. His research focuses on behavior-based control,
learning and diversity in multi-robot teams. He has also begun a
novel research program involving the automatic tracking and analysis
of social insect behavior. Professor Balch has published over 60
journal and conference papers in AI and robotics. His book "Robot
Teams" (edited with Lynne Parker) is now available from AK Peters.
____________
UC BERKELEY CIS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 7 November 2002, 4:00pm-5:30pm
Soda Hall 310, UC Berkeley
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
What's New in Statistical Machine Translation
Kevin Knight
USC/ISI
A lot of knowledge of how to do language translation is implicit in
people's heads. It is tough to extract that knowledge and to encode
it in algorithmic form. On the other hand, there is also a lot of
translation knowledge implicit in large quantities of human-translated
material (available, for example, from the United Nations). I will
talk about some recent work aimed at extracting this knowledge through
automatic machine learning techniques.
About the speaker: Kevin Knight is a Senior Research Scientist at the
USC/Information Sciences Institute. He is also a Research Associate
Professor in the Computer Science Department at USC. He received his
Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991 and his BA from Harvard
University in 1986. He is co-author (with Elaine Rich) of the
textbook Artificial Intelligence. His main research interests are
statistical natural language processing, machine translation, natural
language generation, and decipherment.
____________
SSP: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 7 November 2002, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Technology and Personal Identity:
Explorations Through Film
We will be showing three short films that examine the philosophical
implications of technology for personal identity.
"To Be" (1990, director:John Weldon, Canada, 10 minutes, animated).
Through a fast-paced story of a young woman confronting an eminent
scientist and his mind-boggling invention, this animated film explores
the nature of personal identity and the moral issues relating to
advances in science and technology.
"The Man Who Believed in Body Transplants" (1989, producer: David
Filkin, UK, 30 minutes). Interviews with neurologist Robert Joseph
White on how he justified the nature of his brain transplantation
research.
"Personality Software" (1990, director: Sylvie Fefer, Canada, 8
minutes, animated). People improve their personalities with diskettes
which fit into custom-made drives cut into their heads.
____________
US-ASIA TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT CENTER PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES
on Thursday, 7 November 2002, 4:15pm-5:30pm
Gates B01 (HP Classroom)
http://asia.stanford.edu/events/
Broadband Networks in Asia
George Chen, Senior VP, H&Q Asia Pacific
Sridhar Jagannathan, Former VP Technology, Softbank Emerging Markets
About George Chen: George K. Chen is a Senior Vice President and
Chief Technical Advisor of H&Q Asia Pacific. He is responsible for
technology assessments, strategic formulation, due diligence, joint
venture, and business planning. In addition to Silicon Valley, his
coverage of Greater China includes China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Prior to H&Q Asia Pacific, George was a co-founder of ANDA Networks
(1998-2001) and served as President and chairman of the board of
directors. Previous positions include VP of M&A at Cortelco
Telecommunications Corp., (1995-97); and Vice President of Network
Business Division at ALCATEL N.V. in China and Taiwan (1992-95),
during which the annual revenue of the division grew from $5 million
to $40 million. From 1985 to 1992, George was Assistant Vice
President of Network Development at Fujitsu America Inc., where he
started the Transmission Development Division and grew revenues to
$300 million. From 1978 to 1985, George served as Senior Manager at
Nortel Networks Inc., where he managed three professional groups: Data
Communications Design, System Software Development, and New Product
Introductions; at same time, George supervised three laboratories.
From 1972 to 1978 George worked as Senior Engineer at NCR and
Raytheon. George received a BS in Electrical Engineering, an MS in
Computer Science and an MBA. A native of China and a naturalized
U.S. citizen, he is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese. George was a
founder of the Chinese Software Professionals Association in Silicon
Valley and has served as its Chairman & President. Additionally, he
has been active in IEEE and CIE (Chinese Institute of Engineers).
About Sridhar Jagannathan: Dr. Sridhar Jagannathan is a strategic
advisor to venture funds and early stage startups. Earlier, Sridhar
was Vice President of Technology for Softbank Emerging Markets, a
$200M fund focused on early stage investments in emerging markets.
Prior to SoftBank, Sridhar was Chief Technology Officer and co-founder
of Adatom.com, Inc., an ecommerce enabler and marketmaker. Earlier,
Sridhar was Technical Director for Internet & eCommerce Solutions at
Oracle Corporation. He was also instrumental in setting up Oracle's
Applications Center of Excellence, which co-ordinated product testing,
release and beta implementations. Sridhar is the author of an
ecommerce book (Internet Commerce Metrics and Models, Prentice Hall,
2001) and has taught an ecommerce course for U.C. Berkeley. Sridhar
has a doctorate in engineering from University of California, Berkeley
and a Master's degree (Sloan Fellow) from the Stanford Graduate School
of Business.
____________
PHILOSOPHY LECTURE
on Friday, 8 November 2002, 12 noon-1:30pm
Math Corner 380:383N
A Fresh Look at Quine's Metaphilosophy: Science itself Teaches
Geert Keil
Humboldt University, Berlin
Quine famously holds that philosophy is "continuous with natural
science". In order to find out what exactly the point of this claim
is, I shall take up one of his preferred phrases and trace it through
his writings, i.e., the phrase "Science itself teaches that ...."
Unlike Wittgenstein, Quine did not take much interest in determining
what might be distinctive of philosophical investigations, or of the
philosophical part of scientific investigations. I find this
limitation regrettable, and I shall take a fresh look at his
metaphilosophy, trying to defuse his avowed naturalism by illustrating
how little influence his naturalistic rhetoric has on the way he
actually does philosophy.
____________
CS547: HCI SEMINAR ON PEOPLE, COMPUTERS, AND DESIGN
on Friday, 8 November, 2002, 12:30pm-2:00pm
Gates B01 (HP Classroom) and SITN
http://hci.stanford.edu/seminar
Beginning with the End in Mind:
How to design for people's real goals
Paul Whitmore
E*Trade
The developing discipline of user-centered design has required certain
idealizations. The notion of the "user's conceptual model" is a key
abstraction; by directing designers' attention to actual cognitive
processes, technology can be adapted to anticipate and support the
fallible and limited minds. These minds are often called "users."
I have long been interested in the complexities underlying real
people's attempts to interact with technology. Not only are they
fallible and finite-information-processors; they frequently lack a
clear articulation of their intentions and may have real problems when
asked what they are trying to accomplish. My research examines the
cognitive and emotional issues that face people at the moment they are
asked to make their goals explicit, and the ways that explicit
articulation can interfere with complete access to the true complexity
and range of a person's values and aspirations.
By understanding these complexities, designers can undertake slight
but powerful modifications in the way that they identify and support
the personal goals of real people.
About the speaker: Paul Whitmore is currently the User Interface
Visionary at E*Trade. He works with designers, data-miners, and
marketing professionals. This presentation combines his doctoral
research with industry experience. While at Stanford, he interned at
Xerox PARC in the User Interface Research Group. Recently, he has
started the BAYCHI Apprenticeship Program, which offers workshops to
help bridge the divide between academic and industry preparation.
For this lecture on the Internet, look under Computer Science 547 in
http://scpd.stanford.edu/scpd/students/courseList.asp
For more information about the project in general use, see
http://interactivity.stanford.edu
____________
NLP READING GROUP
on Friday, 8 November 2002, 2:15pm-3:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall, Room 460:301
http://www-nlp.stanford.edu/nlp/nlpgroup.html
Two Papers by Dan Roth
Cindi Thompson, presenter
D. Roth and W. Yih: "Relational Learning via Propositional
Algorithms: An Information Extraction Case Study" IJCAI '01
D. Roth and W. Yih: "Probabilistic Reasoning for Entity & Relation
Recognition" COLING '02
Both are available off Dan's web page: l2r.cs.uiuc.edu/~danr
____________
LOGIC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 12 November March 2002, 4:15pm-5:30pm
Math Corner 380:383N
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Decision Procedures for Presburger Arithmetic:
Automata based methods and ILP
Vijay Ganesh and Sergey Berezin
Department of Computer Science, Stanford University
Presburger arithmetic is an important theory for practical formal
verification of programs. Their are two important classes of decision
procedures (DP) for Presburger arithmetic, namely the automata based
and the ILP (integer linear programming) based methods. Buchi was the
first to propose an automata based DP which uses translation of
Presburger arithmetic into WS1S and subsequently uses an automata
based DP for WS1S. A more efficient method was later proposed by
Hubert Comon, and Wolper et al. This part of the talk will focus on
the current state of the art in automata based DPs for Presburger
arithmetic.
The feasibility part of the ILP problem is precisely the
satisfiability problem for a conjunction of Quantifier-free Presburger
formulas. Considerable amount of research has been done in the last
few decades on the ILP problem. Solvers for ILP extended to handle
quantifiers and boolean combination of presburger formulas can act as
a DP for Presburger arithmetic. There are many methods to solve the
ILP problem, namely the Omega test, simplex with branch and bound etc.
This part of the talk will focus on the Omega test which is a complete
method as opposed to simplex with branch and bound. Some comparisons
between the automata methods and ILP methods will be provided followed
by a brief discussion on how to write practical decision procedures.
____________
REUTERS FOUNDATION DIGITAL VISION PROGRAM SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 13 November 2002, 3:00pm-5:00pm
Digital Vision Fellowship Program lounge (217), Cordura Hall
http://reuters.stanford.edu/seminar_speakers.html
The Future of Search Technology on the Internet
Sergey Brin
Co-Founder and President of Technology, Google
Mr. Brin, a native of Moscow, received a bachelor of science degree
with honors in mathematics and computer science from the University of
Maryland at College Park. He is currently on leave from the
Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, where he
received his master's degree. Brin is a recipient of a National
Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. It was at Stanford where he
met Larry Page and worked on the project that became Google. Together
they founded Google Inc. in 1998, and Brin continues to share
responsibility for day-to-day operations with Larry Page and Eric
Schmidt.
Brin's research interests include search engines, information
extraction from unstructured sources, and data mining of large text
collections and scientific data. He has published more than a dozen
academic papers, including Extracting Patterns and Relations from the
World Wide Web; Dynamic Data Mining: A New Architecture for Data with
High Dimensionality, which he published with Larry Page; Scalable
Techniques for Mining Casual Structures; Dynamic Itemset Counting and
Implication Rules for Market Basket Data; and Beyond Market Baskets:
Generalizing Association Rules to Correlations.
Brin has been a featured speaker at several national and international
academic, business, and technology forums, including the Academy of
American Achievement; European Technology Forum; Technology,
Entertainment and Design; and Silicon Alley 2001. He has shared his
views on the technology industry and the future of search on the
Charlie Rose Show, the ABC Nightly News, CNBC, and CNNfn as well as in
numerous newspaper articles. Brin was named a "Young Innovator Who
Will Create the Future" by MIT's Technology Review magazine in 2002.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LAB COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 13 November 2002, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03), Gates Computer Science Building
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
We Know Where You Are: 3D Visual Person Tracking
John Woodfill
Co-Founder and CTO, Tyzx Inc.
Of all our senses, we rely most heavily on our sense of sight to
interact with the world. As we incorporate embedded processors into
everyday products to make them more intelligent, we can imbue them as
well with this powerful capability. To date, however, machine vision
has only achieved success in manufacturing facilities where lighting
and scene variation are strictly controlled. Seeing in the real world
is much harder.
The challenge to seeing is to view the world in real-time in three
dimensions and color. Until recently, this was possible only with
dedicated high-performance computers. Today, technology developed by
Tyzx performs the task on a single IC at rates which outstrip the
fastest CPUs.
Combined with commodity CMOS imagers, the result is a new platform for
low-cost, low-power 3D sensing for a broad range of affordable
applications. 3D vision-enabled applications from video games to
automotive to robotics are now possible. In many ways, the most
immediate and compelling application is in Homeland Defense.
Dr. Woodfill will discuss the merits of 3D technology for computer
vision and its application to new security challenges.
About the speaker: Dr. John Woodfill is a founder of Tyzx, Inc.
John is known for his research in frame-rate depth and motion vision
for systems that work in the real world. This focus has led to
patented, stereo-vision hardware that is at the core of Tyzx's 3D
imaging technology. Dr. Woodfill initiated and led Interval
Research's work on computational stereo vision. He was previously a
consultant at Xerox PARC and SRI, and a Visiting Scientist at the IBM
Science Center in Heidelberg, Germany. John was also a member of the
original team that developed the INGRES relational database system at
UC Berkeley. He holds a dual AB degree from UC Berkeley in Computer
Science and Philosophy, and an MS degree and PhD from Stanford in
Computer Vision. His thesis work resulted in interactive robotic
systems that tracked people (and cats) in unstructured environments
based solely on estimates of optical flow.
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Thursday, 14 November 2002, 4:00pm
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Self-Reconfigurable Robots/Systems and Digital Hormones
Wei-Min Shen
ISI, University of Southern California
Self-reconfigurable systems are network of autonomous elements that
can alter their physical or logical structures based on feedback of
their performance in the environment. Examples of such systems
include metamorphic robots that can change their shape and size for
the mission and the environment, or distributed sensor networks that
can gather and process information in a wide range of areas. Such
reconfigurable systems provide a powerful and flexible approach to
complex tasks in unstructured and dynamic environments, and they are
highly desirable for future applications of computer technologies such
as space exploration, search/rescue after disasters, and
anti-terrorists operations. Due to their dynamic topology and
decentralized configuration, however, self-reconfigurable systems
demand control mechanisms that go beyond those used by conventional
control mechanisms and software engineering. This presentation
describes a novel approach called "digital hormone model" that is
inspired by the biological concept of hormones that support adaptive
communication, distributed control, online reconfiguration, and
collaboration for many autonomous components in a single or multiple
robot systems. We will demonstrate the utilities of this approach for
controlling locomotion and reconfigurations in CONRO metamorphic
robots, and illustrates its potential for self-reconfigurable systems
that will be distributed, scalable, robust, adaptive, and self-repair.
Just as biological cells, the components in these systems function
based on the principle of self-organization, not on fixed roles,
identifiers or addresses that must be designated in the conventional
computational systems. (This work is jointed with Peter Will and
Behnam Salemi.)
About the Speaker: Dr. Wei-Min Shen is the Associate Director of
USC's newly established Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems, the
Co-Director of ISI's Polymorphic Robotics Laboratory, and a Research
Assistant Professor at University of Southern California in
Information Sciences Institute and Computer Science Department. He
received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989 under
Professor Herbert Simon. Dr. Shen's research interests include
Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Machine Learning. He has won
several research awards in these fields, such as the RoboCup World
Championship Award in 1997, and the AAAI Robotics Competition
Silver-Medal Award in 1996. He is the author of the book "Autonomous
Learning from the Environment." He has chaired several international
conferences and workshops in Robotics, Machine Learning, and Data
Mining, and served on the editorial boards for two scientific books and
one international journal. His work is sponsored by the National
Science Foundation, US Air Force, and Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency. His research achievements have been reported by many
news media, including CNN, PBS, Discovery channel, LA Times, BYTE,
Chinese World Journal, and SCIENCES.
____________
UC BERKELEY CIS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 14 November 2002, 4:00pm-5:30pm
Soda Hall 310, UC Berkeley
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
Assisted Cognition
Henry Kautz
University of Washington
The goal of the Assisted Cognition project is to create novel computer
systems that will enhance the quality of life of people suffering from
Alzheimer's Disease and similar cognitive disorders. This
interdisciplinary project combines computer science research in
artificial intelligence and ubiquitous computing with clinical
research on patient care. Assisted Cognition systems are proactive
memory and problem solving aids that help an individual perform the
tasks of day-to-day life. They sense aspects of an individual's
location and environment, both outdoors and at home, relying on a wide
range of sensors such as GPS, active badges, motion detectors, and
other ubiquitous computing infrastructure; learn to interpret patterns
of everyday behavior, and recognize signs of distress, using
techniques from state estimation, plan recognition, and machine
learning; and offer help to patients through various kinds of
interventions. Research efforts within the Assisted Cognition project
include the Activity Compass and the ADL Prompter.
About the speaker: Henry Kautz is an Associate Professor in the
Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of
Washington. He joined the faculty in the summer of the year 2000
after a career at Bell Labs and AT&T Laboratories, where he was Head
of the AI Principles Research Department. His academic degrees
include an A.B. in mathematics from Cornell University, an M.A. in
Creative Writing from the Johns Hopkins University, an M.Sc. in
Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in
computer science from the University of Rochester. He is a recipient
of the Computers and Thought Award from the International Joint
Conference on Artificial Intelligence and a Fellow of the American
Association for Artificial Intelligence. In 1998 he was elected to
the Executive Council of AAAI, and in 2000 was Program Chair for the
AAAI National Conference.
____________
SSP: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 14 November 2002, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Inside Verb Meanings
Beth Levin
Linguistics, Stanford
Verbs, as the child's rhyme puts it, "tell of something being done"
or, to quote a novel I once read, they are "the engines of language."
Not surprisingly given this essential function, verbs pose special
challenges for speakers, linguists, and lexicographers alike. I show
how the scope, complexity and richness of our knowledge of verbs goes
well beyond the explicit knowledge embodied in even the most elaborate
entries of unabridged dictionaries. I then present results from my
ongoing investigations into the internal structure of verb meanings.
To conclude I briefly discuss how my research illuminates certain
previously observed systematic crosslinguistic differences in the use
of certain verbs said to be "translation equivalents."
About the speaker: Beth Levin is the William H. Bonsall Professor in
the Humanities at Stanford. She received her Ph.D. from MIT in 1983
and then spent four years at the MIT Center for Cognitive Science,
where she had major responsibility for the Lexicon Project. From 1987
to 1999 she was a professor in the Department of Linguistics at
Northwestern University. She joined the Stanford Department of
Linguistics in September 1999. In 1999-2000 she was a fellow at the
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Her research
focuses on the lexicon -- the component of the language system that
serves as a repository for information on the words of a language.
She has conducted extensive breadth- and depth-first studies of the
English verb lexicon, which have provided the foundation for much of
her theoretical research. Her recent work investigates the linguistic
representation of events and the ways in which events and their
participants are expressed in English and other languages. Her
publications include Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Lexical Semantics
Interface (1995, coauthored with Malka Rappaport Hovav), English Verb
Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation (1993), and
Lexical and Conceptual Semantics (1992, coedited with Steven Pinker).
____________
CS547: HCI SEMINAR ON PEOPLE, COMPUTERS, AND DESIGN
on Friday, 15 November, 2002, 12:30pm-2:00pm
Gates B01 (HP Classroom) and SITN
http://hci.stanford.edu/seminar
Advanced User-Interface Design for Vehicles
Aaron Marcus
Aaron Marcus and Associates
The driver/rider experience is a major development in mobile
user-interface design worldwide, similar in scale to the first
introduction of personal computers to the desktop. Most automobile
manufacturers seeking to develop smart cars have relatively little
experience with advanced software-based user-interfaces and
information visualization. This lecture introduces essential concepts
of user-interface design, discusses important human factors issues,
based on AM+A's recent 100-page analysis for BMW Germany, illustrates
prototypes designed by AM+A of radically different information
displays, and discusses cross-cultural communication issues in
relation to global product and service deployment.
About the speaker: Aaron Marcus is a graduate of Princeton University
(physics) and Yale University (graphic design). He was the world's
first graphic designer to work full-time in computer graphics, was a
pioneer in user-interface and information-visualization design, worked
at Bell Labs and Lawrence Berkeley Labs as a computer graphics design
researcher, and taught at Princeton and the University of California
at Berkeley. Since starting AM+A in 1982, he has authored/co-authored
four books and over 100 articles. He lectures and tutors at industry
conferences and onsite worldwide.
For this lecture on the Internet, look under Computer Science 547 in
http://scpd.stanford.edu/scpd/students/courseList.asp
For more information about the project in general use, see
http://interactivity.stanford.edu
____________
GESTURES AND DIALOGUE SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 19 November 2002, 5:15pm
Cordura Hall, Room 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Gestures/
Embodied Knowledge
Jurgen Streeck
Communication Studies, U. of Texas at Austin
I present inquiries into relationships between ordinary practical
activities and skills of the hands ('handling'), and expressive and
symbolic hand movements ('gesturing'). I am interested in the ways in
which the knowledge that the hands possess, as a result of their
ordinary practical dealings (i.e. the ways in which our hands know the
world), might bear upon the ways in which we gesture and shape
gesture's semiotic and experiential qualities. Hands largely know the
world by way of grasping, and manual knowledge is embodied in
routinized, distinctive 'prehensile postures'. These are the result
of 'structural couplings' between sets of hands and graspables and
manipulation tasks in the world. Prehensile postures and gestures are
known proprioceptively, and grasping is largely experienced, in the
kinesthetic mode. Accordingly, I emphasize the haptic qualities of
gesture.
The inquiries I present concern the emergence and patterning of
gesture in videotaped interactions in a do-it-yourself class, among
car-mechanics and their customers, and amongst architects.
____________
END MATERIAL
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