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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 12 February 2003, vol. 18:20
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
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12 February 2003 Stanford Vol. 18, No. 20
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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 12 FEBRUARY 2003 TO 21 FEBRUARY 2003
WEDNESDAY, 12 FEBRUARY 2003
12:15pm Music 319: CCRMA Hearing Seminar
CCRMA Ballroom, The Knoll
Super Audio CD: Overview and Perspectives
Bernard Mont-Reynaud
SONY (Super Audio CD Project)
http://mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/ccrmas/ccrmas.html
Abstract below
3:00pm Reuters Foundation Digital Vision Program Seminar
email for location mailto:digitalvision@csli.stanford.edu
Iqbal Z. Quadir
fellow at the Harvard's Center for Business and Government
and at the Center for Business Innovation at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.
http://reuters.stanford.edu/seminar_speakers.html
Information below
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium
Jordan Hall 420:041
Statistical Models of Language Acquisition
Elissa Newport
University of Rochester
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html
4:00pm Berkeley EECS Joint Colloquium
Soda Hall 306, (UC Berkeley)
Creativity and Technology
Ed Catmull
President, Pixar
http://buffy.eecs.berkeley.edu/Seminars/
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium) and B01
Stephan Wolfram
Creator of Mathematica, author of A New Kind of Science,
and CEO of Wolfram Research, Inc.
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Abstract below
5:45pm Tanner Lecture
Kresge Auditorium
Human Rights and Ethical Globalization
Mary Robinson
former President of Ireland
former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/EIS/lectures.html
THURSDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2003
12:15pm Stanford Networking Seminar
Gates 104
Planetary Scale Computing
Bernardo Huberman
HP Labs
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
11:30am Tanner Seminar
SIEPR A, Landau Economic Building, Stanford
Human Rights and Ethical Globalization
Mary Robinson
former President of Ireland
former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Discussants:
Deborah Rhode, Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law, Stanford
Susan Okin, Mart Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society and
Political Science, Stanford University
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/EIS/lectures.html
12:15pm CSLI CogLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Memory and Learning in Figure-Ground Perception
Mary A. Peterson
University of Arizona
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
4:00pm Personality Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
Title to be announced
Larry Tecott
UC San Franciso
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#person_lab
4:00pm PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
In the Shadow of Ideas
designRAW: Fadhly Bey, Markus Diebel, Tad Toulis, Pontus
Walhgren, and Rico Zorkendorfer
http://www.parc.com/forum/
Abstract below
4:00pm UC Berkeley CIS Seminar
Soda Hall 380 (UC Berkeley)
Collaborative Online Robots
Ken Goldberg
UC Berkeley
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
Abstract below
4:15pm CSLI Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation
Cordura Hall, room 100
Incorporating Biological Knowledge into the Evaluation of
Causal Regulatory Hypotheses
Lonnie Chrisman
ISLE and CSLI
http://cll.stanford.edu/scla.html
Abstract below
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
Developmental Biology and "Innate" Mental Structure
Gary Marcus
2002-2003 Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Social
and Behavior Sciences, Stanford University
[Psychology, New York University]
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Abstract below
4:15pm Neurobiology of Disease Seminar Series
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman B060
Fibril, Protofibrils, Pores, and Neurodegeneration
Peter T. Lansbury, Jr.
Harvard Medical School
http://www-med.stanford.edu/sbrc/calendar/
7:00pm Tanner Lecture
Kresge Auditorium
The Challenge of Human Rights Protection in Africa
Mary Robinson
former President of Ireland
former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/EIS/lectures.html
FRIDAY, 14 FEBRUARY 2003
all day 29th annual Berkeley Linguistics Society Meeting
Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS
9:00am Tanner Seminar
SIEPR A, Landau Economic Building, Stanford
The Challenge of Human Rights Protection in Africa
Mary Robinson
former President of Ireland
former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Discussants:
Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
David Abernethy, Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, Stanford
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/EIS/lectures.html
11:00am Berkeley Institute of Cognitive and Brain Seminar
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
When the Future is Part of the Past: Anticipatory Representation
of Natural Scenes
Helene Intraub
Psychology, University of Delaware
http://socrates.berkeley.edu:4247/seminar.html
12 noon Logical Methods in the Humanities
Bldg. 380:383N (math corner)
Kant's Philosophy of Mathematics in Perspective
Michael Friedman
Philosophy, Stanford
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B03
TaskMaster: Resource management in an email client
Victoria Bellotti, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Mark Howard and Ian Smith
PARC
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
2:15pm NLP Reading Group
Math Corner, 380:383P
Probabilistic Word Vector and Similarity based on Dictionaries
Presented by: Satoshi Suzuki, NTT Communications
http://www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/icl/mtg/members/satoshi/CICLing2003.pdf
http://www-nlp.stanford.edu/nlp/nlpgroup.html
Abstract below
3:15pm (not really a) Friday Cognitive Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
Statistical Models of Language Acquisition
Elissa Newport
University of Rochester
http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/newport/newport.html
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#frisem
4:15pm Computer Musings
Gates B01
Ramanujan's Cool Proof of Bertrand's Postulate
Don Knuth
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/musings.html
4:15pm CS545: Database Seminar
Gates B12
Hippocratic Data Management
Rakesh Agrawal
IBM Research (Almaden)
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/
Abstract below
SATURDAY, 15 FEBRUARY 2003
all day 29th annual Berkeley Linguistics Society Meeting
Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS
SUNDAY, 16 FEBRUARY 2003
all day 29th annual Berkeley Linguistics Society Meeting
Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS
MONDAY, 17 FEBRUARY 2003 - UNIVERSITY HOLIDAY
all day 29th annual Berkeley Linguistics Society Meeting
Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS
TUESDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2003
12:30pm UC Berkeley Special CIS Seminar
Soda Hall 373 (UC Berkeley)
Large-Margin Methods for Natural Language Learning
Michael Collins
MIT AI Lab
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
Abstract below
7:00pm Networks and Network Science Film Series
Wallenberg 160:330
Six Degrees of Separation
(1993, 112 minutes)
http://www.stanford.edu/class/symbsys205/
WEDNESDAY, 19 FEBRUARY 2003
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium
Jordan Hall 420:041
Chimpanzee Social Cognition
Michael Tomasello
Max Planck Institute
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Computer Technology in America's Cup Yacht Racing
J. Craig Mudge
Pacific Challenge
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
THURSDAY, 20 FEBRUARY 2003
12:15pm Stanford Networking Seminar
Gates 104
Title to be announced
Kevin Lai
UC Berkeley
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
4:00pm Personality Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
Pavel Zolotsev and Cara Rice
Stanford
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#person_lab
4:00pm PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
The BMW Technology Office, USA: Mission Technology Transfer
Dr. Joachim K. Stilla
Head of BMW Technology Office, USA
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:00pm UC Berkeley CIS Seminar
Soda Hall 380 (UC Berkeley)
Moving by Thinking: Progress Toward a Cortical Neural Prosthetic
Joel Burdick
California Institute of Technology
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
Abstract below
4:15pm CSLI Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation
Cordura Hall, room 100
Title to be announced
Stefan Schaal
University of Southern California
http://cll.stanford.edu/scla.html
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
Adult Offer and Child Uptake in the Acquisition of Meaning
Eve Clark
Stanford University
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
4:15pm Neurobiology of Disease Seminar Series
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman B060
Neurotrophin Signals: Going the Distance
William Mobley
Medicine, Stanford
http://www-med.stanford.edu/sbrc/calendar/
FRIDAY, 21 FEBRUARY 2003
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B03
Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do
BJ Fogg
CSLI, Stanford
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
2:15pm NLP Reading Group
Math Corner, 380:383P
Title to be announced
Dominic Widdows
CSLI, Stanford University
http://www-nlp.stanford.edu/nlp/nlpgroup.html
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium
Bldg. 90:92Q
Colors, Contexts, and Unarticulated Constituents in the Story
of Jim and his Tie Shop
Jenann Ismael
University of Arizona
http://w3.arizona.edu/~phil/faculty/jismael.htm
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
Alison Preston
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#frisem
____________
Stanford Blood Center status: shortage of O+, O-, A+, A-, AB+, and
AB-. For an appointment: http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call
650-723-7831. It only takes an hour of your time.
____________
MUSIC 319: CCRMA HEARING SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 12 February 2003, 12:15pm
CCRMA Ballroom, The Knoll
http://mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/ccrmas/ccrmas.html
(note different date, time, and location)
I'm happy to announce that Bernard Mont-Reynaud will be at CCRMA for a
special **Wednesday** Hearing Seminar and CCRMA Colloquium. Bernard
has been a regular for many years at the Hearing Seminar is especially
well equipped to talk about the acoustic and perceptual issues.
Bernard has been working on the Super Audio CD project at Sony. This
project is aimed at many things that improve our audio playback
experience, including a higher sample rate and more resolution per
sample. Are these changes a good idea for perception and/or business?
Come listen for yourself.
Note, this is a special time (12:15) and day of the week. Bring your
lunch if you wish. We'll hear some good audio and have a great
discussion.
Bring your favorite ears!!!!
- Malcolm
P.S. Remember parking is non-existent now near the Knoll. Best
solution is to arrive 15 minutes early, park near Tresidder, pay with
a credit card at the machine, and enjoy the short walk up the hill to
the Knoll.
Super Audio CD: Overview and Perspectives
Bernard Mont-Reynaud
SONY (Super Audio CD Project)
The psychoacoustics of high resolution audio is a very challenging
topic to study scientifically. It is interesting but I would not
venture to talk about it without in-depth study, if/when I get to it.
My goal for the Wednesday demo is quite modest. I plan to invite
people to appreciate certain acoustic differences between SACD stereo
and CD stereo ("high res" vs "low res" audio) which is easy to do with
carefully chosen examples, a decent sound system and a clean
room. (And if the room or system doesn't allow this, I will skip it.)
In any case, it is not science, it's a sampling experience, more like
wine tasting...
____________
REUTERS FOUNDATION DIGITAL VISION PROGRAM SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 12 February 2003, 3:00pm-4:30pm
email for location mailto:digitalvision@csli.stanford.edu
http://reuters.stanford.edu/seminar_speakers.html
Iqbal Z. Quadir
fellow at the Harvard's Center for Business and Government
and at the Center for Business Innovation at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.
Iqbal Z. Quadir has taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University since 2001, focusing on the impact of
technologies in the politics and economics of developing countries.
His particular research interest is in the democratizing effects of
technologies in developing countries with some of his initial thoughts
published in the Summer/Fall 2002 issue of The Fletcher Forum of World
Affairs.
Quadir spent most of 1990s founding and building GrameenPhone Ltd.,
which has now become Bangladesh's largest telephone company, with
revenues of $150 million in 2002. His childhood exposure to the
conditions in rural Bangladesh combined with his later venture capital
experience in New York led Quadir to recognize that the ensuing
digital revolution could facilitate the introduction of telephony to
100 million people living in rural Bangladesh. In 1994, he formally
launched this effort by convincing angel investors to establish a New
York-based company, Gonofone (meaning "People's Phone") to help him
organize what subsequently became known as GrameenPhone.
Quadir's vision of a large-scale commercial project that could serve
all urban areas and 68,000 villages in Bangladesh led him to organize
a global consortium involving Telenor AS, the primary telephone
company in Norway; an affiliate of micro-credit pioneer Grameen Bank
in Bangladesh; Marubeni Corp. in Japan; Asian Development Bank in the
Philippines; Commonwealth Development Corp. in the United Kingdom; and
International Finance Corp. and Gonofone in the United States. He
attracted these investors by complementing his vision with a practical
distribution scheme whereby small entrepreneurs, backed by loans from
Grameen Bank, could retail telephone services to their surrounding
communities. With the support of these investors, GrameenPhone,
established in late 1996, started building a new cellular network and
providing services to the public soon thereafter. To date, it has
built the largest cellular network in the country with investments
approaching $300 million and a subscriber base of 800,000. Its rural
program is already available in more than 20,000 villages, providing
telephone access to more than 30 million people, while helping to
create micro-entrepreneurs in these villages.
Quadir's work has been recognized by leaders and organizations
worldwide, with invitations to speak at many forums, including the
World Bank, United Nations, World Economic Forum, and Aspen Institute,
as well as colleges and universities. He appeared on CNN and PBS and
was profiled in feature articles in Financial Times and The New York
Times, and in several books. The World Economic Forum, based in
Geneva, Switzerland, selected him as a "Global Leader for Tomorrow."
Quadir is an active board member or adviser to several companies and
organizations involved in international development. In the United
States, he is involved with Gonofone, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's
Center for Business Innovation, Voxiva, MIT Media Lab Asia, Money
Matters Institute, and EnterpriseWorks Worldwide. Internationally, in
addition to GrameenPhone in Bangladesh, Quadir works with UnoPhone in
Norway (which is extending telephone services to rural Uganda), and
the Evian Group in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Earlier in his career, Quadir served as a vice president of Atrium
Capital Corp., an associate of Security Pacific Merchant Bank, both in
New York, and a consultant to the World Bank in Washington DC. He
received an MBA and an MA from the Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania, and a BS with honors from Swarthmore College.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LAB COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 12 February 2003, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03) and B01, Gates Computer Science Building
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
A New Kind of Science
Stephen Wolfram
Creator of Mathematica, author of A New Kind of Science,
and CEO of Wolfram Research, Inc.
Starting from a few computer experiments, Stephen Wolfram has spent
more than twenty years developing a new approach to science, described
for the first time in his book A New Kind of Science. Basic to his
approach is the idea of studying not traditional mathematical
equations but instead rules of the kind embodied in the simplest
computer programs. A key discovery is that such rules can lead to
behavior that shows immense complexity and mirrors many features seen
in nature. Wolfram has built on this to tackle a remarkable array of
fundamental problems in science, from the origins of apparent
randomness in physical systems, to the development of complexity in
biology, the ultimate scope and limitations of mathematics, the
possibility of a truly fundamental theory of physics, the interplay
between free will and determinism, and the character of intelligence
in the universe. When Wolfram's book was released on May 14, 2002, it
became an instant bestseller, and is now showing many signs of
initiating a major paradigm shift in science. Wolfram's presentation
will cover some of the key ideas and discoveries in his book,
outlining their implications, and discussing their personal and
historical context. An extended question and answer period will be
included.
About the speaker: Stephen Wolfram was educated at Eton, Oxford, and
Caltech, receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1979 at the age
of 20. His early work in physics and computer science was recognized
by a MacArthur award in 1981. In the early 1980s he made a series of
now-classic discoveries about systems known as cellular automata,
leading to numerous applications in physics, mathematics, computer
science, biology, and other fields. In 1986 he founded Wolfram
Research, Inc. and began the creation of Mathematica---now the
world's leading software system for technical computing and symbolic
programming (and tool which made A New Kind of Science possible). Over
the past decade Wolfram has divided his time between leadership of his
company and pursuit of basic science. The results of Wolfram's fifteen
years of work were presented for the first time in his book, A New
Kind of Science (May 2002). An instant bestseller, A New Kind of
Science constituted international science news and quickly emerged as
one of the most-discussed science books in decades.
Because we anticipate a large audience, we will use Gates B1 for the
live presentation and Gates B3 as a video overflow room. Students will
have precedence for seating in the Gates B1 room.
Stephen Wolfram will also be speaking in several other venues. He will
speak on the Stanford campus at 7:30PM on Monday, February 10, in
Dinkelspiel Auditorium. For details see http://scil.stanford.edu. This
is a free public event presented under the auspices of the Stanford
Center for Innovations in Learning. Following the CSL Colloquium
(Wednesday, February 12) he will head to San Francisco to speak in the
Herbst Theater starting at 8PM. See
http://www.cityboxoffice.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=552 for more
information. This is a public event sponsored by California Academy
of Arts and Science; tickets are $18.00.
____________
STANFORD NETWORKING SEMINAR
on Thursday, 13 February 2003, 12:40pm (lunch 12:15pm)
Gates 104
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
Planetary Scale Computing
Bernardo Huberman
HP Labs
The confluence of web technology, fast communication channels and
internet data centers is leading to the emergence of planetary scale
computing, in which diverse distributed applications will access the
computing power of the planet as easily as drawing electricity from a
plug. Besides the formidable obstacles one encounters to make it all
happen, global utility computing poses the problem of how to deal with
ever changing requirements, new additions, hidden resources and
imperfect information on the part of both users and suppliers. I will
show how an economics approach to these problems allows for the timely
allocation of computing and storage resources to those who needed it,
and the ensuing control problems that one encounters.
About the speaker: Bernardo Huberman is an HP Fellow and Director of
the Systems Research Center at Hewlett Packard Laboratories, where he
also heads the research effort in Information Dynamics. He has worked
in condensed matter physics, dealing with systems ranging from
superionic conductors to two-dimensional superfluids, and has made
contributions to the theory of critical phenomena in low dimensional
systems. He is one of the discoverers of chaos in a number of physical
systems, and also established a number of universal properties in
nonlinear dynamical systems. His research into the dynamics of complex
structures led to his discovery of ultradiffusion in hierarchical
systems. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of
Pennsylvania, and is currently a Consulting Professor in the
Department of Applied Physics at Stanford University.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 13 February 2003, 12:15pm-1:30pm
Cordura Hall, Room 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Memory and Learning in Figure-Ground Perception
Mary A. Peterson
University of Arizona
It has long been thought that figure and ground assignment precedes
access to shape and object memories, and therefore that past
experience cannot affect the determination of what is figure and what
is ground. I will briefly review a series of experiments indicating
that this traditional assumption is incorrect. Instead, memories of
known shapes (objects) are accessed sufficiently early in the course
of perceptual processing to affect figure and ground assignment. I
will present a competitive model that accounts both for these results
and for why grounds are perceived to be shapeless, and I will describe
experiments testing predictions from the model. I will close by asking
how much experience with a novel shape is sufficient for it's memory
to influence figure assignment.
____________
PARC FORUM
on Thursday, 13 February 2003, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
George Pake Auditorium, PARC
http://www.parc.com/forum/
In the Shadow of Ideas
Fadhly Bey, Markus Diebel, Tad Toulis,
Pontus Walhgren, and Rico Zorkendorfer
designRAW
What is the aesthetic nature of an idea? Do ideas have an intrinsic
aesthetic? How can an idea be cultivated while at the same time be
left to its own devices?
designRAW is a seven member design collective composed of product
designers working for Lunar Design, IDEO and Zoe Design among
others. The group employs visual design to communicate ideas about
society and the musings that preoccupy it. To date, the three year old
experiment has tackled consumerism, religion and community as well as
the more prosaic needs of washing machines. Each undertaking
germinates from a central idea and is subsequently developed into an
event or design proposal. Utilizing everyday items and simple set-ups
the collective has mounted numerous installations and events to
explore the communicative power of ideas.
designRAW will present samples of their work and discuss the power and
nature of ideas in the formation of their process.
About the Speakers: design RAW is a collective of industrial design
professionals working in the Bay Area, California. design RAW was
formed January 2000 in San Francisco with the objective of offering
members an opportunity for exploring design issues outside of their
professional activities.
Fadhly Bey is a senior industrial designer at Zoe Design Associates in
San Francisco, California. He was Indonesian born in Bern, Switzerland
in 1973. Bey received his design education at Art Center College of
Design in Switzerland and Pasadena (California) where he graduated
with a Bachelor's degree in industrial design in 1997. Bey joined Zoe
in 1997 and has been working on various projects ranging from handheld
electronics to large medical products such as a full body scanner. In
addition, he has been lecturing on design at Nanyang Polytechnic in
Singapore.
Markus Diebel is a senior industrial designer at IDEO Product
Development in Palo Alto, California. He was born in Nurnberg,
Germany in 1964. Diebel holds a diploma as a licensed cabinetmaker in
Germany and received his design education at Art Center College of
Design in Switzerland and Pasadena (California) where he graduated
with a Bachelor's degree in 1994. He also completed an internship at
Marc Newson, Paris. Diebel joined IDEO Palo Alto in 1995 and has been
working on a variety of consumer electronics, office furniture and
concept projects. His work has been recognized by several Industrial
Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), awards from Design Report, ID
magazine, and has been published in various magazines and shown on
different TV stations. Prior and during his work at IDEO, he managed
and designed night clubs in Germany.
Tadeo Toulis is a senior industrial designer at Lunar Design
Incorporated in San Francisco, California. He was born in Brooklyn,
New York in 1967. Toulis earned his Master's degree in Industrial
Design from Pratt Institute in New York in 1994. He holds a bachelor's
degree in English Literature and Studio Art from Wesleyan University,
Connecticut, 1989. In 1996 and 1997, Toulis conducted independent
research as a Fulbright Scholar in Milan, Italy. During that time
Toulis was affiliated with the Politecnico in Milan and was a visiting
artist at the American Academy in Rome. The focus of his research in
Italy was to adapt Italian Design methodology to the design of
high-tech products. Toulis joined Lunar as an industrial designer in
1995. Prior to joining Lunar, Toulis was an industrial designer at
Datascope Corporation in Montvale, NJ. Toulis has lectured on design
issues at several design conferences including the Aspen Design
conference as well as the National and Educational Conferences of the
IDSA. His work has been recognized by awards from ID magazine, the IF
Awards (Hanover) as well as the International Design Yearbook.
Pontus Wahlgren is a senior industrial Designer at IDEO Product
Development in San Francisco, California. He was born in Karlstad,
Sweden in 1974. Wahlgren received his design education at Art Center
College of Design in Switzerland and Pasadena (California) where he
graduated with a Bachelor's degree in industrial design in
1996. Wahlgren conducted Undergraduate studies at l'Atelier de Sevres
in Paris, France in 1992 and 1993. He pursued Post Graduate studies in
the Design Studio of the Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts
and Design in Stockholm, Sweden in 1997. During his Studies, Wahlgren
worked both at No Picnic in Stockholm and at Seymour Powell London. He
joined IDEO San Francisco as an Industrial Designer in 1998. In 1999
he worked in the IDEO Tokyo Studio where he worked on consumer
electronics, furniture, design strategy and conceptual projects. Prior
to joining IDEO, Wahlgren contracted at Nike Retail Services in
Beaverton, Oregon in 1997.
Rico Z\"orkend\"orfer is a senior industrial designer at IDEO Product
Development in San Francisco, California. He was born in M\"unchen,
Germany in 1972. Z\"orkend\"orfer received his design education at Art
Center College of Design in Switzerland and Pasadena (California)
where he graduated with a Bachelor's degree in industrial design in
1996. Z\"orkend\"orfer joined IDEO San Francisco in 1997 and has been
working on a variety of consumer electronics, office furniture systems
and concept projects. His work has been recognized by several
Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), Chicago Athenaeum's Good
Design Award, Best of show at E3 in 99, Freiraum
Gestalltungswettbewerb in 96, Waterlily European Award - under 35 and
Design report. It has been displayed at Cooper-Hewitt National Design
Museum, Ambiente (Frankfurt) and Freiraum Gallery.
____________
UC BERKELEY CIS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 13 February 2003, 4:00pm
Soda Hall 380 (UC Berkeley)
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
Collaborative Online Robots
Ken Goldberg
University of California Berkeley
http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/
Remote-controlled robots have been around for almost a century, used
primarily by trained experts in space, undersea, and in nuclear
cleanup. A new class of tele-robots is now accessible to the public.
"Online Robots" allow anyone on the Internet to visit a museum, tend a
garden, navigate undersea, float in a blimp, or handle protein
crystals.
In this talk I'll describe several projects, focusing on new results
for online robots collaboratively controlled by many users. The
Tele-Actor is a system that combines a human agent (the "Tele-Actor")
with Internet-based distributed audience control. We developed a
formal model of collaborative control that is robust to disturbances
such as drop-outs, randomness, time-delay, and malicious audience
behavior. This model suggests insight into the empirical success of
audience participation systems such as Cinematrix.
In our newest system, ShareCam, $n$ users share control of a single
robotic pan, tilt, zoom camera. We propose the Intersection over
Maximum (IOM) metric for the degree of satisfaction for each user,
which improves over the nonlinear Intersection Over Union (IOU)
metric. We formulate the ShareCam optimization problem and present
several algorithms. For a set of $m$ zoom levels, the algorithm runs
in $O(n2 m)$ time. The algorithm can be distributed to run in $O(n m)$
time at each client and in $O(n \log n)$ time at the server.
This work is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Intel
Corporation, Microsoft, and UC Berkeley's Center for Information
Technology Research in the Interest of Society.
____________
CSLI SEMINAR ON COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING AND ADAPTATION
on Thursday, 13 February 2003, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
Cordura 100
http://cll.stanford.edu/scla.html
Incorporating Biological Knowledge into the
Evaluation of Causal Regulatory Hypotheses
Lonnie Chrisman
ISLE and CSLI
Biological data can be scarce and costly to obtain. Many factors
including high dimensionality, small sample sizes and unobserved
variables typically limit statistical power (the ability to
distinguish real effects from spurious ones), making reliable
inference of causal relations extremely difficult. One approach to
dealing with this problem is to incorporate prior domain knowledge
into data analysis. I introduce a framework for testing whether an
experimental data set contains statistically significant support for a
causal or regulatory relationship in the context of domain background
knowledge. Causal hypothesis testing of this type is typically
considered beyond the scope of classical statistical hypothesis
testing methods. I demonstrate that incorporating domain background
knowledge into data analysis can substantially improve statistical
power, making it possible to detect real causal relationships at a
statistically significant level where the same relationships are
indistinguishable from noise from the data alone.
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SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 13 February 2003, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Developmental Biology and "Innate" Mental Structure
Gary Marcus
2002-2003 Fellow of CASBS, Stanford
[Psychology, New York University]
http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gary/
Recent research in brain development and cognitive development leads
to an apparent paradox. One set of recent experiments suggests that
infants are well-endowed with sophisticated mechanisms for learning
language and analyzing the world; another set of recent experiments
suggests that brain development is extremely flexible. In this talk,
I review various ways of resolving the implicit tension between the
two, and close with a proposal for a novel computational approach to
reconciling nativism with developmental flexibility.
____________
LOGICAL METHODS IN THE HUMANITIES
on Friday, 14 February 2003, 12 noon
Math Corner 380:383N
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Kant's Philosophy of Mathematics in Perspective
Michael Friedman
Philosophy, Stanford
Kant's approach to the philosophy of mathematics is virtually unique
in the history of philosophy in that he assigns the capacity for a
priori knowledge in this science to the faculty of sensibility rather
than the intellect. (Kant takes the intellect to be the source of a
priori knowledge in pure logic but sensibility to be the source of
pure mathematics.) In this way Kant arrives at the quite unusual idea
of a pure or a priori faculty of sensibility, whose structure is given
by the "pure intuitions" of space and time. I explore the variety of
factors motivating and sustaining Kant's unique conception, including
his views on the relationship between pure mathematics and logic, the
roles of construction and calculation in geometry and arithmetic, and
the relationship between pure mathematics and sense perception
(empirical intuition). In this way we see how pure and applied
mathematics are related, for Kant, including especially a particular
application in mathematical physics.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 14 February 2003, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
TaskMaster: Resource management in an email client
Victoria Bellotti, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Mark Howard and Ian Smith
PARC
This talk will focus on the design of a novel prototype, TaskMaster,
that embeds task management resources directly in an email client. The
idea of making email more task-centric came from field investigations
of personal information management in which email emerged as a central
locus for information management online. The adoption of the XP
methodology by our research team allowed fieldwork to directly shape
the design rather than taking its usual place as a basis for
critiquing design. TaskMaster was optimized for testing on real
mission-critical email in a two-week evaluation. Some users continued
to use the tool in preference to Outlook, long after the evaluation
study was ended. Since TaskMaster had only a small fraction of the
features of Outlook, the task management features it embodied were
clearly advantageous enough, for several users, to make up for its
many limitations. In addition our user evaluation has provided us with
a great deal of inspiring feedback about how to improve on our design.
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.
____________
NLP READING GROUP
on Friday, 14 February 2003, 2:15pm
Math Corner, 380:383P
http://www-nlp.stanford.edu/nlp/nlpgroup.html
Probabilistic Word Vector and Similarity based on Dictionaries
http://www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/icl/mtg/members/satoshi/CICLing2003.pdf
Presented by: Satoshi Suzuki, NTT Communications
We propose a new method for computing the probabilistic vector
expression of words based on dictionaries. This method provides a
well-founded procedure based on stochastic process whose applicability
is clear. The proposed method exploits the relationship between
headwords and their explanatory notes in dictionaries. An explanatory
note is a set of other words, each of which is expanded by its own
explanatory note. This expansion is repeatedly applied, but even
explanatory notes expanded infinitely can be computed under a simple
assumption. The vector expression we obtain is a semantic expansion of
the explanatory notes of words. We explain how to acquire the vector
expression from these expanded explanatory notes. We also demonstrate
a word similarity computation based on a Japanese dictionary and
evaluate it in comparison with a known system based on TFIDF. The
results show the effectiveness and applicability of this probabilistic
vector expression.
____________
CS545: DATABASE SEMINAR
on Friday, 14 February 2003, 4:15pm - 5:15pm
Gates B12
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/
Hippocratic Data Management
Rakesh Agrawal
IBM Research (Almaden)
The explosive progress in networking, storage, and processor
technologies is resulting in an unprecedented amount of digitization
of information. In concert with this dramatic increase in digital
data, concerns about the privacy of personal information have emerged
globally. The concerns over massive collection of data are naturally
extending to analytic tools applied to data. Data mining, with its
promise to efficiently discover valuable, non-obvious information from
large databases, is particularly vulnerable to misuse.
Inspired by the privacy tenet of the Hippocratic Oath, we argue that
future database systems must include responsibility for the privacy of
data they manage as a founding tenet. We enunciate the key principles
for such Hippocratic database systems, distilled from the principles
behind current privacy legislations and guidelines. We identify the
technical challenges and problems in designing Hippocratic databases,
and also outline some solution approaches.
One way of preserving privacy of individual data records would be to
perturb them. Since the primary task in data mining is the development
of models about aggregated data, we explore if we can develop accurate
models without access to precise information in individual data
records. We consider the concrete case of building a decision-tree
classifier from perturbed data. While it is not possible to
accurately estimate original values in individual data records, we
describe a reconstruction procedure to accurately estimate the
distribution of original data values. By using these reconstructed
distributions, we are able to build classifiers whose accuracy is
comparable to the accuracy of classifiers built with the original
data.
We will conclude by pointing out some open research problems.
____________
UC BERKELEY SPECIAL CIS SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 18 February 2003, 12:30pm
Soda Hall 373 (UC Berkeley)
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
Large-Margin Methods for Natural Language Learning
Michael Collins
MIT AI Lab
Sequential data is everywhere: obvious examples being text (the web,
or digital libraries), speech, and biological sequences. Algorithms
which recover structure underlying this data are becoming increasingly
important. This leads to an interesting class of learning problems:
how to learn functions which map strings to other discrete structures
such as trees, segmentations, or underlying state sequences?
In this talk I will present new algorithms for these problems, derived
from Freund and Schapire's voted perceptron algorithm for
classification tasks. Properties of the algorithm depend directly on a
modified notion of "margin" on training examples. I will describe how
the algorithm can be used to rerank N-best output from an existing
probabilistic model, using essentially arbitrary features of competing
analyses; how the "kernel trick" applied to discrete structures
can lead to efficient learning with representations tracking an
exponential number of "sub-fragments" of a tree or tagged sequence;
and how the algorithm can be used for efficient discriminative
training of weighted automata.
A first motivation for the new algorithms concerns representation: in
comparison to hidden Markov models, or probabilistic context-free
grammars, the methods are considerably more flexible in the features
that can be used to discriminate between competing structures. A
second theme is discriminative training: the parameter estimation
methods make relatively weak assumptions about the distribution
underlying examples. During the talk I will present experiments with
the methods, showing their utility on a number of natural language
problems.
____________
UC BERKELEY CIS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 20 February 2003, 4:00pm-5:00pm
Soda Hall 380 (UC Berkeley)
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
Moving by Thinking: Progress Toward a Cortical Neural Prosthetic
Joel Burdick
California Institute of Technology
http://robotics.caltech.edu/~jwb/
This talk summarizes our current efforts to develop a neural
prosthetic that can drive a robotic or prosthetic arm in order to aid
the severely handicapped. A neural prosthetic is a direct brain
interface that incorporates implanted electrodes and decoding
algorithms. With such a system, brain thought patterns can be
translated into control commands. Our system's control signals are
derived from electrodes situated in the brain's Parietal Reach Region
(PRR). The PRR, whose function is briefly reviewed, encodes the plans
for intended arm reaches. Our probabilistic algorithms for decoding
the brain's intended reach plan from PRR signals are summarized. We
then describe our experimental set-up for testing this concept on
primate models. We conclude with preliminary experimental results that
demonstrate the possibility of using a neural prosthetic to control
external devices by pure though alone. We also discuss ongoing work to
develop a new class of computer controlled movable electrodes that can
autonomously and continuously adjust their gedometry so as to maintain
optimum signal quality.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 21 February 2003, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Using Computers to Change What People Think and Do:
Insights into Captology
B.J. Fogg
CSLI, Stanford
The U.S. Army and Amazon.com are both using interactive technology to
change people's beliefs and behaviors. They are not alone. With each
passing month, more organizations are using the power of computing to
influence what people think and do. Whether we like it or not,
machines are becoming increasingly adept at influencing humans.
One goal in captology is creating insight into how computing products,
from websites to mobile phone software, can be designed to change
attitudes and behaviors. By understanding captology we can harness
this power for pro-social outcomes, such as promoting health,
education, empathy, and civic involvement. However, because persuasive
technology can be used for undesirable ends, an understanding of
captology can also help us protect ourselves and our children from
unwanted computer-based influence.
In this talk I will explain key concepts in captology, demonstrate
examples of persuasive technology products, and outline some
principles that give interactive experiences the ability to motivate
and persuade.
About the speaker: B.J. Fogg directs research and design at the
Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab http://captology.stanford.edu/ . An
experimental psychologist, BJ also teaches in the Computer Science
Department and the School of Education. Outside Stanford university BJ
runs Grapevine Strategy, a consulting firm that helps clients create
innovative and effective user experiences by leveraging principles
from captology. He holds seven patents, and his work has been featured
in The New York Times, Business 2.0, and The Wall Street Journal (
http://www.bjfogg.info/ ). BJ is the author of a recently published
book: "Persuasive Technology: Using Computer to Change What We Think
and Do" http://www.persuasivetech.info/
____________
END MATERIAL
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