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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 26 March 2003, vol. 18:26
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
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26 March 2003 Stanford Vol. 18, No. 26
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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/
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ACTIVITIES FROM 26 MARCH 2003 TO 6 April 2003
THURSDAY, 27 MARCH 2003
4:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series
EJ228, SRI International
"Grounding Natural Language Semantics in Perception"
Deb K. Roy
The Media Laboratory, M.I.T.
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:00pm PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"Adaptive Workspaces Preparing For The Future Of Work"
Dan Rasmus
V.P. Collaboration and Knowledge Management, Giga
http://www.parc.com/forum/
Abstract below
4:00pm UC Berkeley CIS Seminar
Soda Hall 380 (UC Berkeley)
"Building Rich and Grounded Robot World Models from Sensory
and Symbolic Sources"
Mary-Anne Williams
Information Technology, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
http://research.it.uts.edu.au/magic/Mary-Anne
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
Abstract below
4:15pm Neurobiology of Disease Seminar Series
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman B060
"Nicotinic Mechanisms Influence Circuits and Synaptic Plasticity:
The Implications of Dysfunction"
John A. Dani
Baylor College of Medicine
http://www-med.stanford.edu/sbrc/calendar/
TUESDAY, 1 APRIL 2003
3:30pm Logic Seminar
Gates 200
"Computerized Exercises to a Course of First Order Logic"
Grigori Mints
Philosophy, Stanford
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
4:00pm Berkeley BISC Seminar
373 Soda Hall, Berkeley
"Co-evolutionary Perception-based Reinforcement Learning for
Sensor Allocation in Autonomous Vehicles"
Hamid R. Berenji
Intelligent Inference Systems Corp
http://buffy.eecs.berkeley.edu/Seminars/
4:15pm Engineering 200: Research Universities: Stanford, A Case Study
Jordan 420:040
"A History of Stanford and Silicon Valley"
Tim Lenoir
History, Stanford
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/DoR/101.html
Information below
THURSDAY, 3 APRIL 2003
4:15pm SRI AI Seminar Series
EJ228, SRI International
Title to be announced
Alyssa Glass
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
4:00pm PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
Title to be announced
Tom Okarma
President and CEO, Genron
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
Chuck Carlson
History, Stanford
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
FRIDAY, 4 APRIL 2003
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium
Bldg. 90:92Q
"An Ontological Account of Intention"
Luca Ferrero
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
http://www.uwm.edu/~ferrero/
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
SUNDAY, 6 APRIL 2003
all day Stanford Community Day
http://neighbors.stanford.edu/communityday/
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Stanford Blood Center status: Critical shortage of O+, O-, and
B+. Shortage of A+ and AB-. For an appointment:
http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call 650-723-7831. It only takes
an hour of your time.
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COURSE ANNOUNCEMENTS
Advanced Modal Logic
Philosophy 269
Tuesday--Thursday 11:00AM - 12:15PM in 20-22K
This course presents the mathematical background theory for the modal
logics in the introductory course Philosophy 169. Topics: model theory
of modal definability (invariance, correspondence), connections with
universal algebra, modal completeness theory, and computational
complexity, both for the basic modal language and modern extensions
such as hybrid logics, dynamic logics, and combined systems. We
emphasize general techniques, covering both classical theorems from
the 1970s and more modern results. The course will also point at
various open research questions.
Lit. Blackburn, de Rijke & Venema, "Modal Logic", Cambridge University
Press, 2001, plus some supplementary material on special topics like
fixed-point logic and co-algebra.
Topics in Logic, Language and Computation
Philosophy 298
Thursday 3:15PM - 5:05PM in 460-301
This year's course takes a look at the development of philosophical
logic, from its early days in the 20th century until its current role
at interdisciplinary interfaces (linguistics, computer science,
economics, mathematics, etc.). The aim is to get a working sense for
'logical analysis' of concepts, and of both changes and invariants in
the historical development. We will present a number of examples drawn
from various areas of philosophy. Examples may depend on student
interest. Tentative list: (a) reasoning and explanation, (b)
knowledge, belief revision & learning, (c) formal semantics and
pragmatics, (d) theory structure and knowledge representation, (e)
theories of action and the 'dynamic turn', (f) formal ontology, e.g.,
time and space. Logic does not seem to play the vibrant philosophical
role it had in the 1960s & 1970s. But when we study these examples,
you will see this is a historical accident, not a matter of historical
necessity.
Lit.: selected papers and course notes.
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SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Thursday, 27 March 2003, 4:00pm - 5:30pm
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
"Grounding Natural Language Semantics in Perception"
Deb K. Roy
The Media Laboratory, M.I.T.
http://www.media.mit.edu/cogmac
We are developing systems that learn to converse about what they
perceive and do. At the heart of our effort are two complementary
goals. First, we are creating linguistically-motivated models of
perception that provide the foundation of word meaning and natural
language grammar. Second, we are developing language acquisition
algorithms that learn linguistic structures anchored in perception and
motor control. I will present recent results in word and grammar
acquisition leading to perceptually-grounded spoken language
generation and understanding systems. Applications include spoken
language interfaces to robots, automated verbal descriptions of
electronic documents, video content retrieval by natural language
query, and a variety of other multimodal human-machine interfaces.
About the speaker: Deb Roy is an Assistant Professor of Media Arts and
Sciences at the MIT Media Laboratory where he founded and directs the
Cognitive Machines Group. Roy holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer
Engineering from the University of Waterloo, and a Master of Science
and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research
interests include spoken language understanding and generation,
automatic language acquisition, cognitive modeling of language
learning, computer vision, interactive robotics, assistive
communication technologies, and multimedia information retrieval.
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PARC FORUM
on Thursday, 27 March 2003, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
George Pake Auditorium, PARC
http://www.parc.com/forum/
"Adaptive Workspaces: Preparing for the Future of Work"
Daniel W. Rasmus
Vice President, Collaboration and Knowledge Management
Giga Information Group
Putting the right information into the hands of the right users, at
the right time, in the right way, is the long time promise of IT
managers. Until the advent of intelligent content services,
delivering on that promise involved static reporting that tried to
anticipate the needs and desires of the users, and the focus and
direction of a business. With intelligent content services, which use
pattern recognition and other emerging technologies, systems can now
profile users and content, tools and services. With information
matched to user and to circumstance, an adaptive workspace takes the
next step and attempts to conform to a user's information and tool
needs as his focus of attention and context shifts. It is early in the
evolution of this technology for business applications, but several
scenarios exist and will be explored. The end of the presentation will
speculate on how this technology will change the way people work and
interact, influencing dramatic shifts in social behavior and the
relationship between individuals and their jobs.
About the Speaker: With more than 20 years of IT experience, Daniel
W. Rasmus covers knowledge management (KM) and collaboration for Giga
Information Group. Dan's current research focus includes developing a
strong conceptual framework for KM that includes people, process,
technology and social capital; the requirement for KM in e-business
transformation; practical advice on how to develop a KM-capable
infrastructure; and defining the role of culture in KM and assisting
clients in evolving their culture to accept KM concepts and
practices. Dan has been involved in client interaction and research
for industry leaders and emerging companies, including Lotus,
Microsoft, Intel, AIG, US Postal Service, BAE, The State of
Mississippi, Bank Austria, 3i, BWise, Verano and United Technologies.
Dan is editorial advisor to PC AI Magazine and the author of 190 trade
journal articles and three books. His most recent book, Rethinking
Smart Objects, was published by the University of Cambridge Press in
1999. His book Knowledge Management for IT Professionals will be
published next year by the University of Cambridge Press.
Prior to joining Giga Information Group, Dan was manager of workgroup
computing at Hughes Space and Communications. In addition, Dan has
held technical and management positions at Dataproducts, ITT Cannon,
Cipher Dataproducts, Western Digital and Hughes Aircraft, and he has
managed large projects, including engineering collaboration systems,
enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations and the development
of expert systems for manufacturing applications.
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UC BERKELEY CIS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 27 March 2003, 4:00pm-5:00pm
Soda Hall 380 (UC Berkeley)
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~eyal/cis-seminar
"Building Rich and Grounded Robot World Models
from Sensory and Symbolic Sources"
Mary-Anne Williams
Faculty of Information Technology
University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia
http://research.it.uts.edu.au/magic/Mary-Anne/
Robots interacting with other agents in rich information landscapes
and complex dynamic physical environments require sophisticated and
robust concept and knowledge management capabilities if they are to
solve problems, communicate, learn and exhibit intelligent behaviours.
In this talk I will describe how conceptual spaces provide a powerful
substrate upon which to build effective concept and knowledge
management capabilities that integrate information from multiple
sensory and symbolic sources.
We use SONY AIBO robots and the robot soccer domain to illustrate the
ideas, the framework and the approach. The conceptual spaces
framework allows robots to build rich and grounded world models from a
wide variety of internal and external knowledge resources,
e.g. sensors, ontologies, databases, knowledge bases, the Semantic
Web, web services, other agents etc.
About the Speaker: Mary-Anne is a Research Professor and directs the
Innovation and Technology Research Lab at the University of Technology
Sydney. She recently moved from the Faculty of Business and Law at the
University of Newcastle Australia where she directed an eBusiness
Research Centre.
Mary-Anne has spend many years working in Knowledge Representation and
Reasoning with a special focus on Belief Revision, Intelligent Agents,
and Reasoning about Action. Her PhD was awarded the Best Australian
PhD Dissertation in Computer Science Award from the Computer Science
Association in 1994. Some recent scholarly activities include Workshop
Chair for IJCAI-03, Program Chair for KR in 2002, and Conference Chair
for KR in 2004.
Mary-Anne was Team Leader of the NUbots Robot Soccer Team who came
Third in the SONY Four-Legged League at RoboCup 2002 in Japan. She
recently established a new Robot Soccer Team at UTS, and one of her
main projects is integrating Robot sensor information and knowledge
resources on the Semantic Web.
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LOGIC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 1 April 2003, 3:30pm
Gates 200
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
"Computerized Exercises to a Course of First Order Logic"
Grigori Mints
Philosophy, Stanford
We describe a software package and a web server allowing several
formats of administering exercises to students and automated answer
checking using three computer programs: OTTER, MACE and PRESBURGER.
Currently available exercises cover the material corresponding to
sections 2.1-2.3 of the textbook by H. Enderton and to a certain
degree the Chapter 1. The section 2.4 (Deductive Calculus) can be
easily covered by existing software for natural deduction (Fitch or
EPGY Proof Editor). Remaining section 2.5 (Soundness and Completeness
Theorems) presents a challenge for next stages of the project.
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BERKELEY BISC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 1 April 2003, 4:00pm-5:30pm
373 Soda (UC Berkeley)
http://buffy.eecs.berkeley.edu/Seminars/
Co-evolutionary Perception-based Reinforcement Learning for
Sensor Allocation in Autonomous Vehicles
Hamid R. Berenji
Intelligent Inference Systems Corp
(This is a joint work with David Vengerov and Jayesh Ametha.)
In this talk, we discuss the problem of sensor allocation in Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Each UAV uses perception-based rules for
generalizing decision strategy across similar states and reinforcement
learning for adapting these rules to the uncertain, dynamic
environment. A big challenge for reinforcement learning algorithms in
this problem is that UAVs need to learn two complementary policies:
how to allocate their individual sensors to appearing targets and how
to distribute themselves as a team in space to match the density and
importance of targets underneath. We address this problem using a
co-evolutionary approach, where the policies are learned
separately,but they use a common reward function.
The applicability of our approach to the UAV domain is verified using
a high-fidelity robotic simulator. Based on our results, we believe
that the co-evolutionary reinforcement learning approach to reducing
dimensionality of the action space presented in this work is general
enough to be applicable to other multi-objective optimization
problems, particularly those that involve a tradeoff between
individual optimality and team-level optimality.
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ENGINEERING 200: RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES: STANFORD, A CASE STUDY
on Tuesday, 1 April 2003, 4:15pm
Jordan 420:040
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/DoR/101.html
(The nominal target audience is young faculty, but the seminars are
open to all members of the University, including postdoctoral scholars
and graduate students. -Charles Kruger)
RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES: STANFORD, A CASE STUDY: Focuses on a series of
talks and discussions that are intended to provide insight into how
modern research universities actually work. Topics include the
history of Stanford and Silicon Valley; university governance,
budgets, finance and indirect costs; appointment and promotions; how
to get research funding; research policies; ethical issues in the
publication process; current trends in multidisciplinary scholarship;
and Stanford and society.
Here is the list of speakers and their topics:
April 1 Tim Lenoir A History of Stanford and
Silicon Valley
April 8 Gail Mahood/Pat Jones Appointments and Promotions/
Faculty Affairs
April 15 John Etchemendy University Governance
April 22 Richard Zare Grantsmanship and Research Funding
April 29 Charles Kruger/Kathy Ku Research Policies, Human Subjects,
Intellectual Property
May 6 Randy Livingston/Tim Warner University Finance and Budgets
May 13 Philip Pizzo Collaboration across Campus Drive
May 20 Keith Baker/David Holloway Multidiscipinary Scholarship and
Education in the Liberal Arts
May 27 Donald Kennedy Ethical Issues in Scholarly Publication
June 3 John Hennessy Stanford and Society: Where Do We Go
From Here?
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END MATERIAL
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