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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 17 March 2004, vol. 19:27
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
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17 March 2004 Stanford Vol. 19, No. 27
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A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Cordura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
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ACTIVITIES FROM 17 MARCH 2004 TO 26 MARCH 2004
WEDNESDAY, 17 MARCH 2004
5:00pm The Human Genome as a Tool Series
Fairchild Auditorium
"Around the World In 400 Genes:
Genetic Differences in Human Races?"
Marc Feldman
Biological Sciences, Stanford
THURSDAY, 18 MARCH 2004
3:15pm SNRC Special Seminar
Packard Auditorium, Packard Bldg
"Open Access or Legal Trespass?
Rights Clashes Regarding Wireless Network Hotspots"
Jennifer Granick
Law School, Stanford
(followed by a panel discussion)
http://snrc.stanford.edu/events/talks/granick/
Abstract below
4:00pm PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"Team Skymasters: Achieving Records in Stunt Kite Flying"
Mix McGraw
Team Skymasters
http://www.parc.com/forum/
FRIDAY, 19 MARCH 2004
11:00am Berkeley Institute of Cognitive and Brain Seminar
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
"Retrieving and Using Associative Memories:
Prefrontal and Posterior Cortical Contributions"
Silvia Bunge
Psychology, UC Davis
http://socrates.berkeley.edu:4247/seminar.html
12 noon UC Berkeley Oxyopia Lecture
489 Minor Hall (UC Berkeley)
"The role of contour discontinuities in visual form/motion
processing"
Peter Ulric Tse
Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College
http://optometry.berkeley.edu/oxyopia/oxy_current.html
Abstract below
12 noon Conference on Otomanguean and Oaxacan Languages (COOL 2004)
371 Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~rosemary/cool.htm
SATURDAY, 20 MARCH 2004
all day Conference on Otomanguean and Oaxacan Languages (COOL 2004)
371 Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~rosemary/cool.htm
SUNDAY, 21 MARCH 2004
9:00am Conference on Otomanguean and Oaxacan Languages (COOL 2004)
371 Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~rosemary/cool.htm
MONDAY, 22 MARCH 2004
2:00pm NLP Reading Group
Ventura 17
"ScamSeek: Capturing Financial Scams on the Internet"
Jon Patrick
Univ. of Sydney
http://www-nlp.stanford.edu/nlp/nlpgroup.html
Abstract below
TUESDAY, 23 MARCH 2004
4:15pm Stanford Computer Forum Emeritus Lecture
TCSeq 200
"Towards human-level AI"
John McCarthy
Computer Science, Stanford
http://forum.stanford.EDU/events/lecture/
Abstract below
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Stanford Blood Center status: Shortage of O+, O-, A+, 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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ANNOUNCEMENT
This week is finals week at Stanford and next week is Spring break so
events are a bit sparse. Enjoy the kites flying instead.
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ANNOUNCEMENT
Since material is a bit sparse and since a CSLI Senior Researcher,
Johan van Benthem, is on the committee, I'm including this despite the
event not being local.
Workshop Logic and Multiagent Systems (LAMAS 2)
Call For Proposals
Title: LAMAS 2
(Second Australasian Workshop on Logic and Multiagent Systems)
9 and 10, August 2004
Sheraton Auckland Hotel, Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/lamas2/
Organizers: Hans van Ditmarsch, Stephen Cranefield,
Thomas Meyer, Guido Governatori
Submission deadline: 15 May 2004
LAMAS 2 is the second Australasian workshop on Logic and MultiAgent
Systems. It is a follow-up workshop to a previous workshop on logic
and multiagent Systems (LAMAS) held at the University of Otago in 2002
(see http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/lamas/). LAMAS 2 is one the workshops
associated with the eighth Pacific Rim International Conference on
Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI), to be held in Auckland, New Zealand,
August 9 - 13 August 2004 (see http://www.pricai04.info/default.asp ,
the submission deadline for the main conference is March 22).
The workshop aims to provide a forum to foster lively and fruitful
discussion on issues involved in logic and multiagent systems. Particular
topics of interest are:
1. Specification, verification, and synthesis of multiagent systems
2. Belief revision, belief merging, and dynamic epistemic logics
3. Protocols concerning commitment and negotiation
4. Logics of institutional agency
5. Non-monotonic reasoning, automated reasoning, and model checking
We solicit regular research papers presenting advances in any area of
relevance to the workshop themes. We target researchers active in (but not
necessarily restricted to) the topics of specific interest listed above.
We encourage submissions overlapping more than one of the targeted areas
of interest, to broaden the interest for workshop participants from
different backgrounds. We encourage submission of ongoing research, in
order to ensure lively discussions and in accordance with the 'workshop'
character of this event.
Motivation
Issues such as modelling multiagent system dynamics, communication
languages and protocols for agents, and standardisation, are increasingly
related to various logical tools and other formal methods. Also, topics
such as belief revision, nonmonotonic reasoning, knowledge fusion and
knowledge merging, and belief base management, are increasingly
investigated from relatively new grounds in informatics opened up due to
developments in modal logics, in particular deontic, epistemic and dynamic
logics, and multimodal combinations of those. Partly, such new approaches
have a more computational, or computationally feasible, motivation, a
definite advantage in view of implementing multiagent systems or model
checking their properties. The workshop is intended to support and
consolidate the growing interest in agent systems and logics.
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SNRC SPECIAL SEMINAR
on Thursday, 18 March 2004, 3:15pm - 5:15pm
Packard Auditorium, Packard Bldg
http://snrc.stanford.edu/events/talks/granick/
"Open Access or Legal Trespass?
Rights Clashes Regarding Wireless Network Hotspots"
Jennifer Granick
Law School, Stanford
Panel Discussion:
* Chris Handley, Chief Information Officer, Stanford University
* Professor John Mitchell, Stanford University
* Patrick O'Hare, Sr. VP Engineering, Comcast Cable
* Tim Pozar, co-founder of the Bay Area Wireless Users Group
(BAWUG) & founder of the Bay Area Research Wireless Network
* Adam H. Tachner, Vice President & General Counsel, Atheros
Communications, Inc.
As the Internet technologies have matured, legal clashes between
public rights to make use of digital resources and private rights to
control computers, networks, services and intellectual property have
occurred with increasing frequency. The latest emerging instance is
that of IEEE 802.11 "Wi-FI", or wireless network "Hot Spots".
In this technology, a user accesses the Internet via radio broadcast
on an unrestricted frequency band. Initially, most access points were
unsecured and anyone with the appropriate technology could connect.
Access points, which are limited to usually about 100 feet from the
source, were initially unmarked, but people found them with "sniffers"
and identified access locations with informal graffiti called "war
chalking". Web sites continue to publish locations of wireless access
points.
With increasing numbers of wireless enabled laptop computers, two main
business models have emerged based on the public provision of open
wireless access. One is the "attractor" model in which coffee shops
and churches attract clients because of free wireless Internet access.
The other is the subscription model where clients pay a daily or
monthly fee.
Meanwhile, many businesses and homes have private wireless access
points, perhaps permitting access inadvertently, because security is
light or even non-existent. The central legal issue that has developed
is whether access to such systems is perfectly legal, or whether it is
a trespass or theft of wireless services. Arguments for the former are
based on the pre-existing culture and the fact that this is, after
all, a radio broadcast on an unrestricted frequency. Arguments for the
later are based on analogies to cable and satellite TV signals. Should
access to unsecured computer networks or systems be prosecuted if no
damage was done? Current cases and legal debates will strongly
influence the growth of this new technology and emerging industry.
This seminar will present background on the emerging situation, recent
legal cases and insights into the debates within and outside the legal
profession. The topic will be further explored via discussion among a
panel of experts from various standpoints in the field.
Case Histories
- A Houston computer security analyst was prosecuted by acquitted
after demonstrating the insecurity of a county courts wireless LAN.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/26397.html
- A "Honeypot sting" operation in DC targets "bandwidth borrowers"
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/552
- In November, a Toronto man was charged with stealing wireless
signals after he was found downloading pornography from his car.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2003/11/22/264890.html
- Two men were charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after
using wireless to access store computers.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/33959.html
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UC BERKELEY OXYOPIA LECTURE
on Friday, 19 March 2004, 12 noon
489 Minor Hall (UC Berkeley)
http://optometry.berkeley.edu/oxyopia/oxy_current.html
"The role of contour discontinuities
in visual form/motion processing"
Peter Ulric Tse
Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College
Host: Stanley Kelin
My goal is to specify the neuronal circuitry involved in processing
contour discontinuities (including junctions, terminators, and regions
of high curvature). I will present fMRI and psychophysics data that
constrain the circuitry underlying the rapid form-motion interactions
underlying visual motion perception. In particular, I will argue that
contour discontinuities are used by the motion processing system to
solve the problem of what went where. I suggest that area V3a may be a
salience map of contour discontinuities that act as "trackable
features" that permit a simple solution to the aperture problem, and
that contour discontinuities are used by ventral form analysis areas,
including V4v and posterior fusiform areas to segment objects in space
and time in order to solve the matching problem. Lastly, I will
present data that supports the claim that area MT processes motion
using a high-level "object trajectory" code, rather than a low-level
code, such as motion energy.
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NLP READING GROUP
on Monday, 22 March 2004, 2:00pm - 3:30pm
Ventura 17
http://www-nlp.stanford.edu/nlp/nlpgroup.html
"ScamSeek: Capturing Financial Scams on the Internet"
Jon Patrick
University of Sydney
The Scamseek project aims to build a surveillance tool for identifying
financial scams on the Internet by performing document classification
of Internet pages. There are three principle types of documents of
concern: those that give financial advice by unregistered advisors,
unlawful investment schemes, and share ramping.
The first phase of the project has been completed and a working
system, known as ScamAlert installed at the Australian Securities and
Investment Commission (ASIC). The independent audit of the performance
of the system proved satisfactory with a result for precision of .75,
recall .43, and F=.54, along with identification of 4 scams
misclassified by the client. Significant improvement in recall is
foreshadowed in the 2nd phase of the project. The results are
satisfying in the context of the structure of the data where the
density of scam documents is about 1.8% of the total corpus.
The good performance of the operational system is ascribed to the
combination of using a strong linguistic model of language (Systemic
Functional Linguistics) to define the scam documents in parallel with
a rich statistical analysis of the structure of non-scam documents and
scam look-alikes. A large amount of the experimental program has
concentrated on understanding and exploiting the interaction between
the linguistically described aspects of the documents and the
statistical properties. Each type of data has been used to inform and
modify the usage of the other.
Research outcomes have been achieved in finding new methods for
processing imbalanced classes, and in computing meaning through SFL
network structures.
The operational aspects of the project have proven to be as
challenging as the research objectives. The project has a budget of
$2.2M over 15 months. It has been managed so as to create a balance in
resources between the needs of both the research objectives and the
engineering objectives. Software development has concentrated on three
aspects. Firstly, to produce an environment for the strong directive
management of computational linguistics experiments, secondly, in the
aid of the linguists to create tools to support their manual analysis,
and thirdly the best practice of software engineering principles to
ensure a clean automated rollout of the production system for ASIC.
____________
STANFORD COMPUTER FORUM EMERITUS LECTURE
on Wednesday, 23 March 2004, 4:15pm
TCSeq 200
http://forum.stanford.EDU/events/lecture/
"Towards human-level AI"
John McCarthy
Emeritus Professor of Computer Science, Stanford
It is not surprising that reaching human-level AI has proved to be
difficult and progress has been slow---though there has been important
progress. The slowness and the demand to exploit what has been
discovered has led many to mistakenly redefine AI, sometimes in ways
that preclude human-level AI---by relegating to humans parts of the
task that human-level computer programs would have to do. In the
terminology of this paper, it amounts to settling for a bounded
informatic situation instead of the more general common sense
informatic situation.
Overcoming the "brittleness'' of present AI systems and reaching
human-level AI requires programs that deal with the common sense
informatic situation---in which the phenomena to be taken into account
in achieving a goal are not fixed in advance.
We discuss reaching human-level AI, emphasizing logical AI and
especially emphasizing representation problems of information and of
reasoning. Ideas for reasoning in the common sense informatic
situation include nonmonotonic reasoning, approximate concepts,
formalized contexts, concepts as objects, and self-awareness.
About the Speaker: John McCarthy received the B.S. in mathematics in
1948 from the Caltech and the Ph.D. from Princeton in 1951. He has
taught at Princeton, Dartmouth, M.I.T. and Stanford. He has been
Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University since 1962
(emeritus 2001) and was Director of the Stanford Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory from 1965 to 1980.
He is one of the founders of artificial intelligence research,
starting in 1948. Since 1958 his work has emphasized epistemological
problems, i.e. the problem of what information and what modes of
reasoning are required for intelligent behavior. He originated the
LISP programming language for computing with symbolic expressions, was
one of the first to propose and design time-sharing computer systems,
and pioneered in using mathematical logic to prove the correctness of
computer programs. He has also written papers on the social
opportunities coming from computer and other technology. He originated
the situation calculus, the circumscription method of nonmonotonic
reasoning, and the idea of abstract syntax.
He received the A.M. Turing award of the Association for Computing
Machinery in 1971. He received the first Research Excellence Award of
the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in 1985. He
received the Kyoto Prize in 1988 and the National Medal of Science in
1990. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences.
His recent work includes formalization of non-monotonic reasoning
whereby people and computers draw conjectural conclusions by assuming
that complications are absent from a situation. His current work
involves the formalization of context in mathematical logic, the
elaboration tolerance of logical theories, theories of approximate
entities, a new version of situation calculus, and self-aware computer
systems.
Human-level AI has always been McCarthy's main goal.
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END MATERIAL
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