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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 8 November 2006, vol. 22:10
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
______________________________________________________________________
8 November 2006 Stanford Vol. 22, No. 10
______________________________________________________________________
A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Cordura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4101
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
____________
ACTIVITIES FROM 8 NOVEMBER 2006 TO 19 NOVEMBER 2006
WEDNESDAY, 8 NOVEMBER 2006
12 noon Psychology Developmental Brownbags [8-Nov-06]
Jordan Hall 420:102
"Attachment and Expectations:
Effects on Infants' Representations of Social Relationships"
Frances Chen
Stanford University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_developmental.html
12 noon UC Berkeley CITRIS Research Exchange [8-Nov-06]
290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building (UC Berkeley)
"In situ bioremediation: bacteria saving the world by eating
much of our junk"
Lisa Alvarez-Cohen
Civil & Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley
http://www.citris-uc.org/
1:30pm SRI AI Seminar Series [8-Nov-06]
EK255, SRI International
"Defect Tolerance of Molecular Crossbar Architectures"
Mehdi Baradaran Tahoori
Electrical & Computer Engineering Northeastern University
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
2:00pm Berkeley Seminar [8-Nov-06]
465 Soda Hall (Berkeley)
"Improving Systems Management Policies Using Hybrid
Reinforcement Learning"
Gerry Tesauro
IBM
http://coe.berkeley.edu/events/
Abstract below
3:30pm SRI CSL Seminar [8-Nov-06]
Bldg E - Ek255, SRI International
"PATIKAweb: A Web-based tool for querying and visualizing
PATIKA database, integrating pathway data from various popular
databases"
Ugur Dogrusoz
Head, Center for Bioinformatics, Bilkent Univ., Ankara, Turkey
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium [8-Nov-06]
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
"The Need, Evolution, and Detail of WLAN Security"
Kevin Hayes
Atheros Communications
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
6:00pm Berkeley History and Philosophy of Logic Mathematics, and Science
234 Moses, (Berkeley) [8-Nov-06]
"Rethinking Figure/Ground Organization"
Stephen Palmer
Psychology, UC Berkeley
http://hplms.berkeley.edu/
Abstract below
6:30pm SF Bay ACM Data Mining SIG [8-Nov-06]
SAP LABS, Building D, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA
"Machine learning on multi-core"
Gary Bradski
Manager, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Intel Research
http://sfbayacm.org/dmsig.php
Abstract below
7:00pm Stanford Humanities Center Conference [8-Nov-06]
Cubberley Auditorium, School of Education
Imaging environment: Maps, Models, and Metaphors
"The Culture of Landscape and the Nature of Politics"
William Cronon
University of Wisconsin-Madison
http://shc.stanford.edu/events/
Conference info below
THURSDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2006
all day Stanford Humanities Center Conference [9-Nov-06]
Cubberley Auditorium
Imaging environment: Maps, Models, and Metaphors
http://shc.stanford.edu/events/
Conference info below
12 noon CSLI CogLunch [9-Nov-06]
Cordura Hall 100
"Neural Oscillators and the Brain"
Jose Acacio de Barros
Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil.
http://www.stanford.edu/~barros
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
12 noon Music 319: CCRMA Hearing Seminar [9-Nov-06]
CCRMA Seminar Room, The Knoll
"Commercializing Auditory Neuroscience"
Lloyd Watts
Audience
http://ccrma-mail.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/hearing-seminar
Abstract below
4:00pm Stanford Phonology Workshop [9-Nov-06]
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
"Alan Prince's 'Implication & Impossibility in Grammatical Systems:
What it is & How to find it'"
http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/880-1006/880-PRINCE-0-0.PDF
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
4:00pm PARC Forum [9-Nov-06]
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"The Berkeley View:
A New Framework and a New Platform for Parallel Research"
David A. Patterson
UC Berkeley
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:00pm UC Berkeley CIS Seminar [9-Nov-06]
Soda Hall 320 (UC Berkeley)
"A New Frontier in ComputationComputation with Information
Described in Natural Language"
Lotfi A. Zadeh
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~feisha/cis-seminar
Abstract below
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum [9-Nov-06]
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the
Human-Computer Relationship"
Clifford Nass
Communication, Stanford
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
Abstract below
4:15pm Information Systems Seminar [9-Nov-06]
Packard 101
"Information-efficient Writing"
David MacKay
Cambridge
http://isl.stanford.edu/colloquium.html
4:15pm Fundamental Themes in Neuroscience Seminar [9-Nov-06]
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman
"What determines the shape of neuronal arbors?"
Dmitri Chklovskii
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
http://www.cshl.edu/labs/mitya/chklovskiilabhome.html
http://nis-seminars.stanford.edu/
7:00pm Symposium [9-Nov-06]
Cubberley Auditorium, School of Education
"From Counterculture to Cyberculture:
The Legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog"
Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, Howard Rheingold and Fred Turner
http://www.stanford.edu/~shyeo/wholeearth.htm
Information below
FRIDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2006
all day Stanford Humanities Center Conference [10-Nov-06]
Cubberley Auditorium
Imaging environment: Maps, Models, and Metaphors
http://shc.stanford.edu/events/
Conference info below
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [10-Nov-06]
Gates B01 (HP Auditorium)
"From Personal Computers to Personal Information Environments"
Jeff Pierce
IBM Almaden Research
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/jspierce/
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar [10-Nov-06]
Jordan Hall 420:050
"Active Vision"
Carol Colby
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_cognitive.html
3:15pm ME394: Design Forum [10-Nov-06]
Terman 556
"my research"
David Beach
http://me.stanford.edu/faculty/facultydir/beach.html
http://www.stanford.edu/class/me394/
3:30pm Stanford Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop [10-Nov-06]
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
"Been there -- marked that: a theory of second occurrence focus"
Daniel Buering
UCLA
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/
Abstract below
MONDAY, 13 NOVEMBER 2006
4:00pm UC Berkeley CITRIS Distinguished Speaker [13-Nov-06]
Soda Hall 380 (UC Berkeley)
"Powering Future Growth: Innovating and Commercializing
Breakthrough Technologies"
Darlene Solomon
Agilent Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Agilent Labs
http://www.citris-uc.org/
4:15pm CS528: Broad Area Colloquium [13-Nov-06]
Hewlett Teaching Center 200
Title to be announced
Marc Levoy
http://graphics.stanford.edu/~levoy/
http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs528/
7:30pm Berkeley Colloquium on Art, Technology, and Culture [13-Nov-06]
105 North Gate Hall (Berkeley)
"Stop Making Sense: Contextualizing Media Art"
Rudolf Frieling
Media Arts Curator, SFMOMA
http://atc.berkeley.edu/
TUESDAY, 14 NOVEMBER 2006
12 noon Berkeley Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience [14-Nov-06]
3105 Tolman (Berkeley)
"Closed-Loop, Visually-Based Flight Regulation in a Model
Fruit Fly"
Andrew D. Straw
Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology
http://redwood.berkeley.edu/seminars.php
Abstract below
4:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series [14-Nov-06]
EJ228, SRI International
"Metrics for Dynamic Semantic Graphs"
Tina Eliassi-Rad
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~eliassi/
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:00pm UC Berkeley Working Group in the Philosophy of Mind [14-Nov-06]
location unknown
Title to be announced
Tania Lombrozo
Psychology, Berkeley
http://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/tlombrozo.html
http://neurophilosophy.berkeley.edu/meetings.htm
7:30pm BayCHI [14-Nov-06]
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"From Counterculture To Cyberculture: How The Whole Earth
Catalog Brought Us Virtual Community"
Fred Turner
Communication, Stanford
"Be the Ball"
Greg Niemeyer and Joe McKay
Berkeley
http://www.baychi.org/program/
WEDNESDAY, 15 NOVEMBER 2006
all day American Anthropological Association Conference [15-Nov-06]
San Jose Conference Center, San Jose, CA
http://www.aaanet.org/
12 noon Psychology Developmental Brownbags [15-Nov-06]
Jordan Hall 420:102
"FYP Talk: How fast is fast mapping, exactly? An eye-tracking
study of frequency effects in novel word learning by 2-year-olds"
Quin Yow
Stanford University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_developmental.html
12 noon UC Berkeley CITRIS Research Exchange [15-Nov-06]
290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building (UC Berkeley)
"Texture Analysis of Remote-Sensed Imagery"
Shawn Newsam
Engineering, UC Merced
http://www.citris-uc.org/
Abstract below
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium [15-Nov-06]
Jordan Hall 420:041
"How culture gets under the skin: cultural models, parenting
practices, and child self regulation"
Carol Worthman
Emory University
http://www.anthropology.emory.edu/CHB/members/worthman.html
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_colloquium.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium [15-Nov-06]
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Title to be announced
Richard Chuang
Pacific Data Images ("PDI")
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
THURSDAY, 16 NOVEMBER 2006
all day American Anthropological Association Conference [16-Nov-06]
San Jose Conference Center, San Jose, CA
http://www.aaanet.org/
4:10pm UC Berkeley Philosophy Department Colloquium [16-Nov-06]
Howison Philosophy Library, (305 Moses Hall) (Berkeley)
"The Bayesian and the Dogmatist"
Brian Weatherson
Cornell University
http://brian.weatherson.org/tbatd.pdf
http://philosophy.berkeley.edu/
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum [16-Nov-06]
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"Beyond Copyright: Supporting Creative Work in the Internet Age"
Dean Baker
Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, D.C.
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 17 NOVEMBER 2006
all day American Anthropological Association Conference [17-Nov-06]
San Jose Conference Center, San Jose, CA
http://www.aaanet.org/
11:00am UC Berkeley ICBS Colloquium [17-Nov-06]
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
"Emerging Directions in Brain-Machine Interfaces"
Jose Carmena
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, UC Berkeley
http://icbs.berkeley.edu/
Abstract below
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [17-Nov-06]
Gates B01 (HP Auditorium)
"Innovation on User Research Methods during the development of
Windows Vista"
Gayna Williams
Microsoft
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:00pm Berkeley Information Access Seminar [17-Nov-06]
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
"The Influence of Academic Values on Scholarly Publication and
Communication Practices"
Judson King
Center for the Study of Higher Education
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is296a-1/f06/schedule.html
Abstract below
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium [17-Nov-06]
Bldg. 90:92Q
"On Specifying Content"
Agustin Rayo
MIT
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
Abstract below
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar [17-Nov-06]
Jordan Hall 420:050
"Concepts, an approach to the theoretical and observed limits
of minds"
Idriss Aberkane
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_cognitive.html
SATURDAY, 18 NOVEMBER 2006
all day American Anthropological Association Conference [18-Nov-06]
San Jose Conference Center, San Jose, CA
http://www.aaanet.org/
all day Berkeley TRilateral phonology weekEND (P-TREND) [18-Nov-06]
370 Dwinelle Hall (Berkeley)
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/events
SUNDAY, 19 NOVEMBER 2006
all day American Anthropological Association Conference [19-Nov-06]
San Jose Conference Center, San Jose, CA
http://www.aaanet.org/
all day Berkeley TRilateral syntax and semantics weekEND (S-TREND) [19-Nov-06]
370 Dwinelle Hall (Berkeley)
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/events
____________
Stanford Blood Center: Shortage of O, A, and AB. For an appointment:
http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call 650-723-7831. It only takes
an hour of your time and you get free cookies.
____________
NOTE
According to Ivan Say,
"I wanted to alert you to the large number of interesting
linguistics panels that will be presented at the Anthropology
Meetings in November (15-19) in San Jose. You and your students may
not be in the habit of attending the AAA, but the size of the
linguistics program grows every year and is getting increasingly
fascinating--especially for sociolinguistics. I do hope you will
think about coming."
This is part of the American Anthropological Association annual
conference, see http://www.aaanet.org/
____________
BERKELEY SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 8 November 2006, 2:00pm - 4:00pm
465 Soda Hall (Berkeley)
http://coe.berkeley.edu/events/
"Improving Systems Management Policies Using Hybrid
Reinforcement Learning"
Gerry Tesauro
IBM
The emerging field of self-managing ("autonomic") computing systems
faces a major "knowledge bottleneck" in that designing accurate models
of complex distributed systems, along with rules for intelligently
managing the system according to a set of high-level objectives,This
can be a daunting task requiring a great deal of highly skilled human
expert labor. Machine Learning offers the hope of automatically
extracting knowledge from large amounts of data, but pure "tabula
rasa"online learning may be infeasible and prohibitively costly.Our
recent work on dynamic server allocation shows how to have the best of
both worlds by combining Reinforcement Learning with initial
knowledge-based models and policies in a hybrid approach,in which RL
trains offline on data collected while a queuing-theoretic policy
controls the system. By training offline we avoid suffering
potentially poor performance in live online training. Our results show
that hybrid RL training can achieve significant performance
improvements over a variety of initial model-based policies. We also
give several interesting insights as to how RL, as expected, can deal
effectively with both transients and switching delays, which lie
outside the scope of traditional steady-state queuing theory.
About the Speaker: Gerry Tesauro received a PhD in theoretical physics
from Princeton University in 1986, and subsequently converted to
machine learning research after being swept up in the neural networks
craze of that era. In his career at IBM he has worked on theoretical
and applied machine learning in wide variety of settings, including
multi-agent learning,dimensionality reduction, credit scoring,
computer virus recognition,computer chess (Deep Blue), intelligent
e-commerce agents, and most notoriously, TD-Gammon, a self-teaching
program that learned to play backgammon at human world championship
level. He is currently interested in exploring potential wide
applicability of ML approaches throughout the huge emerging domain of
self-managing computing systems.
____________
SRI CSL SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 8 November 2006, 3:30pm - 4:30pm
EK255, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
"PATIKAweb: A Web-based tool for querying and visualizing PATIKA
database, integrating pathway data from various popular databases"
Ugur Dogrusoz
Head, Center for Bioinformatics, Bilkent Univ., Ankara, Turkey
http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~patikaweb/
Despite the enormous effort for creating standards and tools, current
bioinformatics infrastructure is far from coping with biological
systems data accumulating on an exponential scale. The PATIKA Project
aims to provide the community with an integrated environment for
modeling, analyzing and integrating cellular processes.
The PATIKA server acts as a central database and provides XML-based
Web services for querying and integrating pathway models, currently
containing data integrated from several databases including Reactome
and interfaces with major databases and ontologies such as
Entrez-Gene, UniProt and GO.
In this talk, we will present PATIKAweb, a Web-based, user-friendly
interface, including a multiple-view schema for bioentity (e.g., PPI)
and mechanistic levels (e.g. covalent modification and
transportation), compartments and compound graphs for visualizing
molecular complexes, pathways and black-box reactions. Specialized
algorithms are used to automatically layout pathways along with many
state-of-the-art graph editing functionalities. Constructed models can
be saved in XML, exported to standard formats such as BioPAX or
converted to static images. In addition, models in BioPAX format can
be imported for analysis.
The latest revision of the tool includes a querying component
supporting both SQL-like queries and an array of graph-theoretic
queries for finding feedback loops, positive/negative paths, common
targets and regulators, or 'interesting subgraphs' based on user's
genes of interest. This version also includes a microarray data
analysis component, facilitating analysis of expression data, or
comparison of two related experiments, on top of the pathway data,
through visual techniques such as color-coding and labeling. The tool
also features clustering of pathway objects based on expression data.
PATIKAweb's unique visualization, querying and microarray data
analysis features fill an important gap in the pool of currently
available tools and databases.
____________
BERKELEY HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC, MATHEMATICS, AND SCIENCE
on Wednesday, 8 November 2006, 6:00pm - 7:30pm
234 Moses (Berkeley)
http://hplms.berkeley.edu/
"Rethinking Figure/Ground Organization"
Stephen Palmer
Psychology, UC Berkeley
Several new results on figure-ground organization from our laboratory
will be presented that question the classical view of figure-ground
organization as a unitary phenomenon and/or process. What emerges is a
different view in which the perceptual interpretation near a depth
edge results from a complex interaction among at least four different
components: perception of local depth across the edge, shape
perception, visual attention, and both modal and amodal completion of
the partly occluded surface.
____________
SF BAY ACM DATA MINING SIG
on Wednesday, 8 November 2006, 6:30pm - 9:00pm
SAP LABS, Building D, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA
http://sfbayacm.org/dmsig.php
"Machine Learning on Multi-Core"
Gary Bradski
Manager, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Intel Research
http://www.intel.com/technology/techresearch/people/bios/bradski_g.htm
We are at the beginning of the multicore era. Computers will have
increasingly many cores (processors), but there is still no good
programming framework for these architectures, and thus no simple and
unified way for machine learning to take advantage of the potential
speedup afforded by multicore. We devise a certain "summation form,"
which allows conforming algorithms to be easily parallelized on
multicore computers. We adapt Google's map-reduce paradigm to
demonstrate this parallel speedup technique on a wide variety of
machine learning and computer vision algorithms. We show that this
programming framework is pragmatic and easy to learn for taking
advantage of multicore parallelism. Our experimental results show
basically linear speedup with an increasing number of processors.
About the Speaker: Dr. Gary Rost Bradski is a Principle Engineer
leading machine learning and computer vision research for Intel
Labs. He has a joint appointment as consulting Professor at Stanford
University. His basic goal is to enable and accelerate AI internally
and externally. Some external tools he started for this are the
Probabilistic Network Library (PNL) and the Open Source Computer
Vision Library (OpenCV) available open, for free on Source Forge. The
vision library is used around the world and has become a notable part
of the commercial Intel performance library (IPP) products. A
statistical machine learning library (MLL) is also available at the
OpenCV download site. Gary received a B.S. degree from U.C. Berkeley
and a Ph.D. in Cognitive and Neural Systems (mathematical modeling of
biological perception) in May, 1994 from Boston University Center for
Adaptive Systems. Gary has worked in the fields of: proximity security
systems; medical electronics; computerized EEG; and as a quantitative
analyst at First Union's Derivatives Trading Group. Gary also worked
as a consultant to the medical electronics industry (NeuroSoft) and in
assembly line automation. He is on the advisory board of some local
startups in ID theft prevention.
____________
STANFORD HUMANITIES CENTER CONFERENCE
on Wednesday-Friday, 8-10 November 2006
Cubberley Auditorium
http://shc.stanford.edu/events/
"Imaging environment: Maps, Models, and Metaphors"
Disciplines vary significantly in the ways they represent "nature."
Strategies for depicting local, regional, and global ecosystems--and
their problems--range from statistics to poetics and from computer
modeling to maps and paintings. This conference will bring together
scholars from the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural
sciences to explore the different histories and techniques of
representing the environment on a global scale, and discuss the rights
and responsibilities--individual and collective--that derive from this
knowledge. Do underlying assumptions about nature converge or conflict
in these differing techniques? Are interdisciplinary perspectives,
especially those bridging the humanities and natural sciences, giving
rise to new representations of nature?
Models of the natural world are profoundly shaped by cultural and
political assumptions. Environmental disputes around the globe are
driven by conflicts over different views of nature and particularly
over the place of the human--inside or outside of nature. Alternative
views of the human/nature boundary often translate into conflicting
actions. At stake in these representations are thus material
inequality and economic development, access to political power,
gender, nationalism, indigenous status, and colonial legacies. What
then are the ethical consequences of particular approaches to the
representation of the natural? Which depiction of the actual or
imagined history of a site should be the goal of our restoration
efforts? And what insights about being human emerge from a
re-examination of assumptions about the natural environment?
The relation between local representative strategies and the
increasingly systemic and global character of environmental problems
poses specific challenges and opportunities for interdisciplinary
explorations. From the scientific perspective, we might think about
the ways phenomena change in kind and not just in size when they are
studied at different scales. From the cognitive and cultural side, we
could ask how individuals locate themselves in a global environment,
as well as how global systems can be adequately comprehended in works
of art. The effects of globalization on the natural environment and
its representations confront academic disciplines with the task of
finding new approaches to charting the present and shaping the future.
This conference will take on this challenge by reaching beyond
disciplinary specificity to interrogate the very ways we figure the
natural world, and the consequences of these figurations for our
actions in the global environment.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 9 November 2006, 12 noon - 1:00pm
Cordura Hall 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
"Neural Oscillators and the Brain"
Jose Acacio de Barros
Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil.
http://www.stanford.edu/~barros
Neurons in the brain often fire synchronously, creating neural
oscillators. Because these oscillators are weakly coupled, they may
synchronize. I will discuss weakly coupled oscillators and their use
to model learning. Our learning models are based on assumptions
supported by neurophysiological evidence. We then compare the
learning behavior of the neural oscillator model to psychological
experimental results.
____________
MUSIC 319: CCRMA HEARING SEMINAR
on Thursday, 9 November 2006, 12 noon
CCRMA Seminar Room, The Knoll
http://ccrma-mail.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/hearing-seminar
I'm very pleased to announce that Lloyd Watts, distinguished Hearing-
Seminar alumnus, will be talking about his path from auditory
neuroscientist to commercial success at this week's CCRMA Hearing
Seminar.
Lloyd has been working his way up from cochlear mechanics through
cochlear nucleus and auditory cortex. He has wonderfully detailed
models of many aspects of the auditory system (and knowing Lloyd,
he'll be demonstrating them.) He's founded a company called Audience
to commercialize this knowledge and survive in the world of silicon-
valley venture capital. He's applying this knowledge to solve hard
problems in the cell-phone market.
Bring your favorite ears to this week's CCRMA Hearing Seminar.
- Malcolm
P.S. Come early.. this will be popular.
"Commercializing Auditory Neuroscience"
Lloyd Watts
Audience, Inc.
Neuroscience knowledge and computing technology has advanced to the
point that it is now possible to build realistic, high-resolution,
real-time models of significant portions of the brain. My work has
focused on extracting the principles of operation of key processing
modules in the auditory pathway, in active collaboration with
neuroscientists, so as to construct a plausible working model of this
important sensory system. I will demonstrate real-time,
high-resolution models of the Cochlea, Cochlear Nucleus, spatial
localization systems based on the Superior Olivary Complex and
Inferior Colliculus, and polyphonic pitch detection based on the ICC
and Auditory Cortex, developed by the team at Audience.
I will also demonstrate Audience's two-microphone noise reduction
system developed for the cell-phone market, based on the principles
developed above.
I will report on algorithmic challenges and accomplishments (data
representations, signal processing strategies, and how to validate
that our models really are doing what the brain is doing), commercial
and fundraising challenges (how to turn a long-term science project
into a viable business with an exciting and predictable return on
investment based on commercially successful products), and the long-
term significance of building a realistic model of brain function
beginning with the auditory pathway.
About the Speaker: Lloyd Watts was born in 1961 in London, England.
He received his B.Sc. (Engineering Physics) from Queen's University in
1984, M.A.Sc. (Electrical Engineering) from Simon Fraser University
in 1989, and Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering) from the California
Institute of Technology in 1992. He has worked at Microtel Pacific
Research, Synaptics, Arithmos, Interval Research, and since the year
2000, he has been the Founder, Chairman, and Chief Technology Officer
of Audience, Inc., a venture-backed Silicon Valley company developing
high-performance audio signal processing systems for the
telecommunications industry.
____________
UC BERKELEY CIS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 9 November 2006, 4:00pm-5:00pm
Soda Hall 320 (UC Berkeley)
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~feisha/cis-seminar
"A New Frontier in Computation:
Computation with Information Described in Natural Language"
Lotfi A. Zadeh
Berkeley
What is computation with information described in natural language? A
simple example. I am planning to drive from Berkeley to Santa Barbara,
with stopover for lunch in Monterey. It is about 10 am. It will
probably take me about two hours to get to Monterey and about an hour
to have lunch. From Monterey, it will probably take me about five
hours to get to Santa Barbara. What is the probability that I will
arrive in Santa Barbara before about six pm?
Computation with information described in natural language, or
NL-Computation for short, is a problem of intrinsic importance because
much of human knowledge is described in natural language. Existing
natural languages techniques do not address the problem of
NL-Computation.
Our approach to NL-Computation centers on what is referred to as
generalized-constraint-based computation, or GC-Computation for short.
A generalized constraint is expressed as X isr R, where X is the
constrained variable, R is a constraining relation and r is an
indexical variable which defines the way in which R constrains X.
NL-Computation involves three modules: (a) Precisiation module; (b)
Protoform module; and (c) Computation module. The meaning of an
element of a natural language, NL, is precisiated through translation
into GCL and is expressed as a generalized constraint. An object of
precisiation, p, is referred to as precisiend, and the result of
precisiation, p*, is called a precisiand. The Protoform module serves
the function of abstraction and summarization. The Computation module
is a collection of protoformal deduction rules, with a rule having two
parts, symbolic and computational. These rules are employed to compute
an answer to a query.
The generalized-constraint-based computational approach to
NL-Computation opens the door to a wide-ranging enlargement of the
role of natural languages in scientific theories. Particularly
important application areas are decision-making with information
described in natural language, economics, systems engineering, risk
assessment, qualitative systems analysis, search, question-answering
and theories of evidence.
____________
SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 9 November 2006, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
"Wired for Speech:
How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship"
Clifford Nass
Communication, Stanford
Interfaces that talk and listen are populating computers, cars, call
centers, and even home appliances and toys, but voice interfaces
invariably frustrate rather than help. I will present a series of
experiments, including new unpublished studies, which demonstrate that
people are "voice-activated": people respond to voice technologies as
they respond to actual people and behave as they would in any social
situation. Among the questions I will address are: Can the emotion of
a car's voice improve driving performance? Will people automatically
attempt to imitate a computer's language? If a person's voice and
body are separate, where will the listener think the person "is"?
When should a computer-based voice say "I"? Should people be able to
choose a voice interface's voice? For each question, I will discuss
the basic theory, the experiment(s) and its results, and implications
for design.
About the Speaker: Clifford Nass (Ph.D., Sociology, Princeton
University) is the Thomas M. Storke Professor in the Department of
Communication at Stanford University. He has courtesy appointments in
computer science; science, technology, and society; sociology; and
symbolic systems. He is director of the CHIMe (Communication between
Humans and Interactive Media) Lab and the co-Director of the Kozmetsky
Global Collaboratory. He is the co-author of two books, The Media
Equation and Wired for Speech, and over 100 papers concerning
human-technology interaction. He has consulted on the design of over
200 information products and services for companies including
Microsoft, Toyota, Nissan, Philips, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, and
Charles Schwab.
____________
SYMPOSIUM
on Thursday, 9 November 2006, 7:30pm
Cubberley Auditorium, School of Education
http://www.stanford.edu/~shyeo/wholeearth.htm
"From Counterculture to Cyberculture:
The Legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog"
Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, Howard Rheingold and Fred Turner
During the 1960s, student marchers chanted "Do not fold, spindle or
mutilate!" as they railed against computers and the Cold War-era
military industrial complex they seemed to represent. But within just
three decades, computers had become emblems of countercultural
revolution. This symposium will feature a conversation with three
people who played key roles in that transformation:
Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and co-chairman of
the Long Now Foundation
Kevin Kelly, former executive editor of Wired magazine and author of
Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization and New Rules
for the New Economy
Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the
Electronic Frontier and Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
Fred Turner, moderator and assistant professor of communication,
Stanford University, author of "From Counterculture to Cyberculture:
Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog, and the Rise of Digital
Utopianism".
This event is sponsored by the Stanford University Libraries, the
Department of Communication, and the American Studies Program.
It will be introduced by Henry Lowood, of the Stanford University
Libraries, and followed by a public reception.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 10 November 2006, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B01 (HP Auditorium)
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
"From Personal Computers to Personal Information Environments"
Jeff Pierce
IBM Almaden Research
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/jspierce/
While today's users work with and encounter a growing number and
variety of computational devices (desktop PCs, laptops, tablets, PDAs,
cellphones, etc.), continued adherence to the model of working with a
single, personal computer has resulted in little support for
coordinating activities across those devices. In fact, most devices
are still completely unaware that a user might own other devices. As
users shift from working with a personal computer to working within a
personal information environment, we need to make it easier for them
to coordinate their activities across their personal devices as well
as effectively leverage devices in the local environment
About the Speaker: Jeff Pierce is a research staff member in IBM
Research at the Almaden Research Center in the User Sciences &
Experience Research (USER) group. Previously he was an Assistant
Professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of
Technology, where he led the Personal Information Environments
research group and co-directed the Adaptive Personalized Information
Environments lab with Charles Isbell.
____________
STANFORD SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS WORKSHOP
on Friday, 10 November 2006, 3:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/
"Been There, Marked That: A Theory of Second Occurrence Focus"
Daniel Buering
University of California--Los Angeles
Sentence (1) illustrates `second occurrence focus' (2OF). The object
DP `vegetables' is the semantic focus of `only' in both (1a) and (1b).
As expected, it is accented in (1a), but, surprisingly, it is not in
(1b) (when read as a continuation of (1a)), where the only pitch
accent is on `Paul'. Intuitively this is possible because the DP
`vegetables', although a focus in both sentences, is repeated in (1b)
(whence the name):
(1) a. Everyone already knew that Mary only eats [vegetables]_{F}
b. Even [Paul]_{F} knew that Mary only eats [vegetables]_{2OF}.
Recent work (Beaver et al 2004, a.o.) has shown, however, that 2OFi,
though unaccented, are nevertheless prosodically prominent, mostly
through lengthening. I will present a novel account of focus
representation and realization that predicts the different
realizations of these foci, and also ties them in with a more general
theory of free focus. The account blends together elements of the
theories of Rooth (1992) and Schwarzschild (1999), and is embedded
within a prosodic theory of prominence as advocated in Truckenbrodt
(1999) and my own earlier work.
____________
BERKELEY REDWOOD CENTER FOR THEORETICAL NEUROSCIENCE SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 14 November 2006, 12 noon
3105 Tolman (Berkeley)
http://redwood.berkeley.edu/seminars.php
"Closed-Loop, Visually-Based Flight Regulation in a Model Fruit Fly"
Andrew D. Straw
Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology
Control theory provides a formal framework to understand
feedback-based control, and is a tool neuroscientists may employ as
they seek to understand animal behavior and physiology in a
closed-loop context within the environment. Flight behavior of the
fruit fly Drosophila, because of its robust and high-performance
nature, its well-understood sensory and motor system constituent
elements, and its amenability to multiple experimental approaches,
represents an ideal system for investigating neural function within
such a theoretical framework. Therefore, we are using control theory
to investigate how the nervous system of a fly creates multiple levels
of effective and robust flight behavior, from attitude stabilization,
velocity regulation, obstacle avoidance, object search and
localization, to landing. By implementing a physically realistic model
of important components of the visual and motor systems of the fly, we
are able to generate experimentally testable hypotheses about the
control algorithms that may be implemented by the nervous and
musclo-skeletal systems. Furthermore, questions about the function of
individual components of these systems may be investigated at the
theoretical level within the broader context of whole-animal function.
I will discuss in detail the visual system modeling I have performed,
which is based upon a 3D environment model rendered by a computer
graphics engine, spatially low-pass filtered and sampled to
approximate the optics of a fly compound eye, and processed using
simulated neurons consistent with our knowledge of fly visual
physiology. In particular, motion detecting neurons with large
receptive fields act as 'matched filters' for optical flow produced by
forward and vertical translational velocity. Using estimates of these
quantities produced by model neurons, a control algorithm for wingbeat
kinematics is able to successfully follow a reference trajectory over
a range of conditions. These results will be discussed in the context
of behavioral experiments on freely flying flies which seek to test
predictions from the present modeling results. Our experiences show
that a control theory approach is useful for understanding closed-loop
behavior of an animal within its environment because it enables us to
create, and experimentally test, algorithms by which animals might
control motor output to achieve a particular behavior.
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Tuesday, 14 November 2006, 4:00pm - 5:30pm
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
"Metrics for Dynamic Semantic Graphs"
Tina Eliassi-Rad
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~eliassi/
Dynamic semantic graphs are directed graphs that evolve over time. The
term semantic refers to the fact that such graphs have multi-modal
nodes and multi-relational links. In this talk, I will illustrate why
standard graph metrics are not adequate for semantic graphs. I will
describe a suite of new metrics that capture both local and global
properties of dynamic semantic graphs. Finally, I will demonstrate the
usefulness of these new metrics in various problems ranging from
knowledge representation to visual analysis.
About the Speaker: Tina Eliassi-Rad is a computer scientist at the
Center for Applied Scientific Computing at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory. She earned a Ph.D. in Computer Sciences (with a minor in
Mathematical Statistics) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in
2001. Her research interests include artificial intelligence, machine
learning, knowledge discovery and data mining. Her work has been
applied to the World-Wide Web, large-scale scientific simulation data,
and complex networks.
____________
UC BERKELEY CITRIS RESEARCH EXCHANGE
on Wednesday, 15 November 2006, 12 noon
290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building (UC Berkeley)
http://www.citris-uc.org/
"Texture Analysis of Remote-Sensed Imagery"
Shawn Newsam
Engineering, UC Merced
http://www.ucmerced.edu/faculty/facultybio.asp?facultyid=52
Remote-sensed imagery acquired from satellites or aircraft continues
to offer passive, low-cost, and broad-field monitoring of Earth's
surface and has enabled a new suite of consumer-oriented applications
such as Google Earth. Advances in sensing technology are producing
images with increasing spatial resolution, which means that individual
pixels are more likely to represent the spectral reflectance of
regions composed of single rather than mixes of materials. The problem
of determining the composition of the regions imaged by single pixels
through spectral un-mixing is giving way to the problem of
characterizing the spatial arrangement of the pixels. Such
characterizations can help distinguish land-cover classes consisting
of similar materials but in different spatial configurations.
In this context, I will present my work on analyzing spatial
relationships in remote-sensed imagery. I will discuss the application
of a homogeneous image texture descriptor to performing content-based
similarity retrieval in large collections of high-resolution satellite
imagery. This serves as motivation for my subsequent work on using
image texture for a number of classification tasks in remote-sensed
imagery.
About the Speaker: Professor Newsam is an assistant professor of
Computer Science and Engineering and founding faculty at the new
University of California at Merced. He is born-and-bred UC, having
received his B.S. from UC Berkeley, his M.S. from UC Davis, and his
Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara. He also completed a postdoc in the
Sapphire Data Mining group at the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory.
____________
SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 16 November 2006, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
"Beyond Copyright: Supporting Creative Work in the Internet Age"
Dean Baker
Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, D.C.
Copyright is a relic of the Medieval guild system. It is becoming
increasingly difficult to enforce with digital technology and the
Internet. However, it remains the main mechanism for supporting the
production of creative and artistic work. This talk will point out the
ways in which copyright is becoming increasingly inefficient and
describe the concept of 'Artistic Freedom Vouchers (AFV)', as an
alternative mechanism for financing creative and artistic work.
The AFV is modeled after the charitable tax deduction, with the
difference that the AFV would be a credit for a small amount (e.g.
$75-$100) which could only be used to support creative and artistic
work. Writers, artists, musicians and other creative workers, along
with intermediaries, would register to be eligible to receive this
funding in the same way that charitable and non-profit organizations
register to be eligible for tax deductible contributions. Recipients
of AFV funds would not be eligible to receive copyright protection for
their work, all of which would remain in the public domain.
____________
BERKELEY INSTITUTE OF COGNITIVE AND BRAIN SEMINAR
on Friday, 17 November 2006, 11:00am
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
http://icbs.berkeley.edu/
"Emerging Directions in Brain-Machine Interfaces"
Jose Carmena
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, UC Berkeley
The advent of multi-electrode recordings and brain-machine interfaces
(BMIs) has provided a powerful tool for the development of
neuroprosthetic systems. BMIs are powerful tools that use
brain-derived signals to control artificial devices such as computer
cursors and robots. By recording the electrical activity of hundreds
of neurons from multiple cortical areas in subjects performing motor
tasks we can study the spatio-temporal patterns of neural activity and
quantify the neurophysiological changes occurring in cortical
networks, both in manual and brain control modes of operation. In
previous work at Duke University we demonstrated that monkeys can
learn to reach and grasp virtual objects by controlling a robot arm
through a BMI using visual feedback, even in the absence of overt arm
movements. Learning to operate the BMI is paralleled by functional
reorganization in multiple cortical areas, suggesting that the dynamic
properties of the BMI are incorporated into motor and sensory cortical
representations. While significant breakthroughs have been achieved in
recent years and the field is rapidly taking off, there are challenges
that need to be met before BMI technology fully reaches the clinical
realm. In this talk I will outline the emerging directions the field
is taking towards the development of neuroprosthetic devices for the
impaired.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 17 November 2006, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B01 (HP Auditorium)
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
"Innovation on User Research Methods
during the development of Windows Vista"
Gayna Williams
Microsoft
To create compelling user experiences it is essential to incorporate
user feedback into product development - this has been known for many
years. There are standard methods utilized by user research
practitioners; however, to deliver a user perspective in large scale
software development has required an expansion of the toolset. Because
of short time frames and finite resources it is essential to integrate
research approaches to provide a holistic user perspective and deliver
a high return on research investments. And for the outcome of the
research to be utilized it is critical to have created a product team
environment that is empathetic to users, and deliver results in a way
that blends with development practices. This talk presents innovation
on research methods used during the creation of Windows Vista to
insure that users were considered at each stage of the development
process. The methods highlighted will include: personas, benchmarking,
desirability, instrumentation, and ethnographies.
About the Speaker: Gayna Williams has been involved in user focused
research at Microsoft for 12 years. Before moving to her new position
as Director for Product Customer Partner Experience, she was the User
Research Director for Windows Vista. In her user research role she
managed a team of researchers that comprised usability engineers,
ethnographers and data miners who pioneered original approaches to
understanding users and impacting products. These include persona use,
wide-scale real-time consumer data collection, and exploratory
ethnography. During her tenure at Microsoft Gayna has worked on a
broad range of products including Windows, Internet Explorer, MSN,
NetMeeting, and consumer products. Her new role at Microsoft allows
her to leverage her user research experience and also have an even
broader view of what it takes to satisfy Microsoft customers and
partners. Her undergraduate training was in ergonomics at Loughborough
University of Technology, England; her undergraduate project on the
use of video to support teams was presented at the 1997 European
Computer Supported Cooperative Work conference. She earned a MS at the
University of Minnesota in human factors, conducting research on
advance traffic information systems for use by general and aging
driver populations. She has presented research papers and methods
overviews at several conferences and universities.
____________
BERKELEY INFORMATION ACCESS SEMINAR
on Friday, 17 November 2006, 3:00pm - 5:00pm
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is296a-1/f06/schedule.html
"The Influence of Academic Values on Scholarly Publication
and Communication Practices"
Judson King
Center for the Study of Higher Education
We have examined academic values as they influence publishing choices
and attitudes of University of California, Berkeley faculty. Direct
interviews were carried out with relevant stakeholders -- faculty,
advancement reviewers, librarians, and editors -- in five fields:
anthropology, biostatistics, chemical engineering, English-language
literature and the intersection of law and economics. The results of
the study strongly confirm the vital role of peer review in faculty
values and publishing practices, and indeed in underlying the entire
system of research evaluation. There is much more experimentation with
regard to means of communication while research is in progress, for
which single means of publication and communication are not fixed so
deeply in values and tradition, than there is for final, archival
publication. We conclude that approaches that try to move faculty and
deeply embedded value systems directly toward new forms of archival,
final publication are destined largely to failure in the short-term.
From our perspective, a more promising route is to (1) examine the
needs of scholarly researchers for both final and in-progress
communications, and (2) determine how those needs are likely to
influence future scenarios in a range of disciplinary areas. We are
pursuing that line of approach in further work.
About the Speaker: Jud King started as a faculty member in Berkeley's
chemical engineering department forty-two years ago. In addition to
chairing that department, he has been Dean of the College of Chemistry
and Provost for Professional Schools and Colleges at Berkeley, and
Provost and Senior Vice President -- Academic Affairs for the UC
system. Since leaving that latter post in April 2004 he has been
Director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education.
____________
PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 17 November 2006, 3:15pm
Building 90, room 92Q
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
"On Specifying Content"
Agustin Rayo
MIT
http://web.mit.edu/arayo/www/
http://web.mit.edu/arayo/www/fc.pdf
Participants in a debate can sometimes disagree about the expressive
capabilities of a fragment of their language. As long as they are able
to find mutually acceptable paraphrases for any claims involving the
disputed vocabulary, there is no reason for concern. But in difficult
cases mutually acceptable paraphrases are hard to find, and impasse
threatens.
In this paper I am concerned with the difficult cases. I suggest a
strategy for specifying truth-conditions for one's interlocutor's
claims in contexts where paraphrase is unavailable. In some cases --
such as the debate whether second-order quantification is
ontologically innocent -- I show that the specification can be carried
out using language that is not under dispute. But in others -- such as
the debate between mathematical fictionalists and their rivals --
there are principled reasons for doubting that the specification can
be carried out on neutral ground. This leads to a complex dialectical
situation in which one is able to specify truth-conditions for one's
interlocutor's claims to one's own satisfaction, but only by using the
disputed vocabulary.
About the Speaker: Agustin Rayo works mainly in the philosophy of
logic, mathematics and language. Within the philosophy of logic, he's
focused on philosophical problems and applications pertaining to
higher-order resources and unrestricted quantification. Within the
philosophy of math, he's done work on logicism, and mathematical
realism. Within the philosophy of language, he's focused mostly on
vagueness. He is associate professor of philosophy at MIT, where he
received his PhD in 2001.
____________
END MATERIAL
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