[Date Prev][Date Next][Date Index]
CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 29 November 2006, vol. 22:13
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
______________________________________________________________________
29 November 2006 Stanford Vol. 22, No. 13
______________________________________________________________________
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 29 NOVEMBER 2006 TO 8 DECEMBER 2006
WEDNESDAY, 29 NOVEMBER 2006
12 noon Psychology Developmental Brownbags [29-Nov-06]
Jordan Hall 420:102
"What's the hurry? The efficiency of speech processing in
infancy has immediate and longterm consequences for lexical
development"
Anne Fernald
Stanford
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_developmental.html
12 noon UC Berkeley CITRIS Research Exchange [29-Nov-06]
290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building (UC Berkeley)
"Discovering design principles in bacteria and using them to
design tumor-killing bacterium"
Adam Arkin
Bioengineering, UC Berkeley
http://www.lbl.gov/~aparkin/
http://www.citris-uc.org/
12 noon UC Berkeley IPSR colloquium [29-Nov-06]
5101 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Power, Cognition, and Behavior"
Ana Guinote
University of Kent, UK
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/ipsr/colloquium.htm
3:30pm SRI AI Seminar Series [29-Nov-06]
EK255, SRI International
"In hot water: Exploring hot-spring microbial mat communities
using genomic and metagenomic analyses"
Devaki Bhaya
Biology, Carnegie Institute, Stanford
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium [29-Nov-06]
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
"Computing on the GPU GeForce 8800 & NVIDIA CUDA"
Ian Buck
NVIDIA
http://www.nvidia.com/
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Abstract below
6:00pm Silicon Valley Web Guild [29-Nov-06]
Google (900 Alta Avenue, Mountain View)
"SEO for Web 2.0"
Panel
http://www.webguild.org/
(Registration and fee)
Information below
6:00pm Berkeley History and Philosophy of Logic Mathematics, and Science
234 Moses (Berkeley) [29-Nov-06]
"The Future of Proof"
Dana Scott
Carnegie Mellon
http://hplms.berkeley.edu/
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 30 NOVEMBER 2006
11:00am SRI AI Seminar Series [30-Nov-06]
EJ228, SRI International
"Machine Learning in Web 2.0: Analyzing Dynamic Content-driven
Social Networks"
Sugato Basu
SRI
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
12 noon CSLI CogLunch [30-Nov-06]
Cordura Hall 100
"The Relationship Between Consciousness and Self-Awareness"
Johannes Brandl
University of Salzburg
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
12 noon Music 319: CCRMA Hearing Seminar [30-Nov-06]
CCRMA Seminar Room, The Knoll
"Using auditory modeling to improve speech perception"
Om Deshmukh
University of Maryland
http://ccrma-mail.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/hearing-seminar
Abstract below
12:45pm Stanford Networking Seminar [30-Nov-06]
Gates 104
Title to be announced
Nick Feamster
Computing, Georgia Tech
http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~feamster/
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
3:00pm Stanford Software Seminar [30-Nov-06]
Gates 104
"What's Next for Software Verification?"
Rupak Majumdar
UCLA
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~rupak/
http://theory.stanford.edu/~mhn/sss.html
Abstract below
4:00pm Stanford Phonology Workshop [30-Nov-06]
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
"Discussing 'A Maximum Entropy Model of Phonotactics and
Phonotactic Learning' by Bruce Hayes and Colin Wilson"
http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/858-0806/858-HAYES-0-0.PDF
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
4:00pm PARC Forum [30-Nov-06]
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"The race for 21st century fuels"
Alex Farrell
UC Berkeley
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:00pm Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education [30-Nov-06]
175 Barrows Hall (Berkeley)
"Issues in Higher Education Access for English Language Learners:
Thoughts on Pathways through the Master Plan"
Kenji Hakuta and George C. Bunch
Stanford University and UC Santa Cruz
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/events/
Abstract below
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum [30-Nov-06]
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"Selecting Among Paraphrases"
Tom Wasow
Linguistics, Stanford
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
Abstract below
4:15pm Information Systems Seminar [30-Nov-06]
Packard 101
Title to be announced
Young-Han Kim
UCSD
http://isl.stanford.edu/colloquium.html
4:15pm Stanford Algorithms Seminar (AFLB) [30-Nov-06]
Gates 498
"Incentive-Based Ranking Mechanisms"
Rajat Bhattacharjee
http://www.stanford.edu/~rajatb/
http://theory.stanford.edu/~aflb/
Abstract below
4:15pm Fundamental Themes in Neuroscience Seminar [30-Nov-06]
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman
"The brain's own cannabis - recent developments"
Brad Alger
Physiology and Psychiatry, University of Maryland
http://neuroscience.umaryland.edu/faculty/default.asp?ID=3
http://nis-seminars.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 1 DECEMBER 2006
11:00am SRI AI Seminar Series [1-Dec-06]
EJ228, SRI International
"In-network PCA and anomaly detection"
XuanLong Nguyen
UC Berkeley
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
12 noon Ethics@Noon [1-Dec-06]
Bldg. 100:101K
"The Rational Student and How She Chooses"
John Perry
Philosophy, Stanford
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/EIS/lectures_ethics.html
Abstract below
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [1-Dec-06]
Gates B01 (HP Auditorium)
"Technology for Developing Regions"
Eric Brewer
UC Berkeley
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:00pm Berkeley Information Access Seminar [1-Dec-06]
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
"Math People, a Distributed Name Authority System"
Jim Pitman
Math & Statistics, Berkeley
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is296a-1/f06/schedule.html
Abstract below
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium [1-Dec-06]
Bldg. 90:92Q
"Quine"
Peter Hylton
University of Illinois at Chicago
http://www.uic.edu/depts/phil/bios/hylton.htm
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar [1-Dec-06]
Jordan Hall 420:050
"Value or salience? Competing theories of nucleus accumbens function"
Jeff Cooper
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_cognitive.html
3:15pm ME394: Design Forum [1-Dec-06]
Terman 556
"my research"
Ken Waldron
http://me.stanford.edu/faculty/facultydir/waldron.html
http://www.stanford.edu/class/me394/
3:30pm Linguistics Department Colloquium [1-Dec-06]
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
"Design Choices in Computer Model of Human Sentence Comprehension"
John T. Hale
Michigan State University
http://www.msu.edu/~jthale/
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
Abstract below
MONDAY, 4 DECEMBER 2006
1:00pm Center for Internet and Society Talk [4-Dec-06]
Law School 280A
"Patentable Subject Matter: The Problem of the Absent Gatekeeper"
David Olson
Stanford
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/
4:15pm CS528: Broad Area Colloquium [4-Dec-06]
Hewlett Teaching Center 200
"Modeling with Point Samples"
Markus Gross
Computer Graphics Laboratory, ETH Zurich
http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs528/
Abstract below
TUESDAY, 5 DECEMBER 2006
12 noon Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education [5-Dec-06]
CSHE Library, South Hall Annex (Berkeley)
"From Coherence to Differentiation: Understanding (Changes in)
the European Area for Higher Education and Research"
Wim Weymans
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Leuven
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/events/
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 6 DECEMBER 2006
12 noon Psychology Developmental Brownbags [6-Dec-06]
Jordan Hall 420:102
"Quantity representation in infants: Comparing 6-month olds to rats"
Jen Wagner
Stanford University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_developmental.html
12 noon UC Berkeley CITRIS Research Exchange [6-Dec-06]
290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building (UC Berkeley)
"Tele-immersion for Everybody (TEEVE). Collaborative cyber-
infrastructure that facilitates synchronized dance
performance in geographically distributed locations"
Ruzena Bajcsy
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley
http://www.citris-uc.org/
12:15pm Semantic Web Seminar [6-Dec-06]
Gates 2A open space
"Inconsistency is the Norm"
Carl Hewitt
MIT EECS (emeritus)
Abstract below
6:00pm Berkeley History and Philosophy of Logic Mathematics, and Science
234 Moses, (Berkeley) [6-Dec-06]
"Finding the Causes in an Evolving Population:
Lessons From an Early Drifter"
Roberta Millstein
Philosophy, UC Davis
http://hplms.berkeley.edu/
THURSDAY, 7 DECEMBER 2006
12 noon CSLI CogLunch [7-Dec-06]
Cordura Hall 100
"Conceptic : a physic of imagination"
Idriss Aberkane
Ecole Normale Superieure
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum [7-Dec-06]
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"eScience -- A Transformed Scientific Method"
Jim Gray
eScience Group, Microsoft Research
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
4:15pm Fundamental Themes in Neuroscience Seminar [7-Dec-06]
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman
"Cell Recognition and Wiring the Fly Brain"
Larry Zipursky
Biological Chemistry, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
David Geffen
School of Medicine, UCLA
http://nis-seminars.stanford.edu/
5:15pm Stanford Phonology Workshop [7-Dec-06]
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
"Graded Constraints in English Word Forms"
Jay McClelland
(a joint meeting with SPLaT)
http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~jlm/papers/GCEWFs_2_18_for_comments.pdf
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
7:30pm Silicon Valley Shannon Lecture [7-Dec-06]
Bldg. 380:380C
"Trustworthy Information Technology A Myth or an Enabler"
Roger R. Schell
Aesec Corporation
http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/~tylin/ieeesilicon/
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 8 DECEMBER 2006
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [8-Dec-06]
Gates B01 (HP Auditorium)
"Koala: End user programming on the web"
Tessa Lau, Allen Cypher
IBM Almaden Research Center
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
1:00pm Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education [8-Dec-06]
Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall (Berkeley)
"Governing the Academy: Who's the Boss?"
William Bagley, Steve Brint, Bruce Cain, Jack Citrin, Lawrence
Coleman, John Douglass, Tim Gage, Donald Gerth, Judson King,
Velma Montoya, Karl Pister, Lawrence Pitts, William Zumeta
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/events/
Abstract below
3:00pm Berkeley Information Access Seminar [8-Dec-06]
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
"Progress Report: Education in the virtual world"
Alexis Dailey
"Making Digital Preservation Policy: the National Perspective"
Paul Courant
University of Michigan
Abby Smith
Historian
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is296a-1/f06/schedule.html
Abstracts below
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar [8-Dec-06]
Jordan Hall 420:050
"Does hearing words help us see?"
Gary Lupyan
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_cognitive.html
____________
Stanford Blood Center: Shortage of O-, A, B-, 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.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LAB COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 29 November 2006, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
"Computing on the GPU GeForce 8800 & NVIDIA CUDA"
Ian Buck
NVIDIA
Many researchers have observed that general purpose computing with
programmable graphics hardware (GPUs) has shown promise to solve many
of the worlds compute intensive problems, many orders of magnitude
faster the conventional CPUs. The challenge has been working within
the constraints of a graphics programming environment to leverage this
huge performance potential. GPU computing with CUDA is a new approach
to computing where hundreds of on-chip processor cores simultaneously
communicate and cooperate to solve complex computing problems,
transforming the GPU into a massively parallel processor. The NVIDIA
C-compiler for the GPU provides a complete development environment
gives developers the tools they need to solve new problems in
computation-intensive applications such as product design, data
analysis, technical computing, and game physics. In this talk, I will
provide a brief history of computing with GPUs, how CUDA can solve
compute intensive problems, and where GPU computing will be going in
the future.
About the speaker: Ian Buck completed his Ph.D. at the Stanford
Graphics Lab in 2004. His thesis was titled "Stream Computing on
Graphics Hardware," researching programming models and computing
strategies for using graphics hardware as a general purpose computing
platform. His work included developing the "Brook" software toolchain
for abstracting the GPU as a general purpose streaming coprocessor. He
currently works for NVIDIA as the GPU-Compute software manager.
____________
SILICON VALLEY WEB GUILD
on Wednesday, 29 November 2006, 6:00pm
Google (900 Alta Avenue, Mountain View)
http://www.webguild.org/
"SEO for Web 2.0"
Panel
Web 2.0 is making the entire internet a giant community by connecting
communities of users together. User-generated content can quickly grow
a web site to vast dimensions in little time. Web 2.0 companies depend
heavily on communities and viral marketing to drive traffic to their
sites. However, Web2.0 sites need to rely on search engines to attract
visitors as well. But getting a Web 2.0 site to rank "well" is not as
easy as it seems because there generally is less editorial control and
various structural issues can cause lack of indexability. These issues
can represent insurmountable hurdles for online visibility but they
can be overcome.
This event will focus on:
* How Web 2.0 companies can increase their traffic and search engine
rankings.
* Why all content can't be tucked away behind a membership login?
* How to open up internal data to the search engines without
compromising user privacy?
* Structural barriers limiting indexability and maximizing the
spiderability of web sites.
About the Speakers:
Adam Lasnik, SEO Strategist, Google:
Before there was a public Internet, Adam was e-mailing. Before there
was Netscape or Internet Explorer, he was surfing the Web. He's
written comprehensive search engine optimization reports, managed
sponsored ad campaigns for Fortune 500 companies, and provided broad
communications consulting to successful startup companies. Adam earned
MBA and law degrees -- focused on Global Electronic Communications and
Commerce issues -- and then moved to Germany to serve as an
entrepreneurial consultant to a multinational IT company. Grateful for
the international experience but fascinated by the burgeoning American
dot.com scene, he hopped over to San Francisco and joined the high
tech PR firm Niehaus Ryan Wong as an Interactive Strategist, helping
clients understand and leverage the power of online communities. When
the dot.com boom turned to bust, Adam spent the next years broadening
his online communications and advertising chops with a mix of small
and large companies. In 2006, Adam became Google's first Search
Evangelist, dedicated to building stronger relationships between
Google and Webmasters.
David Hahn, Director of Advertising, LinkedIn:
David directs LinkedIn's advertising business and manages several
strategic product initiatives, including public profiles. LinkedIn's
public profile system helps users publish their profiles on the web,
so that they can be found by search engines and referenced by a custom
url. David also designed and implemented LinkedIn's profile-targeted
advertising system, creating a new targeting paradigm for advertisers.
Prior to LinkedIn, David served as an aide to Senator Dianne Feinstein
in Washington, D.C. and a fellow at The Carter Center in Atlanta.
Markus Hoevener, Chief Visionary, Bloofusion:
Markus is a pioneer in the search engine industry. During his studies
in computer science and marketing at the University of Dortmund,
Germany, he started developing a search engine specifically designed
for the needs of the German marketplace. By 1996 he had co-founded
evision, a company that specialized in the development of search
engine technology. His first commercially available search engine
project, Nathan, was successfully demonstrated in 1997 at Cebit, the
world's largest trade show. A year later, he developed the meta search
engine Apollo.7 that filled the niche for German web content. In 1999
he developed the first wireless access protocol (WAP) search engine
WapUP! and co-founded his next company to market this technology in
Munich, Germany. This VC-backed company, WAP Communications, licensed
its wireless search engine technology to AltaVista. In 2001, he
conceived a search engine focused on the medical world, Mediwarp.com.
Finally, in 2002, he designed his latest search engine that gathers
high tech articles from the Web: TrooBloo.com.
Joelle Gropper Kaufman, Vice President of The Experience, Engage.com:
Joelle joined Engage Corporation in 2006 as Vice President of The
Experience. She is the Engage concierge, responsible for creating and
delivering the most natural, compelling and useful online community
experience that enables members to discover new possibilities for
serious relationships. Over ten years ago, Joelle was a Director of
the Firefly Networks product and account management teams, led
licensing and integration with BarnesandNoble.com for Firefly, was CEO
of Lifespire, and led marketing and sales development for technology
companies such as Reactivity and RSA Securitys Developer Solutions
Group. At Engage, she is refocusing on enabling people to communicate
and collaborate in the journey of creating meaningful relationships
and love. Joelle earned her BA in Organizational Psychology (Studies)
from the University of Michigan and her MBA as a Baker Scholar from
the Harvard Business School.
Moderator: Research Analyst, JupiterKagan
____________
BERKELEY HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC, MATHEMATICS, AND SCIENCE
on Wednesday, 29 November 2006, 6:00pm - 7:30pm
234 Moses (Berkeley)
http://hplms.berkeley.edu/
"The Future of Proof"
Dana Scott
Carnegie Mellon University
Goedel showed us many things. Among others he showed us the
possibility of proof (via the Completeness Theorem for First-Order
Logic); and then quite soon thereafter he showed us the impossibility
of proof (via the Incompleteness Theorem for (suitable) Higher-Order
Logics). These results are well known and famous, but their impact on
the practice of mathematics has perhaps not been very noticeable. To
be sure, related recursive unsolvability results have a clear
explanatory value in keeping people from searching for algorithms
where none can exist. And modern developments in complexity theory
show that many easily stated problems have -- in general -- no quick
solutions. But again, many commentators agree that there has not been
a big shift in main-stream mathematics as a consequence of Goedel's
fundamental work. However, the insight into formalization sparked by
Goedel's original work is now having major payoffs in mechanized
mathematics and proof systems. The lecture will survey some
developments, but it will also bring up the questions of what we
should now regard as a proof and of how new proof methods develop.
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Thursday, 30 November 2006, 11:00am
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
"Machine Learning in Web 2.0:
Analyzing Dynamic Content-driven Social Networks"
Sugato Basu
SRI
In the last decade, machine learning and data mining techniques have
seen widespread successful application to different Internet
technologies, including web search, product recommendation, spam
detection, spelling correction, and news clustering. However, the web
is fast undergoing a paradigm shift, moving from being a mechanism for
delivering static web-content in the existing Web 1.0 model to a
platform facilitating dynamic collaborative content creation in the
emerging Web 2.0 paradigm. This trend is reflected in the growing
popularity of new social web-services, for example, tagging (Flickr)
compared to photo editing (Ofoto), and blogging (Blogger) compared to
homepage hosting (Geocities). This talk will outline how this new
emphasis on rapid creation and sharing of consumer-generated data
(CGM) over large social networks has given rise to dynamic
content-driven social networks, and a new set of challenging machine
learning problems in this context. Focusing on a project (iLink) that
the speaker is currently working on, the talk will discuss research
problems like online learning of topic models over streaming text,
large-scale topic analysis over social networks, and learning to route
messages in a social query model.
About the Speaker: My main areas of research interest are machine
learning, data mining, information retrieval, statistical pattern
recognition and optimization, with applications to analysis of text
and biological data. I am currently working as a research scientist on
the CALO project.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 30 November 2006, 12 noon - 1:00pm
Cordura Hall 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
"The Relationship Between Consciousness and Self-Awareness"
Johannes Brandl
University of Salzburg
What is the relation between having an experience and being self-
aware? This question has played an important role in the
phenomenological tradition before it resurfaced in the recent debate
between higher-order and first-order representational theories of
consciousness. In addressing this question it will be useful to
distinguish two different concerns here: One concern is the
extensional relation between the two terms: Does consciousness occur
with and without self-awareness, or is self-awareness involved in
every conscious experience? A second concern is the explanatory
relation between these terms: Does an explanation of consciousness
have to proceed via an explanation of self-awareness, or can we
explain self-awareness via an explanation of consciousness? My thesis
will be that it is not the task of a theory of self-awareness to
explain what conscious experience is, but we can (and in fact must)
use a theory of consciousness to explain in which sense one is
minimally self-aware whenever one has a conscious experience.
____________
MUSIC 319: CCRMA HEARING SEMINAR
on Thursday, 30 November 2006, 12 noon
CCRMA Seminar Room, The Knoll
http://ccrma-mail.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/hearing-seminar
We're blessed to have another talk on speech enhancement and how the
brain perceives speech at this week's CCRMA Hearing Seminar. Before
Thanksgiving, Lloyd Watts described his efforts to model the auditory
system and to understand how to improve the perception of speech in
cell phones.
This coming Thursday, Om Deshmukh will be talking about his research
on speech enhancement. He started with a simple model of auditory
scene analysis in the brain, which predicts our ability to detect
tones in noise, and extends it to speech signals. This work is a bit
more theoretical than Lloyd's talk (closer to the brain, further from
a product.)
Bring your favorite ears and we'll talk about how to make it easier
to perceive speech.
- Malcolm
P.S. Somebody, I forget who, asked me about the state of the art in
robotic music performance. Here is the long-overdue answer. I
think it's gotten much better, probably because of the RENCON
contest. They objectively judge the expressive qualities in a
computer-generated rendition of a classical piece, and I think the
results are much improved over the last few years. See
http://shouchan.ei.tuat.ac.jp/~rencon/
for more details.
"Synergy of Acoustic-Phonetics and Auditory Modeling towards Speech
Enhancement and Robust Speech Recognition"
Om Deshmukh
The problem addressed in this work is that of enhancing speech signals
corrupted by additive noise. We have developed a model for speech
enhancement called the Modified Phase Opponency (MPO) model. The MPO
model is based on the auditory phase opponency model that was proposed
for detection of tones-in-noise. The MPO-based speech enhancement
scheme does not need to estimate the characteristics of the corrupting
noise nor does it assume that the noise satisfies any statistical
model. The MPO-based speech enhancement scheme leads to the lowest
value of the linear-predictive coefficients based objective measures
and the highest value of the Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality
(PESQ) measure compared to some of the other methods when the speech
signals are corrupted by fluctuating noise. The performance of the
MPO speech enhancement scheme is comparable to some of the other
enhancement techniques when the global SNR and the noise type of the
corrupting noise are not fluctuating.
Combining the MPO speech enhancement technique with our Aperiodicity,
Periodicity and Pitch (APP) detector further improves its
performance. The APP detector was developed to estimate the proportion
of periodic and aperiodic energy in a speech signal. It also estimates
a spectro-temporal binary mask to distinguish spectro- temporal
channels with strong periodic energy from channels with strong
aperiodic energy. The combined MPO-APP speech enhancement technique
strikes a better balance between the amount of speech- deletions and
noise-suppression as compared to the MPO technique.
____________
STANFORD SOFTWARE SEMINAR
on Thursday, 30 November 2006, 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Gates 104
http://theory.stanford.edu/~mhn/sss.html
"What's Next for Software Verification?"
Rupak Majumdar
UCLA
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~rupak/
Over the last few years, software verification based on predicate
abstraction and counterexample-guided refinement has been a successful
technique for performing automatic and precise static analysis of
programs. Other than device driver protocols, though, software
verifiers have so far mostly been applied to simple properties of
systems. For these programs and properties, we show a simple syntactic
algorithm to construct approximate program invariants that is
surprisingly effective, suggesting perhaps that software verification
tools are overkill for these applications. For deeper properties, we
describe our recent attempts to verify a memory management subsystem
and outline several challenges that must be met before the
verification will succeed. We describe some partial progress. In
particular, we describe a technique to infer predicates in the
presence of data structures such as lists and sets, and a type system
that extracts word-level relationships from code containing bitwise
operations.
____________
BERKELEY CENTER FOR STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION
on Thursday, 30 November 2006, 4:00pm
175 Barrows Hall (Berkeley)
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/events/
"Issues in Higher Education Access for English Language Learners:
Thoughts on Pathways through the Master Plan"
Kenji Hakuta and George C. Bunch
Stanford University and UC Santa Cruz
English Language Learners and students with English as a second
language now comprise a substantial proportion of California's K-12
schools. Very little is known about their progress into the higher
education system. In this talk, we will bring together what we know
about the academic performance of the second language population in
K-12, and propose a research agenda for better understanding their
pathways into and through the higher education system.
About the Speakers: Kenji Hakuta is Professor in the School of
Education at Stanford University. He was previously founding Dean of
the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts at UC
Merced. George C. Bunch is Assistant Professor of Educational
Linguistics at UC Santa Cruz. His research interests include education
of language minority students and transition of underrepresented
students to higher education.
____________
SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 30 November 2006, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
"Selecting Among Paraphrases"
Tom Wasow
Linguistics, Stanford
What leads speakers to select one way of saying something over another
way of expressing the same thought? This lecture proposes four
general strategies of utterance production that influence the choice
among alternative formulations:
- Contiguity - Minimize interruptions internal to syntactic and
semantic units;
- Procrastination - Postpone producing complex units;
- Brevity - Keep what is predictable short; and
- Audience Design - Let your audience know when you are having
difficulty.
It also argues against the widely held assumption that ambiguity
avoidance is a major factor in the choice among syntactic
alternatives.
Evidence for these strategies will be drawn from corpus studies and
psycholinguistic experiments, with special attention to the following
five alternations in English:
- Heavy NP Shift: "They take too many dubious assumptions for
granted" vs. "They take for granted too many dubious assumptions"
- Dative Alternation: "We gave a bone to a dog" vs. "We gave a dog a
bone"
- Verb Particle Placement: "You figured out the problem" vs. "You
figured the problem out"
- Relativizer Optionality: "This is the book that I was reading"
vs. "This is the book I was reading"
- Complementizer Optionality: "I think that it is raining" vs. "I
think it is raining"
While each strategy is quite simple and intuitive in itself, the
interactions among them lead to some subtle and surprising results.
____________
STANFORD ALGORITHMS SEMINAR (AFLB)
on Thursday, 30 November 2006, 4:15pm
Gates 498
http://theory.stanford.edu/~aflb/
"Incentive-Based Ranking Mechanisms"
Rajat Bhattacharjee
Stanford
http://www.stanford.edu/~rajatb/
We consider ranking/recommendation systems based on user feedback. We
make a case for sharing with users the revenue generated by such
systems. Our main contribution is a mechanism which rewards useful
feedback and is resistant to selfish/malicious behavior (eg. click
spam). The mechanisms are designed to reward discovery of high quality
entities. Misclassified pages represent an arbitrage opportunity for
the discerning user. The mechanisms are simple enough for use with
existing technology. Joint work with Ashish Goel.
____________
FUNDAMENTAL THEMES IN NEUROSCIENCE SEMINAR
on Thursday, 30 November 2006, 4:15pm
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman
http://nis-seminars.stanford.edu/
"The brain's own cannabis - recent developments"
Brad Alger
Physiology and Psychiatry, University of Maryland
http://neuroscience.umaryland.edu/faculty/default.asp?ID=3
Marijuana and related cannabinoids affect the CNS by binding to CB1R
cannabinoid receptors. When released from cells in many areas of the
brain, including the hippocampus, cerebellum, striatum and neocortex,
endogenous cannabinoids (endocannabinoids) also activate CB1Rs.
Typically, endocannabinoids mediate retrograde signaling: they are
released from postsynaptic cells, travel backwards across the synapse,
and inhibit conventional transmitter release from nerve terminals. An
endocannabinoid, often 2-arachidonyl glycerol, 2-AG, is released
following an influx of Ca2+ into principal cells, or by activation of
mGluRs or mAChRs on the principal cells. The most prominent
endocannabinoid-mediated actions in the hippocampus are exerted on
GABAergic interneurons. Short-term suppression of inhibition is
initiated by depolarization-induced Ca2+ influx (DSI), or relatively
brief activation of the G-protein coupled receptors. Long-term
depression of inhibition (iLTD) is caused by activation of mGluRs
lasting for minutes. This talk will focus on the initiation of
endocannabinoid actions by Ca2+, mGluRs and mAChRs. Particular
attention will be devoted to the mechanisms by which endocannabinoids
are mobilized and to the endocannabinoids as agents and subjects of
neuronal plasticity.
Recent Papers:
[1]Edwards, D.A., Kim, J. and Alger, B.E. (2006) Multiple mechanisms
of endocannabinoid response initiation in hippocampus. J.
Neurophysiol. 95:67-75.
http://nis-seminars.stanford.edu/reprints/Alger1.pdf
[2]Heinbockel, T., Brager, D.H., Reich, C.G., Zhao, J., Muralidharan,
S., Alger, B.E. and Kao, J.P. (2005) Endocannabinoid signaling
dynamics probed with optical tools. J. Neurosci. 25: 9449-9459.
http://nis-seminars.stanford.edu/reprints/Alger2.pdf
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Friday, 1 December 2006, 11:00am
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
"In-network PCA and anomaly detection"
XuanLong Nguyen
UC Berkeley
We consider the problem of network anomaly detection in large
distributed systems. In this setting, Principal Component Analysis
(PCA) has been proposed as a method for discovering anomalies by
continuously tracking the projection of the data onto a residual
subspace. While successful empirically in moderate sized networks,
this approach has serious scalability limitations. To overcome these
limitations, we develop a PCA-based anomaly detector in which adaptive
local data filters send to a coordinator just enough data to enable
accurate global detection. Our method is based on a stochastic matrix
perturbation analysis that characterizes the tradeoff between the
accuracy of anomaly detection and the amount of data communicated over
the network. This is joint work with Ling Huang, Minos Garofalakis,
Michael I. Jordan, Anthony Joseph and Nina Taft.
About the Speaker: XuanLong Nguyen is a PhD candidate in EECS, UC
Berkeley. His research interests lie in machine learning,
computational statistics, optimization and their applications to
distributed/adaptive systems and sensor networks.
____________
ETHICS@NOON
on Friday, 1 December 2006, 12 noon
Bldg. 100:101K
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/EIS/lectures_ethics.html
"The Rational Student and How She Chooses"
John Perry
Philosophy, Stanford
Stanford students face many choices that have prudential and moral
dimensions, e.g., choosing a major, a career, a lifestyle, a life.
Professor Perry will discuss fallacies one should avoid in making such
decisions.
About the Speaker: John Perry is Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of
Philosophy at Stanford University. He has made significant
contributions to areas of philosophy, including logic, philosophy of
language, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind . In 2005, he became
co-host, with Kenneth Taylor, of Philosophy Talk, the radio program
that "questions everything... except your intelligence". He is also
part of the Center for the Study of Language and Information
(CSLI)--an independent research center founded in 1983. He is known
primarily for his work on situation semantics, reflexivity,
indexicality, and self-knowledge.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 1 December 2006, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B01 (HP Auditorium)
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
"Technology for Developing Regions"
Eric Brewer
UC Berkeley
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/
Moore's Law and the wave of technologies it enabled have led to
tremendous improvements in productivity and the quality of life in
industrialized nations. Yet, technology has had almost no effect on
the other five billion people on our planet. In this talk I argue that
decreasing costs of computing and wireless networking make this the
right time to spread the benefits of technology, and that the biggest
missing piece is a lack of focus on the problems that matter. After
covering some example applications that have shown very high impact, I
take an early look at the research agenda and present some our own
preliminary results, including the use of novel low-cost telemedicine
to improve the vision of real people. Our technology supports over
2000 examinations per month in the initial pilot. My goal is to
convince EECS researchers that technology for developing regions is an
important and viable research topic.
About the Speaker: Eric Brewer focuses on all aspects of
Internet-based systems, including technology, strategy, and
government. As a researcher, he has led projects on scalable servers,
search engines, network infrastructure, sensor networks, and
security. His current focus in (high) technology for developing
regions, with projects in Cambodia, India, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Rwanda
and Bangladesh, and including communications, health, education, and
e-government. In 1996, he co-founded Inktomi Corporation with a
Berkeley grad student based on their research prototype, and helped
lead it onto the Nasdaq 100 before it was bought by Yahoo! in March
2003. In 2000, he founded the Federal Search Foundation, a 501-3(c)
organization focused on improving consumer access to government
information. Working with President Clinton, Dr. Brewer helped to
create FirstGov.gov <http://www.firstgov.gov>, the official portal of
the Federal government, which launched in September 2000. He was named
a "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum, by the
Industry Standard as the "most influential person on the architecture
of the Internet", by InfoWorld as one of their top ten innovators, and
by Forbes as one of their 12 "e-mavericks", for which he appeared on
the cover.
____________
BERKELEY INFORMATION ACCESS SEMINAR
on Friday, 1 December 2006, 3:00pm - 5:00pm
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is296a-1/f06/schedule.html
"Math People, a Distributed Name Authority System"
Jim Pitman
Math & Statistics, Berkeley
Math People is a Web 2.0 application which leverages multiple sources
of personal name data to provide a distributed name authority system
for people in the mathematical sciences. For users browsing a suitable
webpage related to mathematical science, the system will provide links
back to a name server which will match names and identifiers in the
text and url of the page with name and identifier data gleaned from
various sources including homepages and open access digital
repositories, to provide authoritative links to these sources whenever
possible. The system also allows authorized users to make
identifications and disambiguate the name data.
It is designed to be an open navigation system to allow users to pass
through the walls which currently separate various information
resources. If successful in achieving this purpose in mathematical
sciences, there appears to be no obstacle to propagation of the system
to provide a distributed name authority network spanning any branch of
human knowledge with enough people and professional organizations
willing to support it.
The proposed business model for long term maintenance of the system is
that data providers with adequate financial resources support the
system to enhance the appeal to users of their electronic offerings,
with either open or gated access: with a small tax on that income from
gated resources to support the linking infrastructure. In determining
the extent of its support of such an open system, each data provider
will have to balance its interest in the open flow of academic
information against its instinct to keep users away from competing
sites, or to restrict navigation by a closed linking system such as
CrossRef which does not acknowledge open access digital repositories
or professional homepages. For more see
http://bibserver.berkeley.edu/projects/mathpeople.html
About the Speaker: Jim Pitman is Professor of Statistics and
Mathematics at U.C. Berkeley, and President of the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics http://imstat.org/ . Over the last few years he
has been working towards improving the quality and quantity of open
access content in the mathematical sciences, by promoting and
launching open access journals for expository and survey material, and
by creating bibliographic software to encourage distributed
alternatives to centrally controlled indexing systems. More at
http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/users/pitman/
____________
LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 1 December 2006, 3:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
"Design Choices in Computer Models of Human Sentence Comprehension"
John Hale
Michigan State University
The relationship between grammar and language behavior is not entirely
clear-cut. One classic view (Chomsky 65, Bresnan & Kaplan 82, Stabler
84, Steedman 89) holds that grammars specify a time-independent body
of knowledge, one that is deployed on-line by a processing mechanism.
Determining the computational properties of this mechanism is thus a
central problem in cognitive science.
This talk demonstrates an analytical approach to this problem that
divides the job up into three parts:
parser = control * memory * grammar
Time-dependent sentence processing predictions then follow
mechanically from the conjunction of assumptions about each of the
three parts (cf. Kaplan 72).Certain combinations accord with known
phenomena and suggest new experimental directions. But more broadly
the approach offers an explicit, positive proposal about how human
sentence comprehension works and the role grammar plays in it.
____________
CS528: BROAD AREA COLLOQUIUM
on Monday, 4 December 2006, 4:15pm - 5:30pm
Hewlett Teaching Center 200
http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs528/
"Modeling with Point Samples"
Markus Gross
Computer Graphics Laboratory, ETH Zurich
In recent years, point primitives have received a growing attention in
graphics and modeling. There are two main reasons for this new
interest in points: On one hand, we have witnessed a dramatic increase
in the polygonal complexity of computer graphics models. The overhead
of managing, processing, and manipulating very large polygonal meshes
has led researchers to question the future utility of polygons as a
fundamental modeling primitive. On the other hand, modern 3D digital
photography and 3D scanning systems facilitate the ready acquisition
of complex, real-world objects. These techniques generate huge volumes
of point samples and create the need for advanced digital processing
of points. In this talk I will discuss the usefulness of sample-based
representations for geometric and physically-based modeling. The first
part of the talk is devoted to the general utility of points for
geometric and graphics modeling. I will present an overview of the
main research results in this area. Concepts for the representation of
point sampled shapes will be addressed, as well as methods for the
interactive modeling of point clouds. In addition, I will focus on
data filtering algorithms as well as on digital geometry processing
and compression of point data. In the second part of the talk I will
address the more general issue of utilizing physically-based
simulation in the interactive modeling process in order to create more
intuitive modeling metaphors. I will use sample-based and meshless
representations as an example and demonstrate their potential to
simulate a wide range of real-world materials at interactive rates.
The presented methods include real-time volumetric deformations as
well as thin shells and approaches based on geometric shape matching.
The talk will end with a critical discussion of the pros and cons of
point sampled representations and the interplay of physical simulation
and geometry processing.
About the Speaker: Dr. Gross is a professor of computer science, chair
of the institute of computational science, and director of the
Computer Graphics Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (ETH) in Zurich. He received a Master of Science in
electrical and computer engineering and a PhD in computer graphics and
image analysis, both from the University of Saarbrucken, Germany. From
1990 to 1994, Gross worked for the Computer Graphics Center in
Darmstadt, where he established and directed the Visual Computing
Group. His research interests include point-based graphics,
physically-based modeling, multiresolution analysis, and virtual
reality. He has published more than 130 scientific papers on computer
graphics and scientific visualization, and he authored the book
"Visual Computing", Springer, 1994. He holds various patents on core
graphics and visualization technologies. Gross has taught courses at
major graphics conferences including ACM SIGGRAPH, IEEE Visualization,
and Eurographics. He serves as a member of international program
committees of many graphics conferences and on the editorial board of
various scientific journals. Gross was a papers co-chair of the IEEE
Visualization '99, the Eurographics 2000, and the IEEE Visualization
2002 conferences. He was chair of the papers committee of ACM SIGGRAPH
2005. Dr. Gross is a senior member of IEEE, a member of the IEEE
Computer Society, a member of ACM and ACM Siggraph, and a fellow of
the Eurographics Association. From 2002-2006 he was a member of the
ETH research commission. Dr. Gross serves in board positions of a
number of international research institutes, societies and government
organizations. He is chair of the software technical advisory
committee of Ageia Corporation. Gross co-founded Cyfex, Novodex, and
LiberoVision.
____________
BERKELEY CENTER FOR STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION
on Tuesday, 5 December 2006, 12 noon
CSHE Library, South Hall Annex (Berkeley)
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/events/
"From Coherence to Differentiation: Understanding (Changes in) the
European Area for Higher Education and Research"
Wim Weymans
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Leuven
http://soc.kuleuven.be/pol/pol_denken/en/staff/weymans.php
Although the creation of a so-called common European "area" for
research and higher education is currently a central European policy
goal, few people know what such an area entails. This paper will argue
that there are at least three different ways to create this area: by
adopting common standards, by collaborating, or by creating new
institutions. It will demonstrate that, despite their differences,
these three ways are all aiming at creating a European space by
essentially increasing coherence and cohesion between universities.
Yet, this paper will go further to defend the thesis that this
underlying model of coherence and cohesion is currently being
challenged by a new paradigm that wants to create a competitive
European research and education space by increasing differentiation
between universities. This paper ends by trying to anticipate possible
problems that this recent shift towards differentiation may cause.
About the Speaker: Wim Weymans is a postdoctoral visiting Fulbright
scholar (Fall 2006) at the Department of History and at the Center for
Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley. He studied in Leuven,
Koeln, and Cambridge and obtained his Ph.D. in 2005. Research topics
include contemporary French (political) theory, the future of public
institutions and, more recently, European higher education policy.
____________
SEMANTIC WEB SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 6 December 2006, 12:15pm
Gates 2A open space
"Inconsistency is the Norm"
Carl Hewitt
MIT EECS (emeritus)
Inconsistency is the norm for large-scale human-interaction
information systems. The experience (e.g. Microsoft, the US
government, IBM, etc.) is that inconsistencies (e.g. among
implementations, documentation, and use cases) are pervasive and
despite enormous expense have not been eliminated.
Standard mathematical logic has the problem that from inconsistent
information, any conclusion whatsoever can be drawn, e.g., "The moon is made
of green cheese." However, our society is increasingly dependent on these
large-scale software systems and we need to be able to reason about them.
In fact professionals in our society reason about these inconsistent systems
all the time. So evidently they are not bound by classical mathematical
logic.
This paper presents Direct Logic for formalizing reasoning more safely
about large-scale human-interaction software systems with their
pervasive inconsistencies. Direct Logic is a restriction of classical
logic that limits the use of indirect proof and the introduction of
irrelevances. Apart from these mild restrictions it allows as much
natural reasoning as possible. Direct Logic provides for increased
safety in reasoning about large software systems because (unlike
classical logic) irrelevances such as "The moon is made of green
cheese." cannot be inferred directly from an inconsistency.
Consequently inconsistent theories in Direct Logic are not made
trivial by being able to deduce every sentence from a single
inconsistency. Such possibly inconsistent theories are called
paraconsistent in the literature.
Goedel first formalized and proved that it is not possible to decide
all mathematical questions by inference in his 1st incompleteness
theorem. However, the incompleteness theorem (as generalized by
Rosser) relies on the assumption of consistency! This paper proves a
generalization of the Goedel/Rosser incompleteness theorem: a
nontrivial paraconsistent theory is incomplete.
What are the implications of pervasive inconsistency for Artificial
Intelligence, Multi-Agent and Multi-Agency Systems, and Software
Engineering? In particular what are the implications for Tony Hoare's
Verifying Compiler Grand Challenge proposal?
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 7 December 2006, 12 noon - 1:00pm
Cordura Hall 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
"Conceptic : a physic of imagination"
Idriss Aberkane
Ecole Normale Superieure
Interests of developing a precise concept theory concern at least
philosophy, mathematics, logic, and cognitive science. It is therefore
not surprising that concept theories have been considered, most
notably by Kant, Hilbert, Godel, and Varela. For the cognitive
scientist the main issues may be some approaches to the following
questions:
- what does human imagination have access to?
. Can a human being only understand the way she thinks?
. How narrow is our imagination, and why?
- how are ideas connected to each other?
. Is a Genius idea nothing more than a very unlikely idea?
. Are there some metastable and some "too stable" ideas?
. To what extent can culture avoid the biological constraints
of our creativity?
. To what extent have culture and biology shaped our history of
sciences?
My talk will mainly introduce and develop the notion of the conceptic
universe in order to suggest some modest approaches to these questions.
____________
SILICON VALLEY SHANNON LECTURE
on Thursday, 7 December 2006, 7:30pm
Bldg. 380:380C
http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/~tylin/ieeesilicon/
"Trustworthy Information Technology A Myth or an Enabler"
Roger R. Schell
Aesec Corporation
Viable human societies in general and businesses in particular have
always required trust. Our dramatically growing dependence on
information systems inescapably allocate more and more of this trust
from humans to technology. Unfortunately, both accumulated experience
and a growing body of expert opinion increasingly call into serious
question whether it is responsible to place substantial trust in this
technology at all, especially in the face of professional attacks. The
good news is that the state of the science of information security is
astonishingly rich with solutions and tools to incrementally and
selectively solve the hard problems. The bad news is that the state of
the actual application of science, and the general knowledge and
understanding of the existing science, is lamentably poor. The
challenge for scholars and practitioners is to aggressively work to
remedy this before our professional efforts to expand the reach of
technology becomes a recipe for disaster.
About the Speaker. Roger R. Schell is co-founder and President of
Aesec Corporation, a new company focused on verifiably secure
platforms for secure, reliable e-business. He is internationally
recognized as a major contributor to the advancement of computer
security concepts and the overall definition of network security. At
Novell, he led their Class C2 network evaluation and managed
development of product security. He was VP for Engineering at Gemini
Computers where he developed their highly secure (Class A1) commercial
product. He served as the founding Deputy Director of the National
Computer Security Center, which he grew into a respected organization
of more than 150 security professionals. For his work there he is
widely regarded as the father of the Trusted Computer System
Evaluation Criteria (the Orange Book), which has been the most widely
used international security standard for computers and networks.
Dr. Schell originated several key modern security design and
evaluation techniques and holds patents in cryptography and
authentication. He participated in sponsored tiger team penetration
tests of several commercial and security enhanced operating systems
and networks for various government activities including the Defense
Intelligence Agency, the U. S. Air Force, the Office of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, and the Central Intelligence Agency. He has more than
60 publications, and was Associate Professor of Computer Science at
the Naval Postgraduate School. The NIST and NSA recognized him with
the 1991 National Computer System Security Award, the nation's highest
honor in the computer security field. Dr. Schell is a retired USAF
Colonel. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the MIT, an
M.S.E.E. from Washington State, and a B.S.E.E. from Montana State.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 8 December 2006, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B01 (HP Auditorium)
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
"Koala: End user programming on the web"
Tessa Lau, Allen Cypher
IBM Almaden Research Center
http://tlau.org/
http://www.acypher.com/
We have developed a system called Koala that enables users to record
their actions in a web browser, play them back to automate those
actions, and publish them on a wiki to share with a community. Within
a corporation or other community, Koala acts as a "wikipedia of how-to
knowledge". For instance, when one person figures out how to fill in
all of the corporate purchasing codes and customer numbers to purchase
a flat panel display, that person's colleagues can play back the
recorded actions to purchase a monitor themselves.
Koala records actions as commands in plain English, using the textual
labels that appear on a web page. When it interprets written commands
in order to perform them, it loosely matches the words in the command
with the words on the web page. As a result, Koala's language is
largely understandable by both humans and Koala: People can freely
write and edit commands without worrying about a rigid syntax, and
instructions written for a person are often executable by Koala.
We will demonstrate the program, show how it combines programming by
demonstration with social networks, describe various domains where we
hope to apply Koala, and discuss our plans for development and
research.
About the Speakers: Tessa Lau is a Research Staff Member at IBM's
Almaden Research Center. She completed her Ph.D. in computer science
at the University of Washington in 2001. Her research goal is to give
people tools to improve their productivity, enhance their creativity,
and make them more effective. She is interested in information
management, particularly personal information, and how people interact
with and customize their working environment. She has done significant
work in the area of programming by demonstration, giving end users the
ability to automate repetitive tasks simply by showing the system how
to perform the task a few times. More generally, she is interested in
finding patterns in human behavior and human-centric information and
building tools that exploit these patterns to enable people to do more
with less work.
Allen Cypher is a Research Staff Member at IBM's Almaden Research
Center. His main research interests are programming by demonstration
and end-user programming -- giving all computer users capabilities
that have traditionally belonged to programmers. Allen is a
co-inventor of Stagecast Creator -- a program that enables children to
create their own games and simulations and publish them on the Web. He
is the editor of Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration. He
created the Eager program, which was one of the first intelligent
agents. Eager constantly monitored a user's actions on the computer,
and when it detected a repetitive activity, it would write a program
to perform that activity automatically. He received a B.A. in
mathematics from Princeton University in 1975, a Ph.D. in computer
science from Yale University in 1980, and spent several years as a
post-doc in cognitive science at the University of California, San
Diego.
____________
BERKELEY CENTER FOR STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION
on Friday, 8 December 2006, 1:00pm
Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall (Berkeley)
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/events/
"Governing the Academy: Who's the Boss?"
A critical examination of the governance of the University of
California and the academy generally in the context of major issues
facing higher education, such as funding, access, recruitment and
retention, and political legitimacy.
Who governs the modern university and who should govern it? What
should be the relationships among the major stakeholders:
administration, faculty, students, alumni, taxpayers and their
representatives? What should be the relationship of the central
administration and individual campus at a multi-campus university like
UC and are the prevailing relationships still appropriate given the
changed structure of funding?
Confirmed participants include:
William Bagley, former member, Board of Regents, UC
Steven Brint, Professor, Sociology, UC Riverside
Bruce Cain, University of California, Washington Center
Jack Citrin, Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley
Lawrence Coleman, Vice Provost, Research, and former Academic Senate chair, UC
John Douglass, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley
Tim Gage, former director, California Department of Finance
Donald Gerth, President Emeritus, CSU, Sacramento
Judson King, Director, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley
Velma Montoya, former member, Board of Regents, UC
Karl S. Pister, former chancellor, UC Santa Cruz
Lawrence H. Pitts, former chair, Academic Council, UC San Francisco
William Zumeta, Professor, Public Affairs/Educational Leadership and
Policy Studies, University of Washington
____________
BERKELEY INFORMATION ACCESS SEMINAR
on Friday, 8 December 2006, 3:00pm - 5:00pm
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is296a-1/f06/schedule.html
"Progress Report: Education in the virtual world"
Alexis Dailey
The virtual world called Second Life is quickly becoming a platform
for a wide range of innovative online experience. Over the past
semester Alex Dailey has been working with the California Digital
Library and UC Office of the President to explore how this space is
being used in higher education. He will report on his survey of the
organizations and the kinds of learning spaces that are emerging
in-world.
"Making Digital Preservation Policy: the National Perspective"
Paul Courant
University of Michigan
Abby Smith
Historian and Consulting Analyst
Abby Smith and Paul Courant, consultants to the Library of Congress's
national digital preservation program, will describe the Library's
development of a national strategy to preserve at-risk digital
content. Areas of particular focus are:
* the identification of content with long-term value;
* the allocation of roles and responsibilities among organizations
with interest in long-term access to that content;
* the economics of archiving;
* and a range of public policy issues, such as intellectual property,
that the Library is engaging.
About the Speakers: Paul N. Courant is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor,
Professor of Public Policy, Professor of Economics, and Faculty
Associate in the Institute for Social Research at the University of
Michigan. From 2002-2005 he served as Provost and Executive
Vice-President for Academic Affairs. More at
http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/faculty_staff/fac_dir.php
Abby Smith is a historian and consulting analyst interested in the
creation, preservation, and use of the cultural record in a variety of
media; the impact of digital information technologies on cultural
heritage institutions; and the evolving role of information as a
public good. She has worked at the Council on Library and Information
Resources (Washington, DC) and at the Library of Congress. She
currently works with the Library of Congress's National Digital
Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) in
development of its national strategy to identify, collect, and
preserve digital content of long-term value. (See "Distributed
Preservation from a National Perspective: NDIIPP at Mid-Point," in
D-LIB http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june06/smith/06smith.html
____________
END MATERIAL
The CSLI Calendar appears weekly on most Wednesdays throughout the
year. Announcements, abstracts, and other information to appear in
the Calendar should be submitted to the editor, who reserves the right
to decide what does or does not go in the calendar
mailto:incalendar@csli.stanford.edu
Requests to be added to the mailing list should be sent to
majordomo@csli.stanford.edu. With the lines in the body of the text
of either
subscribe csli-calendar
for the long form or
subscribe csli-short-calendar
for the short form (i.e., no abstracts). Problems with subscribing or
unsubscribing should be sent to
owner-csli-calendar@csli.stanford.edu.
The full current issue is at
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/Archive/calendar/current.shtml
and the archives at
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/Archive/calendar/
People on many of the CSLI computers can type 'help csli-calendar' to
see the current issue.
The CSLI Calendar is also posted each week to the su.events usenet
newsgroup (only available from computers on the Stanford network)
Information about CSLI's research program is available at
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
For maps to the Stanford University rooms see
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/locations.shtml
____________