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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 21 February 2007, vol. 22:23
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
______________________________________________________________________
21 February 2007 Stanford Vol. 22, No. 23
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A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Cordura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4101
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
____________
ACTIVITIES FROM 21 FEBRUARY 2007 TO 2 MARCH 2007
WEDNESDAY, 21 FEBRUARY 2007
12 noon UC Berkeley IPSR colloquium [21-Feb-07]
5101 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Implicit Motivation to Control Prejudice"
Jack Glaser
Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/ipsr/colloquia.html
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium [21-Feb-07]
Jordan Hall 420:041
"Neurochemistry of the adaptive mind"
Roshan Cools
University of Cambridge
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_colloquium.html
4:10pm UC Berkeley Philosophy Department Colloquium [21-Feb-07]
Howison Philosophy Library, (305 Moses Hall) (Berkeley)
"The Ethics of Freedom"
T. M. Scanlon
Harvard University
http://philosophy.berkeley.edu/
4:15pm Morrison Institute Colloquium [21-Feb-07]
Herrin T-175
"Neuropsychiatric Genetics: Where Are We Headed?"
David Goldstein
Duke University
http://www.genome.duke.edu/people/faculty/goldstein
http://www.stanford.edu/group/morrinst/c.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium [21-Feb-07]
Gates B01 (HP Auditorium)
"A Fast Wait-Free Hash Table and (time permitting) Scaling Up
a Real Application on Azul"
Cliff Click
Azul Systems
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
6:30pm SF Bay ACM Talk [21-Feb-07]
Hewlett Packard, Pruneridge and Wolfe, Cupertino, Bldg. 48, Oak Room
"Technical Management of Software Development"
Alex Martelli
Google
http://sfbayacm.org/
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 22 FEBRUARY 2007
11:45pm Stanford Networking Seminar [22-Feb-07]
Gates 104
"Beyond Bloom Filters:
Approximate Representations of Concurrent State Machines"
Michael Mitzenmacher
Harvard University
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
12 noon CSLI CogLunch [22-Feb-07]
Nora Suppes Hall 103
"Technology Autism"
Rana el Kaliouby
MIT Media Lab
http://affect.media.mit.edu/people.php?id=kaliouby
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
(note location changed, the bldg is adjacent to Cordura)
Abstract below
12 noon Tech Express Brownbag [22-Feb-07]
Turing Auditorium, Polya Hall
"Daylight Saving Time and Sundial"
(Tech Express events are aimed at the Stanford Community)
http://techexpress.stanford.edu/
4:00pm PARC Forum [22-Feb-07]
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"The quality of information: High-tech supply and low-tech command"
Paul Duguid
UC Berkeley
http://www.parc.com/forum/
Abstract below
4:00pm UC Berkeley CIS Seminar [22-Feb-07]
Soda hall 306 (UC Berkeley)
Title to be announced
Yun Song
UC Davis
http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~yssong/
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~feisha/cis-seminar
4:10pm UC Berkeley Philosophy Department Colloquium [22-Feb-07]
Howison Philosophy Library, (305 Moses Hall) (Berkeley)
"Blame and Freedom"
T. M. Scanlon
Harvard University
http://philosophy.berkeley.edu/
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum [22-Feb-07]
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"Got Style? The Linguistic Construction of Social Meaning"
Penny Eckert
Linguistics, Stanford
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
Abstract below
4:15pm Isaac Newton Lecture 1: "Turning Data Into Evidence" [22-Feb-07]
Bldg. 200:203
"Closing the Loop: Testing Newtonian Gravity, Then and Now"
George Smith
Philosophy, Tufts University
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 2007
11:00am Berkeley Institute of Cognitive and Brain Seminar [23-Feb-07]
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
"The role of temporal fine structure in pitch perception and
speech perception"
Brian Moore
University of Cambridge
http://icbs.berkeley.edu/
Abstract below
12 noon Ethics@Noon [23-Feb-07]
Bldg. 60:61K
"The Coming Squeeze on Journalism Ethics:
Challenges in the Evolving Media Environment"
John McManus
Director, GradeTheNews.org
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/EIS/lectures_ethics.html
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [23-Feb-07]
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
"Why Phones are not Computers"
Scott Jenson
Google
http://hci.stanford.edu/seminar/
Abstract below
3:00pm Berkeley Information Access Seminar [23-Feb-07]
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
"Search in 2017"
Clifford Lynch
http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i296a-1/s07/schedule.html
Abstract below
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium [23-Feb-07]
Bldg. 60:61H
"When Does Equality Matter?"
Thomas Scanlon
Harvard University
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~phildept/scanlon.html
Co-Sponsor: Political Theory Workshop and Global Justice Workshop
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar [23-Feb-07]
Jordan Hall 420:050
"¿Se what? Agents, accidents and attributions in English
and Spanish"
Caitlin Fausey
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_cognitive.html
3:30pm Linguistics Department Colloquium [23-Feb-07]
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
"Voiceless, vowel-less syllables in Tashlhiyt Berber:
phonetic and phonological evidence"
Rachid Ridouane
University of Paris III
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
Abstract below
3:30pm SRI AI Seminar Series [23-Feb-07]
EL306, SRI International
"ONISTT Demo: Ontologies/Knowledge Bases, Analyzer, GUI"
Reg Ford and Daniel Elenius
ICS (CSL), SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:00pm UC Berkeley Oxyopia Lecture [23-Feb-07]
489 Minor Hall (UC Berkeley)
"The role of cortical noise in illusory motion and other brain
activities"
Donald Glaser
Physics and Neurobiology, UC Berkeley
http://optometry.berkeley.edu/opt_txtpp/ce/oxyopias.html
Abstract below
4:15pm CSLI Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation [23-Feb-07]
Cordura Hall 100
"Theory-based causal induction"
Tom Griffiths
Psychology and Program in Cognitive Science, UC Berkeley
http://cll.stanford.edu/scla/schedule.shtml
Abstract below
4:15pm CS545: InfoSeminar [23-Feb-07]
Gates B12
"Community Systems: The World Online"
Raghu Ramakrishnan
Yahoo! Research
http://research.yahoo.com/~ramakris/
http://infolab.stanford.edu/infoseminar/
Abstract below
MONDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2007
3:30pm Social Lab [26-Feb-07]
Bldg. 200:105
title to be announced
David Nussbaum
Psychology, Stanford
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_social.html
4:00pm UC Berkeley Ear Club [26-Feb-07]
3105 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Pitch discrimination interference (PDI):
Monaural and binaural pitches"
Hedwig Gockel
Cog/Brain Sci MRC, Cambridge, UK
http://ear.berkeley.edu/ear-club-schedule.html
4:10pm UC Berkeley Linguistics Department Colloquium [26-Feb-07]
182 Dwinelle (Berkeley)
"From first words to first metaphors:
Gesture is at the cutting edge of language learning"
Seyda Ozcaliskan
University of Chicago
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/events/
TUESDAY, 27 FEBRUARY 2007
3:00pm CSLI Tea [27-Feb-07]
Cordura Hall Greenhouse
3:40pm UC Berkeley Clinical Science Psychology Colloquium [27-Feb-07]
3105 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Mad, Bad or Dangerous?:
Studies of Socially Unacceptable Thoughts"
Sheila Woody
Psychology, University of British Columbia
http://psychology.berkeley.edu/news/colloquia.html
4:00pm Berkeley Working Group in the Philosophy of Mind [27-Feb-07]
5101 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Visual Space"
Gerald Westheimer
Neurobiology, UC Berkeley
http://vision.berkeley.edu/vsp/content/people/faculty/westheimer.html
http://neurophilosophy.berkeley.edu/meetings.htm
Abstract below
4:15pm Logical Methods in the Humanities [27-Feb-07]
Bldg. 380:380W (math corner)
"Problems and prospects for computer-checked formal proofs"
Jesse Alama
Stanford
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
4:30pm Stanford Security Seminar [27-Feb-07]
Gates 4B center area (opposite 490)
"Windows mechanisms for mitigating security vulnerabilities"
Ulfar Erlingsson
Microsoft Research, Silicon Valley
http://theory.stanford.edu/seclab/sem.html
WEDNESDAY, 28 FEBRUARY 2007
12 noon UC Berkeley IPSR colloquium [28-Feb-07]
5101 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Mechanisms of Monogamy in Titi Monkeys"
Sally Mendoza
UC Davis
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/ipsr/colloquia.html
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium [28-Feb-07]
Jordan Hall 420:041
Title to be announced
Franklin Chang
NTT Communications Sciences Laboratories, NTT Corp
http://www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/clip/member/chang/
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_colloquium.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium [28-Feb-07]
Gates B01 (HP Auditorium)
"An Ultrafast Optical Digital Technology Smart Light"
Alan Huang
Terabit Corporation
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
5:00pm Berkeley Faculty Research Lectures [28-Feb-07]
Bancroft Hotel (Berkeley)
"The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics"
Martin Jay
History, UC Berkeley
http://www.urel.berkeley.edu/faculty/
THURSDAY, 1 MARCH 2007
11:45pm Stanford Networking Seminar [1-Mar-07]
Gates 104
Title to be announced
Constantine Dovrolis
Georgia Institute of Technology
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~dovrolis/
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
12 noon CSLI CogLunch [1-Mar-07]
Cordura Hall 100
Title to be announced
Jay McClelland
Psychology, Stanford University
http://psychology.stanford.edu/~jlm/
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
4:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series [1-Mar-07]
EJ228, SRI International
"An IP Continuum for Adaptive Interface Design"
Jeff Pierce
IBM Almaden Research Center
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:00pm PARC Forum [1-Mar-07]
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"Transforming R&D To Win In Global Innovation Networks"
Navi Radjou
Vice President, Forrester Research
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:00pm UC Berkeley CIS Seminar [1-Mar-07]
Soda hall 310 (UC Berkeley)
Title to be announced
Brent Gillespie
U. of Michigan
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~brentg/
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~feisha/cis-seminar
4:00pm UC Berkeley Oxyopia Lecture [1-Mar-07]
489 Minor Hall (UC Berkeley)
"The Evolution of Human Color Vision"
Jeremy Nathans
Molecular Biology and Genetics, John Hopkins University
http://optometry.berkeley.edu/opt_txtpp/ce/oxyopias.html
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum [1-Mar-07]
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"Probabilistic Models for Structured Domains: From Cells to Bodies"
Daphne Koller
Computer Science, Stanford
http://robotics.stanford.edu/~koller/bio.html
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
4:15pm Isaac Newton Lecture 2: "Turning Data Into Evidence" [1-Mar-07]
Bldg. 200:203
"Getting Started: Building Theories from Working Hypotheses"
George Smith
Philosophy, Tufts University
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
Abstract below
4:15pm Information Systems Seminar [1-Mar-07]
Packard 101
Title to be announced
Richard Karp
UC Berkeley
http://isl.stanford.edu/colloquium.html
5:00pm UC Berkeley Linguistics Department Colloquium [1-Mar-07]
182 Dwinelle (Berkeley)
Title to be announced
Susanne Gahl
University of Chicago
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/events/
FRIDAY, 2 MARCH 2007
11:00am Berkeley Institute of Cognitive and Brain Seminar [2-Mar-07]
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
"A Natural-Language-Based Computational Theory of Perceptions (CTP)"
Lotfi Zadeh
UC Berkeley
http://icbs.berkeley.edu/
Abstract below
12 noon Ethics@Noon [2-Mar-07]
Bldg. 60:61K
"Medicine, Industry and the Public Trust"
Phillip Pizzo
Dean of the Medical School
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/EIS/lectures_ethics.html
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [2-Mar-07]
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
"Better Game Characters by Design"
Katherine Isbister
Rensselaer Polytechnic
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:00pm Berkeley Information Access Seminar [2-Mar-07]
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
"Architectures for Collaboration: New Directions for Digital Libraries"
Peter Brantley
new Director of the Digital Library Foundation
http://www.diglib.org/
http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i296a-1/s07/schedule.html
Abstract below
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium [2-Mar-07]
Bldg. 90:92Q
"Good and False"
Gordon Belot
University of Pittsburgh, (Visiting CASBS)
http://www.pitt.edu/~philosop/people/belot.html
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar [2-Mar-07]
Jordan Hall 420:050
"Attention, memory, and the medial temporal lobes"
Nicole Dudukovic Kuhl
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_cognitive.html
4:15pm CS545: InfoSeminar [2-Mar-07]
Gates B12
"Towards a Synopsis Warehouse"
Peter Haas
IBM Almaden Research
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/peterh/
http://infolab.stanford.edu/infoseminar/
Abstract below
4:15pm Mathematical Logic Seminar [2-Mar-07]
Bldg. 380:380W (math corner)
"In Search of V"
Hugh Woodin
UC Berkeley
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
____________
Stanford Blood Center: Shortage of all types. 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.
____________
SF BAY ACM TALK
on Wednesday, 21 February 2007, 6:30pm - 9:00pm
Hewlett Packard, Pruneridge and Wolfe, Cupertino, Bldg. 48, Oak Room
http://sfbayacm.org/
"Technical Management of Software Development"
Alex Martelli
Google
Managing software development projects can benefit from some
approaches that are rather different from most traditional management
techniques. Software developers operate with their own particular
mindset, culture and reward system. To motivate and inspire a top
programming team, one type of ideal manager is a technical peer who
can jump into the code and work hands-on, together with the
developers, to solve thorny problems. Such technical involvement can
keep a project moving forward and help the manager build credibility
and trust within the team.
In this talk, Alex Martelli discusses some common management myths,
and shares some immediately useful advice for anyone involved in
managing software development projects.
For those who want to read ahead (or listen ahead) an early version of
this talk can be found at http://osc.gigavox.com/shows/detail1372.html
. This talk will have plenty of new material: quoting Alex "I have
changed the talk itself quite a bit since that podcast was recorded in
July".
About the Speaker: Alex Martelli is Uber Technical Lead at Google,
Inc. Alex holds a laurea in Ingegneria Elettronica from Bologna
University. He wrote Python in a Nutshell, and also co-edited the
Python Cookbook. He's a member of the Python Software Foundation, and
won the 2002 Activators' Choice Award and the 2006 Frank Willison
Memorial Award.
Alex spent 8 years with IBM Research (earning three Outstanding
Technical Achievement Awards), 12 years as senior consultant (Win32,
Fortran, C, C++, Java, etc) at Think3 inc, and 3 years as a Python
freelance consultant (mostly for AB Strakt). He has taught
Programming, Numerical Computing, and Object Oriented Design at
Ferrara University and other venues.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 22 February 2007, 12 noon - 1:00pm
Nora Suppes Hall 103
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
"Technology Autism"
Rana el Kaliouby
MIT Media Lab
http://affect.media.mit.edu/people.php?id=kaliouby
People express affective-cognitive mental states, such as their level
of interest and concentration, all the time, even when interacting
with machines. These mental states shape the decisions that we make,
govern how we communicate with others, and affect our
performance. This talk will present the world's first affect-inference
wearable, and its application in measuring and augmenting
social-emotional communication of machines and people, including
individuals with autism.
About the Speaker: Rana el Kaliouby is a postdoctoral associate at
MIT's Media Laboratory, working on socially-smart wearables. Her
doctoral dissertation has been nominated to the British Computer
Society Distinguished Dissertation Award and has been featured in the
NewScientist, New York Times, the Boston Globe, CNET, Wired, and
Slashdot. She has taught at the American University in Cairo, and is
currently co-teaching the first Autism Theory and Technology course at
MIT. She is the 2006 recipient of the Global Women and Inventors
Network, Higher Education & Learning Institutes (Gold Award). El
Kaliouby holds a bachelor and masters degree in Computer Science from
the American University in Cairo, and a Ph.D. from the Computer
Laboratory, University of Cambridge.
____________
PARC FORUM
on Thursday, 22 February 2007, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
George Pake Auditorium, PARC
http://www.parc.com/forum/
"The quality of information: High-tech supply and low-tech command"
Paul Duguid
UC Berkeley
Can the seventeenth-century publishing business or the
nineteenth-century wine trade tell us much about twenty-first century
high-tech supply chains? In this talk, I will suggest that each of
these commercial sectors faced problematic questions about the quality
of information in disaggregated supply chains and each came up with
surprisingly similar solutions. A comparison suggests that as
vertically integrated organizations come under attack, "vertical
competition" may become a particularly salient feature of the
high-tech landscape, and that while much attention has focused on the
role of copyrights and patents in this landscape, trademarks may turn
out to be the more influential branch of the IP triad.
About the Speaker: Paul Duguid is adjunct professor at the School of
Information at the University of California, Berkeley and professorial
research fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. His current
research interests include the history and development of trademarks.
A more complete bio can found at http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~duguid/
____________
SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 22 February 2007, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
"Got Style? The Linguistic Construction of Social Meaning"
Penny Eckert
Linguistics, Stanford
http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/
While semanticists are busily trying to figure out how words mean,
there are sociolinguists who are out trying to figure out how the
sounds that make up those words mean. While phonemes themselves have
no meaning, variability in the pronunciation of phonemes can carry
social meaning. This talk will offer data from ethnographic work with
adolescents and preadolescents to show how phonological variation
serves as a resource to construct social meaning - how individual
variables carry meanings and how those meanings in turn interact to
constitute styles that index social categories.
____________
ISAAC NEWTON LECTURE
on Thursday, 22 February and 1 March 2007, 4:15pm-6:00pm
Bldg. 200:203
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/cisst/events.html
"Turning Data into Evidence:
Three lectures on the role of Theory in Science"
George Smith
Philosophy, Tufts University
Lecture 1: 22 February 2007
"Closing the Loop: Testing Newtonian Gravity, Then and Now"
Lecture 2: 1 March 2007
"Getting Started: Building Theories from Working Hypotheses"
Lecture 3: 8 March 2007
"Gaining Access: Using Seismology to Probe the Earth's Insides"
The view that all observation is theory-mediated and hence that
scientific evidence invariably rests on theoretical presuppositions
now seems beyond dispute. Many see the consequent apparent lack of
uncontestable grounding as raising deep questions about the nature and
limits of the knowledge achieved in the sciences, questions that are
sometimes taken to challenge all claims of science to epistemic
authority. The three lectures will concede from the outset that theory
of some sort is always needed to turn data into evidence and hence
that theory always enters constitutively into evidence. But they will
then argue that close analysis of historical practice in certain
representative areas of physics shows that the ways in which theory
has in fact entered into the process of marshalling evidence has not
undercut but actually strengthened their claim to epistemic authority.
About the Speaker: George E. Smith is widely recognized as a leading
authority on Isaac Newton, and, in particular, on Newton's
contributions to scientific methodology. Together with I. B. Cohen, he
edited The Cambridge Companion to Newton, where he has a central piece
on Newton's methodology. Aside from being Professor of Philosophy at
Tufts University, Smith has pursued a highly successful career as a
practicing mechanical engineer, and he Directed the Dibner Institute
for the History of Science and Technology at MIT from 2001-2006. The
three lectures will discuss a number of key developments in the
physical sciences, including gravitational research from Newton to
Einstein, J. J. Thomson's work on the electron at the end of the
nineteenth century, and twentieth-century seismological research into
the earth's interior, in order to depict the fine structure of
evidential reasoning in these sciences and thereby illustrate and
defend their epistemic authority. The lectures will be of wide
interest to historians, philosophers, pure and applied physicists,
engineers, and earth scientists, as well as to all those interested in
the question of the distinctive place of the "hard" sciences in
Western intellectual life.
____________
BERKELEY INSTITUTE OF COGNITIVE AND BRAIN SEMINAR
on Friday, 23 February 2007, 11:00am
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
http://icbs.berkeley.edu/
"The role of temporal fine structure in pitch perception and
speech perception"
Brian Moore
University of Cambridge
Broadband complex sounds such as music and speech are decomposed by
the cochlea into a series of narrowband signals, each corresponding to
the waveform at a specific place on the basilar membrane. Each signal
can be considered as composed of a "carrier" (the temporal fine
structure, TFS) with a fluctuating envelope, E. In the auditory
nerve, the TFS is represented in the detailed timing of neural
impulses (phase locking), while the E is represented by fluctuations
in firing rate over time. In this talk, I will review evidence
supporting the idea that TFS plays an important role in pitch
perception and in speech perception. TFS may be especially important
when listening to a target talker in the presence of one or more
background talkers. People with cochlear hearing loss have a reduced
ability to process TFS, and people with cochlear implants have almost
no ability to process TFS. This can partly account for their poor
pitch perception and poor abilities to understand speech when
background sounds are present.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 23 February 2007, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
"Why Phones are not Computers"
Scott Jenson
Google
http://www.jensondesign.com/scott.html
This talk will give a brief history of the mobile phone: how it grew
and blossomed as a communicator but has badly stumbled with the advent
of data services. The solution is to deeply understand the pros/cons
of phone capabilities and create new services that are not "scaled
down web designs."
About the Speaker: Scott Jenson is the lead mobile UI designer for
Google. Before joining Google he ran an independent design
consultancy, after having worked in the Apple Human Interface Group
and Newton Project, and serving as director of the Symbian Design Lab.
____________
BERKELEY INFORMATION ACCESS SEMINAR
on Friday, 23 February 2007, 3:00pm - 5:00pm
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i296a-1/s07/schedule.html
"Search in 2017"
Clifford Lynch
On Saturday, February 17, I had the chance to participate in a session
at the AAAS meeting speculating on what search would be like ten years
from now, in 2017. Preparing for this session, I realized that it had
been about a decade since I wrote an article titled "Searching the
Internet" for Scientific American and this led me to some reflection
about the last decade of search developments as well. At seminar this
week I'll summarize the observations from the AAAS panel, share my own
thinking about what we can learn from the past ten years and what the
next ten years may bring, highlight some open research problems, and
lead a discussion.
____________
LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 23 February 2007, 3:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
"Voiceless, vowel-less syllables in Tashlhiyt Berber:
phonetic and phonological evidence"
Rachid Ridouane
University of Paris III
http://ed268.univ-paris3.fr/lpp/?page=equipe/rachid_ridouane/
Different approaches of assigning syllable structure have in common
the fact that the distribution between nuclear and non-nuclear
syllable constituents is highly correlated with the difference between
vowels and consonants (Kenstowicz 1994). This correlation is not
absolute; witness the numerous cases, in different languages, where
consonants can occupy syllable nucleus positions (e.g. the /l/ in
English [bA.tl] "bottle", the /r/ in Czech in [br.no] "Brno", or the
/n/ in German [ha.bn] "to have"). Notice, however, that all these
nulcear consonants are sonorants. Because of their inherent
properties, these segments behave like vowels (they are produced with
spontaneous vocal-fold vibration and display a vowel-like acoustic
structure). The case of languages where any segment, including
voiceless obstruents, can form the syllable nuclei is far more
surprising. At least two such languages have been reported in
literature, the Salish language Nuxalk (Bella Coola) (Bagemihl 1991)
and a Tashlhiyt Berber language (Dell & Elmedlaoui 2002). In this
talk, I will deal with Tashlhiyt Berber and tackle the issue of the
uniqueness of the syllable structure of this language.
The syllable structure of Tashlhiyt Berber was initially described by
Dell and Elmedlaoui in two widely read studies (1985, 1988). This
syllable structure, usually cited as a typologically unique phenomenon
(e.g. Zec 1995), became a famous example in phonology, especially
since its use by Prince & Smolensky (1993) as a prime illustration of
Optimality Theory. The most striking and controversial examples, taken
as arguments in favor of this analysis, involve consonant-only words
(e.g. [tssrglttnt] "you closed them"). This claim is challenged by
different authors who argue that the alleged consonant-only sequences
are actually pronounced with epenthetic schwa vowels in the context of
the syllabic consonants (Coleman 1996, 1999, 2001, Louali & Puech
1996, 1999, 2000, Angoujard 1997). In this talk, I will try to
determine, based on phonetic and phonological data, whether, in
addition to /a/, /i/, and /u/, there is a fourth vocalic segment at
the level of phonetic and phonological representations that can act as
a syllable peak.
One particular aspect of this question concerns the laryngeal quality
(voiced or voiceless) of epenthetic vowels. In Tashlhiyt Berber, roots
and affixes may consist at the underlying level of consonants only;
when combined they can give rise to long sequences consisting of only
voiceless obstruents (e.g. /tkkst/ "you took off", /tftktstt/ "you
sprained it (fem)", /tsskSftstttfktstt/ "you dried it and you gave
it"). Acoustic, fiberscopic, and photoelectroglottographic data will
be presented showing that such words are genuinely voiceless and
deprived of schwa vowels which can act as syllable nuclei. In addition
to these phonetic data, two additional types of evidence will be
presented for the position that there are truly vowel-less syllables
in this language, metrics and an assibilation process. The argument,
based on versification, shows that voiceless obstruent-only syllables
of the type [tk] are treated in Tashlhiyt poetry as light syllables in
which the second consonant is a nucleus and not a coda. The second
type of evidence, based on the behaviour of dental stops vis-a-vis the
process of assibilation, shows that two consonants not separated at
the underlying level by one of the full vowels /a, i, u/ are adjacent
at the surface. To conclude, I will present results of a preliminary
study, based on electropalatographic data, in which I handle the issue
of the phonetic manifestations of consonant-only syllables in
Tashlhiyt Berber.
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Friday, 23 February 2007, 3:30pm - 4:30pm
EL306, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
"ONISTT Demo: Ontologies/Knowledge Bases, Analyzer, GUI"
Reg Ford and Daniel Elenius
ICS (CSL), SRI International
Note: this is the second of two related seminars. The first took place
on Friday, Feb. 16, same time and place.
This presentation gives a demo and explanatory presentation of recent
work of SRIs Open Netcentric Standards for Training and Testing
(ONISTT) project.
Introduction to the ONISTT ontologies (purposes, resources,
capabilities, assignments, etc). Demonstration of the Analyzer
generating thumbs up, thumbs down, and thumbs sideways on several
confederations proposed to perform specific training missions. The
ONISTT GUI (plugin to Protege). Some peeks at whats under the hood.
Some design decisions. Assessment of tools.
ONISTT is a cross-divisional project at SRI with the following
participants: ESD team: Dave Hanz, Dennis Holeman, Jonathan Solnit,
Mark Johnson, Reg Ford, Vicky Lamar ICS team: Daniel Elenius, David
Martin, Grit Denker, Guizhen Yang, Rukman Senanayake
ONISTT is an ongoing effort that builds on our expertise in the
domains of testing and training systems, semantic web and reasoning
technology. We believe that the technology can be successfully
applied to other domains and we are currently pursuing additional
funding opportunities. Parties interested in collaborating with us on
similar projects or who are interested in teaming with us to seek
funding, please contact David.Hanz@sri.com.
____________
UC BERKELEY OXYOPIA LECTURE
on Friday, 23 February 2007, 4:00pm
489 Minor Hall (UC Berkeley)
http://optometry.berkeley.edu/opt_txtpp/ce/oxyopias.html
"The role of cortical noise
in illusory motion and other brain activities"
Donald Glaser
Physics and Neurobiology, UC Berkeley
I will show some visual patterns that produce the perception of
illusory motion even though they are static or truly random and
contain no net real motion. I will demonstrate how a variety of
non-visual stimuli can change these percepts and discuss the notion of
stochastic resonance which predicts that there is an optimal level of
noise for optimal visual performance. Marijuana and red wine interfere
with these perceptions, presumable by lowering the internal noise
level or general arousal level. Tactile and other sensory systems also
respond best when there is an optimal level of tactile noise. I will
speculate that the brain controls the cortical noise level near this
optimal level just as it controls blood pressure, body temperature
etc. There are very recent physiological fMRI observations consistent
with these psychophysical observations. I will assume the implied
definition of noise in neuroscience as an irregular signal, usual seen
in patterns of neuronal firing, that is not correlated with any known
external stimulus.
____________
CSLI SEMINAR ON COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING AND ADAPTATION
on Friday, 23 February 2007, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
Cordura Hall 100
http://cll.stanford.edu/scla/schedule.shtml
"Theory-based causal induction"
Tom Griffiths
Psychology and Program in Cognitive Science, UC Berkeley
Methods for learning the structure of causal graphical models in
computer science have traditionally made little use of prior knowledge
or constraints on the set of hypotheses being considered. However,
recent work has begun to explore how such knowledge or constraints can
make the problem of structure learning more tractable. In this talk, I
will argue that the same notions are central to explaining how people
can infer causal relationships from small amounts of data. To this
end, I will outline an account of human causal induction that uses
"theory-based" Bayesian inference, where a causal theory generates a
hypothesis space of possible causal structures that are evaluated
using Bayes' rule. The relationship between theory and causal
structure is similar to the relationship between a generative grammar
and syntactic structures in linguistics, with Bayesian inference
providing a way to "parse" observed data using the constraints
provided by the theory. I will describe some experiments exploring the
predictions of this account, based on joint work with Josh Tenenbaum,
Dave Sobel, and Alison Gopnik.
____________
CS545: INFOSEMINAR
on Friday, 23 February 2007, 4:15pm - 5:30pm
Gates B12
http://infolab.stanford.edu/infoseminar/
"Community Systems: The World Online"
Raghu Ramakrishnan
Yahoo! Research
http://research.yahoo.com/~ramakris/
The Web is about you and me. Until now, for the most part, it has
denoted a corpus of information that we put online sometime in the
past, and the most celebrated Web application is keyword search over
this corpus. Sites such as del.icio.us, flickr, MySpace, Slashdot,
Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, and YouTube, which are driven by
user-generated content, are forcing us to rethink the Web--it is no
longer just a static repository of content; it is a medium that
connects us to each other. What are the ramifications of this
fundamental shift? What are the new challenges in supporting and
amplifying this shift?
About the Speaker: Raghu Ramakrishnan is VP and Research Fellow at
Yahoo! Research, where he heads the Community Systems group. He is on
leave from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is Professor
of Computer Sciences, and was founder and CTO of QUIQ, a company that
pioneered question-answering communities such as Yahoo! Answers, and
provided collaborative customer support for several companies,
including Compaq and Sun. His research is in the area of database
systems, with a focus on data retrieval, analysis, and mining. He has
developed scalable algorithms for clustering, decision-tree
construction, and itemset counting, and was among the first to
investigate mining of continuously evolving, stream data. His work on
query optimization and deductive databases has found its way into
several commercial database systems, and his work on extending SQL to
deal with queries over sequences has influenced the design of window
functions in SQL:1999. His paper on the Birch clustering algorithm
received the SIGMOD 10-Year Test-of-Time award, and he has written the
widely-used text "Database Management Systems" (WCB/McGraw-Hill, with
J. Gehrke), now in its third edition.
He is Chair of ACM SIGMOD, on the Board of Directors of ACM SIGKDD and
the Board of Trustees of the VLDB Endowment, and has served as
editor-in-chief of the Journal of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery,
associate editor of ACM Transactions on Database Systems, and the
Database area editor of the Journal of Logic Programming. Dr.
Ramakrishnan is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM), and has received several awards, including a Distinguished
Alumnus Award from IIT Madras, a Packard Foundation Fellowship, an NSF
Presidential Young Investigator Award, and an ACM SIGMOD Contributions
Award.
____________
BERKELEY WORKING GROUP IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
on Tuesday, 27 February 2007, 4:00pm - 5:30pm
5101 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
http://neurophilosophy.berkeley.edu/meetings.htm
"Visual Space"
Gerald Westheimer
Neurobiology, UC Berkeley
http://vision.berkeley.edu/vsp/content/people/faculty/westheimer.html
Gerald Westheimer will lead a discussion of the nature of visual
space, as seen from the perspective of philosophy, mathematics,
physics and psychology. Those interested might wish to look at his
chapter on "Geometry and Spatial Vision", from Seeing Spatial Form,
ed. M.R.M. Jenkin and H.R. Harris (Oxford, 2005), which he has
helpfully made available at
http://webfiles.berkeley.edu/gwestheimer/regchapt.html . Additionally,
he has suggested that his entry on "Visual Space", in the Oxford
Companion to the Mind (Oxford, 1986), might also be helpful.
____________
LOGICAL METHODS IN THE HUMANITIES
on Tuesday, 27 February 2007, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380W
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
"Problems and prospects for computer-checked formal proofs"
Jesse Alama
Stanford
Although it is undecidable whether a first-order formula is provable
in first-order logic, the problem of determining whether a finite
sequence of first-order formulas is a first-order deduction is
decidable. But the decidability of the correctness of a deduction
comes at too high of a cost: it takes too long to formalize an
argument in proof systems such as natural deduction of Hilbert-style
formalisms. In this talk I will discuss the MIZAR project, which aims
to formalize as much mathematics as possible in the MIZAR proof
language. The MIZAR language is close enough to mathematical
vernacular to express oneself fairly naturally, but it is still
restricted enough that one can check fairly quickly the correctness of
a proof expressed in the language. A goal of the MIZAR project is to
formalize as much mathematics as possible, and there have already been
a number of landmark results have been entered into the MIZAR system.
In this connection I will discuss my current work on Euler's
polyhedron formula ("V-E+F=2"), which is one of the outstanding
results of mathematics that has not yet been formalized. I will also
discuss some epistemological aspects of the enterprise of computer
proof-checking, such as whether a computer-checked formal proof can
give certain or near-certain knowledge of its conclusion or is more
securely known than any informal analogue of the formal proof.
Another subject worth investigating is the social nature of
mathematical knowledge, and what role humans have to play in a
mathematical practice that includes computer-checked proofs. Finally,
I will discuss the claim that set theory is a foundation for
mathematics and how that can be evaluated thanks to formalization
efforts such as MIZAR.
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Thursday, 1 March 2007, 4:00pm - 5:30pm
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
"An IP Continuum for Adaptive Interface Design"
Jeff Pierce
IBM Almaden Research Center
The promise of adaptive user interfaces is that they will provide a
flexible mechanism for systems to adapt to the needs of different
users for a variety of tasks. As we consider such systems a basic
trade-off arises between the responsibilities of the system and the
user. In this talk I will describe our initial work exploring a
continuum that expresses potential balances of proactivity between the
user and the system: what combinations of actions by those two could
be responsible for accomplishing a particular task. In addition to
describing the continuum, I will describe how a set of example
applications fit into it and discuss its implications. In particular,
our continuum provides a framework and vocabulary for discussing and
comparing adaptive interfaces. The continuum also provides directions
for future work by suggesting potential interfaces and identifying new
research directions, such as designing interfaces to maximize
effective feedback.
About the Speaker: Jeff Pierce is a research staff member in IBM
Research at the Almaden Research Center in the User-Focused Systems
(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. Among his other stellar accomplishments, he was selected as
Time magazines Person of the Year for 2006.
____________
BERKELEY INSTITUTE OF COGNITIVE AND BRAIN SEMINAR
on Friday, 2 March 2007, 11:00am
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
http://icbs.berkeley.edu/
"A Natural-Language-Based Computational Theory of Perceptions (CTP)"
Lotfi Zadeh
UC Berkeley
There is an enormous literature on perceptions. But what is not in
existence is a computational theory, that is, a theory in which
perceptions play the role of objects of computation. Such a theory,
CTP for short, is outlined in this lecture. The point of departure in
CTP is the observation that natural language is basically a system for
describing perceptions. In CTP, this observation serves as a basis for
equating a perception to its description in a natural language. It is
this equation that opens the door to construction of a computational
theory of perceptions. Perceptions are intrinsically imprecise.
Imprecision of perceptions is passed on to natural languages. Existing
natural processing techniques cannot deal with semantic imprecision of
natural languages. What is needed for this purpose is the concept of
Precisiated Natural Language (PNL). The centerpiece of PNL is the
concept of a generalized constraint. The calculus of generalized
constraints is the core of the computational theory of perceptions.
Humans have a remarkable capability to perform a wide variety of
physical and mental tasks, e.g., driving a car in city traffic,
without any measurement, based solely on perceptions. Mechanization of
such tools is one of the principal objectives of the computational
theory of perceptions.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 2 March 2007, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
"Better Game Characters by Design"
Katherine Isbister
Rensselaer Polytechnic
Increasingly, HCI practitioners are turning to digital games and other
leisure technologies for insights into how to approach design outside
the workplace and the office. Games themselves are currently engaged
in a major evolution, driven by growth in technical sophistication and
audience reach. One essential innovation games can bring to HCI
practice is the tremendous success of interactive characters in
games--both as player avatars, and as 'NPCs' (non- player characters).
In this session we'll examine the underlying psychological principles
that help to make the best game characters compelling to players.
Taking a psychological approach to understanding their design allows
us to extend the insights their designers have had into other
application areas in which social and emotional principles come into
play.
About the Speaker: Katherine Isbister is Director (and founder) of the
Games Research Lab and Program Chair of the HCI M.S. program at
Rensselaer (RPI). Before joining RPI's faculty, she developed and
taught a course at Stanford on the Design of Characters for Games. She
received her Ph.D. from Stanford, with a focus on using ideas from
social psychology to design better, more effective interactive
characters. Katherine's recently completed book--Better Game
Characters by Design: A Psychological Approach--was awarded 4.5 out of
5 "skunks" in a review in the October issue of Game Developer
magazine, and also nominated for a Frontline Award (given every year
to tools and books that help game developers do their jobs better and
more efficiently.) She has published in a wide variety of venues, and
given invited talks at research and academic venues including Sony
research labs in Japan, Banff Centre in Canada, IBM, Electronic Arts,
the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and others. In 1999
Isbister was chosen as one of MIT Technology Review's Young
Innovators, for her work on trans-cultural interface agents. More
information about her work is available at http://www.friendlymedia.org
____________
BERKELEY INFORMATION ACCESS SEMINAR
on Friday, 2 March 2007, 3:00pm - 5:00pm
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i296a-1/s07/schedule.html
"Architectures for Collaboration: New Directions for Digital Libraries"
Peter Brantley
new Director of the Digital Library Foundation
http://www.diglib.org/
I will discuss some of the issues that libraries should be addressing
in the coming years in a discussion of collaboration, new media, and
user participation.
About the Speaker: Peter Brantley is the new Director of the Digital
Library Federation, http://www.diglib.org/ , is a partnership
organization of 39 academic libraries and related organizations that
are pioneering the use of electronic-information technologies to
extend their collections and services. DLF provides leadership for
libraries by identifying standards and best practices for digital
collections and network access, coordinating research and development
in the libraries's use of technology, and fostering projects and
services that libraries need but cannot develop individually. See News
Release at Peter Brantley Appointed DLF Executive Director
http://www.diglib.org/news/pressrelease/PeterBrantleyPressRelease.pdf
____________
CS545: INFOSEMINAR
on Friday, 2 March 2007, 4:15pm - 5:30pm
Gates B12
http://infolab.stanford.edu/infoseminar/
"Towards a Synopsis Warehouse"
Peter Haas
IBM Almaden Research Center
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/peterh/
Data synopses are an essential ingredient of methods for fast
approximate analytical processing, interactive data exploration,
auditing, and automated metadata discovery. We consider the problem of
maintaining a warehouse of synposes that "shadows" a full-scale data
warehouse. Incoming data is decomposed into partitions, and a synopsis
is created for each partition. As the data partitions are rolled in
and out of the full-scale warehouse, the corresponding synopses are
rolled in and out of the synopsis warehouse. Synopses are combined as
needed to yield synopses of the corresponding combination of
partitions. This approach is efficient, allowing parallel processing,
as well as flexible. We discuss some recent work aimed at supporting a
warehouse of synopses. Our focus is on two types of synopses: uniform
random samples and synopses for estimating the number of distinct data
values in a partition. Our algorithms correct, improve, and extend
techniques such as classical reservoir and Bernoulli sampling, the
"concise" and "sample counting" schemes of Gibbons and Matias, and
various probabilistic-counting methods.
About the Speaker: Peter Haas has been a Research Staff Member at the
IBM Almaden Research Center since 1987, and is also a Consulting
Associate Professor in the Department of Management Science and
Engineering at Stanford University. He has received a number of awards
from both ACM SIGMOD and the IBM Research Division for his work on
sampling-based exploration of massive datasets, automated relationship
discovery in databases, query optimization methods, and technology for
autonomic computing. Many of his techniques have been incorporated
into IBM's DB2 database product. He has also developed theory and
methods for modelling and simulation of complex discrete-event
stochastic systems, and his monograph on stochastic Petri nets
(Springer, 2002) received an Outstanding Publication Award from the
INFORMS College on Simulation. He has served on numerous editorial
boards and program committees, and is the author of over 80 conference
publications, journal articles, and books.
____________
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC SEMINAR
on Friday, 2 March 2007, 4:15pm
Math Corner 380:380W
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
"In Search of V"
Hugh Woodin
UC Berkeley
There is now a web of conjectures which all suggest the same
thing--that there is a conception of the universe of sets which yields
both answers to all of the known unsolvable problems of set theory and
which is compatible with all axioms of strong infinity. I shall
discuss some of these conjectures and the prospects for proving them.
____________
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