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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 28 February 2007, vol. 22:24
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
______________________________________________________________________
28 February 2007 Stanford Vol. 22, No. 24
______________________________________________________________________
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 28 FEBRUARY 2007 TO 9 MARCH 2007
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/
6:00pm Berkeley History and Philosophy of Logic Mathematics, and Science
234 Moses (Berkeley) [28-Feb-07]
"What is Medieval Supposition Theory?"
Terrence Parsons
UCLA
http://hplms.berkeley.edu/
THURSDAY, 1 MARCH 2007
11:00am Berkeley Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience [1-Mar-07]
5101 Tolman (Berkeley)
"Sparse Representations for the Cocktail Party Problem"
Hiroki Asari
Watson School of Biological Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
http://redwood.berkeley.edu/seminars.php
Abstract below
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/
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 Santa Clara University CASPIA Talk [1-Mar-07]
EC 235 (Santa Clara University)
"Digital Forensics at NSA"
Ken Shotting
Technical Director, Digital Forensics Division, NSA
http://ia.engr.scu.edu/caspia.html
(this came in an email and isn't actually on the web page)
4:00pm UC Berkeley CIS Seminar [1-Mar-07]
Soda Hall 310 (UC Berkeley)
"Care and Feeding of the Internal Model"
Brent Gillespie
U. of Michigan
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~brentg/
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~feisha/cis-seminar
Abstract below
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
Abstract below
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
"Finding Conserved Structure in Protein Interaction Networks"
Richard Karp
UC Berkeley
http://isl.stanford.edu/colloquium.html
Abstract below
5:00pm UC Berkeley Linguistics Department Colloquium [1-Mar-07]
5101 Tolman (Berkeley)
"Linguistic knowledge is probabilistic: Evidence from Pronunciation"
Susanne Gahl
UIUC and University of Chicago
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/events/
Abstract below
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 noon Logic Seminar [2-Mar-07]
Bldg. 60:62J
"In Search of V"
Hugh Woodin
UC Berkeley
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
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. 60:61H (note room change)
"Background-Independence"
Gordon Belot
University of Pittsburgh, (Visiting CASBS)
http://www.pitt.edu/~philosop/people/belot.html
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
Abstract below
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
MONDAY, 5 MARCH 2007
3:00pm Stanford Software Seminar [5-Mar-07]
Gates 104
"JML: Expressive Modular Reasoning for Java"
Gary T. Leavens
Iowa State University
http://theory.stanford.edu/~mhn/sss.html
Abstract below
3:30pm Social Lab [5-Mar-07]
Bldg. 200:105
"Zimbardo's Lucifer"
Panel discussion
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_social.html
4:00pm UC Berkeley Ear Club [5-Mar-07]
3105 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Spectro-temporal processing of speech:
An information-theoretic approach"
Steve Greenberg
http://neuroscience.berkeley.edu/events/
4:10pm UC Berkeley Linguistics Department Colloquium [5-Mar-07]
182 Dwinelle (Berkeley)
"The Nature and Nurture of Grammar"
Daniel L. Everett
Illinois State University
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/events/
Abstract below
TUESDAY, 6 MARCH 2007
12:30pm UC Berkeley HWNI Talk [6-Mar-07]
3105 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"An Exploration of Visual Recognition"
Pietro Perona
Caltech
http://neuroscience.berkeley.edu/events/
3:00pm CSLI Tea [6-Mar-07]
Cordura Hall Greenhouse
3:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series [6-Mar-07]
EK255, SRI International
"Knowledge Representation in Practice:
Project Halo and the Semantic Web"
Mark Greaves
Vulcan, Inc. (and formerly CSLI)
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:15pm Logic Seminar [6-Mar-07]
Bldg. 380:380W (math corner)
"Fixed Point Semantics for Analog Networks"
Jeffery Zucker
Computing, McMaster University
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 7 MARCH 2007
12 noon UC Berkeley IPSR colloquium [7-Mar-07]
5101 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Mindfulness, Attention and Brain Networks"
Philippe Goldin
Stanford University
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/ipsr/colloquia.html
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium [7-Mar-07]
Jordan Hall 420:041
Title to be announced
Helen Neville
University of Oregon
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_colloquium.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium [7-Mar-07]
Gates B01 (HP Auditorium)
Title to be announced
Phillip Zimmerman (tentative)
Zfone
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
5:00pm Berkeley Faculty Research Lectures [7-Mar-07]
Bancroft Hotel, 2680 Bancroft Way (Berkeley)
"Why Flatland?"
Vaughan F. R. Jones
Mathematics, UC Berkeley
http://www.urel.berkeley.edu/faculty/
THURSDAY, 8 MARCH 2007
4:00pm PARC Forum [8-Mar-07]
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"An Introduction to Climate Change: a live, updated
presentation of the slideshow featured in the movie 'An
Inconvenient Truth'"
Joylette Portlock
The Climate Project
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum [8-Mar-07]
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
Title to be announced
Ivan Sag
Linguistics, Stanford
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
4:15pm Isaac Newton Lecture 3: "Turning Data Into Evidence" [8-Mar-07]
Bldg. 200:203
"Gaining Access: Using Seismology to Probe the Earth's Insides"
George Smith
Philosophy, Tufts University
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
Abstract below
4:15pm Information Systems Seminar [8-Mar-07]
Packard 101
Title to be announced
Terry Hwa
UCSD
http://isl.stanford.edu/colloquium.html
FRIDAY, 9 MARCH 2007
11:00am SRI CSL Seminar Series [9-Mar-07]
EK255, SRI International
"Monitoring-based Programming and Analysis"
Grigore Rosu
UIUC
http://fsl.cs.uiuc.edu/mop
http://www.csl.sri.com/
12 noon Logical Methods in the Humanities [9-Mar-07]
Bldg. 60:62J
"Goedel's Challenge (To Turing):
'The human mind infinitely surpasses any finite machine'"
Wilfried Sieg
Carnegie Mellon University
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [9-Mar-07]
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
"Interactive Diagrams of Complex 3D Objects"
Maneesh Agrawala
UC Berkeley
http://vis.berkeley.edu/~maneesh/
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
12:30pm UC Berkeley HWNI Student Seminar [9-Mar-07]
101 LSA (Berkeley)
"Mechanisms of non-visual ocular photoreception"
Russell Van Gelder
Washignton Univ. School of Medicine
http://neuroscience.berkeley.edu/events/
3:00pm Berkeley Information Access Seminar [9-Mar-07]
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
"Google Earth Symposium"
Ray Larson, Jeanette Zerneke & others
http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i296a-1/s07/schedule.html
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar [9-Mar-07]
Jordan Hall 420:050
"Thinking about thinking about thinking:
language, space, and folk psychology"
Steve Flusberg
"276 trigrams, ah, ah, ah: Counting the way towards Bayesian
connectionism with word segmentation"
Jeremy Glick
"Causality as context in implicit contingency learning"
Daniel Sternberg
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_cognitive.html
3:30pm Linguistics Department Colloquium [9-Mar-07]
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
"Getting to Optimality"
John J. McCarthy
University of Massachusetts Amherst
http://people.umass.edu/jjmccart/
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
Abstract below
4:00pm UC Berkeley Oxyopia Lecture [9-Mar-07]
489 Minor Hall (UC Berkeley)
"Eve's Legacy: Snakes and the Origins of Primates"
Lynne Isbell
Anthropology, UC Davis
http://optometry.berkeley.edu/opt_txtpp/ce/oxyopias.html
Abstract below
4:15pm CS545: InfoSeminar [9-Mar-07]
Gates B12
"Making Sense of the World, One Photo at a Time"
Mor Naaman
Yahoo! Research (Berkeley)
http://infolab.stanford.edu/infoseminar/
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.
____________
NOTE
Stanford laptop users who travel might be interested in the Tech
Briefing this Friday, 2 March 2007, from 2:00pm to 3:30pm.
"IT Services is rolling out a new remote access service, called iPass
Mobile Office. iPass provides global remote access via Wi-Fi, Hotel
Ethernet, and dial up connectivity from 161 countries around the world.
Marty Riley, from iPass, will talk about the iPass service and how it
addresses the increasingly complex needs of the mobile user."
Though August 2007 Stanford regular employees and faculty can try it
out for free during the trial program.
For more information on iPass, please visit http://ipass.stanford.edu/
____________
BERKELEY REDWOOD CENTER FOR THEORETICAL NEUROSCIENCE SEMINAR
on Thursday, 1 March 2007, 11:00am
5101 Tolman (Berkeley)
http://redwood.berkeley.edu/seminars.php
"Sparse Representations for the Cocktail Party Problem"
Hiroki Asari
Watson School of Biological Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
A striking feature of many sensory processing problems is that there
appear to be many more neurons engaged in the internal representations
of the signal than in its transduction. For example, humans have about
30,000 cochlear neurons, but at least a thousand times as many neurons
in the auditory cortex. Such apparently redundant internal
representations have sometimes been proposed as necessary to overcome
neuronal noise. We instead posit that they directly subserve
computations of interest. Here we provide an example of how sparse
overcomplete linear representations can directly solve difficult
acoustic signal processing problems, using as an example monaural
source separation using solely the cues provided by the differential
filtering imposed on a source by its path from its origin to the
cochlea (the head-related transfer function, or HRTF). In contrast to
much previous work, the HRTF is used here to separate auditory streams
rather than to localize them in space. The experimentally testable
predictions that arise from this model--- including a novel method for
estimating a neuron's optimal stimulus using data from a multi-neuron
recording experiment---are generic, and apply to a wide range of
sensory computations.
____________
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.
____________
ISAAC NEWTON LECTURE
on Thursday, 1 and 8 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.
____________
UC BERKELEY CIS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 1 March 2007, 4:00pm-5:00pm
Soda Hall 310 (UC Berkeley)
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~feisha/cis-seminar
"Care and Feeding of the Internal Model"
Brent Gillespie
U. of Michigan
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~brentg/
When considering how to build a machine that learns, a reasonable
starting point is to consider how the human brain and body learns,
especially learns to solve motor tasks.
We have been conducting human subject studies using haptic interface
to virtual environments to understand how the central nervous system
uses sensory input and past experience to solve manipulation tasks and
whether internal models might be involved. We ask subjects to drive
resonant systems, to balance underactuated and unstable systems, to
anticipate changes in load while objects are lifted, and to throw
virtual balls at targets. We meter the visual and haptic feedback, use
covert condition changes that check dependence on expectations, and
occasionally back-drive the human hand and arm to determine driving
point impedance. We have found evidence that internal models are used
for integration of visual and haptic feedback and for rapid tuning of
parameters within a feedforward controller. We have shown that
training in one task can lead to performance improvements in
parametrically related tasks even without specific practice. The most
reasonable explanation for such an outcome is a mental model that is
similarly parameterized. A memory map within the brain now seems less
likely. Interestingly, the concept of a model computing somewhere
inside the brain strikes most neuroscientists as ludicrous;
nevertheless, the idea is gaining hold in motor control. In addition
to reviewing results from our lab in this talk, I will survey the
field of human motor learning, and attempt to extract implications for
the field of machine learning.
____________
SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 1 March 2007, 4:15pm
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
Many domains in the real world are richly structured, containing a
diverse set of objects, related to each other in a variety of
ways. For example, a living cell contains a rich network of
interacting genes, that come together to perform key functions. A
robot scan of a physical environment contains classes of objects such
as people,vehicles, trees, or buildings, each of which might itself be
a structured object. However, most applications of machine learning
aim to simplify the problem by considering objects in the domain as
independent instances from a single distribution. In this talk, I aim
to show that one can gain from modeling both the dependencies arising
from the relationships between objects, and the rich structure of the
similarities and differences between them. The first part of the talk
will describe a rich language, based on probabilistic graphical
models, which allows us to model the rich network of dependencies
between related objects; we show how to learn such models from data
and how to use the learned model both for knowledge discovery and for
reasoning about new instances. The second part of the talk focuses on
methods for learning the similarities and differences between related
yet diverse classes of objects (such as different types of animals),
so as to allow information learned for one class to transfer to
another. I will describe applications of this framework to two main
tasks: modeling objects in the physical world, and recognizing them in
laser range scans and in images; and inferring a network of regulatory
interactions in a cell, and how this network is perturbed by
individual genotype.
About the Speaker: Daphne Koller received her BSc and MSc degrees from
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and her PhD from Stanford
University in 1993. After a two-year postdoc at Berkeley, she returned
to Stanford, where she is now an Associate Professor in the Computer
Science Department. Her main research interest is in creating
large-scale systems that reason and act under uncertainty, using
techniques from probability theory, decision theory and
economics. Daphne Koller is the author of over 100 refereed
publications, which have appeared in venues spanning Science, Nature
Genetics, the Journal of Games and Economic Behavior, and a variety of
conferences and journals in AI and Computer Science. She was the
co-chair of the UAI 2001 conference, and has served on numerous
program committees and as associate editor of the Journal of
Artificial Intelligence Research and of the Machine Learning
Journal. She was awarded the Arthur Samuel Thesis Award in 1994, the
Sloan Foundation Faculty Fellowship in 1996, the ONR Young
Investigator Award in 1998, the Presidential Early Career Award for
Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 1999, the IJCAI Computers and
Thought Award in 2001, the Cox Medal for excellence in fostering
undergraduate research at Stanford in 2003, and the MacArthur
Foundation Fellowship in 2004.
____________
INFORMATION SYSTEMS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 1 March 2007, 4:15pm-5:15pm
Packard 101
http://isl.stanford.edu/colloquium.html
"Finding Conserved Structure in Protein Interaction Networks"
Richard Karp
UC Berkeley
The machinery that carries out and regulates the functioning of cells
consists largely of networks of interacting proteins. Many protein
interaction networks are conserved - they have evolved over
evolutionary time and occur, in modified forms, in many organisms.
Using databases of protein-protein interactions in several species, we
have devised an efficient algorithm called {\it Match-and-Split} for
identifying plausible conserved networks and an efficient randomized
algorithm.for finding plausible signal transduction pathways in
humans, yeast, worm, fly and bacteria. These conserved structures
support prediction of previously unknown protein interactions and
functions across species. Several of our predictions have been
confirmed experimentally.
About the Speaker: Richard M. Karp was born in Boston, Massachusetts
on January 3, 1935. He attended Boston Latin School and Harvard
University, receiving the Ph.D. in 1959. From 1959 to 1968 he was a
member of the Mathematical Sciences Department at IBM Research. From
1968 to 1994 and from 1999 to the present he has been a Professor at
the University of California, Berkeley, where he held the Class of
1939 Chair and is currently a University Professor. From 1988 to 1995
and 1999 to the present he has been a Research Scientist at the
International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley. From 1995 to
1999 he was a Professor at the University of Washington. During the
1985-86 academic year he was the co-organizer of a Computational
Complexity Year at the Mathematical sciences research Institute in
Berkeley. During the 1999-2000 academic year he was the
Hewlett-Packard Visiting Professor at the Mathematical Sciences
Research Institute. The unifying theme in Karp's work has been the
study of combinatorial algorithms. His 1972 paper, "Reducibility Among
Combinatorial Problems," showed that many of the most commonly studied
combinatorial problems are NP-complete, and hence likely to be
intractable. Much of his work has concerned parallel algorithms, the
probabilistic analysis of combinatorial optimization algorithms and
the construction of randomized algorithms for combinatorial problems.
His current activities center around algorithmic methods in genomics
and computer networking. He has supervised thirty-six Ph.D.
dissertations. His honors and awards include: U.S. National Medal of
Science, Turing Award, Fulkerson Prize, Harvey Prize (Technion),
Centennial Medal (Harvard), Lanchester Prize, Von Neumann Theory
Prize, Von Neumann Lectureship, Distinguished Teaching Award
(Berkeley), Faculty Research Lecturer (Berkeley), Miller Research
Professor (Berkeley), Babbage Prize and eight honorary degrees. He is
a member of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and Engineering,
the American Philosophical Society and the French Academy of Sciences,
and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association
for Computing Machinery and the Institute for Operations Research and
Management Science.
____________
UC BERKELEY LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM
on Thursday, 1 March 2007, 5:00pm
5101 Tolman (Berkeley)
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/events/
"Linguistic knowledge is probabilistic: Evidence from Pronunciation"
Susanne Gahl
UIUC and University of Chicago
Most current models of linguistic competence make the simplifying
assumption that linguistic knowledge is categorical and static. A
contrasting view is that grammar and lexicon are probabilistic and
malleable. Interestingly, researchers on both sides of the debate have
pointed to the same observations about pronunciation in support of
their respective positions. For example, frequent words tend to
shorten, as do words that have a high probability of occurrence, given
neighboring words (cf. Jurafsky et al., 2001). This fact has been
cited as evidence for the claim that probabilities are part of
linguistic competence (e.g. Bybee, 2006) - as well as for the opposing
claim that probabilities are epiphenomenal and not knowledge in any
sense of the term (Newmeyer, 2006). The two sides of this debate have
shared two assumptions: (1) The shortening of frequent forms is the
result of fluency, or articulatory routinization; and (2)
Probabilistic pronunciation variation reflects very simple probability
models, such as those based on string frequencies and word-to-word or
segment-to-segment probabilities. In this talk, I argue that both of
these assumptions are false. I present experiments and corpus studies
suggesting that pronunciation variation reflects speakers knowledge of
probabilities associated with detailed syntactic and lexical
constructions. More broadly, I argue that structure and probabilities
jointly organize linguistic knowledge, and that grammar is
probabilistic and malleable throughout the life span.
____________
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.
____________
LOGIC SEMINAR
on Friday, 2 March 2007, 12 noon
Bldg. 60:62J
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.
____________
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
____________
PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 2 March 2007, 3:15pm
Building 60:61H (note unusual location)
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
"Background-Independence"
Gordon Belot
University of Pittsburgh, (Visiting CASBS)
http://www.pitt.edu/~philosop/people/belot.html
General relativity differs vastly from all theories that came before
it, and it is often said that a necessary condition for further
progress in the search for a quantum theory of gravity is to learn how
to incorporate into the fabric of physics the lessons implicit in
general relativity. One of the most revolutionary features of general
relativity is that it is background-independent: it treats space and
time as among the actors in the drama rather than as a fixed stage
upon which the play is set. Opinions have varied as to how the notion
of background-independence should be made precise.I will discuss a few
classic attempts in this direction that turn upon the notions of
general covariance, absoluteness, and relationalism, and argue that
none of them is adequate to our intuitions. I will suggest a
(deceptively simple) analysis of background independence: a theory is
fully background-independent if according to it, no two physical
possibilities correspond to the same spacetime geometry.
About the Speaker: Gordon Belot is associate professor of philosophy
at the University of Pittsburgh. Before joining the faculty at Pitt in
2004 he taught at Princeton and NYU. He has held fellowships from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the National Science
Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Center
for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His primary interests
are in philosophy of physics and philosophy of science. Several of his
recent papers are concerned with the interpretative, methodological,
and metaphysical implications of symmetry principles.
____________
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.
____________
STANFORD SOFTWARE SEMINAR
on Monday, 5 March 2007, 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Gates 104
http://theory.stanford.edu/~mhn/sss.html
"JML: Expressive Modular Reasoning for Java"
Gary T. Leavens
Iowa State University
The Java Modeling Language (JML) is used to specify, check, and verify
detailed designs for Java classes and interfaces. JML is an open,
international, collaborative effort among 20 research groups and
projects. This talk briefly describes background on the JML effort,
including its tool support for runtime assertion checking, extended
static checking, static verification, unit testing, etc.
Subtyping and dynamic dispatch in object-oriented languages pose a
challenge for modular reasoning, which is the key to practical tools.
Moreover, a specification language must be clear and expressive to be
used by practicing programmers. Modular reasoning is done by using
supertype abstraction -- reasoning based on static type information.
Expressiveness comes from a rich set of features for specifying
methods. This talk describes how specification inheritance in JML
forces behavioral subtyping, through a discussion of semantics and
examples. Behavioral subtyping, together with a set of methodological
restrictions, makes modular reasoning with supertype abstraction
valid.
This work was supported in part by NSF grant CCF-0429567. The work on
behavioral subtyping in particular is based on joint work with Prof.
David A. Naumann of Stevens University. See http://jmlspecs.org/ for
more information about JML.
____________
UC BERKELEY LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Monday, 5 March 2007, 4:00pm
182 Dwinelle (Berkeley)
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/events/
"The Nature and Nurture of Grammar"
Daniel L. Everett
Illinois State University
In this lecture I will discuss different ways in which culture,
grammar, and cognition can interact, focusing on ways in which culture
seems to have shaped grammar in the Amazonian language isolate,
Piraha. Data from new experiments on Piraha recursion, counting, and
other language-related cognitive tasks will be discussed. It is
suggested that Piraha (as many other languages) potentially presents
severe problems for a Chomskyan view of grammar at the same time that
it supports a Boasian view of language and grammar as significantly
shaped by culture.
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Tuesday, 6 March 2007, 3:00pm
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
"Knowledge Representation in Practice:
Project Halo and the Semantic Web"
Mark Greaves
Vulcan, Inc.
Vulcans Project Halo is an ambitious, multiyear research program to
develop a detailed scientific knowledge base that can answer AP-level
questions and provide explanations in a user-appropriate manner. It is
one of the largest AI research programs in the US today. Halos current
focus is building AI tools that allow graduate students in chemistry,
biology, and physics to author scientific knowledge adequate to answer
sophisticated natural-language questions without relying on trained
knowledge engineers. Halo researchers have been working to link
Semantic Web technology with the other knowledge representations in
the system. This talk will lay out Halos technologies and results to
date, and describe the technical and UI issues we have faced in
getting users to author scientific conceptual knowledge.
About the Speaker: Dr. Mark Greaves is currently Program Manager for
Knowledge Systems at Vulcan Inc., the private asset management company
for Paul Allen ( http://www.vulcan.com/ ). At Vulcan, he is sponsoring
advanced R&D in large knowledge bases and semantic web technologies,
including Project Halo ( http://www.projecthalo.com/ ). Formerly, Mark
served as Director of DARPAs Joint Logistics Technology Office, and as
Program Manager in DARPAs Information Exploitation Office. He managed
a variety of DARPA projects in semantics and distributed computing
technology, including the DAML project that funded the development of
the OWL, OWL/S, and SWRL languages. Prior to coming to DARPA, Mark
worked on natural language semantics and software agent technology at
the Mathematics and Computing Technology group of Boeing Phantom
Works.
____________
LOGIC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 6 March 2007, 4:15pm-5:30pm
Math Corner 380:380W
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
"Fixed Point Semantics for Analog Networks"
Jeffery Zucker
Computing, McMaster University
Around the mid-20th century, it seemed that analog computation had
been eclipsed by digital computation. However, in the last few
decades there has been a resurgence of interest in analog computing.
In the first part of this talk, I will discuss analog computation in
general, and try to explain this resurgence of interest.
In the second part, I will describe recent work by John Tucker
(Swansea) and myself on fixed point semantics for analog networks of
processors and channels containing streams of real numbers or other
continuous data.
____________
LOGICAL METHODS IN THE HUMANITIES
on Friday, 9 March 2007, 12 noon
Bldg. 60:62J
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
"Goedel's Challenge (To Turing):
'The human mind infinitely surpasses any finite machine'"
Wilfried Sieg
Carnegie Mellon University
The mathematical core of Goedel's philosophical challenge is
constituted by the incompleteness theorems when given in their "most
satisfactory form", i.e., as Goedel saw it, when formal theories are
characterized via Turing computability. As Turing machines codify
human mechanical procedures (carried out without appealing to higher
cognitive capacities) the question naturally arises, whether the
theorems justify the claim that the human mind or intellect has
mathematical abilities that are not shared by any machine. Turing
admits that steps of "intuition" are needed to transcend particular
formal theories; thus, there is a substantive point in contrasting
Turing's views with Goedel's assertion, "the human mind infinitely
surpasses any finite machine". I analyze a seemingly common core that
raises central issues in the foundations of mathematics and cognitive
science.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 9 March 2007, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
"Interactive Diagrams of Complex 3D Objects"
Maneesh Agrawala
UC Berkeley
http://vis.berkeley.edu/~maneesh/
Diagrams are essential for communicating the structure of complex 3D
objects such as mechanical assemblies, architectural environments and
biological organisms. Yet, creating illustrations that clearly depict
the structural relationships between the parts of such objects is not
an easy task. The primary problem is occlusion -- important interior
structures are often hidden by opaque exterior surfaces. Therefore,
illustrators use conventions such as exploded views, cutaways,
ghosting (i.e. varying the transparency of the occluder), and
hidden-object stylization (i.e. varying the rendering style of the
hidden object) to reduce or eliminate occlusions and reveal internal
parts. In this talk I'll present several interactive systems that are
based on these design conventions and make it easy to generate
illustrative diagrams of complex 3D objects.
About the Speaker: Maneesh Agrawala is Assistant Professor in the
Visualization Lab in the Department of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His
research interests are visualization, human computer interaction and
computer graphics. For the last several years he has been
investigating the techniques and principles graphic designers use to
improve the effectiveness of visualizations. The goals of this work
are to discover the cognitive design principles and then instantiate
them in automated design tools. This approach was demonstrated
LineDrive, an automated system that uses visual abstraction techniques
to create highly effective route maps. LineDrive maps are currently
available at Mappoint Driving Directions.
____________
LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 9 March 2007, 3:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
"Getting to Optimality"
John J. McCarthy
University of Massachusetts Amherst
http://people.umass.edu/jjmccart/
This talk will examine a modification of Optimality Theory that
incorporates something analogous to the derivations of rule-based
phonology. Classic OT's operational component GEN and its evaluative
component EVAL do not interact: GEN applies its operations freely to
create a wide variety of output candidates, and EVAL decides which one
is most harmonic (=optimal). In the modified theory, called harmonic
serialism (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004) or OT-CC (McCarthy 2007),
GEN applies an operation only when the result is more harmonic,
according to EVAL. From this it follows that, if several operations
are involved in getting from the underlying form to the surface, there
must be a path of monotonic harmonic improvement from one to the
other. If there isn't such a path, "Come to think of it, you can't get
there from here".
OT-CC has applications to the problem of phonological opacity, but
this talk will focus on its typological consequences. The requirement
of monotonic harmonic improvement is more restrictive than classic
OT's harmony requirement, and as a result the same constraint set
yields a more limited typology in OT-CC than in classic OT. This talk
will explore the typological differences.
____________
UC BERKELEY OXYOPIA LECTURE
on Friday, 9 March 2007, 4:00pm
489 Minor Hall (UC Berkeley)
http://optometry.berkeley.edu/opt_txtpp/ce/oxyopias.html
"Eve's Legacy: Snakes and the Origins of Primates"
Lynne Isbell
Anthropology, UC Davis
A gradient in brain size exists in mammals, with humans having much
larger brains than those of the great apes, who themselves have larger
brains than other primates. Primates as a whole have larger brains
than other mammals. About half of the neocortex in primates is
involved with vision, and indeed, their heavy reliance on vision is
what sets primates apart from other mammals. Thus, whatever it was
that led to our own huge brains started with the first primates. In
this talk, I will describe a new theory for the origin of those first
primates and their special brains. The Snake Detection theory proposes
that (1) the appearance of snakes may have initially led to the
expansion of mammalian visual systems, (2) the appearance of
constricting snakes about 100 million years ago may have led to the
origin of primates via expansion of the mammalian visual systems, and
(3) the appearance of venomous snakes about 60 million years ago may
have led to the origin of anthropoid primates and further expansion of
the primate visual systems. I also explain why other mammals did not
respond similarly to venomous snakes and why the visual systems of Old
World fruit bats are convergent with those of primates. I discuss the
myriad levels of evidence in support of this theory, including
biogeography, primate ecology, neurophysiology, and brain anatomy. The
echos of visual and behavioral adaptations to snakes are still present
in our brains today, including our fear of snakes and our remarkable
pre-conscious "blindsight" early warning system.
____________
CS545: INFOSEMINAR
on Friday, 9 March 2007, 4:15pm - 5:30pm
Gates B12
http://infolab.stanford.edu/infoseminar/
"Making Sense of the World, One Photo at a Time"
Mor Naaman
Yahoo! Research (Berkeley)
The availability of map interfaces and location-aware devices makes a
growing amount of unstructured, geo-referenced information available
on the Web. This type of information, in aggregate form, can help
understand data trends and features. In particular, over ten million
geo-referenced photos are now available on the photo-sharing website
Flickr. These photos are often associated with user-entered
unstructured text labels (i.e., tags) -- the first major collection of
its kind.
In this talk, I will discuss two approaches for extraction of
information (knowledge, if you will) from this metadata-rich yet
unstructured set of photos. The first approach is location-driven,
using the dataset to extract representative tags for each map region
and zoom level. An alternative approach takes a tag-centric view, and
attempts to extract place/event semantics for each tag by analyzing
the usage patterns of the tag in location and time.
Finally, I will describe and demonstrate two prototype applications
that make use of the extracted knowledge, ZoneTag and TagMaps, both
available from the Y!RB web site at http://whyrb.com/ .
____________
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____________