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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 26 September 2007, vol. 23:4
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
______________________________________________________________________
26 SEPTEMBER 2007 Stanford Vol. 23, No. 4
______________________________________________________________________
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 26 SEPTEMBER 2007 TO 5 OCTOBER 2007
WEDNESDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2007
12 noon UC Berkeley IPSR colloquium [26-Sep-07]
5101 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Relationships Viewed in Terms of Behavioral Systems:
Attachment, Caregiving, and Sex"
Phillip Shaver
University of California, Davis
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/ipsr/colloquia.html
12:15pm Logical Methods in the Humanities [26-Sep-07]
Gates 2A
"The Logical Necessity of Inconsistency"
Carl Hewitt
MIT EECS (emeritus)
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium [26-Sep-07]
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
"The PeakStream Platform for Many-Core Computing"
Matthew Papakipos
Engineering Director, Google
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER 2007
12:45pm Center for Internet and Society Talk [27-Sep-07]
Law School 280A
"RIAA v. The People: Four Years and Counting"
Fred von Lohmann
Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF)
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
4:00pm Berkeley Future of Scholarly Communication Seminar [27-Sep-07]
CSHE Library, South Hall Annex (Berkeley)
"A Library in a Green Field: Creating a New Research Library
in and for the Twenty-First Century"
Donald A. Barclay
Deputy University Librarian, UC Merced
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/events/
FRIDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER 2007
12 noon Speech Lunch [28-Sep-07]
Phonetics Lab
"Organizational Meeting"
see announcement
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [28-Sep-07]
Gates B01
"Sketching and Experience Design"
Brad Myers
CMU HCI Institute
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
12:30pm UC Berkeley HWNI Student Seminar [28-Sep-07]
101 LSA (Berkeley)
"Innate versus learned odor perception in the mouse main
olfactory system"
Hitoshi Sakano
U. of Tokyo
http://neuroscience.berkeley.edu/events/
2:00pm GRAI Seminar [28-Sep-07]
Gates 104
"From Image Enhancement to Computational Cameras"
Fr\'edo Durand
MIT
http://cs.stanford.edu/people/theobalt/GRAI.html
Abstract below
3:00pm Berkeley Information Access Seminar [28-Sep-07]
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
"The University of California, Merced Library: What other
research libraries will be"
Bruce Miller
University Librarian, UC Merced
http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i296a-1/f07/schedule.html
Abstract below
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium [28-Sep-07]
Bldg. 90:92Q
"Ontological Realism"
Ted Sider
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
4:00pm PARC Forum [28-Sep-07]
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"Silicon Microchips as Implantable Drug Delivery and
Biosensing Devices"
John T. Santini
MicroCHIPS Inc.
http://www.parc.com/forum/
(note unusual day)
4:00pm UC Berkeley Oxyopia Lecture [28-Sep-07]
489 Minor Hall (UC Berkeley)
"The Assembly of Functional Circuits in Developing Retina"
Marla Feller
UC Berkeley
http://optometry.berkeley.edu/opt_txtpp/ce/oxyopias.html
MONDAY, 1 OCTOBER 2007
2:15pm Phonology Workshop [1-Oct-07]
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
"Organization meeting"
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
3:30pm Social Lab [1-Oct-07]
Bldg. 200:105
Title to be announced
Art Aaron
NYU at Stonybrook
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_social.html
4:00pm UC Berkeley Ear Club [1-Oct-07]
3105 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Cochlea Modeling Retrospective"
Richard Lyon
Foveon Inc., Santa Clara
http://ear.berkeley.edu/ear-club-schedule.html
TUESDAY, 2 OCTOBER 2007
4:15pm Mathematical Logic Seminar [2-Oct-07]
Bldg. 420:048
"Solving Logical Equations in Monadic Logic"
Grigori Mints, Tomohiro Hoshi
Stanford
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
4:15pm CS309a: Software as a Service [2-Oct-07]
Skilling Auditorium
Brian Behlendorf
Founder & CTO of Collab.net
http://www.collab.net/
http://cs309a.stanford.edu/
WEDNESDAY, 3 OCTOBER 2007
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium [3-Oct-07]
Jordan Hall 420:041
"Separating Motivational Direction from Affective Valence:
Implications for the Study of Asymmetrical Frontal Cortical
Activity, Anger, and Positive Affect"
Eddie Harmon Jones
Texas A & M University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_colloquium.html
4:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series [3-Oct-07]
EJ228, SRI International
"SmartWeb: Multimodal Web Services on the Road"
Wolfgang Wahlster
DKFI
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium [3-Oct-07]
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
"Programmable Microfluidics"
Bill Thies
MIT
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
THURSDAY, 4 OCTOBER 2007
4:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series [4-Oct-07]
EJ228, SRI International
"Superlink-online: large-scale distributed system for genetic
linkage analysis"
Mark Silberstein
Technion
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:00pm PARC Forum [4-Oct-07]
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"Electronics sustainability challenge:
Miles to go before we sleep ..."
Ted Smith
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum [4-Oct-07]
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"What We Did This Summer"
Summer Interns, Symbolic Systems Program
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
FRIDAY, 5 OCTOBER 2007
11:00am UC Berkeley ICBS Colloquium [5-Oct-07]
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
"Sparse coding and invariance in visual cortex"
Bruno Olshausen
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and School of Optometry, Berkeley
http://icbs.berkeley.edu/
Abstract below
12 noon Ethics@Noon [5-Oct-07]
Bldg. 100:101K
"Why Not Toss a Coin? Lotteries and Justice"
Peter Stone
Political Science
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/EIS/lectures_ethics.html
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [5-Oct-07]
Gates B01
"The Accountability of Presence: Location Tracking beyond Privacy"
Paul Dourish
Informatics, UC Irvine
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:00pm Berkeley Information Access Seminar [5-Oct-07]
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
"Conceptual Schemas for Events"
Ryan Shaw
http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i296a-1/f07/schedule.html
____________
Stanford Blood Center: Shortage of O-, O+, A-, A+, B-, and AB-. For
an appointment: http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call 650-723-7831.
It only takes an hour of your time and you get free cookies. The
Blood Center is also raising money for a new bloodmobile.
____________
ANNOUNCEMENTS
BERKELEY CIS SEMINAR
The Berkeley CIS (Center for Intelligent Systems) Seminar is looking
for suggestions for speakers. Contact Sasha Rakhlin <rakhlin
... cs.berkeley.edu> if you have any ideas. See
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/CIS/ for more info.
SPEECH LUNCH
Friday, 28 September 2007, 12 noon
Phonetics Lab
Meghan Sumner (sumner ... stanford.edu) would like to invite Stanford
researchers interested in speech and spoken language to attend Speech
Lunch each Friday. Speech Lunch is an informal weekly meeting
designed to promote discussion among a diverse group of researchers.
It is a great place to propose experiments, discuss data, learn about
research in areas other than your own, and exchange ideas.
If you aren't sure whether or not you are interested in speechy things
or if you are just curious about work other people are working on,
don't be shy!! come to Speech Lunch!
The first organizational meeting is this Friday (28 September) at
12:00pm in the Phonetics Lab. The first quarter will be devoted to
familiarizing ourselves with the research of other group members.
Each week, one member will present their work to the group. If you
plan on attending, please let me know when you would like to present
your work. If you aren't convinced that you want to present, but feel
like you should, then you might as well put your name on the list!
GRAI READING GROUP
Fridays, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Gates 120, AI Fishbowl
http://cs.stanford.edu/people/theobalt/GRAI.html
This fall, an exciting new cross-disciplinary reading group named GRAI
(Graphics meets AI) will kick off. In the weekly event we will discuss
state-of-the art research that lies on the frontier between the fields
of computer graphics, computer vision, and robotics. While the core
topic of the meeting will be "Vision-based Graphics and 3D Video", we
will also discuss a wider range of subjects including:
* Animation Reconstruction
* 3D Computer Vision
* Image-and Video-based Rendering
* Sensor Fusion
* Scene Reconstruction in Robotics
* Computational Photography
* Image, Video and Scene Understanding
* Motion Capture and Motion Analysis
* Machine Learning for Vision and Graphics
* ...
Come and join us, share your thoughts and ideas, and get involved by
presenting your work or discuss a paper. We hope for lively and fun
discussions. GRAI will also be a great venue for new graduate
students to get in touch with Stanford researchers.
To kick things off they will be having a special talk by Fr\'edo
Durand from MIT. Abstract further down in this calendar (or on the
web page).
CS448: VIRTUAL WORLDS
MW 2:15-3:30pm
Hewlett 200
https://graphics.stanford.edu/wikis/cs448-07-fall
(Stanford students only)
Virtual worlds are networked virtual environments that simulate
interaction in three-dimensional spaces and decouple it from
geographic and physical constraints. The course covers major themes in
contemporary virtual worlds research. We will review history, system
architectures, optimization techniques for massive environments, and
animation. The bulk of the course is devoted to non-traditional
topics, including casual content creation, high level behavior
specification, applications and limitations of virtual worlds, social
and behavioral aspects, and presence. Almost every lecture will
conclude with a significant open research problem. These will be
pursued through open-ended team research projects. Graphics and
systems background required. Course includes a visit to an immersive
virtual reality laboratory and guest lectures from experts on
input/output technologies, social aspects of virtual worlds, and
casual content creation.
The course is required for those wishing to be involved with the
Virtual Worlds Group. http://vw.stanford.edu/
The Virtual Worlds Group is headed by Vladlen Koltun, Assistant
Professor in Computer Science, and is investigating large-scale
networked virtual environments. The members are researching the
challenges in growing virtual world systems to millions of concurrent
participants.
____________
LOGICAL METHODS IN THE HUMANITIES
on Wednesday, 26 September 2007, 12:15pm
Gates 2A
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
"The Logical Necessity of Inconsistency"
Carl Hewitt
MIT EECS (emeritus)
Kurt G\"odel first formalized and proved that it is not possible to
decide all mathematical questions by inference in his 1st
incompleteness theorem. However, the incompleteness theorem (as
generalized by Rosser) relies on the assumption of consistency. This
talk proves a generalization of the G\"odel/Rosser incompleteness
theorem: a reflective paraconsistent theory in Direct Logic [Hewitt
2007] is incomplete (without relying on the assumption of
consistency). I.e., for each reflective paraconsistent theory, the
theory proves that there is a G\"odelian paradoxical sentence which
can neither be proved or disproved in the theory.
In order to be useful for large software systems, paraconsistent
theories in Direct Logic make use of a powerful form of reflection
between abstract logical statements and reified manifestation in XML.
Direct Logic makes use of a criterion of Admissibility that bars the
Liar, Russell, and Curry paradoxes. However, the G\"odelian argument
is admissible and results in a logically necessary inconsistency!
So why did G\"odel and the logicians who followed him not go in this
direction? Solomon Feferman (who personally worked with G\"odel) has
remarked on "the shadow of Hilbert that loomed over G\"odel from the
beginning to the end of his career." Also Feferman conjectured that
"G\"odel simply found it galling all through his life that he never
received the recognition from Hilbert that he deserved." Furthermore,
Feferman maintained that "the challenge remained well into his last
decade for G\"odel to demonstrate decisively, if possible, why it is
necessary to go beyond Hilbert's finitism in order to prosecute the
constructive consistency program."
Also G\"odel was a committed Platonist, which has an interesting
bearing on the issue of the status of reflection. G\"odel invented
arithmetization to encode abstract mathematical statements as
integers. Direct Logic provides a way to easily formalize and
parconsistently prove G\"odel's argument (and even an extension due to
L\"ob). But it is not clear that Direct Logic is fully compatible with
Platonism.
Consequently, with an argument just a step away from inconsistency,
G\"odel (with his abundance of caution) was not prepared to go in that
direction.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LAB COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 26 September 2007, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
"The PeakStream Platform for Many-Core Computing"
Matthew Papakipos
Engineering Director, Google
PeakStream was a high-profile Silicon Valley startup company, founded
in 2005. PeakStream was funded by KPCP and Sequoia capital, and
founded by the speaker, Matthew Papakipos. The company's product was a
software platform for programming multi-core processors, both CPUs and
GPUs. It included a rich set of system development tools such as
debuggers and profilers.
This talk describes the company history, from early Stanford
connections, to founding, to products, to its acquisition by Google in
2007. The talk introduces many-core processors and identifies the
challenges in programming them for the average developer. We identify
some of the application areas which desire the performance that these
chips can offer. The PeakStream software architecture is presented as
a solution to these challenges and opportunities. We discuss some of
the more interesting design choices, challenges, and solutions in the
development of the company's software. We describe the developer
programming model in detail, and the underlying software technology
that makes it work. Then we show some sample applications, show how
they work in the PeakStream software system, and illustrate how the
PeakStream Virtual Machine makes it all work. In order for developers
to use a system like this, it is important to have tools like
debuggers and profilers; we show how these work in the PeakStream
system. We end with some speculation on the future of many-core
processor hardware and software.
About the speaker: Matthew Papakipos is an entrepreneur based in
Silicon Valley. Matt is an expert in graphics hardware and software,
parallel computing systems, and high-tech startup companies.
Matt is presently an Engineering Director at Google. Matt joined
Google after its acquisition of PeakStream, the startup company that
he founded in 2005. Matt was founder and CTO of PeakStream.
PeakStream developed and sold a software platform for programming
multi-core processors, including CPUs and GPUs. PeakStream was funded
by KPCB & Sequoia Capital.
Matt ran the GPU Architecture group at NVIDIA for several years,
spanning the early TNT products through GeForce and the Microsoft XBox
game console. He was instrumental in standardization efforts around
multi-texture capabilities for OpenGL, and negotiated DirectX graphics
interfaces with Microsoft.
Matt has been awarded over thirty patents, primarily in processor
architecture. Matt received his Sc. B. in Mathematics/Computer Science
from Brown University. More information on Matt is available at
http://www.papakipos.com/work.htm/
____________
CENTER FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY TALK
on Thursday, 27 September 2007, 12:45pm
Law School 280A
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/
"RIAA v. The People: Four Years and Counting"
Fred von Lohmann
Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF)
Four years ago, the recording industry inaugurated an unprecedented
campaign of lawsuits against individuals who use peer-to-peer
(P2P)file sharing networks to share music. Nearly 30,000 lawsuits
later, has it worked? If not, what should be done instead? And what
have we learned about the mechanics of federal civil litigation
against thousands of unrepresented individuals?
Drawing on a recent EFF report summarizing the first four years of the
recording industry litigation effort, Fred will discuss the recording
industry's tactics and describe alternatives that may be on the
digital music horizon.
About the Speaker: Fred von Lohmann (SLS '96) is Senior Intellectual
Property Attorney for EFF. Before coming to EFF, he was a research
fellow with the UC Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and an
associate with the San Francisco law firm of Morrison & Foerster.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 28 September 2007, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B01
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
"Sketching and Experience Design"
Brad Myers
CMU HCI Institute
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam
The Natural Programming Project is working on making programming
languages and environments easier to learn, more effective, and less
error prone. We are taking a human-centered approach, by first
studying how people perform their tasks, and then designing languages
and environments that take into account people's natural
tendencies. Early work focused on designing languages for novices
based on how people think about expressing algorithms and
tasks. Current work is focused on programming environments and
libraries. We studied novice and expert programmers working on
every-day bugs, and found that they continuously are asking "Why" and
"Why Not" questions, so we developed the "WhyLine" debugging tool
which allows programmers to directly ask these questions of their
programs and get a visualization of the answers. The WhyLine decreased
debugging time by a factor of 8 and increased programmer productivity
by 40%. We studied typical maintenance tasks and discovered that
programmers spend about 38% of their time navigating around code, and
so we are in the process of designing a new tool to help eliminate
this overhead. When learning how to use new libraries, we observed
that programmers tend to try to adapt examples, so developed
techniques to make reuse of example code easier. For editing of code,
our studies show that people do not require the full flexibility of
text editing, so we designed a prototype environment that provides
more support.
This talk will provide an overview of our studies and resulting
designs as part of the Natural Programming project.
For more information, see http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~NatProg/
About the Speaker: Brad A. Myers is a Professor in the Human-Computer
Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie
Mellon University. He is an ACM Fellow, and a member of the CHI
Academy, an honor bestowed on the principal leaders of the field. He
is the principal investigator for the Pebbles Handheld Computer
Project and the Natural Programming Project, and previously led the
Amulet and Garnet projects. He is the author or editor of over 300
publications, including the books "Creating User Interfaces by
Demonstration" and "Languages for Developing User Interfaces," and he
is on the editorial board of five journals. He has been a consultant
on user interface design and implementation to over 50 companies, and
regularly teaches courses on user interface design and software. Myers
received a PhD in computer science at the University of Toronto where
he developed the Peridot UIMS. He received the MS and BSc degrees from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during which time he was a
research intern at Xerox PARC. From 1980 until 1983, he worked at PERQ
Systems Corporation. His research interests include user interface
development systems, user interfaces, handheld computers, programming
environments, programming language design, programming by example,
visual programming, interaction techniques, and window management. He
is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and also belongs to SIGCHI, ACM, the
IEEE Computer Society, and Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility.
____________
GRAI SEMINAR
on Friday, 28 September 2007, 2:00-3:30pm
Gates 104
http://cs.stanford.edu/people/theobalt/GRAI.html
"From Image Enhancement to Computational Cameras"
Fr\'edo Durand
MIT
The digital photography revolution has greatly facilitated the way in
which we take and share pictures. However, it has mostly relied on a
rigid imaging model inherited from traditional photography.
Computational photography and video go one step further and exploit
digital technology to enable arbitrary computation between the light
array and the final image or video. Such computation can overcome
limitations of the imaging hardware and enable new applications. It
can also enable new imaging setups and postprocessing tools that
empower users to enhance and interact with their images and videos.
This talk describes new imaging architectures as well as software
techniques that leverage computation to facilitate the extraction of
information and enhance images. In particular, I will describe the use
of a bilateral decomposition of images into a large-scale and a detail
component using an edge-preserving approach. I will describe a variety
of techniques that build on such decomposition for tone mapping,
relighting, style transfer and flash photography. I will also describe
a new simple modification of a lens as well as new inference
techniques that enable the capture of both depth and a full-resolution
image from a single picture.
About the Speaker: Fr\'edo Durand is an associate professor in
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and a member of the Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He received his PhD from
Grenoble University, France, in 1999, supervised by Claude Puech and
George Drettakis. From 1999 till 2002, he was a post-doc in the MIT
Computer Graphics Group with Julie Dorsey.
He works both on synthetic image generation and computational
photography, where new algorithms afford powerful image enhancement
and the design of imaging system that can record richer information
about a scene. His research interests span most aspects of picture
generation and creation, with emphasis on mathematical analysis,
signal processing, and inspiration from perceptual sciences. He
co-organized the first Symposium on Computational Photography and
Video in 2005 and was on the advisory board of the Image and Meaning 2
conference. He received an inaugural Eurographics Young Researcher
Award in 2004, an NSF CAREER award in 2005, an inaugural Microsoft
Research New Faculty Fellowship in 2005, a Sloan fellowship in 2006,
and a Spira award for distinguished teaching in 2007.
____________
BERKELEY INFORMATION ACCESS SEMINAR
on Friday, 28 September 2007, 3:00pm - 5:00pm
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i296a-1/f07/schedule.html
"The University of California, Merced Library: What other
research libraries will be"
Bruce Miller
University Librarian, UC Merced
R Bruce Miller, Founding University Librarian at UC Merced, will
discuss the rapid transition of the UC Merced Library from concept in
2001 to a fully functional cutting edge research university library in
2007. The UC Merced Library superficially is similar to other research
university libraries, but a closer look reveals unique organizational
structures, atypical programs focused on communication with users,
bold attitudes regarding access to information resources, integrated
and non-intrusive technology, and pizza delivery to the reading
rooms. The role of Librarians is focused on initiative, leadership,
and creativity. Librarians are not allowed to do "piecework". Miller
will discuss problems and successes. The focus will be on the evolving
nature of libraries and the opportunities and challenges that face the
profession.
____________
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 2 October 2007, 4:15pm
Bldg. 420:048
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
"Solving Logical Equations in Monadic Logic"
Grigori Mints, Tomohiro Hoshi
Stanford
A logical formula F(X,P) can be treated as an equation to be satisfied
by the solutions X(P). J. McCarthy considers the parameterization of
the models of formulas, gives the general solution in the case of
propositional logic and states the problem for other logics. We find
the general solution for the formulas in the first-order language
with monadic predicates and equality. The solutions are obtained via
quantifier elimination and parametrized by epsilon terms.
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Wednesday, 3 October 2007, 4:00pm - 5:30pm
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
"SmartWeb: Multimodal Web Services on the Road"
Wolfgang Wahlster
DKFI
SmartWeb provides a context-aware user interface to web services, so
that it can support the mobile user in different roles, e.g. as a car
driver, a motorbiker, or a pedestrian. It provides a symmetric
multimodal dialogue system combining speech, gesture, haptic and video
input with speech, haptic, video and acoustic output. It goes beyond
traditional keyword search engines like Google by delivering higher
quality results that are adapted to the mobile users current task and
situation. In mobile situations, users don't want to deal with
hypertext lists of retrieved web pages, but simply want an answer to
their query. If a desperate driver with a crying and acutely ill child
on the backseat asks SmartWeb Who is the closest paediatrician? he
needs just the name and address of the doctor. Based on SmartWebs
ability to combine various web services, the driver can then ask
SmartWeb a follow-up question about route guidance to the doctors
practice. One of the innovative features of SmartWeb is that the user
can specify whether he wants a textual or pictorial answer, a video
clip or a sound file as a query result.
SmartWeb provides not only an open-domain question answering machine
but a multimodal web service interface for coherent dialogue, where
questions and commands are interpreted according to the context of the
previous conversation. For example, if the driver of our Mercedes-Benz
R-Class test car asks SmartWeb Where is the closest Italian
restaurant, it will access a web service to find an appropriate
restaurant and show its location on a digital map presented on the
large dashboard display. The user may continue his dialog with a
command like Please guide me there with a refueling stop at the lowest
price gas station. In this case, SmartWeb combines a navigation
service with a special web service that finds low gas prices.
SmartWeb includes plan-based composition methods for semantic web
services, so that complex tasks can be carried out for the mobile
user.
One version of SmartWeb has been deployed on a BMW motor-bike R1200RT,
using a swivel with force feedback integrated in the handle
bar. Similar to the control knob known from the iDrive interface of
BMW automobiles, the biker can rotate the swivel or push it right or
left in order to browse through menus or select items displayed by
SmartWeb on the large high-resolution screen in the middle of the
cockpit. In combination with these pointing actions, the biker can use
speech input over the microphone integrated in a Bluetooth helmet to
interact with SmartWeb. The multimodal dialogue system combines visual
displays with speech and earcons over the speakers integrated in the
helmet and haptic force feedback for output generation. For example,
the biker can ask for weather forecasts along his planned
route. SmartWeb accesses location-based web services via the bikes 3G
wireless connection to retrieve the relevant weather forecasts. In
addition, SmartWeb exploits ad-hoc Wifi connections for
vehicle-to-vehicle communication based on a local danger warning
ontology so that the motorbike driver can be informed of a danger
ahead by a car in front of him. For example, a car detecting a large
wedge of water under its wheels will pass the information wirelessly
to the bike following it and SmartWeb will generate the warning
Attention! Risk of aquaplaning 100 meters ahead using the GPS
coordinates of both vehicles to compute the distance to the upcoming
dangerous area. Another distinguishing feature of SmartWeb is the
generation of adaptive multimodal presentations taking into account
the predicted cognitive load of the biker depending on the driving
speed and other factors.
About the Speaker: Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster is the Director and CEO of
DFKI, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and a
Professor of Computer Science and Computational Linguistics at
Saarland University (Saarbr\"ucken, Germany). Founded in 1988, DFKI
today is the worlds largest contract research institute with in the
field of innovative software technology based on Artificial
Intelligence (AI) methods with more than 400 researchers working for
DFKIs industrial shareholders BWM, DaimlerChrysler, EADS, SAP,
Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom and Bertelsmann. Professor Wahlster
received his diploma and doctoral degree (1981) in Computer Science
from the University of Hamburg, Germany. He has published more than
180 technical papers and 8 books on intelligent multimodal user
interfaces. His current research includes multimodal and tangible user
interfaces, mobile multimedia interfaces for Car2X systems, user
modeling, ambient intelligence, embodied conversational agents, and
mobile access to semantic web services. Wahlster has received numerous
honors and awards for his research contributions. He is an AAAI Fellow
(elected in 1993), an ECCAI Fellow (since 1999), and a GI Fellow
(since 2004). In 2001, the President of the Federal Republic of
Germany presented the German Future Prize to Professor Wahlster for
his work on language technology and intelligent user interfaces. He
was the first computer scientist to receive Germanys highest
scientific prize that is awarded each year for outstanding innovations
in technology, engineering, or the natural sciences. He was the first
German computer scientist elected Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish
Nobel Prize Academy of Sciences, Stockholm in 2003. Currently, he is
serving as the chief scientific advisor of the German government for
IT in the framework of the national high-tech funding strategy.
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Thursday, 4 October 2007, 4:00pm - 5:30pm
EJ228, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
"Superlink-online:
large-scale distributed system for genetic linkage analysis"
Mark Silberstein
Technion
Linkage analysis is a tool used by geneticists for mapping
disease-susceptibility genes in the study of genetic diseases. However
such analysis is often beyond the capabilities of a single
computer. We present a distributed system called Superlink-Online for
computing multipoint LOD scores of large inbred pedigrees.
Superlink-online achieves high performance via parallelization of the
algorithms in Superlink, a state-of-the-art serial program for linkage
analysis tasks, and through utilization of thousands of resources
residing in multiple opportunistic computing environments, aka
Grids. Notably, the system is available online, which allows
geneticists to perform computationally intensive analyses with no need
for either installation of software, or maintenance of a complicated
distributed environment.
In this talk I will describe the scheduling system architecture which
drives Superlink-online. The main challenges have been to efficiently
split large tasks for distributed execution in highly dynamic
non-dedicated running environment, and to provide nearly interactive
response time for shorter tasks while simultaneously serving massively
parallel ones. The system utilizes resources in all the available
grids, unifying thousands CPUs over campus grids in the Technion and
the University of Wisconsin in Madison, EGEE grids in Europe, and
Community Computing Grid Superlink@Technion (via BOINC). The system is
being extensively used by medical centers worldwide. Since January
2006, over 12,000 interactive genetic analysis tasks were performed,
utilizing over 240 years of CPU time.
This work has been done as a part of his PhD in the Technion under
joint supervision of Prof. Assaf Schuster and Dan Geiger. It has been
published in American Journal of Human Genetics and presented at High
Performance Distributed Computing conference in 2006.
About the Speaker: Mark Silberstein is a PhD student at the CS
department in the Technion under the joint supervision of Prof. Assaf
Schuster and Dan Geiger. His main research focus has been efficient
serial and parallel algorithms for inference in Bayesian networks (in
the context of genetic linkage analysis), and their execution in
large-scale opportunistic computing environments, aka Grids. He is
currently visiting UC Davis, working with Prof. John Owens on the
parallelization of Bayesian inference on GPUs.
____________
BERKELEY INSTITUTE OF COGNITIVE AND BRAIN SEMINAR
on Friday, 5 October 2007, 11:00am
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
http://icbs.berkeley.edu/
"Sparse coding and invariance in visual cortex"
Bruno Olshausen
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and School of Optometry, Berkeley
There is now much theoretical and experimental support for the idea of
feature selectivity and sparse coding in visual and other sensory
cortical areas. At the same time, it is widely believed that higher
cortical areas are involved in representing invariances of the
environment, and "slowness" has been proposed as a potential coding
objective for achieving this. Here I will discuss the relation
between sparseness and slowness, and preliminary efforts to combine
these two objectives into a single framework. The model raises a
number of intriguing questions regarding the nature of cortical
representation that can be tested experimentally.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 5 October 2007, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B01
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
"The Accountability of Presence: Location Tracking beyond Privacy"
Paul Dourish
Informatics, UC Irvine
In all the media hubbub around the recent release of Apple's iPhone,
one consistent critique is that it lacks a GPS unit. It's interesting
that, at that point, a claim to technological leadership for a mobile
device can founder on this. Mobility is no longer sufficient;
location-tracking is a key feature. However, the introduction of
location-based technologies has traditionally been accompanied by a
series of concerns over privacy. These discussions, though, adopt a
fairly reductive model of privacy, concerned primarily with the
trade-offs involved in service provision and location disclosure.
Following a strategy of selecting extreme examples as prototypical
cases for potential futures, we have been studying a group of paroled
sex offenders who are tracked via GPS as part of their parole
conditions. We were interested in the way in which pervasive location
tracking in a complex social context affects one's experience of
everyday space. While the issues that arise are highly specific to
their particular situation, they are suggestive of a new set of
considerations for location tracking in consumer devices. Based on our
preliminary studies, I will discuss some of these concerns, including
the multiple accountabilities of presence at specific places and
times, the legibilities of everyday space both from within and
without, and the underexamined relationship between mobile
technologies and the bodies that carry them.
About the Speaker: Paul Dourish is a Professor of Informatics in the
Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at UC Irvine,
with courtesy appointments in Computer Science and Anthropology. His
primary research interests lie at the intersection of computer science
and social science, and he is known particularly for his research in
the areas of Ubiquitous Computing, Computer-Supported Cooperative
Work, and Human-Computer Interaction. His book, "Where the Action Is:
The Foundations of Embodied Interaction" was published by MIT Press in
2001; it explores how phenomenological accounts of action can provide
an alternative to traditional cognitive analysis for understanding the
embodied experience of interactive and computational systems.
Before coming to UCI, he was a Senior Member of Research Staff in
the Computer Science Laboratory of Xerox PARC; he has also held
research positions at Apple Computer and at Rank Xerox EuroPARC.
He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University College,
London, and a B.Sc. (Hons) in Artificial Intelligence and Computer
Science from the University of Edinburgh.
____________
END MATERIAL
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