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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 10 October 2007, vol. 23:6
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
______________________________________________________________________
10 OCTOBER 2007 Stanford Vol. 23, No. 6
______________________________________________________________________
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 10 OCTOBER 2007 TO 20 OCTOBER 2007
WEDNESDAY, 10 OCTOBER 2007
12:15pm Psychology Developmental Brownbags [10-Oct-07]
Jordan Hall 420:102
"Introduction to research at Bing Nursery School"
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_developmental.html
3:30pm SRI CCB Seminar Series [10-Oct-07]
EK225, SRI International
"Automated Aides for Generating Scientific Insights"
Lawrence Hunter
University of Colorado School of Medicine
http://compbio.uchsc.edu/Hunter/
Abstract below
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium [10-Oct-07]
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
"Open Source Research: Analytics, Economics, and Best Practices"
Dirk Riehle
SAP Research
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Abstract below
6:30pm SF Bay ACM Data Mining SIG [10-Oct-07]
SAP LABS, Building D, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA
"Google News Personalization: Scalable Online Collaborative
Filtering"
Mayur Datar
Research Scientist, Google
http://sfbayacm.org/dmsig.php
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 11 OCTOBER 2007
11:00am CCRMA Hearing Seminar [11-Oct-07]
CCRMA Seminar Room, The Knoll
"Cochlear modeling retrospective"
Richard F. Lyon
Google
http://ccrma-mail.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/hearing-seminar
Abstract below
12 noon CSLI CogLunch [11-Oct-07]
Cordura Hall 100
"Gödel, Nagel, Minds and Machines"
Solomon Feferman
Math, Stanford University
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
POSTPONED till October 25
3:30pm Symposium of Undergraduate Research and Public Service [11-Oct-07]
McCaw Hall, Arrillaga Alumni Center
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
4:00pm UC Berkeley CIS Seminar [11-Oct-07]
Soda Hall 320 (UC Berkeley)
"Reconstruction and subgaussian processes"
Shahar Mendelson
Australian National University and Technion
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~rakhlin/cis-seminar
Abstract below
4:00pm Personality Lab [11-Oct-07]
Jordan Hall 420:102
Bulent Turan
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_personality.html
4:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series [11-Oct-07]
EJ291, SRI International
"Learning to Swim, Walk, and Grasp using Shaped Manifold Control"
Bill Smart
Washington University in St. Louis
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
Abstract below
4:00pm PARC Forum [11-Oct-07]
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"Know the Bread You Break: Kneading the Issues of Sustainable
Food Choices"
Jesse Ziff Cool
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:15pm US-Asia Technology Management Center [11-Oct-07]
Skilling Auditorium
"Innovation in the Video Game Industry"
Ichiro Otobe
Chief Strategist, Square Enix Co. Ltd.
http://www.gdconf.com/aboutus/advisoryboard.htm#otobe
http://asia.stanford.edu
4:15pm Fundamental Themes in Neuroscience Seminar [11-Oct-07]
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman
"Molecular genetic Analysis of Neural Circuits for Innate
defensive Behaviors in Flies and Mice"
David Anderson
Caltech, HHMI
http://nis-seminars.stanford.edu/
FRIDAY, 12 OCTOBER 2007
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [12-Oct-07]
Gates B01
"The Accountability of Presence: Location Tracking beyond Privacy"
Paul Dourish
Informatics, UC Irvine
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
2:00pm GRAI Seminar [12-Oct-07]
Gates 104
"New Trends in 3D Video"
Christian Theobalt
Stanford
http://cs.stanford.edu/people/theobalt/GRAI.html
3:00pm Berkeley Information Access Seminar [12-Oct-07]
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
"Mark-up of Biographical Text"
Presentation based on the "Bringing Lives to Light: Biography
in Context" project
Ray Larson and others
http://ecai.org/imls2006/
http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i296a-1/f07/schedule.html
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar [12-Oct-07]
Jordan Hall 420:050
"Dollars vs. Days: Do time and money share a common neural
currency? Distributed neural representations of value predict
choice in a delay discounting task"
Kacey Ballard
Stanford
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_cognitive.html
3:30pm Stanford Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop [12-Oct-07]
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
"Coherence and the (Psycho-)Linguistics of Pronoun Interpretation"
Andrew Kehler
UCSD
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/
Abstract below
MONDAY, 15 OCTOBER 2007
3:15pm Stanford Phonology Workshop [15-Oct-07]
Linguistics Chair's office, Margaret Jacks Hall
"Discussion of Pearce (2006) 'The interaction between metrical
structure and tone in Kera'"
Alex Jaker
Stanford University
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
3:30pm Social Lab [15-Oct-07]
Bldg. 200:105
"Protecting the Halo: The Role of Self-image in Everyday Morality"
Benoit Monin
Stanford
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_social.html
4:00pm Reading Group in Logic and Language [15-Oct-07]
Cordura 100
Organizational meeting
See announcement
4:00pm UC Berkeley Linguistics Colloquium [15-Oct-07]
182 Dwinelle Hall (Berkeley)
"Linguistic complexity: A comprehensive definition and survey"
Johanna Nichols
UC Berkeley
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/events/
4:00pm UC Berkeley Ear Club [15-Oct-07]
3105 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"The effect of spatial separation on informational masking of speech"
Tanya Arbogast
Audiology, Boston University
http://ear.berkeley.edu/ear-club-schedule.html
TUESDAY, 16 OCTOBER 2007
4:15pm Mathematical Logic Seminar [16-Oct-07]
Bldg. 420:048
"A Formal Proof of Euler's Polyhedron Formula"
Jesse Alama
Stanford
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 17 OCTOBER 2007
all day Tekes Seminars [17-Oct-07]
Ceras 100B
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/h-star/tekes/tekes.html
See announcement
5:00pm Tekes Networking Cocktail Event [17-Oct-07]
Ceras 100B
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/h-star/tekes/tekes.html
See announcement
6:30pm SF Bay ACM Talk [17-Oct-07]
Hewlett Packard, Pruneridge and Wolfe, Cupertino, Bldg. 48, Oak Room
"Yahoo! Mail - designing a large Ajax application"
Greg Rosenberg
Yahoo!
http://sfbayacm.org/
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2007
all day Tekes Seminars [18-Oct-07]
Ceras 100B
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/h-star/tekes/tekes.html
See announcement
all day PNC and ECAI 2007 Annual Conference [18-Oct-07]
UC Berkeley
Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI)
and Pacific Neighborhood Consortium (PNC)
http://pnclink.org/pnc2007/english/index.htm
Information below
12 noon CSLI CogLunch [18-Oct-07]
Cordura Hall 100
"Intentionality, Intuition, and Proof in Mathematics"
Richard Tieszen
San Jose State
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
12:15pm Stanford Networking Seminar [18-Oct-07]
Packard 101
"The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It"
Jonathan Zittrain
Oxford University/Stanford
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
4:00pm PARC Forum [18-Oct-07]
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"A classical interpretation of observed macroscopic quantum
behavior in microwave driven Josephson systems"
Niels Gronbech Jensen
Applied Science, UC Davis
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum [18-Oct-07]
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"Film: 'The Great Robot Race' (2006)"
with discussion afterward
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
4:15pm Fundamental Themes in Neuroscience Seminar [18-Oct-07]
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman
"Hippocampal sequence memory formation and reactivation"
Matt Wilson
MIT
http://web.mit.edu/picower/faculty/wilson.html
http://nis-seminars.stanford.edu/
FRIDAY, 19 OCTOBER 2007
all day PNC and ECAI 2007 Annual Conference [19-Oct-07]
UC Berkeley
Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI)
and Pacific Neighborhood Consortium (PNC)
http://pnclink.org/pnc2007/english/index.htm
Information below
11:00am UC Berkeley ICBS Colloquium [19-Oct-07]
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
"The malleability of visual cognition: Effects of videogame expertise"
Steve Mitroff
Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University
http://icbs.berkeley.edu/
Abstract below
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [19-Oct-07]
Gates B01
"Augmented Social Cognition"
Ed Chi
PARC
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
2:00pm GRAI Seminar [19-Oct-07]
Gates 104
"Sensor Fusion and Depth Superresolution"
James Diebel
Stanford
http://cs.stanford.edu/people/theobalt/GRAI.html
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium [19-Oct-07]
Bldg. 90:92Q
"Kant, Proust, and the Appeal of Beauty"
Richard Moran
Harvard University
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
Abstract below
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar [19-Oct-07]
Jordan Hall 420:050
"Bilingual Language Processing: Eye-Tracking Evidence for
Parallel Activation"
Viorica Marian
Northwestern University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_cognitive.html
SATURDAY, 20 OCTOBER 2007
all day PNC and ECAI 2007 Annual Conference [20-Oct-07]
UC Berkeley
Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI)
and Pacific Neighborhood Consortium (PNC)
http://pnclink.org/pnc2007/english/index.htm
Information below
____________
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; they need
$200,000 and have $80,000 so far.
____________
ANNOUNCEMENT
Tekes Networking Event
Wednesday, 17 October 2007, 5:00pm-7:00pm
Ceras 100B
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/h-star/tekes/tekes.html
Tekes cordially invites the Stanford Community to this Networking
Event to meet Finnish researchers and business managers working in the
fields of innovation, strategic management, network management, future
risk management, and contract management at Stanford University.
The Networking Event and associated two day Seminar features the Tekes
LIITO Delegation of over 30 researchers, business managers and Silicon
Valley based Finnish Technology and Innovation Funding Agency (Tekes)
representatives as part of the Tekes Innovative Business Competence
and Management program. http://www.tekes.fi/liito/
RSVP: kindly rsvp by Friday, October 12th to thuong.tan ..@.. tekes.fi
Tekes Seminars
Wednesday and Thursday, 17 and 18 October 2007, all day
These seminars aim at improving the international competitiveness of
Finnish enterprises and to increase cutting-edge applied business
research in Finland. The program promotes cooperation between the
researchers and enterprises both in Finland and internationally.
Tekes LIITO would like to meet researchers who share our interest on
finding ways to help companies design strategies for open innovation
management and with whom we could build knowledge sharing networks and
research collaboration.
Day 1: Team Based Collaborative Design and Innovation
Wednesday, Oct. 17, 9 am - 4:30pm (followed by the Networking event
described above)
Day 2: Innovating, Collaborating and Strategizing
Thursday, Oct. 18th, 9 am - 4:30 pm
RSVP: kindly rsvp by Friday, October 12th to thuong.tan ..@.. tekes.fi
____________
ANNOUNCEMENT
Reading Group in Logic and Language
Monday, 15 October 2007, 4:00pm
CSLI, Cordura 100
Organizer: Bill Rounds, Stanford-CSLI and University of Michigan CSE
rounds .at. mac.com
This reading group will look at some current issues in logic and
language. Topics range from mathematical models for language
translation like tree transducers and TAGS, their logical description
as part of model-theoretic syntax, relations to HPSG and Construction
Grammar, higher order logic for these formalisms, the theory of
hyperintensions, computational semantics as it relates to these
things. Schedule to be determined; organizational meeting Monday
Oct. 15.
____________
SRI CCB SEMINAR SERIES
on Wednesday, 10 October 2007, 3:30pm - 5:30pm
EK225, SRI International
"Automated Aides for Generating Scientific Insights"
Lawrence Hunter
University of Colorado School of Medicine
http://compbio.uchsc.edu/Hunter/
The profusion of high-throughput instruments and the explosion of new
results in the scientific literature, particularly in molecular
biomedicine, is both a blessing and a curse to the bench researcher.
Even knowledgable and experienced scientists can benefit from
computational tools that help navigate this vast and rapidly evolving
terrain. However, effective design and implementation of tools that
genuinely facilitate the generation of novel and significant
scientific insights remains poorly understood. In this talk, I will
describe a set of efforts that combines natural language processing
for information extraction and graphical network models for semantic
data integration into a system that has recently played a pivotal role
in making a significant discovery, and also discuss how it might be
possible to compare and evaluate such systems.
About the speaker Dr. Lawrence Hunter is the Director of the
Computational Bioscience Program and of the Center for Computational
Pharmacology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and an
Associate Professor in the departments of Pharmacology, Computer
Science (Boulder), and Preventive Medicine and Biometrics. He
received his Ph.D. in computer science from Yale University in 1989,
and then spent more than 10 years at the National Institutes of
Health, ending as the Chief of the Molecular Statistics and
Bioinformatics Section at the National Cancer Institute. He
inaugurated two of the most important academic bioinformatics
conferences, ISMB and PSB, and was the founding President of the
International Society for Computational Biology. Dr. Hunter's
research interests span a wide range of areas, from cognitive science
to rational drug design. His primary focus recently has been the
integration of natural language processing, knowledge representation
and machine learning techniques and their application to interpreting
data generated by high throughput molecular biology.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LAB COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 10 October 2007, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
"Open Source Research: Analytics, Economics, and Best Practices"
Dirk Riehle
SAP Research
Why are small startups and large companies alike giving their software
away "for free" as open source? How does open source change developer
careers? What new skills do developers and companies need to learn to
survive and thrive in this new open source world? This talk discusses
the economics driving stakeholder behavior in the open source
ecosystem, presents selected analytical results of how open source
works (or doesn't) and takes a look at how companies can benefit from
employing open source best practices internally.
About the speaker: Dirk Riehle is a software researcher and
entrepreneur. He leads the open-source research group at SAP Labs in
Palo Alto, California. Dirk has worked in Germany, Switzerland, and
the United States. He was the leader of the team that designed and
implemented the first UML virtual machine. In 2005, Dirk started the
WikiSym conference series[2], of which he was the first conference
chair. He is interested in all things open source, collective
intelligence and wikis, and software architecture. Dirk holds a
Ph.D. in computer science from ETH Zurich and an M.B.A. from Stanford
University. Most of his work can be found at http://www.riehle.org/
____________
SF BAY ACM DATA MINING SIG
on Wednesday, 10 October 2007, 6:30pm - 9:00pm
SAP LABS, Building D, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA
http://sfbayacm.org/dmsig.php
"Google News Personalization:
Scalable Online Collaborative Filtering"
Mayur Datar
Research Scientist, Google
Several approaches to collaborative filtering have been studied but
seldom have the studies been reported for large (several millions of
users and items) and dynamic (the underlying item set is continually
changing) settings. This talk will focus on our approach to
collaborative filtering for generating personalized recommendations
for users of Google News. We generate recommendations using three
approaches: collaborative filtering using MinHash clustering,
Probabilistic Latent Semantic Indexing (PLSI), and covisitation
counts. We combine recommendations from different algorithms using a
linear model. Our approach is content agnostic and consequently domain
independent, making it easily adaptible for other applications and
languages with minimal effort. The talk will describe our algorithms
and system setup in detail, and report results of running the
recommendations engine on Google News.
About the Speaker: Mayur Datar works as a Research Scientist with
Google Inc. His research interests are in datamining, algorithms,
databases and computer science theory. Prior to joining Google, Mayur
obtained his doctorate degree in computer science from Stanford
university and a Bachelor of Technology degree from I.I.T. Bombay. He
was awarded the President of India, Gold Medal for being the most
outstanding student of his graduating batch from I.I.T. Bombay. He has
published several papers in renowned conferences such as SIGMOD, VLDB,
KDD, FOCS, SODA, WWW.
____________
CCRMA HEARING SEMINAR
on Thursday, 11 October 2007, 11:00am
CCRMA Seminar Room, The Knoll
http://ccrma-mail.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/hearing-seminar
The Stanford Hearing Seminar is back for another quarter. We'll be
meeting at 11AM on Thursdays.
I'm happy to announce that Richard Lyon, long-time Hearing-Seminar
supporter, will be talking about the history of cochlear modeling and
describe how we got to where we are today. I saw this presentation
earlier this year in Telluride and it's wonderful to see how all the
pieces fit together. It's a complicated story, made easy to digest
with lots of animations and figures. Highly recommended.
Bring your favorite two cochlea. We'll talk about how they work!
- Malcolm
"Cochlear modeling retrospective"
Richard F. Lyon
Google
There is a long history of cochlea modeling that people need to be
aware of, to help design, optimize, and evaluate neuromorphic hearing
systems. In particular, it's important to understand: the notions of
time-frequency and time-scale separation and the classes of filters
that these notions imply; the large-scale AGC and "essential"
nonlinearities that compress the wide dynamic range of sound into a
small representation range; the indirect relationship of transfer
functions to tuning curves; the relative properties of cascade and
parallel filterbanks; the need for higher-order poles to get realistic
transfer functions; why zeros are needed to keep the delay realistic;
and why and how to capture temporal structure for subsequent
processing. We review these topics and some early contributions to
this field.
____________
UC BERKELEY CIS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 11 October 2007, 4:00pm-5:00pm
Soda Hall 320 (UC Berkeley)
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~rakhlin/cis-seminar
"Reconstruction and subgaussian processes"
Shahar Mendelson
Australian National University and Technion
In the reconstruction problem one is given a set T \subset \R^d and an
unknown t \in T. The goal is to approximate this unknown point using
few random linear measurements (<X_i,t>)_{i=1}^k, where (X_i) are
selected independently according to a measure \mu on R^d. The question
is how to obtain high probability estimates on the degree of
approximation possible (depending on the number of measurements k,
properties of the set T and the measure \mu).
We will present a survey of recent results concerning the
reconstruction problem and explain how it could be analyzed using
properties of subgaussian processes.
____________
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
on Thursday, 11 October 2007, 4:00pm - 5:30pm
EJ291, SRI International
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
"Learning to Swim, Walk, and Grasp using Shaped Manifold Control"
Bill Smart
Washington University in St. Louis
Learning to control high-dimensional, non-linear dynamical systems is
hard, in part because of the Curse of Dimensionality. The volume of
the state space increases exponentially with the number of state
variables used to describe the system. Learning a controller over this
space often requires an exponential amount of training data, limiting
us to relatively low-dimensional systems.
Many robotic systems, however, do not inhabit the entire volume of the
state space. In fact, any system with a periodic gait lives on a
1-dimensional manifold embedded in the full state space of the
system. In this talk, we introduce Shaped Manifold Control, which
simultaneously estimates the manifold over which the system operates
and learns an effective controller over this manifold. SMC sidesteps
the curse of dimensionality because is learns over a 1-dimensional
manifold, regardless of the dimensionality of the full state space.
We have successfully applied SMC to a number of simulated
high-dimensional continuous dynamical systems, including swimming and
walking robots, and will also discuss our plans for using it for the
control of a robotic hand prosthesis using direct cortical control.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 12 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.
____________
STANFORD SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS WORKSHOP
on Friday, 12 October 2007, 3:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/
"Coherence and the (Psycho-)Linguistics of Pronoun Interpretation"
Andrew Kehler
UCSD
More than three decades of research has sought to uncover the
principles that determine how hearers interpret pronouns in context.
This work has focused predominantly on identifying so-called
'preferences' or 'heuristics' that hearers utilize based on linguistic
properties of antecedent expressions. This emphasis may partially
explain Beaver's (2004) observation of a ``curious near absence of
work within [the formal semantics and pragmatics] tradition on
anaphora resolution", as with limited exceptions, the semanticist will
find a striking lack of emphasis on meaning in the existing
literature.
Indeed, this focus is a departure from the type of approach outlined
in Hobbs (1979), which argues that the mechanisms that drive pronoun
interpretation are driven predominantly by semantics, world knowledge,
and inference, with particular reference to how these are used to
establish the coherence of discourses. In this talk, I report on new
experimental evidence in support of a coherence-driven analysis, and
describe how the analysis can accommodate a range of previous findings
suggestive of conflicting preferences and biases. Case studies of
four commonly-cited preferences are described, specifically (i) the
parallel grammatical role preference (e.g., Smyth 1994), (ii) thematic
role preferences (e.g., Stevenson et al. 1994), (iii) implicit
causality biases (e.g., Caramazza et al. 1977), and (iv) the subject
assignment strategy (e.g., Crawley et al. 1990). In each case, the
experimental results offer an explanation of what the underlying
source of the bias is, and predicts in what contexts evidence for it
will surface.
Extending a proposal by Arnold (2001), these results suggest that
pronoun interpretation is incrementally influenced by (i)
probabilistic expectations that hearers have about how the discourse
will be coherently continued, and (ii) their expectations about what
entities will be mentioned next, which, crucially, are conditioned on
those coherence relationships. I will also argue that the results
leave various myths by the roadside, e.g., that pronoun interpretation
can be profitably thought of as a 'search and match' procedure, and
that coherence relations need not be controlled for in experimental
stimuli.
(This talk includes joint work with Laura Kertz, Hannah Rohde, and
Jeffrey Elman.)
____________
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 16 October 2007, 4:15pm
Bldg. 420:048
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
"A Formal Proof of Euler's Polyhedron Formula"
Jesse Alama
Stanford
Euler's polyhedron formula asserts for a polyhedron p that V-E+F=2,
where V, E, and F are, respectively, the numbers of vertices, edges,
and faces of p. The history of Euler's formula is bumpy because it
turns out to be difficult to say just what a polyhedron is, and, even
when a definition is given, it turns out to be difficult to specify
the subclass of polyhedra for which Euler's formula holds. A history
of Euler's formula is given in Imre Lakatos's "Proofs and
Refutations"[1]. Lakatos's history illustrates a critical process for
improving mathematical knowledge; he calls it the method of proofs and
refutations. The process consists of refining a conjecture (such as
Euler's polyhedron formula) in the light of counterexamples and
incomplete proofs. The goal of the method of proofs and refutations
is to produce a valid proof, which, by definition, has no
counterexamples.
Given its rocky history, then, formalizing Euler's formula presents an
interesting challenge for formal proof checking. In this talk I discuss
my recent work on a formalization of (a proof of) Euler's polyhedron
formula. The proof was carried out in the MIZAR[2], which is a proof
checking system based on classical first-order logic and set theory. I
try to disarm Lakatos's antipathy toward formal mathematics by showing
how the process of formalizing a proof mirrors or exemplifies the method
of proofs and refutations.
References:
[1] Imre Lakatos: _Proofs and Refutations_, edited by John Worrall and
Elie Zahar. Cambridge University Press, 1976.
[2] MIZAR. Available at http://www.mizar.org .
____________
SF BAY ACM TALK
on Wednesday, 17 October 2007, 6:30pm - 9:00pm
Hewlett Packard, Pruneridge and Wolfe, Cupertino, Bldg. 48, Oak Room
http://sfbayacm.org/
"Yahoo! Mail - designing a large Ajax application"
Greg Rosenberg
Yahoo!
In this talk, Greg will discuss the interaction design behind the
all-new Yahoo! Mail, and AJAX-related challenges we encountered along
the way. He'll give an overview of my role and of the project as
well. This will cover building upon a well-established web-mail
product, to infusing it with new technology from the Oddpost.com
acquisition, to new innovations, and the competitive landscape. Then
the talk will get into specifics around the interaction design,
providing specific examples where we had to craft our own solutions
for the product. Then, I'll give a full demonstration of the product,
highlighting features, some of the areas that were challenges and
calling out some of the unique choices we made.
About the Speaker: Greg Rosenberg is a principal designer at Yahoo!
Inc. and led the interaction design for the all-new Yahoo! Mail:
designing the interaction model, tabbed message system, and several
key features. Recently, Greg has taken on managing and directing the
design for Yahoo! Mash and another new product initiative. Passionate
about design and shipping products, Greg has 12 years experience as an
interaction designer, having created a wide variety of Windows, Mac
OS, web-based and handheld products for companies such as AOL,
Netscape, Symantec and Palm.
____________
PNC AND ECAI 2007 ANNUAL CONFERENCE
on Thursday through Saturday, 18-20 October 2007
Sibley Auditorium, UC Berkeley
http://pnclink.org/pnc2007/english/index.htm
Registration required but free
"Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI)
and Pacific Neighborhood Consortium (PNC) Annual Conference"
PNC and ECAI 2007 Annual Conference and Joint Meetings will be held at
the University of California, Berkeley from October 18 to October 20
(Thursday to Saturday). This Conference is one of the academic
activities in celebration of the completion of the C.V. Starr East
Asian Library, and as a memorial to the late Dr. Chang-Lin Tien,
Berkeley's first Asian Chancellor.
Chancellor Tien was one of the people who made PNC possible. In the
early 1990's, many scholars believed that information exchange between
higher education institutions on the Pacific Rim could be improved
through the development of computing and communication technology,
With this belief, the Pacific Neighborhood Consortium was founded at
Berkeley in 1992.
The main theme of PNC and ECAI 2007 Annual Conference is "Area
Studies, Then and Now. Ms. Pauline Yu, the President of the American
Council of Learned Societies, is invited to be the distinguished
speaker for the keynote session. Dr. Cliff Lynch, the Director of
Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) will be the keynote speaker
in the session of "Digital Archives and e-Libraries, Then and Now;
furthermore, David Rumsey from David Rumsey Map Collection, one of the
largest private collections of historic maps in the US, will be the
keynote speaker in the session of "Map Collection and GIS, Then and
Now".
The session formats of the PNC and ECAI consists of oral presentation,
and poster sessions covering various domains such as
*Area Informatics I: Technical Aspects
*Area Informatics II: Application of Geo-temporal systems to Area Studies
*Biographical Mark-up
*ContextualInfrastructure
*Cultural Atlases
*Digital Archives and e-Libraries-Then and Now
*e-Learning
*e-Museums
*e-Resource and Service
*e-Science
*Institutional Collaborations and Funding
*Map Collection and GIS-Then and Now
*Project Showcase
*Spatial Technologies Convergence
*Spatial and Temporal Visualization in the Humanities.
Scholars, technicians, librarians, museum professionals, educators,
site managers, and all working with cultural materials and technology
may have an interest in this conference.
From the dawn of the Internet Age to the present, the Pacific
Neighborhood Consortium has brought together those at the cutting edge
of technological research for content organization, visualization,
discovery, and access; with those who create, preserve, and manage
content. PNC invites you to attend this important event for the
Pacific Rim scholarly communities.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 18 October 2007, 12 noon - 1:00pm
Cordura Hall 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
"Intentionality, Intuition, and Proof in Mathematics"
Richard Tieszen
San Jose State
In the late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties Arend
Heyting, following Oskar Becker, identified proofs with fulfillments
of mathematical intentions (in the sense of intentionality). The idea
of proofs as fulfillment of intentions was then used by Heyting and
Becker to interpret the intutionistic logical constants, and in this
use it played an important historical role in the formulation of what
is now called the BHK interpretation of the intuitionistic logical
constants. The idea was that proofs in the sense of intuitionistic
constructions are just forms of intuition, where intuitions are
understood as fulfillments of mathematical intentions. A variant of
this interpretation was formulated by Kolmogorov at around the same
time, in terms of problems (in place of intentions) and solutions (in
place of fulfillments). In recent times, Martin-L\"of has again used
the language of intention and fulfillment in some presentations of his
work on intutionistic type theory. By association, there are also
relationships to the Curry-Howard idea of formulae-as-types, and to
other technical developments.<p>
In my talk I will examine the idea of proofs as fulfillments of
intentions, propose a related account of mathematical intuition, and
consider the question whether the ideas of intentionality and proof as
fulfillment (= intuition) in mathematics have applications that extend
beyond constructive foundations.
____________
STANFORD NETWORKING SEMINAR
on Thursday, 18 October 2007, 12:15pm
Packard 101
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
"The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It"
Jonathan Zittrain
Oxford University/Stanford
The Internet we know and love at risk even as its freedoms are at a
high water mark and rising. It's the changing slope of the curve that
counts. Regulators and some business types (e.g., incumbents) have
interest in being able to intervene more readily; they've been stymied
since the 1990's because the Net has produced too many golden eggs to
be worth shutting it down. The deciding vote is the "consumer" vote,
and they want their MTV. Unfortunately that vote is itself shifting,
in part because of the uncontrolled environment represented by Net and
PC: too much spyware, too many viruses, too little reliability for the
applications they want to use. Waiting in the wings is a new
generation of "information appliances" that in the past have been
laughable (think WebTV) but now are killer: iPod, XBox, TiVo, most
mobile phones, Zune, PSP. These appliances, and a general
appliancization of the PC itself, represent a very different
environment: the immutability of an appliance to the consumer and
third parties (think television set), coupled with use of the latest
Net innovations to make the thing eminently alterable by (and only by)
its maker and licensees. This talk maps out the bad implications of an
appliancized -- and Web 2.0 -- world, and offers suggestions to temper
it.
About the speaker: Jonathan Zittrain is a Visiting Professor of Law
from the University of Oxford, and the Chair in Internet Governance
and Regulation at Oxford University. Zittrain's research includes
digital property, privacy, and speech, and the role played by private
"middlepeople" in Internet architecture. He has a strong interest in
creative, useful, and unobtrusive ways to deploy technology in the
classroom. Education: Harvard Law School, J.D. 1995; Harvard
University John F. Kennedy School of Government, M.P.A. 1995; Yale
University, B.S. Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence 1991.
____________
UC BERKELEY ICBS COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 19 October 2007, 11:00am
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
http://icbs.berkeley.edu/
"The malleability of visual cognition: Effects of videogame expertise"
Steve Mitroff
Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University
An important aspect of visual perception that has gone relatively
understudied is how, and under what conditions, a perceiver can
influence his or her own visual system. How can specific training
regimens and prior experiences influence how and what one sees? In
this talk, I will discuss my lab's recent and current research
exploring the effects of video game experiences on visual
perception. I will present our experiments which demonstrate in what
ways action video game players differ from non-video game players, and
what the differences may mean for basic visual processing as well as
for society more broadly.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 19 October 2007, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B01
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
"Augmented Social Cognition"
Ed Chi
PARC
Over the last few years, we've realized that many of the information
environments are gradually turning people into social foragers and
sharers. People spend much time in communities, and they are using
these communities to share information with others, to communicate, to
commiserate, and to establish bonds. This is the "Social Web". While
not all is new, this style of enhanced collaboration is having an
impact on people's online lives, so we've formed a new research area
here at PARC to go after these ideas in depth.
"Augmented Social Cognition" is trying to understand the enhancement
of a group of people's ability to remember, think, and reason. This
has been taking in the form of many Web2.0 systems like social
networking sites, social tagging systems, blogs, and Wikis. In this
talk, I will summarize examples of recent research on:
- how decreasing the interaction costs might change the number of
people who participate in social tagging systems?
- how conflict and coordination have played out in Wikipedia?
- how social transparency might affect reader trust in Wikipedia?
About the Speaker: Ed H. Chi is a research scientist at Palo Alto
Research Center's User Interface Research Group. Ed completed his
three degrees (B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.) in 6.5 years from University of
Minnesota, and has been doing research on user interface software
systems since 1993. He has been featured and quoted in the press, such
as the Economist, Time Magazine, LA Times, and the Associated Press.
____________
PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 19 October 2007, 3:15pm
Building 90, room 92Q
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
"Kant, Proust, and the Appeal of Beauty"
Richard Moran
Harvard University
Many writers on aesthetic matters recognize a special question about
the normativity of the judgment of beauty, insofar as this is
different from the judgment of something as agreeable or pleasant.
Kant famously marks this difference in terms of a demand for universal
agreement, which is expressed in the judgment that something is
beautiful rather than merely agreeable.
"Many things may be charming and agreeable to him; no one cares
about that. But if he proclaims something to be beautiful, then he
requires the same liking from others; he then judges not just for
himself but for everyone, and speaks of beauty as if it were a
property of things. That is why he says: The thing is beautiful, and
does not count on other people to agree with his judgment of liking
on the ground that he has repeatedly found them agreeing with him;
rather he demands [fordern] that they agree. He reproaches them if
they judge differently, and denies that they have taste, which he
nevertheless demands of them, as something they ought to have."
(212-213, Hackett edition, Pluhar translation)
Yet Kant also claims a special autonomy for the judgment of the
beautiful, which is difficult to square with the demand for universal
agreement, as when he says: "Taste lays claim merely to autonomy; but
to make other people's judgments the basis determining one's own would
be heteronomy." (282) Some interpreters of Kant respond by rejecting
the imperatival or normative understanding of the claim to universal
agreement, rendering it closer to a prediction or expectation of
agreement. A different tradition of thinking about beauty, however,
marks the difference with objects of mere enjoyment by relating the
idea of necessity in the experience of the beautiful to the
necessities of love and the sense of requirement felt toward its
objects. Mary Mothersill refers to this tradition when she says,
"Beauty is causally linked with pleasure and inspires love. [...]
Plato's psychology is more accurate than Kant's: our earliest
impression - and in that sense our prototype of beauty - is not a
wildflower but a human face, one that is the focus of intense if
ambivalent affect." Beauty Restored, pp. 271 & 273 This paper
explores the consequences of taking this other tradition seriously,
using Proust as a representative exemplar, as a way both of making
sense of some of the features Kant ascribes to the concept of the
beautiful, while avoiding the paradoxes stemming from his focus on the
conditions for universal agreement.
About the Speaker: Richard Moran received his Ph.D. from Cornell
University, and taught at Princeton University before moving to
Harvard in 1995, where he is the Brian D. Young Professor of
Philosophy. He is the author of the book 'Authority and Estrangement:
An Essay on Self-Knowledge' (Princeton, 2001), and various articles on
aesthetics, moral psychology, the philosophy of action, and issues
relating to speech and testimony.
____________
END MATERIAL
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