From T.Heida at ewi.utwente.nl Thu Apr 1 07:31:18 2010 From: T.Heida at ewi.utwente.nl (T.Heida@ewi.utwente.nl) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 13:31:18 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers - Special issue on "Neural models of brain disorders" References: <5FE32CF75A28C74CBFD57A57B8A3EF0D0234AFEC@EWIEX12.dynamic.ewi.utwente.nl> Message-ID: ----------------------------------- ================= CALL FOR PAPERS ================= ---------------------------------------------------------------- Special Issue of the Neural Networks Journal (Elsevier) on "Neural models of brain disorders" ---------------------------------------------------------------- Guest Editors Vassilis Cutsuridis, Boston University, USA (vcut at bu.edu) Ciska Heida, University of Twente, The Netherlands (t.heida at utwente.nl) Wlodek Duch, Nicolaos Copernicus University, Poland (wduch at is.umk.pl) Kenji Doya, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan (doya at oist.jp) -------- Scope -------- Recent decades have witnessed dramatic accumulation of knowledge about the genetic, molecular, pharmacological, neurophysiological, anatomical, imaging and psychological characteristics of brain disorders. Despite these advances, however, experimental brain science has offered very little insight into the theoretical framework for integrating neurobiological and psychological data. Surgical treatment of neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease, dystonia and epilepsy were until recently mainly based on applying lesions at specific parts of the brain. While these procedures nowadays have been replaced by more reversible neurostimulation methods, most therapies for brain disorders are still based on trial-and-error and effective mechanisms remain unknown. Mathematical and neurocomputational models play an instrumental role in bridging the gap between the brain and behavior, and may help to unravel the underlying mechanisms of therapy and to simulate and test new therapeutic strategies. The goal of the special issue is to provide a snapshot and a resume of the current state-of-the-art of the ongoing research avenues concerning the neural basis of brain disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, dementia, psychosis, affective disorders, anxiety, autism, dyslexia, Altzheimer's disease, epilepsy, etc. The emphasis will be on computational models that are tightly grounded on experimental data. --------------- Specific Aims --------------- The special issue specifically aims at providing insights in neuronal network processes and interactions underlying normal and abnormal behavior based on computational models. These models may describe network behavior at a microscopic (cellular) or macroscopic (system) level. The usefulness of the models in understanding neural organization and behavior will be emphasized. The neuroanatomical and neurophysiological principles that are included in the models are clearly stated including the simplifications that are adopted. Experimental data is presented that form the basis for the acceptance of the model and its reductions both in describing normal and abnormal behaviour. Therapeutic methods based on medication as well as targeted electrical or magnetic stimulation of the brain may be explored using these models. Existing therapeutic methods may be challenged while the outcome of novel (neurostimulation) methods may be predicted. ----------------- Important dates ---------------- Submission deadline: September 1st, 2010 Review deadline: December 1, 2010 Revised submission deadline: February 1, 2011 Final decision: March 1, 2011 Appearance in journal: ~April, 2011 ----------- Submission ----------- Electronic submission instructions for the Neural Networks journal can be found under http://ees.elsevier.com/neunet/ Please indicate in your cover letter that your article is for the special issue "Neural Models of Brain Disorders". From hafner at informatik.hu-berlin.de Thu Apr 1 08:12:37 2010 From: hafner at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Verena V. Hafner) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 14:12:37 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD positions in interactive robotics Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, The INTRO project (INTeractive RObotics Research Network) is offering 10 research positions (8 PhD student positions starting in 2010 and 2 post-doctoral positions starting in 2011) in the interdisciplinary areas of Interactive Robotics; Cooperative Robot Learning, Cognitive Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and Intelligent Interface Design. INTRO aims to create a new generation of robotic researchers with a broad understanding of the research and technologies needed to build intelligent robots that function in close interaction with humans in unstructured, changing ?real word? conditions. The training has a strong multidisciplinary approach complemented by specialized domain knowledge. Young researchers will work closely with industries, endowing them with insight and understanding of the industrial product life-cycle and valuable hands-on experience of top-level industrial robot development. By blending complementary skills, INTRO will improve the career perspectives of young researchers, in both academic and industrial sectors. This will be achieved through a transnational network of universities and robot companies, with senior researchers from different disciplines (robotics, artificial intelligence, cognitive sciences, human factors) coming from different ?schools-of-thought? (computer sciences, industrial engineering, psychology). Web site: http://introbotics.eu/ INTRO is funded by the European Commission as part of the FP7 program and involves 6 partners: ? Ume? University, Sweden ? Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel ? Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin, Germany ? Space Applications Services, Belgium ? Robosoft, France ? University of the West of England, UK Each PhD student will be stationed at one of the universities and will also undergo a secondment and visit other partners. The post-doctoral researchers will be stationed at one of the partner companies, with several visits to the other partners? institutions. The following positions are offered: ? Umea University, Sweden - PhD2: Learning from Demonstration and Imitation - PhD5: Emotional interaction ? Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel - PhD1: Learning inspired by cognitive psychology - PhD8: Intelligent interface design ? Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin, Germany - PhD3: Behaviour and intention recognition for human-robot learning - PhD4: Dynamic gesture analysis ? University of the West of England, UK - PhD6: Robot safety and interaction - PhD7: Failure detection and recovery Each recruited researcher will join a training program comprising the following major components: An individual research project conducted in close cooperation with researchers from the partner universities and industries; A network-wide training program that includes regular courses and courses in complementary skills (such as project management and proposal writing); Seminars and workshops. The INTRO partners recognize the importance of gender equality and are committed to it in all aspects of the project. For more information on INTRO and the open positions, please visit http://introbotics.eu/ According to Marie-Curie rules, applicants must be in their first 4 years (full-time equivalent) since gaining a university degree which would entitle them to embark on doctoral studies. An applicant for a positions must not be a citizen of the country in which the associated university is located (exceptions apply, see below). Each position has to be applied for separately. Common closing date for all applications: 15th of April 2010. Anticipated start date: 1st of September 2010 or earlier. With best regards, Verena Hafner -- http://koro.informatik.hu-berlin.de/ From ps629 at columbia.edu Thu Apr 1 09:33:16 2010 From: ps629 at columbia.edu (Paul Sajda) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 09:33:16 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position in Multimodal Neuroimaging for Characterizing Rapid Decision Making Message-ID: <306700D6-1746-4E56-8755-C455AB6F39B7@columbia.edu> Postdoctoral Fellow Multimodal Neuroimaging for Characterizing Rapid Decision Making Columbia University, Department of Biomedical Engineering The Laboratory for Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing (LIINC) at Columbia University has an immediate opening for a Postdoctoral Fellow to participate in our research program focusing on understanding the cortical basis for rapid decision making in the human brain. Our approach has been to use multi-modal neuroimaging, including a custom designed simultaneous EEG/fMRI system, to identify spatio- temporal cortical networks underlying rapid decision making, followed by targeted TMS to perturb these networks to infer causality between network activity and behavior. Our analysis methods are deeply rooted in machine learning techniques, with a focus on using such techniques to enable single-trial analysis for correlating with decision variables. Applicants should have a background in one, and preferably several, of the following area: machine learning, neural signal processing, neuroimaging (EEG and/or fMRI), decision making, cognitive neuroscience. A Ph.D. in Engineering, Computer Science or Neuroscience is preferred. LIINC is in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University and interacts closely with other departments at Columbia, Including Electrical Engineering, Biological Sciences, Computer Science and Neuroscience. In addition, the C3Vision project includes collaborators at other academic institutions as well as in industry, and the project involves both basic and applied research which will ultimately lead to testable systems. Interested candidates should send via email their CV, three representative papers, the names of three references, and cover letter to Prof. Paul Sajda (psajda at columbia.edu). Applications will be considered until September 2010. The position is for one year, with the option to renew for 2-3 years, given satisfactory performance and available funding. Only U.S. citizens or permanent residence will be considered. Paul Sajda, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Biomedical Engineering Columbia University 351 Engineering Terrace Building, Mail Code 8904 1210 Amsterdam Avenue New York, NY 10027 tel: (212) 854-5279 fax: (212) 854-8725 email: ps629 at columbia.edu http://liinc.bme.columbia.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100401/4734c331/attachment-0001.html From Oliver.Obst at csiro.au Fri Apr 2 04:15:45 2010 From: Oliver.Obst at csiro.au (Oliver.Obst@csiro.au) Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2010 19:15:45 +1100 Subject: Connectionists: Initialization and self-organized optimization of recurrent neural network connectivity Message-ID: Dear Colleagues as a subscriber to this list you may be interested in our paper Initialization and self-organized optimization of recurrent neural network connectivity Joschka Boedecker, Oliver Obst, N. Michael Mayer, and Minoru Asada HFSP J. 2009 October; 3(5): 340?349. Published online 2009 October 26. doi: 10.2976/1.3240502. which is now available free of charge from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2801534/pdf/HJFOA5-000003-000340_1.pdf Comments and questions are welcome. Abstract: Reservoir computing (RC) is a recent paradigm in the field of recurrent neural networks. Networks in RC have a sparsely and randomly connected fixed hidden layer, and only output connections are trained. RC networks have recently received increased attention as a mathematical model for generic neural microcircuits to investigate and explain computations in neocortical columns. Applied to specific tasks, their fixed random connectivity, however, leads to significant variation in performance. Few problem-specific optimization procedures are known, which would be important for engineering applications, but also in order to understand how networks in biology are shaped to be optimally adapted to requirements of their environment. We study a general network initialization method using permutation matrices and derive a new unsupervised learning rule based on intrinsic plasticity (IP). The IP-based learning uses only local learning, and its aim is to improve network performance in a self-organized way. Using three different benchmarks, we show that networks with permutation matrices for the reservoir connectivity have much more persistent memory than the other methods but are also able to perform highly nonlinear mappings. We also show that IP-based on sigmoid transfer functions is limited concerning the output distributions that can be achieved. -- Oliver Obst form follows function (Louis Sullivan). Adaptive Systems Team CSIRO ICT Centre http://research.ict.csiro.au/ +61 2 9372 4710 http://oliver.obst.eu/ From thomas.wennekers at plymouth.ac.uk Mon Apr 5 14:48:10 2010 From: thomas.wennekers at plymouth.ac.uk (Thomas Wennekers) Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 19:48:10 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Final Call: 2/3 June 2010 Spike Train Measure Workshop Message-ID: <201004051948.10432.thomas.wennekers@plymouth.ac.uk> Workshop on Spike Train Measures and Their Applications to Neural Coding 2/3 June 2010 in Plymouth/UK http://helen.pion.ac.uk/stm2010 This workshop addresses the central question in Computational Neuroscience which aspects of neural firing patterns matter functionally and which may be of less importance. In the past, various heuristic measures have been used to characterise spike train data such as firing rates, interspike intervals, pair-correlations, and so on. More recently, advanced tools have been proposed that more systematically explore coding properties of neurons and neural ensembles. These comprise, for example, higher-order statistics, information-based interaction and complexity measures, spike-train metrics, or detailed computational models which allow to understand and predict spike-timing in neurons faithfully. The workshop aims at reviewing some of these recent advances, especially progress on spike train metrics and complementary measures to characterise and predict neural firing patterns. Experimental studies, modelling, data-analysis, and theoretical contributions are equally welcome. Possible topics comprise but are not restricted to - progress on single and multiple-unit spike train metrics - information-theoretic approaches addressing spike patterns - statistical characterisation of multiple unit firing patterns - heuristic measures to characterise neural coding properties - fitting of computational models from spike trains - spike train prediction - applications in data analysis and neural coding The workshop will consist of invited talks, discussions, and a poster session. Invited Speakers Matthias Bethge (MPI for Biological Cybernetics, Tubingen, Germany) Christian Borgelt (European Centre for Soft Computing, Spain) Bruno Cessac (Institute Non Lineare, Nice, France) Richard Naud (EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland) Peter Latham (unconfirmed, UCL, UK) Marcello Montemurro (University of Manchester, UK) Rodrigo Quian-Quiroga (University of Leicester, UK) Stefan Rotter (University of Freiburg, Germany) Simon Schultz (Imperial College, UK) Jonathan Victor (Weill Cornell Medical College, NY, USA) Date and time: 2.June 2010 9:20 to 3.June 13:00 Venue: The University of Plymouth, UK Participation is free, but registration *is* required. Limited travel funds for students may become available. For further information regarding registration, location, travel information, etc please visit the workshop webpage at http://helen.pion.ac.uk/stm2010 Organisers: Thomas Wennekers (University of Plymouth, UK) Sonja Gruen (RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan) Roman Borisyuk (University of Plymouth, UK) Leslie Smith (University of Stirling, UK) This workshop is generously funded by the UK Spike Train Network and the UK Neuroinformatics Node. From viktor.jirsa at univmed.fr Tue Apr 6 05:50:23 2010 From: viktor.jirsa at univmed.fr (Viktor Jirsa) Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:50:23 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD opening in Behavioral Neuorsciences in Marseille Message-ID: <4BBB03DF.6060204@univmed.fr> *Ph.D. studentship in Behavioral Neurosciences at the Mediterranean University in Marseille, France * _Title:_ Control mechanisms in precision aiming in the elderly The Institute of Movement Sciences in Marseille (France) (ISM, http://www.ism.univmed.fr) has an opening for a PhD student in Behavioral Neurosciences. The ISM is an interdisciplinary laboratory (CNRS & University of the Mediterranean), which brings together research in experimental psychology, behavioral neuroscience, motor control, biomechanics, and physiology. Topics currently being investigated in the ISM include: perception-action coupling, motor control, neuromuscular modeling with kinematics, computational neurosciences with a focus on large-scale brain modeling, non-invasive brain imaging including Electroencephalography (EEG). _PhD project: _ Our daily activities incessantly require that we control both the speed and the accuracy of our movements via which we physically interact with the environment. Over a century of research has firmly documented that movement speed decreases as accuracy requirements increase and vice versa. This so-called speed-accuracy trade-off has been extensively explored, notably in goal-directed aiming. We recently found evidence that, in young adults, repetitive precision aiming movements with low and high accuracy requirements are associated with two different control mechanisms (corresponding to rhythmic and discrete movements, respectively). It is well known that both the peripheral and central nervous system of the elderly are subject to changes, which underlies an alteration of their interaction with their environment relative to young adults. In particular, in the context of precision aim these effects come to the fore as a slowing down and increased variability of their movements. This interdisciplinary team-project brings together established theoretical and methodological expertise in nonlinear dynamics, experimental psychology, neurophysiology and behavioral neuroscience in order to determine how aging impacts the distinct motor control mechanisms utilized in precision aiming. This aim will be pursued combining skills in dynamical modeling/simulation, complementary (phase flow) analysis techniques as well as the analysis of kinematic and electromyographical patterns (underlying muscular activity) in multiple experiments in the context of precision aiming. Applicants should have a background in experimental psychology or behavioral neurosciences and have programming, as well as time-series analysis skills. Knowledge of dynamical approaches to motor control is a plus. Funding will be allocated on a competitive basis. Principal investigators involved are Laure Fernandez, Raoul Huys and Viktor Jirsa. For further information please contact Laure Fernandez: laure.fernandez at univmed.fr From M.Montemurro at manchester.ac.uk Tue Apr 6 06:05:27 2010 From: M.Montemurro at manchester.ac.uk (Marcelo Montemurro) Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 11:05:27 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Manchester Workshop on Neural Coding & Computation Message-ID: <23C868CE-92B9-4753-AA0B-A9F075C20B09@manchester.ac.uk> Dear All, this is the first announcement of the workshop on Neural Coding and Computation that will take place at the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Manchester (UM). Understanding how the brain codes and processes information is one of the major challenges of neuroscience. The Manchester Neural Coding and Computation Workshop will address this fundamental problem by bringing together leading international speakers from computational neuroscience, mathematical neuroscience, and systems neuroscience. The aim of the workshop is to present cutting edge research on neural coding from a multidisciplinary perspective. The date, time, and venue for the workshop are as follows: 31August 2010, from 10:00am to 5:00pm The University of Manchester Faculty of Life Sciences Room G306, ground floor, Jean McFarlane Building The confirmed invited speakers are the following: -Peter Dayan (Gatsby, London) -Christoph Kayser (Max Planck Institute, Tuebingen, Germany) -Miguel Maravall (Instituto de Neurociencias, Alicante, Spain) -Simon Schultz (Imperial College, London) -Simon Thorpe ( CNRS, France) -Misha Tsodyks (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel) Some travel support will be available (priority will be given to PhD students and postdocs). The event is funded by the UK Neuroinformatics Node (www.neuroinformatics.org.uk), the Neuroscience Research Institute (UM), and the Faculty of Life Sciences (UM). Registration and attendance are free of charge. Buffet lunch will be provided. Please, register by filling in the form at the workshop web page (www.neuroscience.manchester.ac.uk/research/researchgroups/computation/workshops) Regards, The organisers -- Dr. Marcelo A. Montemurro Faculty of Life Sciences University of Manchester Room 3.606 Stopford Building Oxford Road Manchester, M13 9PT UK phone: +44(0)161 306 3883 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100406/10bad068/attachment.html From ted.carnevale at yale.edu Tue Apr 6 16:38:47 2010 From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale) Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:38:47 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: NEURON 2010 Summer Course Message-ID: <4BBB9BD7.60004@yale.edu> COURSE ANNOUNCEMENT What: "The NEURON Simulation Environment" (NEURON 2010 Summer Course) http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nscsd2010/nscsd2010.html When: Saturday, June 19, through Wednesday, June 23, 2010 Where: The Institute for Neural Computation at the University of California, San Diego, CA Organizers: N.T. Carnevale and M.L. Hines Description: This intensive hands-on course covers the design, construction, and use of models in the NEURON simulation environment. It is intended primarily for those who are concerned with models of biological neurons and neural networks that are closely linked to empirical observations, e.g. experimentalists who wish to incorporate modeling in their research plans, and theoreticians who are interested in the principles of biological computation. The course is designed to be useful and informative for registrants at all levels of experience, from those who are just beginning to those who are already quite familiar with NEURON or other simulation tools. Registration is limited to 20, and the deadline for receipt of applications is Tuesday, June 1, 2010. For more information see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nscsd2010/nscsd2010.html or contact Ted Carnevale Neurobiology Dept. Yale University School of Medicine PO Box 208001 New Haven, CT 06520-8001 phone 203-494-7381 email ted.carnevale at yale.edu Supported in part by: National Institutes of Health Institute for Neural Computation http://inc.ucsd.edu/ Contractual terms require inclusion of the following statement: This course is not sponsored by the University of California. From terry at salk.edu Tue Apr 6 16:42:22 2010 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:42:22 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - April, 2010 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents - Volume 22, Number 4 - April 1, 2010 ARTICLE Efficient Learning and Feature Selection in High-Dimensional Regression Jo-Anne Ting, Aaron D'Souza, Sethu Vijayakumar, and Stefan Schaal LETTERS Adaptive Design Optimization: A Mutual Information Based Approach to Model Discrimination in Cognitive Science Daniel R. Cavagnaro, Jay I. Myung, Mark A. Pitt, and Janne V. Kujala EEG-fMRI Fusion of Paradigm-free Activity using Kalman Filtering Thomas Deneux and Faugeras Olivier A Model of Indispensability of a Large Glial Layer in Cerebrovascular Circulation Rohit Gandrakota, V. S. Chakravarthy, Ranjan K. Pradhan Dynamical Mean Field Model of a Neural-Glial Mass Roberto C. Sotero and Ramon Martinez-Cancino A Continuous Entropy Rate Estimator for Spike Trains Using a K-means Based Context Tree George Reeke and Tiger Lin Conditional Probability Based Significance Tests for Sequential Patterns in Multi-Neuronal Spike Trains P.S. Sastry and K.P. Unnikrishnan Spiking Neural Networks for Cortical Neuronal Spike Train Decoding Huijuan Fang, Yongji Wang, and Jiping He A Simulation Study Investigating the Impact of Dendritic Morphology and Synaptic Topology on Neuronal Firing Patterns Jen-Yung Chen ----- ON-LINE - http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/neco SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2010 - VOLUME 22 - 12 ISSUES USA Others Electronic only Student/Retired $65 $128 $60 Individual $115 $178 $107 Institution $962 $1,025 $860 Canada: Add 5% GST to USA prices MIT Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902. Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-orders at mit.edu http://mitpressjournals.org/neuralcomp ----- From gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Tue Apr 6 22:24:16 2010 From: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu (Mark A. Gluck) Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 22:24:16 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: POSTDOC POSITION: Cognitive Neuroscience of Learning, Memory, and Decision Making Message-ID: PLEASE REPOST OR FORWARD TO POTENTIAL APPLICANTS: POSTDOC POSITION: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE OF LEARNING, MEMORY & DECISION MAKING We seek a postdoctoral applicant for a position at Rutgers University - Newark in New Jersey to work as part of an international interdisciplinary team studying the cognitive neuropsychology and neuroimaging of learning and decision making. Prior experience in one or more of: cognitive psychology of learning and memory, behavioral studies of brain-damaged subjects or functional neuroimaging required. Some familiarity with neuro-computational modeling helpful but not essential. [An additional position is also available for someone with strong computer modeling and programming skills to work on computational modeling of front-striatal-hippocampal interaction in learning, with emphasis on modeling degenerative brain disorders.] Clinical behavioral studies in our lab include studies of patients with Parkinson's disease, dystonia, drug addiction, FTD, depression, amnesia, or MCI/Alzheimer's. Collaborative projects include local partners in NY and NJ, as well as international collaborations in Italy, Turkey, Korea, China, Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian West Bank. >> If you are going to the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting in >>Montreal later this month, please email immediately to discuss >>possible interview there on Sunday or Monday morning of meeting. We are located in downtown Newark, 13 miles outside of New York City. See http://www.gluck.edu for more information on our lab, grants, and research. To apply, please send CV and summary of your past and future research interests to Dr. Mark A. Gluck at gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu. Position could start in summer or fall of 2010. Note: Applicants must be US Citizens or green card holders. ___________________________________ Dr. Mark A. Gluck, Professor Co-Director, Rutgers Memory Disorders Project Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Rutgers University 197 University Ave. Newark, New Jersey 07102 Web: http://www.gluck.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100406/57674004/attachment.html From Eugene.Izhikevich at braincorporation.com Thu Apr 8 00:22:40 2010 From: Eugene.Izhikevich at braincorporation.com (Eugene M. Izhikevich) Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2010 21:22:40 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Jobs at Brain Corporation: spiking models of motor control Message-ID: <4bbd5a07.8802be0a.1fdf.0eac@mx.google.com> Two full-time positions in computational neuroscience are available immediately at Brain Corporation, San Diego, CA at the level of scientist (postdoc), senior scientist (assistant professor), or principal scientist (associate/full professor), to collaborate with the existing team of vision neuroscientists to develop spiking models of motor control. A successful candidate will have a published record of research on spiking networks and good knowledge of theories of reinforcement learning and forward/inverse models of motor control, as well as knowledge of MATLAB, C/C++, and object-oriented programming. Brain Corporation is located in beautiful San Diego, in close proximity to the UCSD campus and the Salk Institute. The employee compensation package at Brain Corporation includes annual performance-based bonuses, matching 401k contributions, and a stock option grant. Submit your resume/CV and relevant papers to Dr. Eugene M. Izhikevich at . In your cover letter, address your areas of expertise relevant to models of motor control. From bschrauw at elis.UGent.be Fri Apr 9 11:16:32 2010 From: bschrauw at elis.UGent.be (Benjamin Schrauwen) Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010 17:16:32 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Final CFP for workshop on Cognitive and Neural Models for Automated Processing of Speech and Text 2010 Message-ID: <12DC9028-BB64-4E20-BD4E-F80CB5B13FFB@elis.ugent.be> Final Call for Papers for the workshop on "Cognitive and Neural Models for Automated Processing of Speech and Text" (CONAS 2010) July 9 and 10, 2010, Ghent, Belgium. Website: http://conas.elis.ugent.be INVITED SPEAKERS: - Yoshua Bengio, University of Montreal - Tomaso Poggio, MIT - Gordon Pipa, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research - Stefan Kiebel, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences - Adam Sanborn, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London - Ruslan Salakhutdinov, MIT - Alex Graves, Technical University of M?nchen - Peter Tino, University of Birmingham IMPORTANT DATES: Submission of full papers: April 23, 2010 Notification of acceptance: June 1, 2010 Registration before: June 23, 2010 The aim of this workshop is to elucidate this potential role of deep and recurrent models as an intermediary between the engineering and the empirical aspects of speech and language processing. ------------------------------------- We would like to kindly invite you to submit papers to the workshop on "Cognitive and Neural Models for Automated Processing of Speech and Text" (CONAS 2010). This is a 2-day workshop on the role of cognitive, neural and deep models in speech recognition and language understanding, held in Ghent (Belgium) on July 9-10th, 2010. *Background and Scope* Speech recognition and language understanding is one of the prime fields where application engineering meets -- or should meet -- with cognitive neuroscience. However, the interdisciplinary connections are not as tight as one might wish. On the application engineering side, as we go up the linguistic hierarchy, we find a diversity of computational methods, ranging from signal processing over statistical pattern recognition to grammar and logic-based semantic representation formalisms - with a remarkably limited use of artificial neural networks. On the cognitive neuroscience side, we find a diversity of human performance phenomena that are studied, from acoustic perception over various memory competences to the temporal structure of syntactic and semantic parsing, repair processes and the planning and execution of oral communications. It is fair to say that engineers do not care too much how their computational methods can be realized by brains, nor do neuroscientists, as a rule, ground their models in executable algorithms. In this situation, computational models based on recurrent and/or deep neural networks may serve as an interface between application engineering and brain/cognition modeling. On the one hand, these models can, in principle, model complex spatio-temporal data and thus should eventually be capable to acquire (and possibly exceed) the functionalities which are today realized by a diversity of other formalisms. On the other hand, these deep and recurrent models appear intrinsically suited to be mapped to biological neural systems, although there is still a large complexity gap between formal and artificial vs. biological neural networks. While neural models are currently not much used in speech and language applications, it may be time to reconsider their role in the light of recent developments of novel, powerful RNN based and deep learning architectures. The aim of this workshop is to elucidate this potential role of deep and recurrent models as an intermediary between the engineering and the empirical aspects of speech and language processing. We thus solicit contributions on topics of the following kind (list is indicative, not exclusive): - novel deep or recurrent NN architectures for multi-scale temporal data processing (e.g. based on reservoir computing, multidirectional RNNs, temporal deep belief networks) - implementations of complex statistical data processing in RNNs (e.g. Bayesian or dynamical Bayesian networks) - short-term, working, and long-term memory mechanisms in RNNs - implementing grammar in deep and recurrent NNs - learning and adaptation in deep or recurrent NNs - beyond supervised training - technological solutions for speech / handwriting / language processing - implementation and parallelization aspects *Organizers* The workshop is organized by the consortium of the European FP7 project ORGANIC (www.reservoir-computing.org), and is funded through this project. The objective of ORGANIC is to establish RNN models as a viable alternative to the mainstream statistical models in speech recognition, using the principles of reservoir computing as a starting point. *Program Board* Benjamin Schrauwen, University of Ghent (chair) Herbert Jaeger, Jacobs University Bremen Wolfgang Maass, Technical University Graz Peter F. Dominey, INSERM Lyon Jean-Pierre Martens, University of Ghent Welf Wustlich, Planet intelligent systems GmbH From rmcantin at isr.ist.utl.pt Sat Apr 10 11:59:31 2010 From: rmcantin at isr.ist.utl.pt (Ruben Martinez-Cantin) Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:59:31 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CfP: RSS10 Workshop Towards Closing the Loop: Active Learning for Robotics Message-ID: ---------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS - RSS WORKSHOP Towards Closing the Loop: Active Learning for Robotics Zaragoza, Spain, June 27, 2010 http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt/~rmcantin/rss2010.php ---------------------------------------------------------------- Important Dates: ---------------- * Submission of extended abstracts: May 19, 2010 (later submission might not be considered for review) * Notification of acceptance: May 28, 2010 * Workshop date: June 27, 2010 Overview: --------- The ability to adapt to changing environment autonomously will be essential for future robots. While this need is well-recognized, most machine learning research focuses largely on perception and static data sets. Instead, future robots need to interact with the environment to generate the data that is needed to foster real-time adaptation based on all information collected in previous interactions and observations. In other words, we need to close the loop between the robot acting, robot sensing and robot learning. Novel active methods need to outperform passive methods by a margin that compensates the potential the extra computational burden and the cost of the active data sampling. During the last years, there has been an increasing interest in related techniques that could potentially become applicable in this context. These include techniques from statistics such as adaptive sensing or sequential experimental design as well novel reinforcement learning methods that have the potential to scale into robotics. In this context, we would like to bring together researchers from both the robotics and active machine learning in order to discuss for which problems the autonomous learning loop can be closed using learning, and to identify the machine learning methods that can be used to close it. Invited speakers: ----------------- * Mark Coates, McGill University * Andrew Davison, Imperial College London * Manuel Lopes, University of Plymouth * Pierre-Yves Oudeyers, INRIA * Nick Roy, MIT * Jo-Ann Ting, UBC * John K. Tsotsos, York University Submission instructions: ------------------------ We invite submission of extended abstracts to the workshop. Extended abstracts should be up to 2 pages in length, formatted in according to RSS style. However, submissions should not be blind. Extended abstracts should be sent in PDF or PS file format by email to alrss10 at gmail.com The selected submission may be accepted either as an oral presentation or as a poster presentation. We encourage participants who can contribute in the following areas: * Active learning * Active filtering * Sequential experimental design * Adaptive sensing * Optimal information gathering * Autonomous exploration * Bayesian optimization * Active cognitive development * Attention systems or gaze control * Sensor placement * Active vision * Online decision making * Selection criteria/Utility functions * Information theoretic metrics in the context of robotics. The above list is not exhaustive, and we welcome submissions on highly related topics too. Accepted extended abstracts will be made available online at the workshop website. Steering Committee: ------------------- * Florence d'Alch?-Buc * Jun Morimoto * Nick Roy * Marc Toussaint Organizers: ----------- * Ruben Martinez-Cantin, Instituto Superior Tecnico * Jan Peters, Max Plank Institute * Andreas Krause, Caltech Contact: -------- mailto:alrss10 at gmail.com http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt/~rmcantin/rss2010.php From Randy.OReilly at Colorado.EDU Sun Apr 11 03:39:41 2010 From: Randy.OReilly at Colorado.EDU (Randall Charles O'Reilly) Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:39:41 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc in Computational Cognitive Neuroscience, CU Boulder Message-ID: Postdoctoral Opening Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab University of Colorado Boulder A postdoctoral position is available starting summer or fall 2010 for someone interested in pursuing neuroscience-based computational modeling of cognition. There are numerous projects ongoing within the lab that could be of interest, but the primary funding is to work and publish on embodied models of cognition, where a virtual robotic system explores and learns within a virtual environment, using biologically-based brain systems for vision, motor control, cognitive control, and memory. The central hypothesis is that realistic interaction with the physical environment provides a rich source of high-quality learning signals that are unavailable to standard disembodied computational models. The infrastructure and initial successful models are in place, so now the fun begins! The primary requirement for the position is a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience, computer science, or neuroscience, and extensive experience with computational modeling work at the neural network and/or detailed biophysical level. The position will be supervised by Dr. Randall O'Reilly at the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder. For more information about the research, the computational cognitive neuroscience lab, and other associated faculty, see http://grey.colorado.edu/CompCogNeuro/index.php/CCNLab http://psych.colorado.edu/~oreilly and associated links. Interested individuals should send a curriculum vitae, representative publications, a statement of research interests, and three letters of reference via email torandy.oreilly at colorado.edu. Applications will be reviewed starting in May, continuing until the position is filled. The University of Colorado Boulder is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment. - Randy ---- Dr. Randall C. O'Reilly Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience University of Colorado Boulder 345 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0345 303-492-0054 Fax: 303-492-2967 http://psych.colorado.edu/~oreilly From sanchez at uji.es Wed Apr 14 04:03:15 2010 From: sanchez at uji.es (=?iso-8859-1?Q?J._Salvador_S=E1nchez?=) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 10:03:15 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: AERFAISS 2010 Call-for-Participation Message-ID: <96C68FC353474CF2B2AE8719B2D4F6BF@dlsi.uji.es> Call for Participation (apologies for multiple copies)_____________________________________________________ AERFAI International Summer School on Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning in Multimedia Systems --- Benic?ssim, June 7-11, 2010 URL: http://www.aerfaiss2010.uji.es E-mail: info at aerfaiss2010.uji.es DESCRIPTION The AERFAI Summer School 2010 is organized by the Spanish Association for Pattern Recognition (AERFAI) in collaboration with the Institute of New Imaging Technologies at Universitat Jaume I of Castell? (Spain). This is the fifth edition in a series of AERFAI Summer Schools devoted to a wide range of topics in the fields of Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. The focus of this year Summer School is to study the most relevant approaches to Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning in Multimedia Systems. This event is open to any researcher or PhD-student who is interested in learning or refreshing their knowledge about the most successful approaches in the fields of object & human-action detection/categorization and recognition. AERFAISS'2010 is organized as a five-days intensive course to be held June 7-11 in Benic?ssim (Spain). Leading experts in the field shall present each tutorial, followed by a practice session with specific software in order for participants to gain a better understanding of the theory. A non-formal poster session will also be organized for the participants to present their current research and interact with their scientific peers. ORGANIZATION CO-CHAIRS Prof. J. Salvador S?nchez, Local Chair AERFAISS'2010, sanchez at uji.es Prof. Filiberto Pla, Chairman of the AERFAI, pla at uji.es LIST OF LECTURERS Learning with Structured Inputs and Outputs Dr. Christoph Lampert, Institute of Science and Technology, Vienna (Austria) Interactive Video Retrieval Dr. Cees G.M. Snoek, University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) Human Action Recognition (Video) Dr. Ivan Laptev, INRIA, Paris - Rocquencourt (France) Human Activity Modelling from Mobile Phone Sensors Dr. Daniel Gatica-Perez, IDIAP Research Institute, Martigny (Switzerland) Visual Recognition and Features Dr. Krystian Mikolajczyk, CVSSP, University of Surrey (UK) Multimodal Data Fusion Dr. St?phane Marchand-Maillet, University of Geneva (Switzerland) New Challenges in Machine Learning Prof. Ethem Alpaydin, Bogazi?i University, Istanbul (Turkey) REGISTRATION Fees for the AERFAISS'2010 are as follows: AERFAI members - Early registration (by May 10, 2010): Full ... 500 Euros / Single lecture ... 100 Euros AERFAI members - Late registration (after May 10, 2010): Full ... 550 Euros / Single lecture ... 110 Euros Non-members - Early registration (by May 10, 2010): Full ... 600 Euros / Single lecture ... 120 Euros Non-members - Late registration (after May 10, 2010): Full ... 650 Euros / Single lecture ... 130 Euros The full registration fee includes access to all lectures, handling material, coffee breaks, lunches, a guided tour and social dinner. The single lecture registration allows access to the lecture chosen, handling material, coffee breaks and lunch. Payment of registration fee should be done by bank transfer (more information at http://www.aerfaiss2010.uji.es). VENUE AERFAISS'2010 will be held at Hotel Intur Bonaire in Benic?ssim. The hotel is located 150 meters from one of the best fine sandy beaches in Benic?ssim at the Mediterranean coast. It is 10 minutes from the city of Castell?n and the train station, while the Valencia airport is 45 minutes by car. ACCOMMODATION Participants will have a special group rate at Hotel Intur Bonaire and other hotels very close to the AERFAISS'2010 venue. More information about reservation is available on the web site. CONTACT AERFAISS'2010 Dept. Llenguatges i Sistemes Inform?tics Universitat Jaume I Av. Vicent Sos Baynat, s/n 12071 Castell?n de la Plana (Spain) Tel. +34 964728348 / +34 964728350 / +34 964728359 Fax +34 964728435 E-mail: info at aerfaiss2010.uji.es -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100414/ecf023d9/attachment-0001.html From t.heskes at science.ru.nl Sun Apr 11 15:23:47 2010 From: t.heskes at science.ru.nl (Tom Heskes) Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:23:47 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Neurocomputing volume 73 (issues 7-9) Message-ID: <4BC221C3.4000308@science.ru.nl> Connectionists: Neurocomputing volume 73 (issues 7-9) ----------- SPECIAL PAPERS (Advances in Computational Intelligence and Learning, ESANN 2009) Advances in computational intelligence and learning (editorial) Cecilio Angulo, John A. Lee, Frank-Michael Schleif Oscillation in a network model of neocortex Jennifer Dwyer, Hyong Lee, Amber Martell, Rick Stevens, Mark Hereld, Wim van Drongelen Producing pattern examples from ?mental? images Bruno P.A. Grieco, Priscila M.V. Lima, Massimo De Gregorio, Felipe M.G. Fran?a A cortical model for binocular vergence control without explicit calculation of disparity Agostino Gibaldi, Manuela Chessa, Andrea Canessa, Silvio P. Sabatini, Fabio Solari Adaptive local dissimilarity measures for discriminative dimension reduction of labeled data Kerstin Bunte, Barbara Hammer, Axel Wism?ller, Michael Biehl Transformations in variational Bayesian factor analysis to speed up learning Jaakko Luttinen, Alexander Ilin X-SOM and L-SOM: A double classification approach for missing value imputation Paul Merlin, Antti Sorjamaa, Bertrand Maillet, Amaury Lendasse Median fuzzy c-means for clustering dissimilarity data Tina Geweniger, Dietlind Z?lke, Barabara Hammer, Thomas Villmann Hyperparameter learning in probabilistic prototype-based models Petra Schneider, Michael Biehl, Barbara Hammer Exploratory analysis of functional data via clustering and optimal segmentation Georges H?brail, Bernard Hugueney, Yves Lechevallier, Fabrice Rossi Optimizing an organized modularity measure for topographic graph clustering: A deterministic annealing approach Fabrice Rossi, Nathalie Villa-Vialaneix Efficient voting prediction for pairwise multilabel classification Eneldo Loza Menc?a, Sang-Hyeun Park, Johannes F?rnkranz Multi-task preference learning with an application to hearing aid personalization Adriana Birlutiu, Perry Groot, Tom Heskes A new variational radial basis function approximation for inference in multivariate diffusions Michail D. Vrettas, Dan Cornford, Manfred Opper, Yuan Shen A principled approach to image denoising with similarity kernels involving patches Arnaud De Decker, John A. Lee, Michel Verleysen A hidden process regression model for functional data description. Application to curve discrimination Faicel Chamroukhi, Allou Sam?, G?rard Govaert, Patrice Aknin ?ukasiewicz fuzzy logic networks and their ultra low power hardware implementation Rafa? D?ugosz, Witold Pedrycz -------------- REGULAR PAPERS Delay-range-dependent robust H? control for uncertain systems with interval time-varying delays Huaicheng Yan, Hao Zhang, Max Q.-H. Meng A danger theory inspired artificial immune algorithm for on-line supervised two-class classification problem Chenggong Zhang, Zhang Yi Classification of multispectral images in coral environments using a hybrid of classifier ensembles Ant?nio P.M. Henriques, Adri?o D. D?ria Neto, Ricardo F. Amaral Robust exponential stability criterion for uncertain neural networks with discontinuous activation functions and time-varying delays Xiru Wu, Yaonan Wang, Lihong Huang, Yi Zuo AUC maximization linear classifier based on active learning and its application Guang Han, Chunxia Zhao State estimation for neural networks with mixed interval time-varying delays Huiwei Wang, Qiankun Song Committees of Adaboost ensembles with modified emphasis functions Vanessa G?mez-Verdejo, Jer?nimo Arenas-Garc?a, An?bal R. Figueiras-Vidal Asymptotic tracking control scheme for mechanical systems with external disturbances and friction Lili Cui, Huaguang Zhang, Bing Chen, Qingling Zhang A heuristically enhanced gradient approximation (HEGA) algorithm for training neural networks Dimokritos Panagiotopoulos, Christos Orovas, Dimitrios Syndoukas Less conservative results of state estimation for neural networks with time-varying delay Yonggang Chen, Weiping Bi, Wenlin Li, Yuanyuan Wu Training of neural models for predictive control Maciej ?awry?czuk Dynamical behaviors of impulsive reaction?diffusion Cohen?Grossberg neural network with delays Jie Pan, Shouming Zhong Kernel-based metric learning for semi-supervised clustering Mahdieh Soleymani Baghshah, Saeed Bagheri Shouraki Experimental comparison of recursive self-organizing maps for processing tree-structured data P. Van?o, I. Farka? A generalized procedure in designing recurrent neural network identification and control of time-varying-delayed nonlinear dynamic systems Xueli Wu, Jianhua Zhang, Quanmin Zhu Delay-dependent passivity criterion for discrete-time delayed standard neural network model Jin Zhu, Qingling Zhang, Zhonghu Yuan Origin and elimination of two global spurious attractors in Hopfield-like neural network performing Boolean factor analysis Alexander A. Frolov, Dusan Husek, Igor P. Muraviev, Pavel Y. Polyakov Composite function wavelet neural networks with extreme learning machine Jiuwen Cao, Zhiping Lin, Guang-bin Huang Relevance vector machine with adaptive wavelet kernels for efficient image coding Arvind Tolambiya, Prem K. Kalra Efficiently mining local conserved clusters from gene expression data Guoren Wang, Yuhai Zhao, Xiangguo Zhao, Botao Wang, Baiyou Qiao A multi-objective memetic and hybrid methodology for optimizing the parameters and performance of artificial neural networks Leandro M. Almeida, Teresa B. Ludermir Power quality disturbance classification using Hilbert transform and RBF networks T. Jayasree, D. Devaraj, R. Sukanesh Hybrid sampling on mutual information entropy-based clustering ensembles for optimizations Feng Wang, Cheng Yang, Zhiyi Lin, Yuanxiang Li, Yuan Yuan A self-organizing neural architecture integrating desire, intention and reinforcement learning Ah-Hwee Tan, Yu-Hong Feng, Yew-Soon Ong Combine image quality fusion and illumination compensation for video-based face recognition Chao Wang, Yongping Li A mode-dependent stability criterion for delayed discrete-time stochastic neural networks with Markovian jumping parameters Yan Ou, Peng Shi, Hongyang Liu Multiclass support vector classification via coding and regression Pei-Chun Chen, Kuang-Yao Lee, Tsung-Ju Lee, Yuh-Jye Lee, Su-Yun Huang Unsupervised wavelet-based spike sorting with dynamic codebook searching and replenishment Hsiao-Lung Chan, Tony Wu, Shih-Tseng Lee, Ming-An Lin, Shau-Ming He, Pei-Kuang Chao, Yu-Tai Tsai ------------- BRIEF PAPERS Less conservative delay-dependent stability criteria for neural networks with time-varying delays Hanyong Shao Integration of heterogeneous data sources for gene function prediction using decision templates and ensembles of learning machines Matteo Re, Giorgio Valentini ------------ JOURNAL SITE: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/neucom SCIENCE DIRECT: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/5660-2010-999269992-1783436 From t.heskes at science.ru.nl Sun Apr 11 15:23:38 2010 From: t.heskes at science.ru.nl (Tom Heskes) Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:23:38 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Neurocomputing volume 73 (issues 4-6) Message-ID: <4BC221BA.9@science.ru.nl> Neurocomputing volume 73 (issues 4-6) ----------- SPECIAL PAPERS (Bayesian Networks) Bayesian networks (editorial) Alex Aussem Inference and parameter estimation on hierarchical belief networks for image segmentation Christian Wolf, G?rald Gavin A dynamic Bayesian network to represent discrete duration models Roland Donat, Philippe Leray, Laurent Bouillaut, Patrice Aknin A novel Markov boundary based feature subset selection algorithm S?rgio Rodrigues de Morais, Alex Aussem A conservative feature subset selection algorithm with missing data Alex Aussem, Sergio Rodrigues de Morais ------------ SPECIAL PAPERS (Design and Application of Neural Networks and Intelligent Learning Systems, KES 2008) Design and application of neural networks and intelligent learning systems (editorial) Dipti Srinivasan, Robert J. Howlett, Ignac Lovrek, Lakhmi C. Jain, Chee-Peng Lim A B-spline network based neural controller for power electronic applications Heng Deng, Dipti Srinivasan, Ramesh Oruganti Stator resistance identification based on neural and fuzzy logic principles in an induction motor drive Dinko Vukadinovic, Mateo Basic, Ljubomir Kulisic Use of the circle segments visualization technique for neural network feature selection and analysis C.P. Lim, S.L. Wang, K.S. Tan, J. Navarro, L.C. Jain Feature and model selection with discriminatory visualization for diagnostic classification of brain tumors F?lix F. Gonz?lez-Navarro, Llu?s A. Belanche-Mu?oz, Enrique Romero, Alfredo Vellido, Margarida Juli?-Sap?, Carles Ar?s Structural analysis of regulatory DNA sequences using grammar inference and Support Vector Machine Robertas Dama?evi?ius Intelligent design of an unconstrained layout for a flexible manufacturing system Mirko Ficko, Simon Brezovnik, Simon Klancnik, Joze Balic, Miran Brezocnik, Ivo Pahole On the evolutionary-fuzzy control of WIP in manufacturing systems Nikos C. Tsourveloudis A cross-entropy-based population-learning algorithm for discrete-continuous scheduling with continuous resource discretisation Piotr J?drzejowicz, Aleksander Skakovski Genetic algorithm for optimizing service distributions Kresimir Jurasovic, Mario Kusek Focus support interface based on actions for collaborative learning Yuki Hayashi, Tomoko Kojiri, Toyohide Watanabe --------------- SPECIAL PAPERS (2nd International Conference on Bio-inspired Computing: Theories and Applications, BIC-TA 2007) Some novel classification and learning methods and applications for neural networks?Selected papers from the Second International Conference on Bio-Inspired Computing: Theories and Applications (editorial) Xiaopeng Wei, Qiang Zhang, Guangzhao Cui Application of fuzzy adaptive back-propagation neural network in thermal conductivity gas analyzer Xian-Zhong Wang, Tao Zhang, Lei He An associative sparse coding neural network and applications Xianhua Zeng, Siwei Luo, Qingyong Li A novel classification method using the combination of FDPS and flexible neural tree Bo Yang, Lin Wang, Zhenxiang Chen, Yuehui Chen, Runyuan Sun A general fuzzified CMAC based reinforcement learning control for ship steering using recursive least-squares algorithm Zhipeng Shen, Chen Guo, Ning Zhang Neural spike sorting using mathematical morphology, multiwavelets transform and hierarchical clustering Xinling Geng, Guangshu Hu, Xin Tian A multiscale neural network learning paradigm for financial crisis forecasting Lean Yu, Shouyang Wang, Kin Keung Lai, Fenghua Wen -------------- REGULAR PAPERS Regression based D-optimality experimental design for sparse kernel density estimation S. Chen, X. Hong, C.J. Harris Stability analysis of discrete-time stochastic neural networks with time-varying delays Yan Ou, Hongyang Liu, Yulin Si, Zhiguang Feng Existence and global exponential stability of periodic solution for delayed neural networks with impulsive and stochastic effects Xiaodi Li Exponential stability of genetic regulatory networks with random delays Xuyang Lou, Qian Ye, Baotong Cui Local uniform stability of competitive neural networks with different time-scales under vanishing perturbations A. Meyer-B?se, R. Roberts, V. Th?mmler Dynamic depression control of chaotic neural networks for associative memory Min Xia, Jian?an Fang, Yang Tang, Zhijie Wang No-reference image quality assessment in contourlet domain Wen Lu, Kai Zeng, Dacheng Tao, Yuan Yuan, Xinbo Gao On passivity analysis for stochastic neural networks with interval time-varying delay Jie Fu, Huaguang Zhang, Tiedong Ma, Qingling Zhang Existence and global attractivity of almost periodic solutions for delayed high-ordered neural networks Lili Wang Synchronization stability of continuous/discrete complex dynamical networks with interval time-varying delays Dong Yue, Hongjie Li Dynamics of high-order Hopfield neural networks with time delays Jianlong Qiu Incremental tensor biased discriminant analysis: A new color-based visual tracking method Jing Wen, Xinbo Gao, Yuan Yuan, Dacheng Tao, Jie Li Photo-sketch synthesis and recognition based on subspace learning Bing Xiao, Xinbo Gao, Dacheng Tao, Yuan Yuan, Jie Li Stability analysis for neural networks with time-varying delay: A more general delay decomposition approach Yonggang Chen, Weiping Bi, Wenlin Li Synchronization control of switched linearly coupled neural networks with delay Wenwu Yu, Jinde Cao, Wenlian Lu Neural implementation of coarse-to-fine processing in V1 simple neurons Hiroaki Sasaki, Shunji Satoh, Shiro Usui Simple zero singularity analysis in a coupled FitzHugh?Nagumo neural system with delay Bin Zhen, Jian Xu Rotation invariant iris feature extraction using Gaussian Markov random fields with non-separable wavelet Jing Huang, Xinge You, Yuan Yuan, Feng Yang, Lin Lin Biologically inspired feature manifold for gait recognition Yang Mu, Dacheng Tao The errors in simultaneous approximation by feed-forward neural networks Tingfan Xie, Feilong Cao Boosting with pairwise constraints Changshui Zhang, Qutang Cai, Yangqiu Song Exponential stability of numerical solutions to stochastic delay Hopfield neural networks Li Ronghua, Pang Wan-kai, Leung Ping-kei Object-oriented subspace analysis for airborne hyperspectral remote sensing imagery Liangpei Zhang, Xin Huang Image fusion algorithms for color and gray level images based on LCLS method and novel artificial neural network Alaeddin Malek, Maryam Yashtini A unified distance measurement for orientation coding in palmprint verification Zhenhua Guo, Wangmeng Zuo, Lei Zhang, David Zhang Constrained Laplacian Eigenmap for dimensionality reduction Chun Chen, Lijun Zhang, Jiajun Bu, Can Wang, Wei Chen A general kernelization framework for learning algorithms based on kernel PCA Changshui Zhang, Feiping Nie, Shiming Xiang Outlier-resisting graph embedding Yanwei Pang, Yuan Yuan Improved exponential stability criteria for discrete-time neural networks with time-varying delay Zixin Liu, Shu L?, Shouming Zhong, Mao Ye On pth moment exponential stability of stochastic Cohen?Grossberg neural networks with time-varying delays Chuangxia Huang, Jinde Cao The Hopf bifurcation analysis on a time-delayed recurrent neural network in the frequency domain Amirhossein Hajihosseini, Gholam Reza Rokni Lamooki, Babak Beheshti, Farzaneh Maleki Notes on ?Recurrent neural network model for computing largest and smallest generalized eigenvalue? Ying Tang, Jianping Li An improved constrained ICA with reference based unmixing matrix initialization Zhan-Li Sun, Li Shang Fast error estimation for efficient support vector machine growing Pages 1018-1023 A. Navia-V?zquez, R. D?az-Morales Efficient online recurrent connectionist learning with the ensemble Kalman filter Derrick T. Mirikitani, Nikolay Nikolaev Model predictive flight control using adaptive support vector regression Jongho Shin, H. Jin Kim, Sewook Park, Youdan Kim Improved stability criteria of neural networks with time-varying delays: An augmented LKF approach Tao Li, Xiaoling Ye ------------------ JOURNAL SITE: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/neucom SCIENCE DIRECT: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/5660-2010-999269995-1666110 From yann.renard at irisa.fr Wed Apr 14 17:48:07 2010 From: yann.renard at irisa.fr (Yann Renard) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:48:07 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: New release of OpenViBE 0.6.0 Message-ID: <4BC63817.6090906@irisa.fr> New release of *OpenViBE* 0.6.0 "Spring edition" is now available for download at : This release as been delayed because of a bug in the acquisition server. More information about this bug can be found on the dedicated forum topic in the NEWS section. === Overview ========================================= OpenViBE is an opensource platform that enables to design, test and use Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI). Broadly speaking, OpenViBE can be used in many real-time Neuroscience applications. The OpenViBE platform stands out for its high modularity. It addresses the needs of different types of users (programmers and non-programmers) and proposes a user-friendly graphical language which allows non-programmers to design a BCI without writing a single line of code. OpenViBE is portable, independent of hardware or software targets, can run under Windows and Linux and is entirely based on free and open-source software. OpenViBE is compatible with MATLAB programming. OpenViBE comes with preconfigured scenarios and runs already existing applications such as : * BCI based on motor imagery * P300 speller * Neurofeedback * Real-time visualization of brain activity in 2D or 3D OpenViBE is available under the terms of the LGPL-v2+. The whole software is developed in C++. It consists of a set of software modules that can be integrated easily and efficiently to design BCI applications such as for Virtual Reality interaction. === Where to get more information ==================== If you want more details, check these links : *Website* *Quick introduction video* : *Software download* : *One-hour training session video* : *Screenshots and videos* : === What changed since 0.5.0 ? ======================= In this new release, you will find the following modifiactions (+ for adds, * for modifications, - for removes) : + Lucie Daubigney contributed a new driver : g.Tec's gMobiLab+ acquisition device for Linux + We added a new driver : Micromed SD LTM (through SystemPlus Evolution) + We added impedance check to the drivers that could support it + We updated the sample scenarios + We added a Confusion Matrix computation box + We added a Matrix Display box + We added a Lua stimulation box + We reenabled VR demos as default * We enhanced the visuals of the VR demos and added a few stats to make the experience more entertaining * We refactored the acquisition server so the server itself runs in a separate thread for better performances * We corrected some bugs on the acquisition server that caused desynchronisations * We moved to Ogre 1.7 for 3D display * We moved to Boost 1.41 * We updated the online documentation and tutorials * We updated many documentation pages * We fixed lots of bugs ! - We removed OpenMASK / OBT dependency === What's coming in the next release(s) ============= Here is a snapshot of what we are currently doing and what you can expect from the next release(s) : + A Neuroscan acquisition driver + A MitsarEEG acquisition driver + An EGI acquisition driver + More tools dedicated to plugins developpers (base classes, code generators etc...) + More tools dedicated to authors / designer users + A more general matrix operations box ... === Closing words ==================================== We want to thank Lucie Daubigney for her contribution to the g.Mobilab+ driver. Feel free to join us and to contribute as Lucie and others are doing... ! Looking forward to hearing your feedback, we hope you'll enjoy working with OpenViBE as we do. The whole team wishes you a happy Christmas and happy new year... Best regards, The OpenViBE consortium *Contact* : Project Leader : Anatole L?cuyer, INRIA (anatole.lecuyer at irisa.fr) Lead Software Engineer : Yann Renard, INRIA (yann.renard at irisa.fr) From x.troncoso at neuralcorrelate.com Wed Apr 14 13:20:38 2010 From: x.troncoso at neuralcorrelate.com (Xoana G Troncoso) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 10:20:38 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: TOP TEN Illusion Finalists!! Message-ID: The TOP TEN illusions for the Best Illusion of the Year Contest have been chosen!! The Best Illusion of the Year Contest, now sponsored by Scientific American, is an Official Satellite of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS) conference. The Contest Gala will be on Monday, May 10th, 5-7pm, in the Philharmonic Center of Arts (Naples, FL). Doors will open at 4.30pm. Hosted by the inimitable *Stuart Anstis*! With a special appearance by *The Amaz!ng Randi*, the renowned magician, escapologist, and skeptic! Everybody is invited and families are welcome!! Who will the TOP THREE winners be??? That?s up to YOU! The audience will choose them. For more details, please visit our webpage: http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com 2010 TOP TEN ILLUSION CONTESTANTS (alphabetical order): *?Counter?intuitive illusory contours?*, by Bart Anderson (University of Sydney, Australia) *?Two sinusoids: 6-1 perceptions?*?, by Jan Kremlacek (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic) *?Stretching out in the tub?*, by Lydia Maniatis (American University, USA) *?The steerable spiral?*, by Peter Meilstrup & Michael Shadlen (University of Washington, USA) *?The monkey-business illusion?*, by Daniel Simons (University of Illinois, USA) *?Impossible motion: magnet-like slopes?*, by Koukichi Sugihara (Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences, Japan) *?The blurry heart illusion?*, by Kohske Takahashi, Ryosuke Miimi & Katsumi Watanabe (University of Tokyo, Japan) *?The fat face thin (fft) illusion?*, by Peter Thompson (University of York, UK) *?Attention-biased after-image rivalry?*, by Peter Tse (Dartmouth College, USA) *?Illusory gloss?*, by Maarten Wijntjes & Sylvia Pont (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands) To see the illusions themselves? you must come to the CONTEST!!! Xoana Troncoso (Illusion Contest Coordinator) Susana Martinez-Conde (President, Neural Correlate Society) On behalf of the Executive Board of the Neural Correlate Society: Stephen Macknik, Jose-Manuel Alonso, Susana Martinez-Conde, Luis Martinez, Xoana Troncoso, Peter Tse The Neural Correlate Society is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 non-profit organization, whose mission is to promote the public awareness of vision research. -- Xoana G Troncoso, PhD Illusion Contest Coordinator http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com/ Postdoctoral Scholar in Neuroscience Andersen Laboratory California Institute of Technology 1200 E California Blvd. M/C 216-76 Pasadena, California 91125, USA phone: +1-626-395-8337 email: x.troncoso at neuralcorrelate.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100414/bd034724/attachment.html From dorney at cnbc.cmu.edu Thu Apr 15 09:51:20 2010 From: dorney at cnbc.cmu.edu (Barbara Dorney) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:51:20 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: SAND5: Final Announcement Message-ID: <4BC719D8.6050504@cnbc.cmu.edu> LAST CALL FOR TRAVEL SUPPORT The fifth international workshop on Statistical Analysis of Neuronal Data (SAND5) will take place May 20-22, 2010, in Pittsburgh, PA. There will be talks by senior investigators and junior investigators. Please see our website: http://sand.stat.cmu.edu There will also be a poster session, to which all participants are invited to contribute. This workshop series is concerned with analysis of neural signals from various sources, including EEG, fMRI, MEG, 2-Photon, and extracellular recordings. It aims to * define important problems in neuronal data analysis and useful strategies for attacking them; * foster communication between experimental neuroscientists and those trained in statistical and computational methods * encourage young researchers, including graduate students, to present their work; * expose young researchers to important challenges and opportunities in this interdisciplinary domain, while providing a small meeting atmosphere to facilitate the interaction of young researchers with senior colleagues. Talks and posters may involve new methodology, investigation of existing methods, or application of state-of-the-art analytical techniques. We expect there to be a special issue of the Journal of Computational Neuroscience devoted to analysis of neural data, including many papers from this workshop. Here are the confirmed keynote speakers: ? Stu Geman (Brown U.) ? Sonja Gruen (Riken) ? Tom Mitchell (Carnegie Mellon) ? Partha Mitra (Cold Spring Harbor) ? Tirin Moore (Stanford) ? Clay Reid (Harvard) ? Walt Schneider (Pittsburgh) ? Matt Smith (Pittsburgh) ? Garrett Stanley (Georgia Tech) ? Mriganka Sur (MIT) We have made financial commitments to participants, but some funds for travel support remain available. We strongly encourage applications from women and underrepresented minorities. Requests for travel support should be made as soon as possible, and certainly before April 20, 2010. The organizers are Emery Brown, Elizabeth Buffalo, Rob Kass, Liam Paninski, and Jonathan Victor. From jbednar at inf.ed.ac.uk Thu Apr 15 11:38:17 2010 From: jbednar at inf.ed.ac.uk (James A. Bednar) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:38:17 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: UK PhD studentships in Neuroinformatics and Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: <201004151538.o3FFcH4r001597@lodestar.inf.ed.ac.uk> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100415/ef7d73c0/attachment.ksh From munakata at colorado.edu Fri Apr 16 12:10:00 2010 From: munakata at colorado.edu (Yuko Munakata) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:10:00 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Applications in Cognitive Development at CU Boulder Message-ID: Postdoctoral Applicants Cognitive Development Center University of Colorado Boulder I am seeking postdoctoral applications from candidates interested in studying the development of cognitive control. Work in my lab investigates these issues primarily through behavioral studies with children and through neural network simulations. In collaboration with colleagues in our NIMH Center for Executive Function and Dysfunction, we are also investigating mechanisms of cognitive control using fMRI, ERP, and pharmacological methods. Start date is preferably Fall 2010. Interested individuals should send a curriculum vitae, representative publications, a statement of research interests, and three letters of recommendation, all via email to munakata at colorado.edu. Review of applications will begin May 3. For more information, see: http://psych.colorado.edu/~munakata/ http://psych.colorado.edu/cdc/ http://defd.colorado.edu/ The University of Colorado Boulder is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment. Yuko ------------- Yuko Munakata, Professor Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, 345 UCB University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0345 munakata at colorado.edu, http://psych.colorado.edu/~munakata From BS.Bhattacharya at ulster.ac.uk Mon Apr 19 16:07:21 2010 From: BS.Bhattacharya at ulster.ac.uk (Bhattacharya Basabdatta) Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:07:21 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers Special thematic session at BIC-TA 2010, Liverpool, Uk Message-ID: <5BEE8418A733624688A183865F7E22DC021583B7@jnexc09.ad.ulster.ac.uk> ---------------------------------------- Call for Papers _________________________ Special Thematic Session at BIC-TA 2010 on Computational models of functional and dysfunctional brain circuitry 8th - 10th September, Liverpool, UK A Special Thematic Session will be held at the BIC-TA Conference 2010 on the area of modelling functional aspects of the brain with a view to developing a better understanding of the healthy and the dysfunctional brain. We would like to invite all interested authors to make full length paper submission to the session. Submission details are available at the conference website - http://www.hope.ac.uk/bicta2010 Background and Scope: Apart from knowledge discovery, computational models are contributing towards developing a better understanding of the functional, structural and dynamical aspects of different areas of the brain. This knowledge may have significant benefits for medical science. Furthermore, computational models are being used extensively to help develop and improve new bio-inspired technologies, information processing tools, control algorithms and brain-machine interfaces. Topics of interest are, but not limited to: * Psychological and neurological disorders * Cortical dynamics * Brain rhythms * Perceptual processing * Cognitive and emotional processing * Motor circuitry * Models to inform new technologies such as brain-machine interfaces, robot control Publication: The proceedings of BIC-TA 2010 will be published by the IEEE and indexed by EI and IEEEXplore. Selected papers will be published in a special issue of the journal (SCI and Math Review indexed) "Natural Computing": a Springer publication. Important Dates: * Paper submissions due: Monday 10th May 2010 * Notification of acceptance: Saturday 10th July 2010 * Revised manuscripts due: Friday 30th July 2010 * Conference: 8th - 10th September 2010 Orgainsers: Dr. Basabdatta Sen Bhattacharya (bs.bhattacharya at ulster.ac.uk) and Dr. Damien Coyle (dh.coyle at ulster.ac.uk), Intelligent Systems Research Centre, University of Ulster. Regards, Basabdatta Sen Bhattacharya RA, ISRC Magee Campus, University of Ulster Derry BT48 7JL Northern Ireland, UK tel(o): +44(0)28713 75449 web: http://isrc.ulster.ac.uk/staff/BBhattacharya/Contact.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100419/e0b220f5/attachment.html From chenyu6 at gmail.com Thu Apr 22 00:10:21 2010 From: chenyu6 at gmail.com (Chen Yu) Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:10:21 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral researcher in machine learning and cognitive modeling, Indiana University Message-ID: A postdoctoral position is available in the Computational Cognition and Learning Lab at Indiana University (http://www.indiana.edu/~dll/) for someone who is interested in analyzing and modeling multimodal multi-streaming data collected from human-human and human-robot interaction. The lab research work focuses on developing and using data mining and machine learning techniques to understand multimodal embodied communication and cognitive learning systems, and as well as building computational models/systems to emulate human intelligence. To achieve those goals, we employ state-of-the-art sensing and computational techniques to collect multimodal behavioral data (e.g. vision, speech, motion tracking, and eye tracking) from human-human and human-robot interaction, and analyze such data based on statistical machine learning techniques. This is a good opportunity to participate in interdisciplinary research projects. The requirement for the position is a Ph.D. in computer science or cognitive science, and extensive experience with data mining and computational modeling work. Candidates with experience in working with sensorimotor data are preferred. The position will be supervised by Dr. Chen Yu of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Cognitive Science & Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. For more information about the research, the computational cognition and learning lab, and other affiliated faculty, see http://www.indiana.edu/~dll/. Interested individuals should send a CV, representative publications, a statement of research interests, and three letters of reference to chenyu at indiana.edu. From bowlby at bu.edu Tue Apr 20 11:18:01 2010 From: bowlby at bu.edu (Brian Bowlby) Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:18:01 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: 14th ICCNS: Call for Registration and Confirmed Invited Speakers Message-ID: <9A7609DF-F54E-4D7A-814B-B15A0B7D84D3@bu.edu> FOURTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COGNITIVE AND NEURAL SYSTEMS May 19?22, 2010 Boston University 677 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA http://cns.bu.edu/meetings/ Sponsored by the Boston University Center for Adaptive Systems, Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems (http://cns.bu.edu), and Center of Excellence for Learning in Education, Science, and Technology (http://celest.bu.edu) with financial support from the National Science Foundation This interdisciplinary conference is aimed at researchers and students of computational neuroscience, cognitive science, neural networks, neuromorphic engineering, and artificial intelligence. It includes invited lectures and contributed lectures and posters by experts on how the brain and other intelligent systems adapt to a changing world. Single-track oral and poster sessions enable all presented work to be highly visible. CONFIRMED INVITED SPEAKERS Moshe Bar (Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School) The proactive brain: Predictions in visual cognition Leon Chua (University of California, Berkeley) [Plenary Speaker] Memristor minds Carol Colby (Carnegie Mellon University) Active vision Heiner Deubel (University of Munich) Attention before goal-directed actions Stephen Grossberg (Boston University) Linking What and Where in visual attention, recognition, navigation, and planning Earl Miller (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) [Plenary Speaker] The prefrontal cortex: Brain rhythms and cognition Anthony Movshon (New York University) Reading visual information from neuronal populations Steven Petersen (Washington University) Using network analysis tools to study the brain's control systems Russell Poldrack (UCLA) Stopping ourselves: The neural basis of response inhibition Josef Rauschecker (Georgetown University Medical Center) A functional and computational role for the dorsal stream in space and speech Barry Richmond (National Institutes of Health) Studies into the neurobiological basis of stimulus-outcome learning in monkeys Xiao-Jing Wang (Yale University) Computational neurobiology of decision making WORKSHOP ON ?TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DREAM? Steffen Gais (Ludwig Maximilians University) Cholinergic and other neurotransmitter influences on memory processing during sleep Michael Hasselmo (Boston University) Modulation of grid cells and head direction cells during waking and sleep Bruce McNaughton (University of Lethbridge) Dynamics of memory and non-memory reactivation during slow-wave and REM sleep Cliff Saper (Harvard Medical School) Sleep switches Robert Stickgold (Harvard Medical School) Sleep, memory, and dreams: Beyond consolidation Erin Wamsley (Harvard Medical School) Memories in the sleeping brain: A function for our dreams? Matt Wilson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Hippocampal memory reactivation during sleep WORKSHOP ON ?NEUROMORPHIC COMPUTING: FROM BRAINS TO NANOCHIPS? Gail A. Carpenter (Boston University) The ART of neuromorphic computing Ralph Etienne-Cummings (Johns Hopkins University) Implementing a spike-based HMAX vision system with a silicon neural array Henry Markram (Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne) The Blue Brain Project: Insights into the design of the neocortical microcircuitry Karlheinz Meier (University of Heidelberg) Neuromorphic computing ? Are we ready for a big step? Ennio Mingolla (Boston University) Neural designs for nanochip applications REGISTRATION FORM Fourteenth International Conference on Cognitive and Neural Systems May 19?22, 2010 Boston University Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems 677 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA Fax: +1 617 353 7755 Mr/Ms/Dr/Prof:_____________________________________________________ Affiliation:_________________________________________________________ Address:__________________________________________________________ City, State, Postal Code:______________________________________________ Phone and Fax:_____________________________________________________ Email:____________________________________________________________ The registration fee includes a copy of the conference proceedings volume, a reception on Friday night, and 3 coffee breaks each day. CHECK ONE: ( ) $95 Conference (Regular) ( ) $65 Conference (Student) METHOD OF PAYMENT: [ ] Enclosed is a check made payable to "Boston University" Checks must be made payable in US dollars and issued by a US correspondent bank. Each registrant is responsible for any and all bank charges. [ ] I wish to pay by credit card (MasterCard, Visa, or Discover Card only) Name as it appears on the card:___________________________________________ Type of card: _____________________________ Expiration date:________________ Account number: _______________________________________________________ Signature:____________________________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100420/bc2dfbeb/attachment-0001.html From M.deKamps at leeds.ac.uk Wed Apr 21 04:00:18 2010 From: M.deKamps at leeds.ac.uk (Marc de Kamps) Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:00:18 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Two fully-funded PhD Studentships in Computer Science at Leeds University Message-ID: <328C1883CC6BC643B02B589D66B5A16CAC564C0F0F@HERMES8.ds.leeds.ac.uk> Two fully-funded home/EU PhD studentships are available in the School of Computing at the University of Leeds, UK. ? The Biosystems Group is especially keen to encourage students to apply in the areas of computational neuroscience and bioinformatics. The following areas are currently of particular interest: ? (i) Bioinformatics & machine learning with high throughput 'omics data (ii) Modelling dynamical biological systems (iii) Modelling sensory processing, motor control and learning in the C. elegans nervous system (iv) Neural models of visual attention and working memory (v) Population density method for spiking neurons Any applicant will compete for the position(s) with applicants in all other subject areas in the School of Computing. The awards will be made on applicant merit only. ? Funding: The two studentships are funded by an EPSRC doctoral training grant and will start from 1 September 2010 or as soon as possible thereafter. Each of the two studentships is funded for 3.5 years and covers Home/EU fees and maintenance at the standard EPSRC rate (currently ?13,490 per annum). There is also an allowance for travel and equipment. Requirements: All PhD candidates should have or expect to obtain a first class or good 2:1 honours degree in computer science or other related areas. A background in computational neuroscience, bioinformatics, mathematics or physics is necessary.?The successful candidates should fulfil the eligibility criteria for EPSRC funding through UK/EU nationality and residency status. ? Application:? See http://www.leeds.ac.uk/students/apply_research.htm for online applications. The application deadline is the 30 April 2010. Contact Netta Cohen (N.Cohen at leeds.ac.uk), Chris Needham (C.Needham at leeds.ac.uk) or Marc de Kamps?(M.deKamps at leeds.ac.uk) for academic questions and rsadmit at comp.leeds.ac.uk for administrative ones. ? ? ? From neuro.informatics.at.mbl at gmail.com Thu Apr 22 17:32:58 2010 From: neuro.informatics.at.mbl at gmail.com (Neuro Informatics) Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:32:58 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: =?windows-1252?q?WORKSHOP_ON_CIRCUIT_=26_MOLECULA?= =?windows-1252?q?R_ARCHITECTURE_OF_THE_VERTEBRATE_BRAIN=2C_JUNE_17?= =?windows-1252?q?_=96_29=2C_2010=2C_Application_deadline=3A_April_?= =?windows-1252?q?30=2C_2010?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: *ANNOUNCING A NEW CSH WORKSHOP ON CIRCUIT & MOLECULAR ARCHITECTURE OF THE VERTEBRATE BRAIN* Dear Colleague: *WORKSHOP ON CIRCUIT & MOLECULAR ARCHITECTURE OF THE VERTEBRATE BRAIN* ** *JUNE 17 ? 29, 2010* *Application deadline: April 30, 2010* Instructors: Partha Mitra, Kathy Rockland & Z. Josh Huang *Please pass this along to colleagues or members of your laboratory or group who may benefit from this training. * In comparison with complete reference genomes now available for multiple species, our knowledge about the neuronal and circuit architecture of the vertebrate nervous systems is relatively sparse. However, this situation is rapidly changing, enabled by technical advances as well as resurgent and widespread interest in the neuroscientific community in mapping out neural circuitry at unprecedented scales, ranging from the reconstruction of local micro-circuits to the mapping of brain-wide meso-circuits. This circuit architecture naturally and logically complements the molecular architecture as delineated by the mapping of brain-wide gene expression patterns. Experimental efforts are under way in multiple species, promising to advance our knowledge of the wiring logic of the vertebrate brain. This will fundamentally impact our understanding of brain function and evolution, and also play an essential role in understanding pathological changes in circuitry that underlie neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. This two week workshop will bring together classical neuroanatomical approaches along with the new techniques that are enabling a new generation of neuroanatomical research into the circuit and molecular architecture of the vertebrate brain. The workshop will have three main components: classical, molecular and computational neuroanatomy. An experimental component of the workshop will involve injection based tract tracing in the mouse, employing classical and viral tracer substances, in wild type and transgenic mice. Lectures will cover classical (tracer injections, sectioning, histochemistry, imaging) and molecular (genetic engineering of mice as well as viral tracers, optogenetic probing of circuits) techniques. Material will be presented by simultaneous viewing of slides under light microscopy as well as digital images, including an in-depth orientation to internet resources. The computational component will involve hands on algorithmic analysis and interpretation of digital neuroanatomical data sets, from both EM and light microscopy. Species covered will include rodents, human and nonhuman primates, with special lectures on other vertebrate lineages. Speakers include: John Allman, David Amaral, Katrin Amunts, Jason Bohland, Mitya Cklovskii, Karl Deisseroth, Bruce Fischl , Mike Hawrylycz , Mark Henkelman, Harvey Karten , David Kleinfeld, Kevan Martin, Marcello Rosa, Joe Safdieh , Cliff Saper , Nenad Sestan, Karel Svoboda , Larry Swanson, Menno Witter & Hongkui Zeng Partial scholarships may be available to offset tuition, room and board costs based on stated need (apply in writing). *************************************** Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meetings & Courses Program Please click here for our entire course program for an up-to-the-minute and in-depth grasp of the latest techniques and concepts across a wide range of biological disciplines: For a full schedule of 2010 meetings, please click here If you no longer wish to be included in our mailings, please click here<:pakaluk at cshl.edu> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100422/9d138f64/attachment.html From neuro.informatics.at.mbl at gmail.com Thu Apr 22 18:19:56 2010 From: neuro.informatics.at.mbl at gmail.com (Neuro Informatics) Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:19:56 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Neuroinformatics course at Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA: Application Deadline has been extended to April 26th, 2010 Message-ID: Neuroinformatics course at Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA Application Deadline has been extended to April 26th, 2010 Dates: August 14th to 29th, 2010 Web: http://www.mbl.edu/education/courses/special_topics/neufo.html The objective of this two week course is to develop an understanding of the methods of managing and analyzing data sets from neurophysiological and behavioral measurements, particularly large data volumes that require systematic statistical and computational approaches. The course includes lectures on fundamental analytical methods, established and emerging applications and focused hands-on computer-based sessions. Topics include point processes (*e.g., *spike trains), continuous processes (*e.g.*, LFP/ECoG/EEG/MEG recordings, fMRI, and behavioral recordings), and methods for analyzing neuroanatomical (*e.g., *light and electron microscopy) data. Various statistical techniques for exploratory and confirmatory analysis of the data will be treated along with underlying scientific questions and potential applications. The course also includes tutorials on computer methods and discussions of major open issues in the field. The course is targeted broadly, from experimental researchers to researchers with a theoretical or analytical orientation who work closely with data. A main aim of the course is to foster close working relations between the theorists and experimentalists. Researchers at all levels, from advanced graduate student to working professional, may benefit from the course. Limited to 26 participants. Computer Laboratory: A hands-on approach will be taken in a computer laboratory that forms an integral part of this course. Example data sets will be supplied, and participants are encouraged to bring their own data. We will primarily use MATLAB, with additional tools used as needed (*e.g.*, MySQL). Participants will be guided in applying analytical techniques to the example data sets and will further participate in a structured "data analysis challenge", in which teams will analyze published data sets in the context of specific questions. This should benefit both experimental researchers that wish to analyze their own data sets and theorists who want to work with data. Structure of the Course: The first week will contain lectures dealing with fundamental statistical and analytical techniques appropriate for neural data analysis. A concurrent computer laboratory will run in the evenings to supplement the lectures. The second week contains application-based lectures, focused on emerging research areas and associated analytical and experimental techniques, along with the "data analysis challenge". -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100422/591d51ec/attachment-0001.html From ted.carnevale at yale.edu Thu Apr 22 21:37:48 2010 From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale) Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:37:48 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: NEURON 2010 Summer Course Message-ID: <4BD0F9EC.50703@yale.edu> Learn how to use NEURON to model neurons and networks of neurons, how to speed up your simulations by taking advantage of parallel processing on multicore PCs and Macs, and more, at the NEURON 2010 Summer Course, which will be held at UCSD's Institute for Neural Computation. For more information and the on-line registration form, see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nscsd2010/nscsd2010.html Supported in part by: National Institutes of Health Institute for Neural Computation http://inc.ucsd.edu/ Contractual terms require inclusion of the following statement: This course is not sponsored by the University of California. From v.steuber at herts.ac.uk Fri Apr 23 09:38:26 2010 From: v.steuber at herts.ac.uk (Volker Steuber) Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:38:26 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Studentships in Computational Neuroscience and Neural Networks Message-ID: <4BD1A2D2.80207@herts.ac.uk> PhD Studentships in Computational Neuroscience and Neural Networks Science and Technology Research Institute University of Hertfordshire Applications are invited for PhD studentships in the Biological and Neural Computation Group at the Science and Technology Research Institute at the University of Hertfordshire. Possible projects include: - Applications of Neural Networks and Other Machine Learning Techniques - Associative Memory in Biologically Detailed Models of Neural Networks - Interactions between Learning and Network Dynamics in Neural Circuits More detailed project descriptions and an application form can be found under http://homepages.stca.herts.ac.uk/~comqvs/phd_advert_2010.html Applicants should have excellent computational and numerical skills and a good first degree in maths, computer science, physics, neuroscience, biology or a related discipline. Previous experience in neuroscience is not required but would be an advantage. Successful candidates will receive an approximately ?13,500 per annum bursary plus the payment of the standard UK student fees. Research in Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire has been recognized as excellent by the latest Research Assessment Exercise, with 55% of the research submitted being rated as world leading or internationally excellent. The Science and Technology Research Institute provides a very stimulating environment, offering a large number of specialized and interdisciplinary seminars as well as general training opportunities. The University of Hertfordshire is located in Hatfield, just north of London. For informal inquiries contact Dr Neil Davey (n.davey at herts.ac.uk) or Dr Reinoud Maex (r.maex1 at herts.ac.uk). Application forms should be returned to Mrs Lorraine Nicholls, 9AB, Tel: 01707 286083, Research Student Administrator, STRI, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Herts, AL10, l.nicholls @ herts.ac.uk. The short-listing process will begin on 19 May 2010. Interviews will be held in the first week in June 2010. From zhaoping at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Sun Apr 25 05:33:12 2010 From: zhaoping at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Dr Zhaoping Li) Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:33:12 +0100 (BST) Subject: Connectionists: Call for participation and contribution to 2nd Beijing International Symposium on Computational Neuroscience, July 22nd, 2010 Message-ID: The 2nd Beijing International Symposium on Computational Neuroscience is an intensive, high quality, one day symposium taking place on July 22, 2010, in Tsinghua University. It will feature presentations of theories, models, and theory/model- motivated experiments in neuroscience. Most presentations will be contributed posters, allowing extensive interactions and exchanges between participants. Additionally, there will be four invited oral presentations. The topics of interests include, but are not limited to, computational theories and models of vision or other sensory processes, motor control, learning, memory, and decision making; physiological and psychological experiments to test or develop computational theories, such as monkey electrophysiology to test theories of visual attention, and human psychophysics to explore models of visual adaptation, inference, and perceptual learning, and inter-disciplinary investigations in neural encoding and decoding, learning and plasticity, neural circuits and networks, etc. This symposium aims to encourage interaction between computational and experimental communities, between researchers in the regional and international communities of computational neuroscience, and to foster and encourage interest among students and young researchers in this field. The symposium website is http://cns.med.tsinghua.edu.cn/biscon10/home Invited Speakers are (in alphabetical order) Larry Abbott (Columbia University, USA), Peter Dayan (University College London, UK), Dan Kersten (University of Minnesota, USA), Li Wu (Beijing Normal University, China). Some names of the participants and contributors are Fang Fang (Peking University, China), Tomoki Fukai (RIKEN, Japan), Bo Hong (Tsinghua University, China), Pei-Ji Liang (Shanghai Jiaotong University, China) Zach Mainen (Institute Gulbenkian de Ciencia, Portugal) Hiro Nakahara (RIKEN, Japan), Ning Qian (Columbia University, US), Sen Song (Tsinghua University, China), Si Wu (Institute of Neuroscience, China), Cong Yu (Beijing Normal University, China), Liqing Zhang (Shanghai Jiaotong University, China), Mingsha Zhang (Institute of Neuroscience, China), Li Zhaoping (University College London, UK/Tsinghua University, China). Call for contributions and participations: Researchers and students are encouraged to contribute and participate in the symposium. Registration is required, early registration is recommended if you want to secure a place. Registration is free if you do not sign up for symposium dinner, and costs 150 yuan otherwise. To contribute a poster presentation, please submit an abstract (max 200 words) together with a one to two A4 page summary of the work in a pdf file at the registration website. Submission deadline is June 10th, 2010. The submissions will be reviewed by the symposium committee. Limited travel funds are available to help students and young researchers to participate in the symposium. Preference will be given to those who present their work. Please contact the symposium secretary to apply for travel assistance if needed. To register or to submit a contribution, please go to the website http://cns.med.tsinghua.edu.cn/biscon10/registration Submission deadline is June 10, 2010. More details about the symposium organization, travel/accommodation, program schedule, contact details, and information about the sy mposium in 2009, can be found at the symposium website http://cns.med.tsinghua.edu.cn/biscon10/home From neuralassembly at yahoo.co.jp Mon Apr 26 09:45:18 2010 From: neuralassembly at yahoo.co.jp (Takashi KANAMARU) Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:45:18 +0900 (JST) Subject: Connectionists: A new paper on the roles of inhibitory neurons in neural sync Message-ID: <20100426134519.46124.qmail@web3111.mail.kcd.yahoo.co.jp> Dear all, I would like to announce a new paper on the roles of inhibitory neurons in the neural synchronization is available. Takashi Kanamaru and Kazuyuki Aihara, "Roles of inhibitory neurons in rewiring-induced synchronization in pulse-coupled neural networks," Neural Computation, vol.22, no.5 (2010) pp.1383-1398. http://brain.cc.kogakuin.ac.jp/~kanamaru/research/kanamaru-nc2010.pdf Simulator (Please note that Java simulator would be launched.) http://brain.cc.kogakuin.ac.jp/~kanamaru/Chaos/e/Risc/ [Abstract] The roles of inhibitory neurons in synchronous firing are examined in a network of excitatory and inhibitory neurons with Watts and Strogatz's rewiring. By examining the persistence of the synchronous firing that exists in the random network, it was found that there is a probability of rewiring at which a transition between the synchronous state and the asynchronous state takes place, and the dynamics of the inhibitory neurons play an important role in determining this probability. Best regards, Takashi KANAMARU http://brain.cc.kogakuin.ac.jp/~kanamaru/ Department of Innovative Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Global Engineering, Kogakuin University, 139 Inume, Hachioji-city, Tokyo 193-0802, Japan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100426/455efd36/attachment.html From wsenn at cns.unibe.ch Mon Apr 26 17:32:39 2010 From: wsenn at cns.unibe.ch (Walter Senn) Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:32:39 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Biological Cybernetics: vol 102, issue 5 Message-ID: <4BD60677.5020809@cns.unibe.ch> Biological Cybernetics: vol 102, issue 5 --- Table of Content Original papers: "Mappings between a macroscopic neural-mass model and a reduced conductance-based model" Serafim Rodrigues, Anton V. Chizhov, Frank Marten & John R. Terry http://www.springerlink.com/content/f34r878357h886r8/ "Evaluating functional roles of phase resetting in generation of adaptive human bipedal walking with a physiologically based model of the spinal" Shinya Aoi, Naomichi Ogihara, Tetsuro Funato, Yasuhiro Sugimoto & Kazuo Tsuchiya http://www.springerlink.com/content/w320w40555164521/ "Relative spike timing in stochastic oscillator networks of the Hermissenda eye" William H. Nesse & Gregory A. Clark http://www.springerlink.com/content/b5r236q6571256gh/ "Simulated visual homing in desert ant natural environments: efficiency of skyline cues" Kai Basten & Hanspeter A. Mallot http://www.springerlink.com/content/4v7tp9804774767q/ "Effects of phase on homeostatic spike rates" Nicholas Fisher, Sachin S. Talathi, Paul R. Carney & William L. Ditto http://www.springerlink.com/content/jn78526j34412874/ "Controlling precise movement with stochastic signals" Enrico Rossoni, Jing Kang & Jianfeng Feng http://www.springerlink.com/content/7x6201p11j144221/ ---- Biological Cybernetics, all issues: http://www.springerlink.com/content/100465/ From getoor at cs.umd.edu Tue Apr 27 17:45:52 2010 From: getoor at cs.umd.edu (Lise Getoor) Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:45:52 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Eighth International Workshop on Mining and Learning from Graphs, MLG 2010 @ KDD 2010 Message-ID: <4BD75B10.3020704@cs.umd.edu> Call for Papers Eighth Workshop on Mining and Learning with Graphs 2010 (MLG-2010) http://www.cs.umd.edu/mlg2010 Washington, DC, July, 24-25 (co-located with SIG-KDD 2010 ) Submission Deadline May 7, 2010 This year's workshop on Mining and Learning with Graphs will be held in conjunction with the 16th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining that will take place in July 25-28, 2010 in Washington, DC. There is a great deal of interest in analyzing data that is best represented as a graph. Examples include the WWW, social networks, biological networks, communication networks, and many others. The importance of being able to effectively mine and learn from such data is growing, as more and more structured and semi-structured data is becoming available. This is a problem across widely different fields such as economics, statistics, social science, physics and computer science, and is studied within a variety of sub-disciplines of machine learning and data mining including graph mining, graphical models, kernel theory, statistical relational learning, etc. The objective of this workshop is to bring together researchers from a variety of these areas, and discuss commonality and differences in challenges faced, survey some of the different approaches, and provide a forum topresent and learn about some of the most cutting edge research in this area. As an outcome, we expect participants to walk away with a better sense of the variety of different tools available for graph mining and learning, and an appreciation for some of the interesting emerging applications for mining and learning from graphs. The key challenge we address in this workshop is how to efficiently analyze large data sets that are relational in nature and hence easily represented as graphs. Such data are becoming ubiquitous in a plethora of application and research domains and now is the time to bring together people from these various fields to exchange ideas about how we can mine and learn from these large data sets. The goal of this workshop will be to explor e the state-of-the-art algorithms and methods, leveraging existing knowledge from other sub-disciplines, to examine graph-based models in the context of real-world applications, and to identify future challenges and issues. In particular we are interested in the following topics: * Graph mining * Kernel methods for structured data * Probabilistic models for structured data * (Multi-)relational data mining * Methods for structured outputs * Network analysis * Large-scale learning and applications * Sampling issues in graph algorithms * Evaluation of graph algorithms * Relationships between mining and learning with graphs and statistical relational learning * Relationships between mining and learning with graphs and inductive logic programming * Semi-supervised learning * Active learning * Transductive inference * Transfer learning We invite researchers working on mining and learning with graphs to submit regular and position papers detailing the major points and/or results they would present during a talk. Regular papers are a maximum of 8 pages long in two-column format, position papers comprise 2 pages. Authors whose papers were accepted to the workshop will have the opportunity to give a short presentation at the workshop as well as present their work in a poster session to promote interaction and dialog. Please follow the submission link on the main workshop site (http://www.cs.umd.edu/mlg2010) to submit. We will not be doing double-blind reviews,so please include your name and affiliation. The workshop itself is a two-day workshop. Each day will consist of keynote speakers, short presentations showcasing accepted papers, discussions at end of sessions, and a poster session to promote dialog. Important Dates Paper submission deadline May 7 Notification of acceptance May 21 Final paper deadline May 28 Workshop July 24-25 Organizers * Ulf Brefeld (Yahoo! Research, Barcelona) * Lise Getoor (University of Maryland) * Sofus A. Macskassy (Fetch Technologies / USC) Program Committee * Edo Arioldi * Tanya Berger-Wolf * Hendrik Blockeel * Karsten Borgwardt * Chris Burges * Diane Cook * Tina Eliassi-Rad * Stephen Fienberg * Paolo Frasconi * Thomas Gaertner * Brian Gallagher * Aris Gionis * Marko Grobelnik * Jiawei Han * Susanne Hoche * Lawrence Holder * Jure Leskovec * George Karypis * Samuel Kaski * Kristian Kersting * Dunja Mladenic * Alessandro Moschitti * Jennifer Neville * Massimiliano Pontil * Foster Provost * Padhraic Smyth * Swapna Somasundaran * Eric Xing * Philip Yu * Mohammed Zaki * Fabio Massimo Zanzotto * Zhongfei (Mark) Zhang Contact Information Sofus A. Macskassy Fetch Technologies 841 Apollo Street Suite 400 El Segundo, CA 90245 http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~sofmac http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~macskass sofmac at fetch.com From sanchez at uji.es Wed Apr 28 11:51:41 2010 From: sanchez at uji.es (=?iso-8859-1?Q?J._Salvador_S=E1nchez?=) Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:51:41 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: AERFAISS 2010 Call-for-Participation (EARLY REGISTRATION DEADLINE APPROACHING) Message-ID: <8EA6E7541B0043B988927A2BA8B2D53D@dlsi.uji.es> Call for Participation (apologies for multiple copies)_____________________________________________________ AERFAI International Summer School on Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning in Multimedia Systems --- Benic?ssim, June 7-11, 2010 URL: http://www.aerfaiss2010.uji.es E-mail: info at aerfaiss2010.uji.es DESCRIPTION The AERFAI Summer School 2010 is organized by the Spanish Association for Pattern Recognition (AERFAI) in collaboration with the Institute of New Imaging Technologies at Universitat Jaume I of Castell? (Spain). This is the fifth edition in a series of AERFAI Summer Schools devoted to a wide range of topics in the fields of Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. The focus of this year Summer School is to study the most relevant approaches to Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning in Multimedia Systems. This event is open to any researcher or PhD-student who is interested in learning or refreshing their knowledge about the most successful approaches in the fields of object & human-action detection/categorization and recognition. AERFAISS'2010 is organized as a five-days intensive course to be held June 7-11 in Benic?ssim (Spain). Leading experts in the field shall present each tutorial, followed by a practice session with specific software in order for participants to gain a better understanding of the theory. A non-formal poster session will also be organized for the participants to present their current research and interact with their scientific peers. ORGANIZATION CO-CHAIRS Prof. J. Salvador S?nchez, Local Chair AERFAISS'2010, sanchez at uji.es Prof. Filiberto Pla, Chairman of the AERFAI, pla at uji.es LIST OF LECTURERS Learning with Structured Inputs and Outputs Dr. Christoph Lampert, Institute of Science and Technology, Vienna (Austria) Interactive Video Retrieval Dr. Cees G.M. Snoek, University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) Human Action Recognition (Video) Dr. Ivan Laptev, INRIA, Paris - Rocquencourt (France) Human Activity Modelling from Mobile Phone Sensors Dr. Daniel Gatica-Perez, IDIAP Research Institute, Martigny (Switzerland) Visual Recognition and Features Dr. Krystian Mikolajczyk, CVSSP, University of Surrey (UK) Multimodal Data Fusion Dr. St?phane Marchand-Maillet, University of Geneva (Switzerland) New Challenges in Machine Learning Prof. Ethem Alpaydin, Bogazi?i University, Istanbul (Turkey) REGISTRATION Fees for the AERFAISS'2010 are as follows: AERFAI or PASCAL2 members - Early registration (by May 10, 2010): Full ... 500 Euros / Single lecture ... 100 Euros AERFAI or PASCAL2 members - Late registration (after May 10, 2010): Full ... 550 Euros / Single lecture ... 110 Euros Non-members - Early registration (by May 10, 2010): Full ... 600 Euros / Single lecture ... 120 Euros Non-members - Late registration (after May 10, 2010): Full ... 650 Euros / Single lecture ... 130 Euros The full registration fee includes access to all lectures, handling material, coffee breaks, lunches, a guided tour and social dinner. The single lecture registration allows access to the lecture chosen, handling material, coffee breaks and lunch. Payment of registration fee should be done by bank transfer (more information at http://www.aerfaiss2010.uji.es). VENUE AERFAISS'2010 will be held at Hotel Intur Bonaire in Benic?ssim. The hotel is located 150 meters from one of the best fine sandy beaches in Benic?ssim at the Mediterranean coast. It is 10 minutes from the city of Castell?n and the train station, while the Valencia airport is 45 minutes by car. ACCOMMODATION Participants will have a special group rate at Hotel Intur Bonaire and other hotels very close to the AERFAISS'2010 venue. More information about reservation is available on the web site. CONTACT AERFAISS'2010 Dept. Llenguatges i Sistemes Inform?tics Universitat Jaume I Av. Vicent Sos Baynat, s/n 12071 Castell?n de la Plana (Spain) Tel. +34 964728348 / +34 964728350 / +34 964728359 Fax +34 964728435 E-mail: info at aerfaiss2010.uji.es -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100428/f1b43985/attachment-0001.html From hammer at in.tu-clausthal.de Wed Apr 28 12:19:57 2010 From: hammer at in.tu-clausthal.de (Barbara Hammer) Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:19:57 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: workshop announcement Message-ID: <4BD8602D.6060101@in.tu-clausthal.de> Workshop on New Challenges in Neural Computation http://www2.in.tu-clausthal.de/~hammer/GINN/NC2_2010/nc2.html in connection to KI 2010 (http://www.ki2010.kit.edu/) at September 21-24. in Karlsruhe, Germany. Goal: Neural computation and biologically inspired data processing systems constitute essential topics in artificial intelligence accompanied by a well established theoretical foundation and numerous successful applications in science and industry. Caused by an increasing complexity of the involved data and underlying tasks, modern information processing continues to pose challenging tasks to the field which are far from being solved. The goal of the workshop is to figure out paradigms, concepts, and models to extend neural systems to these situations and to identify good benchmark scenarios in which to test advanced capacities of model systems. Important Dates * Papers/Abstracts due: 21.6.2010 * Notification of acceptance: 19.7.2010 * Final program available at: 31.7.2010 * Submission of camera ready papers: 12.8.2010 * Workshop: 21. or 24.9.2010 Program Committee: * Barbara Hammer, Bielefeld University * Thomas Villmann, University of Applied Sciences Mittweida * Michael Biehl, RU Groningen * R?diger Brause, Uni Frankfurt * Fred Hamker, TU Chemnitz * Christian Igel, RU Bochum * Thomas Martinetz, Uni L?beck * Friedhelm Schwenker, Uni Ulm * Marc Strickert, Uni Siegen * Alfred Ultsch, Uni Marburg * Rolf W?rtz, RU Bochum -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100428/1b6c27f5/attachment-0001.html From P.Tino at cs.bham.ac.uk Fri Apr 30 04:03:30 2010 From: P.Tino at cs.bham.ac.uk (Peter Tino) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:03:30 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP 2010 Pattern Recognition School Message-ID: <4BDA8ED2.7090905@cs.bham.ac.uk> * 6th INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON PATTERN RECOGNITION (ISSPR) * 5-10 September, 2010, Plymouth, UK www.patternrecognitionschool.com Early registration deadline: 28 May, 2010 It is a pleasure to announce the Call for Participation to the 6th International Summer School on Pattern Recognition. In 2007, the 5th ISSPR School held at Plymouth was a major success with over 100 participants. The major focus of 2010 summer school includes: - A broad coverage of pattern recognition areas which will be taught in a tutorial style over five days by leading experts. The areas covered include statistical pattern recognition, Bayesian techniques, non-parametric and neural network approaches including kernel methods, string matching, evolutionary computation, classifiers, decision trees, feature selection and dimensionality reduction, clustering, reinforcement learning, and Markov models. - A number of prizes sponsored by Microsoft and Springer for best research demonstrated by participants and judged by a panel of experts. The prizes will be presented to the winners by Prof. Chris Bishop from Microsoft Research. - Providing participants with knowledge and recommendations on how to develop and use pattern recognition tools for a broad range of applications. The registration fee for the 2010 event has been frozen as the same in 2007, so this is an excellent opportunity for participants to register at an affordable cost. The fee includes registration and accommodation plus meals at the event. The registration process is online through the school website www.patternrecognitionschool.com which has further details on registration fees. Please note that the number of participants registering each year at the summer school is high with a limited number of seats available, and therefore early registration is highly recommended. Should you need any help, then please do not hesitate to contact Prof. Sameer Singh at s.singh at lboro.ac.uk -- Peter Tino The University of Birmingham School of Computer Science Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK +44 121 414 8558 , fax: 414 4281 http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pxt/ From pkoenig at uos.de Fri Apr 30 08:34:36 2010 From: pkoenig at uos.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Peter_K=F6nig?=) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:34:36 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 5 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Grants for PhD Students Message-ID: <4BDACE5C.3020809@uos.de> ** * * * * * * *The PhD Programme Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabr?ck* http://www.cogsci.uos.de/phd** invites applications for *5 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Grants for PhD Students* The PhD Programme Cognitive Science is a curricular PhD programme, associated with the Institute of Cognitive Science and research groups from the Institutes of Informatics and Psychology. It includes research groups in Artificial Intelligence, Computational Linguistics, Neurobiopsychology, Neuroinformatics, Philosophy of Cognition, Knowledge Based Systems, and Differential Psychology. The Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabr?ck is one of the largest European centres in Cognitive Science, offering degree programmes for BSc, MSc, and PhD in Cognitive Science and carries out research on a broad range of cognitive processes. We invite applications for the Lichtenberg PhD scholarships from all Cognitive Science areas. Scholarships are EUR 1500 (plus allowances) per month for a maximum of three years, to start at October 1st, 2010. For details about the application procedure pls. refer to http://www.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/cogsci/phd/application. The application *deadline *is *June 1st, 2010*. The University of Osnabr?ck strives to increase the number of women in research and teaching. Women are therefore explicitly encouraged to apply. *Contact:* Prof. Dr. Peter Bosch Director of the PhD Programme Cognitive Science University Professor of Computational Linguistics and Cognitive Science Institute of Cognitive Science University of Osnabr?ck 49069 Osnabr?ck Germany (+49 541) 969 3373, pbosch at uos.de. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100430/276cabec/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: clip_image002.png Type: image/png Size: 10229 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100430/276cabec/clip_image002-0001.png -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 3744 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100430/276cabec/smime-0001.bin From mbethge at tuebingen.mpg.de Fri Apr 30 09:36:13 2010 From: mbethge at tuebingen.mpg.de (Matthias Bethge) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:36:13 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: =?windows-1252?q?University_Professor_=28salary_g?= =?windows-1252?q?rade_W3=29_=93Neural_Information_Processing=94?= Message-ID: The Wilhelm Schickard Institute for Computer Science at the University of T?bingen invites applications for the position of ========================================== University Professor (salary grade W3) ?Neural Information Processing?. ========================================== The Professorship deals with principles of neural information processing that are crucial for perceptual inference and autonomous behavior in animals and machines. The position entails research on how neural systems effectively utilize information in high-dimensional sensory inputs and the design of corresponding methods or hardware for technical applications. Potential research topics include: distributed computation, dynamic learning systems, design principles for feature hierarchies that are critical for vision, audition or other sensory inference problems, stimulation methods and algorithms, models for neural information processing, signal processing of neural activity, development of neural information processing based hardware. The position is to be filled as soon as possible. The professorship will be part of the new Bernstein Centre for Computational Neuroscience that will soon be launched by the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, and the University of T?bingen. The successful candidate is expected to have a thriving independent research program as evidenced by a strong publication record. He/she will join the teaching faculty of a newly established International Master-/PhD-program in Neural information processing and of the teaching programs of the Wilhelm Schickard Institute for Computer Science. Requirements: Candidates must have a habilitation or a strong publication record and good teaching abilities. Contact: For more information about the position, please contact Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Rosenstiel (Rosenstiel at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de) or Prof. Dr. Matthias Bethge (mbethge at tuebingen.mpg.de). Applications including CV, list of publications, and certificates should be submitted preferably in electronic form (pdf-file) to the dean of Informations- und Kognitionswissenschaften, Sand 13, 72076 T?bingen. Full applications should be sent before May 31, 2010 to the contact address given above. The University of T?bingen aims at increasing its share of women in research and teaching and therefore actively encourages applications from female candidates. Applicants with disabilities are preferred given equal qualifications. Please send only copies and not originals of documents, as they will not be returned by mail. ___________________________________________ Prof. Dr. Matthias Bethge Computational Vision & Neuroscience Group http://www.kyb.mpg.de/bethge Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience :: Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics :: University of T?bingen, Inst. for Theoretical Physics -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20100430/1a990154/attachment.html From levys at wlu.edu Fri Apr 30 12:31:29 2010 From: levys at wlu.edu (Simon D. Levy) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:31:29 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Abstracts: Compositional Connectionism in Cognitive Science II: The Localist / Distributed Dimension Message-ID: <4BDB05E1.70707@wlu.edu> This workshop will be held on 11 August 2010 at the annual Cognitive Science Society Meeting in Portland, Oregon. Please see http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy/cogsci2010/ for details. -- Simon D. Levy Associate Professor and Department Head Computer Science Department 407 Parmly Hall Washington& Lee University Lexington, VA 24450 540-458-8419 (voice) 540-458-8255 (fax) levys at wlu.edu http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy