From gaijin at yha.att.ne.jp Sat May 2 10:45:56 1998 From: gaijin at yha.att.ne.jp (Sam Joseph) Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 14:45:56 -0000 Subject: Thesis on Adaptive Neural Growth Message-ID: <199805020633.PAA11791@yha.att.ne.jp> Dear Connectionists, For your information, the phd thesis entitled: "Theories of Adaptive Neural Growth" by Sam Joseph, Edinburgh University 1998 is available to download in gzipped postscript format at: http://www.cns.ed.ac.uk/students/sam/work.html On the same web page is a shorter paper entitled "Feature Generation Mechanism" that summarises some of the main results from the phd thesis, regarding the construction of boolean neural networks that takes inspiration from the relationship between electrical activity and outgrowth in biological neurons. All comments gratefully received, particularly on the shorter (draft) paper, which is designed to be in a more digestable format. Full abstract of thesis follows at end of this mail. Sincerely Sam Joseph email to: sam at cns.ed.ac.uk **************** Abstract of "Theories of Adaptive Neural Growth" When interpreting the results of experiments that investigate biological development, one is faced with a wealth of data. Producing a model of such development must always involve some degree of abstraction. The appropriate level of abstraction and the importance of particular experimental evidence is determined by one's modelling objective. Models may potentially be motivated by one of two complementary aims: 1. To understand how biological neurons achieve their mature interconnectivity. 2. To improve the learning ability of artificial neural nets (ANNs) by taking inspiration from the growth of biological nervous systems. These aims are exemplified in the thesis by two simulated neural models. The first is a model of neuromuscular development that places an emphasis on achieving biological plausibility. The second is a platform for modifying the connectivity of artificial neural networks. This feature generation mechanism (FGM) platform supports a variety of growth procedures that are inspired by evidence from biological development. The model of development at the mammalian neuromuscular junction (NMJ) focusses on the achievement of single innervation, and is an extension of the existing dual constraint model (DCM). The identities of the molecules involved in the DCM are proposed and the framework is adjusted accordingly. This extension allows a variety of developmental phenomena to be replicated, including the presence of both activity-dependent \& independent competition between terminals. A further framework is established that provides a potential explanation for the paradoxical results of synaptic interaction under focal blockade conditions. The FGM model concerns feed-forward ANNs and attempts to improve their unsupervised pattern recognition ability. Different FGMs consist of functions that in the right combination produce connectivity patterns that maximise the average Shannon information provided by the output of individual nodes. They also allow the network to construct partial input features which form an any-of-N representation of a given input pattern. FGM networks are shown to outperform other straightforward unsupervised ANNs in trials on simple data sets. More demanding tests are performed indicating that an FGM net with Boolean weights outperforms a competitive network using continuous weights. The slight superiority of the FGM performance is achieved with a third of the free parameters of the competitive net. The nature of the FGM induced partial connectivity implies that these networks would scale up to larger problems more easily their fully connected counterparts. From ted.carnevale at yale.edu Sat May 2 22:20:08 1998 From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale) Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 22:20:08 -0400 Subject: NEURON summer course Message-ID: <354BD458.197A@yale.edu> Announcing THE NEURON SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT An intensive hands-on course Date: Saturday, August 1, through Wednesday, August 5, 1998 Place: San Diego Supercomputer Center Course faculty includes: Ted Carnevale Michael Hines Bill Lytton Terry Sejnowski This course is designed for experimentalists who wish to incorporate empirically-based modeling into their research plans. It will be of interest to three broad classes of participants. 1. Those who have little or no modeling experience will learn not only the technical aspects of modeling but also its philosophical basis and scientific rationale. 2. Intermediate users will learn how best to approach common tasks, and under what circumstances special components of NEURON's rich feature set might be particularly helpful. 3. Experienced users will benefit from an update on new features and a review of important topics that may have escaped their attention when they first learned how to use NEURON. Partial listing of the topics that will be covered: Design and construction of models of biophysical mechanisms, individual neurons, and networks of neurons Strategies for efficient design and project management Adding new biophysical mechanisms Optimization NEURON's new variable order, variable timestep method Powerful features of the Vector and Impedance classes The graphical user interface for simulation control and data analysis Registration is limited to 20 individuals on a first-come, first-serve basis. The registration fee is $525, which covers expenses that include room and board. Deadline for registration is Wednesday, July 1, 1998. For more information about this course, including an electronic registration form, see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/sdsc98/sdsc98.htm For more information about NEURON see http://www.neuron.yale.edu and in particular the article "The NEURON simulation environment" (Hines and Carnevale, Neural Computation 9:1179-1209, 1997), which is posted in HTML format at http://www.neuron.yale.edu/papers/nc97/nctoc.htm --Ted From harnad at coglit.soton.ac.uk Mon May 4 16:33:42 1998 From: harnad at coglit.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 21:33:42 +0100 (BST) Subject: Citation Linking: Temporary Access to ISI Database Message-ID: The BBS and Psycoloquy Archives have been temporarily linked to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) database (till the end of May only) in connection with the JISC/Elib-funded Open Journal Project. You can go to an article, click on what it cites and jump to its abstract and references in the ISI database. There are gaps, but with a little imagination, you will have a foretaste of what will soon be possible with citation linking of electronic journals and databases I suggest you start with the "MOST-LINKED PAPERS" in BBS and Psycoloquy. As you scan the text, click on a cited paper you want to see. It will first jump to the full citation in the bibliography; click again and you will find yourself in the ISI database, navigating the abstracts through citations. (Imagine it was all full text.) Please try it: http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cogsci.htm Then PLEASE let the Open Journal Project (funded by JISC/ELib) know what you thought and what you suggest to make it better by filling out the Web form at: http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cogsci-yourview.htm For background information on citation linking see our published papers. Webs of Research: Putting the User in Control http://sosig.ac.uk/iriss/papers/paper42.htm Citation Linking: Improving Access to Online Journals http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/acmdl97.htm All relevant papers are listed at http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/papers.htm From honavar at cs.iastate.edu Mon May 4 14:14:23 1998 From: honavar at cs.iastate.edu (Vasant Honavar) Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 13:14:23 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Call for Participation: ICGI-98 Message-ID: <199805041814.NAA10661@ren.cs.iastate.edu> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text Size: 11250 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/00000000/20c8218a/attachment.ksh From iiass at tin.it Tue May 5 04:54:59 1998 From: iiass at tin.it (IIASS) Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 10:54:59 +0200 Subject: JOB POSITION AVAILABLE AT IIASS Message-ID: <354ED3E3.4020@tin.it> PLEASE POST ***************************************************************** 5 Job positions available at IIASS The International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS) located in Vietri sul Mare (Salerno), Italy, is seeking for young highly motivated individuals to join his research group. Position Available are: a) One-year Research Fellowship in "Image and Pattern Processing of Remotely Sensed Data" Potential candidates should belong to the regions of Objective 1 of European Community. Candidate's Qualifications: i) M.S. or "Laurea", or Ph.D in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or a related discipline; ii) Strong programming skills in C, or C++ language, and UNIX operating system; iii) Knowledge of linear and nonlinear image processing and pattern recognition techniques. Expertise in at least one of the fields listed below: *) Computer vision; *) Fuzzy System, Neural Networks; The position is within an EEC-funded research project investigating hybrid knowledge-based classification of remotely sensed data. Job Reference Code: BOELIM98 Deadline: April 30 1998 b) One year research fellowship in speech processing and speech recognition Candidate's Qualifications: M.S. or "Laurea", or Ph.D in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or a related discipline; Strong programming skills in C, or C++ language; Expertise in at least one of the fields listed below: *) Computational and corpus linguistics, text processing; *) Neural Networks, genetic algorithms; *) Signal and Speech processing, speech coders, speech production. Job Reference Code: ANN198 c) One year research fellowship in Virtual Environments and Multimedia Systems Candidate's Qualifications: M.S. or "Laurea" , or Ph.D in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or a related discipline; Strong programming skills in C, or C++ language, and in the Irix or Windows NT environments; Expertise in at least one of the fields listed below: *) Computer Graphics; *) Audio and Video Motion; *) Signal and Image processing. Partial Knowledge of at least one of the following software packages: CorelDraw, SoftImage, Studio 3D Job Reference Code: ANT198 d) One year Teaching Assistant position Candidate's Qualifications: Ph.D in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or a related discipline; The position call for candidates who are effective teacher at graduated level. Job Reference Code: TUT98 c) One year research fellowship in Electronics Candidate's Qualifications: M.S. or Laurea Degree in Physics or in Electronic Engineering; The position call for candidates who have spent at least one year working in an electronic laboratory and are familiar with electronics tools. Job Reference Code: ELE98 Salary depends on age and experience. Applicants must be graduated after 1992. Send CV, 2 letter of recommendation, and a selected number of publications (including the thesis dissertation) to: Prof. Marinaro, IIASS - Via G. Pellegrino 19 - 84019 Vietri sul MAre (Salerno) - ITALY. Job position reference code.... e-mail: iiass at tin.it phone: +39 (0) 89 761167 phone: +39 (0) 89 761189 IIASS is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Qualified women and minority candidates are especially encouraged to apply. From rmeir at dumbo.technion.ac.il Sun May 10 08:26:08 1998 From: rmeir at dumbo.technion.ac.il (Ron Meir) Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 15:26:08 +0300 (IDT) Subject: Workshop on non-linear time series Message-ID: * APOLOGIES TO MULTIPLE RECIPIENTS OF THIS MESSAGE A workshop titled ``Non-linear Time Series for Learning, Prediction and Control'' will be held at the Technion, Israel, between June 29 and July 2 1998. The main thrust of the workshop will be the presentation of current research on the rapidly evolving field of non-linear models for time series, with applications in machine learning, prediction, filtering and control. The workshop will consist of 30-45 minute talks by several invited speakers from Israel and abroad (see list below), as well as several contributed half hour talks. The workshop will provide both faculty and students with a unique opportunity to be introduced to the field of non-linear time series modeling, and to discuss their research interests with some of the leading people in the field. The invited speakers in the workshop come from a variety of disciplines including: Statistics, Econometrics, Information Theory, Dynamical Systems, Physics and Machine learning; the main intention being to achieve a truly inter-disciplinary workshop. All invited speakers have been asked to provide a short introduction to their respective field. People interested in attending the workshop are requested to send an e-mail message to this effect to either Dr. Ron Meir (rmeir at dumbo.technion.ac.il) or to Dr. Hava Siegelman (iehava at ie.technion.ac.il), as soon as possible, as the number of participants is restricted for reasons of space. No resgistration fee will be required. ============================================================================ Research Workshop of the Israel Science Foundation Non-linear Time Series for Learning, Prediction and Control June 29 - July 2 1998 Technion, Israel http://www-ee.technion.ac.il/~rmeir/WORKSHOP/conference.html http://www-ee.technion.ac.il/~rmeir/WORKSHOP/schedule.html Organizing Committee: Ron Meir, Robert Adler, Yoram Baram, Offer Lieberman, Hava Siegelman, Naftali Tishby. Invited Speakers: Feder, M. Universal prediction with finite memory. Glass, L. Control of complex rhythms in medicine. Granger C. (1) A general introduction to non-linear time series. (2) Co-monotone processes. Kanter, I. Analytical study of time series prediction by feedforward networks. Lo J. Neural filtering. Merhav, N. Universal prediction for indexed classes of sources. Opper, M. Worst case analysis for individual sequences. Ott, E. Controlling chaos using unstable periodic orbits. Masry, E. Additive nonlinear time series. Nobel, A. Nonparametric estimation from ergodic processes. Priestley, M. Time-frequency decomposition via wavelet analysis. Robinson, P. Long memory conditionally heteroscedastic errors in semiparametric estimation of long memory. Sjoberg, J. Nonlinear black-box modeling in signal processing. Tong, H. Testing for common structure in a panel of threshold models. Weigend, A. Title to be announced. Zakai, M. Nonlinear filtering. Zeitouni, O. On the memory length of optimal nonlinear estimation of Markovian processes Financial Support Israel Science Foundation, Institute for Advanced Studies in Mathematics at the Technion, Departments of Electrical Engineering and Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion. From mieko at hip.atr.co.jp Mon May 11 05:06:33 1998 From: mieko at hip.atr.co.jp (Mieko Namba) Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 18:06:33 +0900 Subject: Contents Information [Neural Networks Vol.11, No.2] Message-ID: <199805110906.SAA06965@mailhost.hip.atr.co.jp> Dear Members, Let me introduce the latest issue of "Neural Networks" as below. It is an official international compilation of the Journals of the International Neural Networks Society, the European Neural Networks Society and the Japanese Neural Networks Society. If you would like to continue receiving contents information, please refer to the "Contents Direct " service at the bottom of this mail. Thank you very much. Sincerely yours, Mitsuo Kawato Co-Editor-in-Chief Neural Networks (ATR Human Information Proc. Res. Labs.) ****************************************************************** Neural Networks Vol.11, No.2 ****************************************************************** pp. 189-208 A neural network model for the development of simple and complex cell receptive fields within cortical maps of orientation and ocular dominance SJ Olson, S Grossberg pp. 209-213 Multilayer neural networks and Bayes decision theory K Funahashi pp. 215-234 Hybrid interior point training of modular neural networks PT Szymanski, M Lemmon, CJ Bett pp. 235-248 Cubic approximation neural network for multivariate functions D Stein, A Feuer pp. 249-257 A learning model for oscillatory networks J Nishii pp. 259-270 Learning and approximation capabilities of adaptive spline activation function neural networks L Vecci, F Piazza, A Uncini pp. 271-282 Deterministic annealing EM algorithm N Ueda, R Nakano pp. 283-296 Evolution and generalization of a single neurone: I. Single-layer perception as seven statistical classifiers S Raudys pp. 297-313 Evolution and generalization of a single neurone: II. Complexity of statistical classifiers and sample size considerations S Raudys pp. 315-322 Encoded pattern classification using constructive learning algorithms based on learning vector quantization CNS Ganesh Murthy, YV Venkatesh pp. 323-336 ARTMAP-IC and medical diagnosis: instance counting and inconsistent cases GA Carpenter, N Markuzon pp. 337-346 A hybrid neural network model in handwritten word recognition JH Chiang pp. 347-357 The neural network approach to a parallel decentralized network routing H Kurokawa, CY Ho, S Mori pp. 359-376 Learning reaching strategies through reinforcement for a sensor-based manipulator P Martin, J Del R Millan ****************************************************************** Information about Contents Direct ****************************************************************** If you have any questions about ContentsDirect, please send an e-mail to: CDhelp at elsevier.co.uk An automatic reply only will be returned with information and instructions. If you wish to cancel your registration(s) automatically, simply visit our ContentsDirect registration site at http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/ContentsDirect or, alternatively, send a message to: Cdstop at elsevier.co.uk stating: 1. Your name 2. The e-mail address to which the contents are now sent 3. Your full mailing address 4. The journal title(s) for which you no longer want the ContentsDirect service. E-mail cancellations are not automatic and some delay may be experienced before you no longer receive your ContentsDirect. We regret that we cannot suspend temporarily your registration for periods of time when you are unreachable at your e-mail address. Copyright Elsevier Science Ltd, 1998 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Elsevier Science Ltd, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, UK. No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. ****************************************************************** end. ========================================================= Mieko Namba Secretary to Dr. Mitsuo Kawato Editorial Administrator of NEURAL NETWORKS ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories 2-2 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto 619-0288, Japan TEL +81-774-95-1058 FAX +81-774-95-1008 E-MAIL mieko at hip.atr.co.jp ========================================================= From lautrup at nbi.dk Mon May 11 09:28:30 1998 From: lautrup at nbi.dk (Benny Lautrup) Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 15:28:30 +0200 Subject: Spontaneous Order of Life II (1998) Message-ID: <001201bd7ce0$b05b3d90$1ed4e182@lautrup.nbi.dk> SUMMER SCHOOL The Second Copenhagen International Multidisciplinary School in the Biological Sciences: The Spontaneous Order of Life (SOL`98) Self-Organized Criticality and Non-Linear Dynamics in Physical, Biological, Social and Economic Systems to be held at the Niels Bohr Institute 10-19 August 1998 Topics include: *The Science of Self-Organized Criticality *Solving Problems with Collective, Distributed Self-Organizing Systems *The Nonlinear Dynamics of Collective Behavior in Animals *The Technological and Commercial Perspectives of Applied Molecular Evolution *The Origin of Life from Interactions of Amino Acids and Membranes *Cosmological Natural Selection Confirmed Speakers: Per Bak (Niels Bohr Institute) Eric Bonabeau (Santa Fe Institute) Stuart Kauffman(Santa Fe Institute) Roger Penrose (Oxford) Peter Schuster (Vienna) Lee Smolin (Penna. State Univ. Geoffrey West (Los Alamos) Peter Wills (Santa Fe Institute) International Advisory Committee: Brian Goodwin (Schumacher College) Stuart Kauffman (Santa Fe Institute) Roger Penrose (Oxford) Local Organizing committee: Per Bak (Niels Bohr Inst.) Don Bennett (Niels Bohr Inst.) Benny Lautrup (Niels Bohr Inst.) Erik Mosekilde (Tech. Univ. of Denmark) Ole Mouritsen (Tech. Univ. of Denmark) Holger Bech Nielsen (Niels Bohr Inst.) Bjoern Quistorff (Univ. of Copenhagen) Bodil Soegaard (Roy. Vet. & Agricult. Univ.) For more information and to apply, please utilize the SOL`98 homepage at http://www.nbi.dk/~sol98 Support from the Nordic Academy for Advanced Study provides SOL`98 with a limited number of full grants that can be applied for primarily by Scandinavian students. For other attendees, there is a fee of 2500. DKR if registration and remittance is completed before June 15, 1998. After this date the fee is 3000. DKR. The registration fee (included in a NorFA grant) includes lunches, several working dinners, and copies of the three books: Per Bak: How Nature Works Lee Smolin: The Life of the Cosmos Author & Book: To be announced If you don't have access to the web, contact the SOL'98 Secretariat at hnchristen at nbi.dk or telefax (+45) 35325400. From srg at ecs.soton.ac.uk Mon May 11 08:13:06 1998 From: srg at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Steve Gunn) Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 13:13:06 +0100 Subject: Research Studentship, University of Southampton, U.K. Message-ID: <000901bd7cd6$2756afc0$16734e98@hurricane.ecs.soton.ac.uk> Image, Speech and Intelligent Systems Research Group University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K. http://www.isis.ecs.soton.ac.uk Support Vector Machines for Classification and Regression Applications are invited for a 3 year PhD studentship in the area of empirical data modelling, in conjunction with a Unilever sponsored project. The project will investigate the method of Support Vector Machines for solving classification and regression problems. Applicants should have, or expect to gain, a First Class or Upper Second Class (or equivalent) in a numerate discipline. Additionally, knowledge of approximation theory, optimisation and numerical analysis would be advantageous. The person appointed will have a good background in programming with C/C++. The appointment is open to U.K. and EU nationals, and the studentship is ?5295 (97/98), and for exceptional candidates a CASE award will be available. The project will start in October 1998. Applications in the form of a CV and names and addresses of three referees should be sent, as soon as possible and at the latest by 30th June 1998, to Dr. Steve Gunn, Image Speech and Intelligent Systems Research Group, Building 1, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, U.K.. Further information is available from Dr. Steve Gunn (Tel: +44 (0)1703 592338, Fax: +44 (0)1703 594498, E-mail: S.R.Gunn at ecs.soton.ac.uk) and on the ISIS web site at http://www.isis.ecs.soton.ac.uk/resources/svminfo. From apbraga at cisne.cpdee.ufmg.br Mon May 11 14:53:28 1998 From: apbraga at cisne.cpdee.ufmg.br (Antonio de Padua Braga) Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 15:53:28 -0300 Subject: CFP:Vth Brazilian Symposium on Neural Networks Message-ID: <35574928.FB624444@cpdee.ufmg.br> Please forward to colleagues, etc. Apologies if you have received this already. NOTE: Proceedings will be published by IEEE Computer Society Press /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ CALL FOR PAPERS Vth Brazilian Symposium on Neural Networks Brazilian Computer Society Federal University of Minas Gerais Belo Horizonte, 9 to 11th December 1998 http://www.cpdee.ufmg.br/~sbrn98 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ INTEREST AREAS Submissions of papers related to the following areas are wellcome : Theory, Applications, Architectures, Associative memories, Associative memories, Cognitive science, Electronic and optical implementation, Hybrid systems, Learning, Neurobiology, Neurodynamics and Chaos, Pattern recognition, Signal Processing, Prediction, Inteligent control, Robotics, Identification, Image processing, Other themes related to artificial neural networks. SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Conference chairman: Antonio de Padua Braga (Brazil) Scientific committee chairs: Teresa Bernarda Ludermir (Brazil) Carlos Eduardo Pedreira (Brazil) Aluizio F. R. Araujo (Brazil), Andre P. L. F. Carvalho (Brazil), Antonio de Padua Braga (Brazil), Brijesh Verma (Australia), Cairo L. Nascimento Junior (Brazil), Edson Costa B.C. Filho (Brazil) Harold Szu (USA), Helge Ritter (Germany), Igor Aleksander (England), James A. Anderson (USA), Jude W. Shavlik (USA), Luiz Pereira Caloba (Brazil), Phillipe De Wilde (England), Takashi Yoneiama (Brazil) Vladimir Vapnik (USA), Walmir Matos Caminhas (Brazil) and Weber Martins (Brazil) INVITED TALKS Harold Szu (Title: Blind Demixing by Neural Network Independent Component Analyses) Igor Aleksander (Title: The Emergence of a Qualia-Like Phenomenon in a Neurocomputational System) James A. Anderson (Title: Teaching the Multiplication Tables to a Neural Network: Flexibility vs. Accuracy) Jude W. Shavlik (Title: Talking with Your Neural Networks: Putting Inference Rules In and Getting Rules Out) Vladimir Vapnik (Title: Problems of Learning and Generalization) IMPORTANT DATES Paper submission : 30 JUNE, 1998 Notification of acceptance : 30 September, 1998. ====================================================================== Detailed information can be obtained from conference WWW-page: ===================================================================== -- Antonio de Padua Braga, PhD | apbraga at cpdee.ufmg.br Depto. Engenharia Eletronica | http://www.cpdee.ufmg.br/~apbraga Campus da UFMG (Pampulha) | Tel: +55 31 499 4869 (499 4848) Caixa Postal 209 | FAX: +55 31 499 4850 30.161-970, Belo Horizonte, MG | BRAZIL From stevew at ultimode.com Tue May 12 14:08:09 1998 From: stevew at ultimode.com (Steve Waterhouse) Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 11:08:09 -0700 Subject: PhD Thesis on Mixtures of Experts Available Message-ID: <35589009.74F937BE@ultimode.com> Dear Connectionists, I am pleased to announce the availability of my PhD thesis, "Classification and Regression using Mixtures of Experts" which is now available on my web site: http://www.ultimode.com/stevew/thesis.html An outline follows: Classification and Regression using Mixtures of Experts by Steven Richard Waterhouse October 1997, Cambridge University Engineering Dept. and Jesus College Cambridge This thesis investigates a recent tool in statistical analysis: the mixtures-of-experts model for classification and regression. The aim of the thesis is to place mixtures-of-experts models in context with other statistical models. The hope of doing this is that we may better understand their advantages and disadvantages over other models. The thesis first considers mixtures-of-experts models from a theoretical perspective and compares them with other models such as trees, switching regression models and modular networks. Two extensions of the mixtures-of-experts model are then proposed. The first extension is a constructive algorithm for learning model architecture and parameters which is inspired by recursive partitioning. The second extension uses Bayesian methods for learning the parameters of the model. These extensions are compared empirically with the standard mixtures-of-experts model and with other statistical models on small to medium sized data sets. In the second part of the thesis the mixtures-of-experts framework is applied to acoustic modelling within a large vocabulary speech recognition system. The mixtures-of-experts is shown to give an advantage over standard single neural network approaches on this task. The results of both of these sets of comparisons indicate that mixtures-of-experts models are competitive with other state-of-the-art statistical models. ------------------------------------------------- Steve Waterhouse Ultimode Systems Data Mining Tools 2560 Bancroft Way #213, Berkeley, CA 94704 T: 510 548 8978 F: 510 845 2292 M: 415 420 3365 E: stevew at ultimode.com W: http://www.ultimode.com ------------------------------------------------- From terry at salk.edu Tue May 12 18:43:23 1998 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 15:43:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: NEURAL COMPUTATION 10:4 Message-ID: <199805122243.PAA24405@helmholtz.salk.edu> Neural Computation - Contents Volume 10, Number 4 - May 15, 1998 REVIEW Computational Models of Neuromodulation Jean-Marc Fellous, and Christiane Linster NOTES Weight-Value Convergence of the SOM Algorithm for Discrete Input Siming Lin and Jennie Si Reading Neuronal Synchrony with Depressing Synapses W. Senn, I. Segev, and M. Tsodyks LETTERS Neural Networks with Dynamic Synapses Misha V. Tsodyks, Klaus Pawelzik, and Henry Markram Spike Frequency Adaptation Affects the Synchronization Properties of Networks of Cortical Oscillator Sharon M. Crook, G. Bard Ermentrout, and James M. Bower GABAergic Inhibitory Control of the Transient and Sustained Components of Orientation Selectivity in a Model Microcolumn In Layer 4 of Cat Visual Cortex Paul Bush and Nicholas Priebe Changes in GABAB Modulation During a Theta Cycle May Be Analogous to the Fall of Temperature During Annealing Vikaas S. Sohal and Michael E. Hasselmo RST: A Connectionist Architecture to Deal With Spatiotemporal Relationships J.-C. Chappelier and A. Grumbach A Neural Model of Contour Integration in the Primary Visual Cortex Zhaoping Li Predictive Neural Networks for Learning the Time Course of Blood Glucose Levels From the Complex Interaction of Counterregulartory Hormones Klaus Prank, Clemens Jurgens, Alexander von zur Muhlen, And Georg Brabant Properties of Support Vector Machines Massimiliano Pontil and Alessandro Verri Validation of Voting Committees Eric Bax Toward Optimally Distributed Computation Peter J. Edwards and Alan F. Murray Efficient Adaptive Learning for Classification Tasks with Binary Units J. Manuel Torres Moreno and Mirta B.Gordon A Systematic and Effective Supervised Learning Mechanism Based on Jacobian Rank Deficiency Guian Zhou and Jennie Si ----- ABSTRACTS - http://mitpress.mit.edu/NECO/ SUBSCRIPTIONS - 1998 - VOLUME 10 - 8 ISSUES USA Canada* Other Countries Student/Retired $50 $53.50 $78 Individual $82 $87.74 $110 Institution $285 $304.95 $318 * includes 7% GST (Back issues from Volumes 1-9 are regularly available for $28 each to institutions and $14 each for individuals. Add $5 for postage per issue outside USA and Canada. Add +7% GST for Canada.) MIT Press Journals, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902. Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 258-6779 mitpress-orders at mit.edu ----- From espaa at soc.plym.ac.uk Wed May 13 07:47:21 1998 From: espaa at soc.plym.ac.uk (espaa) Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 11:47:21 GMT Subject: PAA Journal Papers Message-ID: <3EBAA0C1EE6@scfs3.soc.plym.ac.uk> PATTERN ANALYSIS AND APPLICATIONS SPRINGER-VERLAG LIMITED FORTHCOMING PAPERS IN THE PAA JOURNAL (Vol.1 , No. 1 , 1998) Digital Boundary Tracking Gabor T Herman, University of Pennsylvania, USA David Robinson, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Combining Classifiers: A Theoretical Framework Joseph Kittler, University of Surrey, UK LED Cosmetic Flaw Inspection System Ahmad Fadzil, Institute of Technology-Petronas, Malaysia Chu Jenn Weng, Hewlett Packard, Malaysia Recognition of Legal Amounts on Bank Cheques Didier Guillevic, CENPARMI, Concordia University Ching Y Suen, CENPARMI, Concordia University Resolution of Pattern Recognition Problems using a Hybrid Genetic/Random Neural Network Learning Algorithm Jose Aguilar, Universidad de los Andes, Venezuela Adrana Colmenares, Universidad de los Andes, Venezuela Reclustering Techniques improve Early Vision Feature Maps A Cozzi and F Worgotter, Ruhr Universitat Bochum, Germany Book Reviews Affective Computing (Rosalind Pickard), MIT Press Principal Component Neural Networks-Theory and Applications (KI Diamantaras and SY Kung), Jon Wiley Further information is available through: Journal web site: http://www.soc.plym.ac.uk/soc/sameer/paa.htm Journal secretary: Barbara Davies, School of Computing, University of Plymouth, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK; e-mail: espaa at soc.plym.ac.uk From Simon.N.CUMMING at British-Airways.com Wed May 13 06:50:16 1998 From: Simon.N.CUMMING at British-Airways.com (Simon.N.CUMMING@British-Airways.com) Date: 13 May 1998 10:50:16 Z Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: NCAF Conference, Derby, UK, 30Jun-1Jul98 Message-ID: <"BSC400A1 980513105012690511*/c=GB/admd=ATTMAIL/prmd=BA/o=British Airways PLC/s=CUMMING/g=SIMON/i=N/"@MHS> NEURAL COMPUTING APPLICATIONS FORUM CONFERENCE, 30 JUNE - 1 JULY 1998 DERBY, ENGLAND. The purpose of the Neural Computing Applications Forum (NCAF) is to promote widespread exploitation of neural computing technology by: ]providing a focus for neural network practitioners ]disseminating information on all aspects of neural computing ]encouraging close co-operation between industrialists and academics The Summer meeting will be hosted by -------------- Rolls-Royce in Derby, UK, on Tuesday 30th June and Wednesday 1st July. For the first time NCAF will be visiting Derby where the host organisation will be Rolls-Royce. This is the home for the current NCAF chairman, Peter Cowley. His team is arguably the leading UK industrial group in the application of Neural and other AI techniques. The 2 days will be packed with applications oriented papers as usual. There will also be adequate time for networking with other practitioners, during coffee, lunch and the Tuesday evening event...... NCAF Conference in DERBY 30th June - 1st July 1998 ================================================== Programme --------- Tuesday 30th June 1998 ---------------------- Introduction and Welcome Peter Cowley, Rolls-Royce Tutorial: Genetic Algorithms - An Evolutionary Tale Rachel Pearce, Rolls-Royce Condition Monitoring Using Kernel Density Estimation Matt Desforges and Phil Jacob, University of Manchester Invited Talk: Support Vector Machines Alex Gammerman, Royal Holloway College Cleaning Aircraft Data Paul Zanelli, University of York Neural Network Applications in Ship Survivability Philip Thompson, DERA Rosyth Wednesday 1st July 1998 ----------------------- What Can Neurons Compute? Gary Green, University of Newcastle Time and Relative Dimensions in Space with ANN Paul Beatty and David Asbridge, University of Manchester Wavelet Feature Extraction for Pattern Recognition Wieslaw Staszewski, University of Sheffield Case Studies in Finance Doug Hird, Abbey National Recent Applications Brian Kett, Neural Computer Sciences Social Programme ---------------- The City Centre Ghost Walk (30 June, evening). The story begins to unfold when you leave Derby Heritage Centre and head towards Lock-up Yard. A moment's reprieve permits the Ghosthunter to partake in liquid refreshment in the Tiger Bar before you are taken into the barrel-vaulted tunnels beneath Market Hall. The story continues as you head across Market Place towards The Bell; eventually ending the first leg of the tour at Lafferty's. Subject to their availability visits to the Police Museum and the Shire Hall are included before returning to the Centre for a Ghosthunter's Supper. plus Puzzle Corner: Dumb and Dumber Graham 'Rottweiler' Hesketh (Rolls-Royce) ..... Also Rolls-Royce Advanced Technology Exhibition An opportunity for an informal tour of the aerospace exhibition ..... -------------------------------------------------------------- Conference fees (in Sterling): --------------- 100 pounds for non-members (lunch and evening social event extra). 20 pounds for NCAF members (lunch and evening social event extra). Membership fees: --------------- All amounts are in pounds Sterling, per annum. All members receive a quarterly newsletter and are eligible to vote at the AGM (but see note on corporate membership). Full (Corporate) Membership : 300 pounds (allows any number of people in the member organisation to attend meetings at member rates; voting rights are restricted to one, named, individual. Includes automatic subscription to the journal Neural Computing and Applications.) Individual Membership : 170 pounds (allows one, named, individual to attend meetings at member rates; includes journal) Associate Membership: 110 pounds: includes subscription to the journal and newsletter but does not cover admission to the meetings. Reduced (Student) Membership : 65 pounds including Journal; 30 pounds without journal. Applications for student membership should be accompanied by a copy of a current full-time student ID card, UB40, etc. ------------------------------------------------------------------- For further information please e-mail NCAFsec at brunel.ac.uk or Phone our Voice Mail on (+44/0)1784 477271 From barba at cvs.rochester.edu Wed May 13 09:51:04 1998 From: barba at cvs.rochester.edu (Barbara Arnold) Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 08:51:04 -0500 Subject: 21st CVS Symposium Message-ID: 21st CVS Symposium "Environmental Structure, Statistical Learning & Visual Perception" June 4 - 6, 1998 CENTER FOR VISUAL SCIENCE University of Rochester Rochester, NY The Center for Visual Science at the University of Rochester is proud to present the 21st Symposium, "Environmental Structure, Statistical Learning and Visual Perception". The three-day symposium will consist of five sessions plus an open house and lab tours on Saturday afternoon. The meeting will begin with a Reception/Buffet on Wednesday evening, June 3. Formal sessions start Thursday morning, June 4, and end at noon on Saturday. There will be optional banquets held on Thursday and Friday evenings, and a cookout lunch on Saturday. Informal discussion gatherings will follow the banquets. PROGRAM Wednesday, June 3 4:00-10:00 PM Registration 6:00-8:00 PM Reception/Buffet Thursday, June 4 SESSION I: Image Statistics E Simoncelli, New York University C Chubb, University of CA Irvine D Ruderman, The Salk Institute SESSION II: Color Constancy D. Brainard, Univ of CA Santa Barbara S Shevell, University of Chicago A Hurlbert, Univ of Newcastle, England Friday, June 5 SESSION III:Surface Perception T Adelson, MIT L Maloney, New York University Zili Liu, NEC Research Institute SESSION IV: Object Perception D Knill , University of Pennsylvania K Nakayama, Harvard University P Kellman, University of CA Los Angeles Saturday, June 6 SESSION V: Neural Coding and Plasticity W Geisler, University of Texas Austin N Logothetis, Max-Planck Institute M Sur, MIT SESSION VI: OPEN HOUSE Center for Visual Science Open House and Lab Tours REGISTRATION FEES Preregistration, Regular $125.00 Preregistration, Student $ 95.00 On-site, Regular $180.00 On-site, Student $130.00 To preregister, please return the form posted on our website http://www.cvs.rochester.edu/symposium/propsymposia98.html Please send a separate form for each person registering. No preregistrations will be accepted after May 22. If you do not have access to our website please contact Barbara Arnold at barba at cvs.rochester.edu or 716-275-8659 ACCOMMODATIONS AND MEALS The University has moderate cost rooms available for symposium attendees. Residence halls are centrally located on the campus and are a short walk to Hoyt Hall where the symposium sessions will be held. A special package of residence hall room and all meals and banquets is being offered to Symposium participants. This package includes all meals from Thursday breakfast through the Saturday barbecue. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Barbara Arnold email: barba at cvs.rochester.edu Center for Visual Science phone: 716 275 8659 Room 274 Meliora Hall fax: 716 271 3043 University of Rochester Rochester NY 14627-0270 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de Wed May 13 09:42:21 1998 From: biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de (Michael Biehl) Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 15:42:21 +0200 (METDST) Subject: 2 papers: 1. Phase transitions in multilayered nets, 2. Self-averaging and online learning Message-ID: <199805131342.PAA15449@wptx08.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de> FTP-host: ftp.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de FTP-filename: /pub/preprint/1998/WUE-ITP-98-014.ps.gz FTP-filename: /pub/preprint/1998/WUE-ITP-98-002.ps.gz The following two manuscripts are now available via anonymous ftp, see below for the retrieval procedure. Alternatively, they can be obtained from the Wuerzburg Theoretical Physics preprint server in the WWW: http://theorie.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~publications.shtml ------------------------------------------------------------------ Ref. WUE-ITP-98-014 [8 pages] Phase transitions in soft--committee machines M.Biehl, E. Schl\"osser, and M. Ahr Equilibrium statistical physics is applied to layered neural networks with differentiable activation functions. A first analysis of off-line learning in soft-committee machines with N input and K hidden units learning a perfectly matching rule is performed. Our results are exact in the limit of high training temperatures. For K=2 we find a second order phase transition from unspecialized to specialized student configurations at a critical size P of the training set, whereas for K > 2 the transition is first order. The limit K to infinity can be performed analytically, the transition occurs after presenting on the order of N K examples. However, an unspecialized metastable state persists up to P= O (N K^2). Monte Carlo simulations indicate that our results are also valid for moderately low temperatures qualitatively. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Ref. WUE-ITP-98-002 [10 pages] Self-averaging and On-line Learning G. Reents and R. Urbanczik (to appear in Phys. Rev. Letters) Conditions are given under which one may prove that the stochastic dynamics of on-line learning can be described by the deterministic evolution of a finite set of order parameters in the thermodynamic limit. A global constraint on the average magnitude of the increments in the stochastic process is necessary to ensure self-averaging. In the absence of such a constraint, convergence may only be in probability. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Retrieval procedure via anonymous ftp: unix> ftp ftp.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de Name: anonymous Password: {your e-mail address} ftp> cd pub/preprint/1998 ftp> binary ftp> get WUE-ITP-98.XXX.ps.gz (*) ftp> quit unix> gunzip WUE-ITP-98-XXX.ps.gz e.g. unix> lp -odouble WUE-ITP-98-XXX.ps (*) can be replaced by "get WUE-ITP-98-XXX.ps". The file will then be uncompressed before transmission (slow!). ___________________________________________________________________ e-mail : biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de reents at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de From HEINKED at psycho1.bham.ac.uk Thu May 14 20:22:17 1998 From: HEINKED at psycho1.bham.ac.uk (Mr Dietmar Heinke) Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 17:22:17 -0700 Subject: 2nd Call for Papers Message-ID: <355B8AB9.6543@psycho1.bham.ac.uk> ***************** Call for Papers ****************************** 5th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW) Connectionist Models in Cognitive Neuroscience University of Birmingham, England Tuesday 8th September - Thursday 10th September 1998 This workshop is the fifth in a series, following on from the first at the University of Wales, Bangor (with theme "Neurodynamics and Psychology"), the second at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland ("Memory and Language"), the third at the University of Stirling, Scotland ("Perception") and the forth at the University College, London ("Connectionist Representations"). The general aim is to bring together researchers from such diverse disciplines as artificial intelligence, applied mathematics, cognitive science, computer science, neurobiology, philosophy and psychology to discuss their work on the connectionist modelling of psychology. This year's workshop is to be hosted by the University of Birmingham. As in previous years there will be a theme to the workshop. The theme is to be: Connectionist Models in Cognitive Neuroscience. This covers many important issues ranging from modelling physiological structure to cognitive function and its disorders (in neuropsychological and psychiatric cases). As in previous years we aim to keep the workshop fairly small, informal and single track. As always, participants bringing expertise from outside the UK are particularly welcome. Speakers will include: David Plaut, George Houghton, Steve Tipper, Kim Plunkett, David Glasspool, Trevor Harley, Kate Mayall, John Taylor. A one page abstract should be sent to Professor Glyn W. Humphreys School of Psychology University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom Deadline for abstracts: 31th of May, 1998 Registration, Food and Accommodation The workshop will be held at the University of Birmingham. The conference registration fee (which includes lunch and morning and afternoon tea/coffee each day) is 60 pounds. A special conference dinner (optional) is planned for the Wednesday evening costing 20 pounds. Accommodation is available in university halls or local hotels. A special price of 150 pounds is available for 3 nights accommodation in the halls of residence and registration fee. Organising Committee Dietmar Heinke Andrew Olson Professor Glyn W. Humphreys Contact Details Workshop Email address: Manorhse at psg-fs2.bham.ac.uk Workshop Homepage: http://psgsuni.bham.ac.uk/ncpw5/ncpw5home.html Dietmar Heinke, NCPW5, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. Phone: +44 (0)121 414 4920, Fax: +44 212 414 4897 http://web.bham.ac.uk/heinkedg/ Email: heinked at psycho1.bham.ac.uk Andrew Olson, NCPW5, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. Phone: +44 (0)121 414 3328, Fax: +44 212 414 4897 http://psgsuni.bham.ac.uk/olsona.htm Email: olsona at psycho1.bham.ac.uk Glyn W. Humphreys, NCPW5, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. Phone: +44 (0)121 414 4930, Fax: +44 212 414 4897 http://psgsuni.bham.ac.uk/humphreg.htm Email: humphreg at psycho1.bham.ac.uk From annesp at vaxsa.csied.unisa.it Thu May 14 14:05:21 1998 From: annesp at vaxsa.csied.unisa.it (annesp@vaxsa.csied.unisa.it) Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 19:05:21 +0100 Subject: Extended Deadline and Reduced Student fee (E. R. Cainiello School) Message-ID: <98051419052158@vaxsa.csied.unisa.it> ***************************************************************** EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR THE SUMMER SCHOOL MAY 30 1998 REDUCED REGISTRATION FEE FOR MASTER and Ph.D STUDENTS Please post **************************************************************** International Summer School ``Neural Nets E. R. Caianiello" 3rd Course "A Course on Speech Processing, Recognition, and Artificial Neural Networks" web page: http://wsfalco.ing.uniroma1.it/Speeschool.html The school is jointly organized by: INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC STUDIES (IIASS) Vietri sul Mare (SA) Italy, ETTORE MAJORANA FOUNDATION AND CENTER FOR SCIENTIFIC CULTURE (EMFCSC) Erice (TR), Italy Supported by: EUROPEAN SPEECH COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION (ESCA) Sponsored by: SALERNO UNIVERSITY, Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche E.R. Caianiello (Italy) DIRECTORS OF THE COURSE DIRECTORS OF THE SCHOOL AND ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Gerard Chollet (France). Maria Marinaro (Italy) M. Gabriella Di Benedetto (Italy) Michael Jordan (USA) Anna Esposito (Italy) Maria Marinaro (Italy) PLACE: International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS) Via Pellegrino 19, 84019 Vietri sul Mare, Salerno (Italy) DATES: 5th-14th October 1998 POETIC TOUCH Vietri (from "Veteri", its ancient Roman name) sul Mare ("on sea") is located within walking distance from Salerno and marks the beginning of the Amalfi coast. Short rides take to Positano, Sorrento, Pompei, Herculaneum, Paestum, Vesuvius, or by boat, the islands of Capri, Ischia, and Procida. Velia (the ancient "Elea" of Zeno and Parmenide) is a hundred kilometers farther down along the coast. Day time: 3 hour in the morning, three hour in the afternoon. Day free: One day with an excursion of the places around. AIMS: The aim of this school is to present the experiments, the theories and the perspectives of acoustic phonetics, as well as to discuss recent results in the speech literature. The school aims to provide a background for further study in many of the fields related to speech science and linguistics, including automatic speech recognition. The school will bring together leading researchers and selected students in the field of speech science and technology to discuss and disseminate the latest techniques. The school is devoted to an international audience and in particular to all students and scientists who are working on some aspects of speech and want to learn other aspects of this discipline. MAJOR TOPICS The school will cover a number of broad themes relevant to speech, among them: 1) Speech production and acoustic phonetics 2) Articulatory, acoustic, and prosodic features 3) Acoustic cues in speech perception 4) Models of speech perception 5) Speech processing (Preprocessing algorithms for Speech) 6) Neural Networks for automatic speech recognition 7) Multi-modal speech recognition and recognition in adverse environments. 8) Speech to speech translation (Vermobil and CSTAR projects) 9) Applications (Foreign Language training aids, aids for handicapped, ....). 10) Stochastic Models and Dialogue systems FORMAT The meeting will follow the usual format of tutorials and panel discussions together with poster sessions for contributed papers. The following tutorials are planned: ABEER ALWAN UCLA University (CA) USA "Models of Speech Production and Their Application in Coding and Recognition" ANDREA CALABRESE University of Connecticut (USA) "Prosodic and Phonological Aspects of Language" GERARD CHOLLET CNRS - ENST France "ALISP, Speaker Verification, Interactive Voice Servers" PIERO COSI CNR-Padova Italy "Auditory Modeling and Neural Networks" RENATO DE MORI Universite d' Avignon, France "Statistical Methods for Automatic Speech Recognition" M. GABRIELLA DI BENEDETTO Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy ``Acoustic Analysis and Perception of Classes of Sounds (vowels and consonants)" BJORN GRANSTROM Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Sweden "Multi-modal Speech Synthesis with Application" JEAN P. HATON Universite Henri-Poincare, CRIN-INRIA, France "Neural Networks for Automatic Speech Recognition" HYNEK HERMANSKY Oregon Graduate Institute, USA "Goals and Techniques of Speech Analysis" HERMANN NEY Computer Science Department, Aachen Germany "Algorithms for Large Vocabulary Speech Recognition" "Text and Speech Translation using Statistical Methods" JOHN OHALA University of California at Berkeley (CA) USA "Articulatory Constraints on Distinctive Features" JEAN SYLVAIN LIENARD LIMSI-CNRS, France "Speech Perception, Voice Perception" "Beyond Pattern Recognition" PROCEEDINGS The proceedings will be published in the form of a book containing tutorial chapters written by the lecturers and possibly shorter papers from other participants. One free copy of the book will be distributed to each participant. LANGUAGE The official language of the school will be English. POSTER SUBMISSION There will be a poster session for contributed presentations from participants. Proposals consisting of a one page abstract for review by the organizers should be submitted with applications. DURATION Participants are expected to arrive in time for the evening meal on Sunday 4th October and depart on Tuesday 15th October. Sessions will take place from Monday 5th-Wednesday 14th. COST Student Fee: 1500 dollars Student fee include accommodations (arranged by the school), meals, one day of excursion, and a copy of the proceedings of the school. Transportation is not included. REDUCED REGISTRATION FEE: IIASS, thanks to foundings offered by the sponsor is able to offer to students which are taking a master or a Ph.D degree, a reduced registration fee of 1000 dollars. A few scholarships are available for students who are otherwise unable to participate at the school, and who cannot apply for the grants offered by ESCA. The scholarship will partially cover lodging and living expenses. -- A supplement of 40 dollars per night should be paid for single room. Payment details will be notified with acceptance of applications. GRANTS -- A few ESCA grants are available for participants (which cover tuition and, maybe, part of the lodging). See http://ophale.icp.inpg.fr/esca/grants.html for further information. Individual applications for grants should be sent to Wolfgang Hess by e-mail: wgh at sunwgh.ikp.uni-bonn.de ELIGIBILITY The school is open to all suitably qualified scientists from around the world. APPLICATION PROCEDURE: Important Date: Application deadline: May 30 1998 Notification of acceptance: June 15 1998 Registration fee payment deadline: July 10 1998 People with few years of experience in the field should include a recommendation letter of their supervisor or group leader Places are limited to a maximum of 60 participants in addition to the lecturers. These will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. ************************************************************************** APPLICATION FORM Title:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Family Name:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Other Names:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Name to appear on badge:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Mailing Address (include institution or company name if appropriate): ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Phone:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Fax:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ E-mail:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Date of Arrival : Date of Departure: Will you be applying for a ESCA grant ? yes/no* *(please delete the alternatives which do not apply) Will you be applying for a scholarship ? yes/no* *(please delete the alternatives which do not apply) *(please include in your application a justification for scholarship request) ***************************************************************** Please send the application form together the recommendation letter by electronic mail to: iiass at tin.it, subject: summer school; or by fax: +39 89 761 189 (att.ne Prof. M. Marinaro) or by ordinary mail to the address below: IIASS Via Pellegrino 19, I84019 Vietri sul Mare (Sa) Italy For further information please contact: Anna Esposito International Institute for advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS) Via Pellegrino, 19, 84019 Vietri sul Mare (SA) Italy Fax: + 39 89 761189 e-mail: annesp at vaxsa.csied.unisa.it ================== RFC 822 Headers ================== ================== RFC 822 Headers ================== From iiass at tin.it Wed May 13 07:47:06 1998 From: iiass at tin.it (IIASS) Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 13:47:06 +0200 Subject: summer school Message-ID: <3559883A.3E50@tin.it> From lautrup at nbi.dk Thu May 14 12:03:48 1998 From: lautrup at nbi.dk (Benny Lautrup) Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 18:03:48 +0200 Subject: Spontaneous Order of Life II, IMPORTANT MESSAGE Message-ID: <000601bd7f51$e1a8b350$1ed4e182@lautrup.nbi.dk> Due to a technical error our application form at http://www.nbi.dk/~sol98 did not send the filled out forms correctly by email. Anyone who has tried to apply via the internet is kindly requested to resubmit the application. We are sorry for this inconvenience, but computers are as unreliable as the people behind them! Hanne Christensen (hnchristen at nbi.dk) The Niels Bohr Institute Blegdamsvej 17 2100 Copenhagen From Mark.Plumbley at kcl.ac.uk Thu May 14 14:23:11 1998 From: Mark.Plumbley at kcl.ac.uk (Mark Plumbley) Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 14:23:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: PhD Studentship: Applying Neural Networks in Microwave CAD Message-ID: Please display and/or circulate... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- KING'S COLLEGE LONDON DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING PhD Studentship Applying Neural Networks in Microwave CAD Applications are invited for a PhD research studentship to participate in an EPSRC funded project on applying neural networks in microwave CAD. The aim of the project is to develop and facilitate a neural network modeling technique suitable for fast analysis and optimization of multilayer monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). The studentship covers the standard fees and an annual stipend of £7,479 for three years. Applicants should have at least an upper second class degree in one of these disciplines: electronic engineering, physics or computer science. Knowledge of microwave engineering, computer simulation or neural networks would be desirable. Further details and the application form may be obtained from: Ms Nicola Hall Postgraduate Secretary Department of Electronic Engineering King's College London Strand London WC2R 2LS Tel: +44 171 873 2592 Fax: +44 171 836 4781 Informal inquiries may be made to Dr X. Chen at xiaodong.chen at kcl.ac.uk. [Full EPSRC studentships are only available to UK residents. Candidates from other EU countries may be eligible for a fees-only award. For more details on these criteria, see the EPSRC web site URL "http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/in-depth/post-grad/eligind.htm"]. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dr Mark Plumbley Mark.Plumbley at kcl.ac.uk |_/ I N G'S Centre for Neural Networks | \ College Division of Engineering L O N D O N King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK Founded1829 Tel: +44 (0)171 873 2241, Fax: +44 (0)171 873 5071 http://www.eee.kcl.ac.uk/~mdp/ ------------------------------------------------------------------ From rybaki at eplrx7.es.dupont.com Thu May 14 15:52:24 1998 From: rybaki at eplrx7.es.dupont.com (Ilya Rybak) Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 15:52:24 -0400 Subject: positions at DuPont Message-ID: <199805141952.PAA04554@pavlov> _____________________________________________________________ OPEN POSITIONS IN COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY AT DUPONT COMPANY DuPont is a world leader in the chemical, biological and engineering sciences, including fundamental and applied research programs ranging from industrial bioprocesses for the synthesis of chemicals and materials to genetically improved crops and discovery of crop protection chemicals. We are now seeking Ph.D. Principal Investigators to join multidisciplinary teams of Life Scientists. Positions in Computational Biology We are a group of computer scientists, engineers and experimentalists using computer-based/analytical approaches to problems that arise from the complexity and overabundance of biological data. New technologies in Genomics and Functional Genomics for gathering biological information have made it reasonable to expect complete inventories of molecular components like genes, RNAs, and proteins in cells. But we still won't be able to predict biological behavior. How will we organize and understand this information to make it useful? We need new insights, new science, and technology to illuminate the landscape being created by research. We are looking for system's engineers, computer scientists and computational biologists to help develop new computational tools and analytical models to extract information from the data. Creativity and the ability to work with colleagues from different disciplines are as important as specific, strong technical credentials. BioChemical Systems Engineer ----------------------------- This position requires metabolic pathway analysis using approaches such as MCA, flux analysis, modeling and simulation, and continuous, discrete, and numerical optimization as part of a team approach. Candidates should be interested in connecting these analytical tools to genomic and functional genomic-type data collection (e.g. gene expression profiles, protein profiles, metabolites, etc.). The successful candidate will likely have a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering with strong credentials in biochemical engineering and/or biology, or some equivalent mix of education and experience. Please refer to: CRD98-2100 Systems Scientist ----------------- This position requires experience in approaching problems with a "process systems perspective". Appropriate backgrounds might include process control engineering, dynamic systems and simulation, probability and stochastic processes, decision analysis, dynamic programming, and planning under uncertainty, use of logical and mathematical models to provide insight and solutions to complex problems, large-scale data analysis and biological systems analysis. Informatics (bioinformatics) sophistication will be a plus, but not required, although interest in developing tools in this area and working with this kind of data will be required. Candidates should have a Ph.D. and experience in some area of process systems engineering, computer science, or dynamical systems or related areas of applied mathematics. Please refer to: CRD98-2123A Computational Biologist ----------------------- This position requires strong experience in modeling biological systems. Ability to work with biologists and mine the biological literature to build models. Experience in biological neural networks or computational neurobiology, for example, would be appropriate, as is demonstrated ability to create models in systems where only partial data is available. Interest in using modeling/simulation as an aid in developing system understanding and for making predictions leading from the understanding. Candidates should have a Ph.D. and both computational and biological credentials. Familiarity with bioinformatics and bioinformatic resources will be a plus. Please refer to: CRD98-2123B Whether you are just starting your career or looking for growth opportunities, we encourage you to apply. We are looking for highly motivated individuals who can become members of our research teams to enhance both our success as well as their own. You will enjoy our state-of-the-art Experimental Station and facilities. These positions offer a highly competitive salary and an excellent benefits package. We are located in Wilmington, DE, an area that offers an attractive lifestyle with easy access to all the cultural, academic and recreational activities on the Eastern Seaboard. Qualified candidates should send a resume and three references to: DuPont Human Resources CRD98-# 1007 Market Street, N12419 Wilmington, DE 19898 We are an equal opportunity employer. Please make reference to the job code when responding. _______________________________________________________________ From jose at tractatus.rutgers.edu Sun May 17 17:29:19 1998 From: jose at tractatus.rutgers.edu (Stephen Jose Hanson) Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 17:29:19 -0400 Subject: SYS ADM / RESEARCH STAFF Rutgers U. Psychology Department Message-ID: <355F56AF.9AE628A9@tractatus.rutgers.edu> COMPUTER MANAGER/RESEARCH STAFF Salary Range 27 Retirement System ABP Send resumes to: Department of Personnel, 249 University Avenue, Newark, NJ 07102 EMAIL Enquirys: jose at psychology.rutgers.edu please include in Subject Heading: SYS ADM Reporting to the chair, responsible for administering the computing resources of the department. Major component of this position involves research in Cognitive Science, especially related to Connectionist networks (or Neural Networks and Computational Neuroscience). Will plan, direct, and implement research approaches and concepts with faculty, including writing and organizing research experiments. Must be able to write program specifications designed for specific research control situations. Other responsibilities consist of installing and debugging software, and routine system maintenance administration. Will participate in planning and design for network growth and computing facilities as it relates to RU-NET 2000. Requires a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Cognitive Science, or Cognitive Neuroscience AI or other related fields or equivalent experience. Requires familiarity with C-programming, UNIX system internals (BSD, System V, Solaris, Linux) and Windows (95, NT) as well as local area networks running TCP/IP. Image processing or graphics programming experience a plus. From jose at tractatus.rutgers.edu Sun May 17 17:23:45 1998 From: jose at tractatus.rutgers.edu (Stephen Jose Hanson) Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 17:23:45 -0400 Subject: Connectionist Post Doctoral Position RUTGERS U- PSYCHOLOGY DEPT. Message-ID: <355F5560.B9CC643D@tractatus.rutgers.edu> The DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY at RUTGERS UNIVERSITY-Newark Campus POSTDOCTORAL Position A postdoctoral position that can be filled immediately running through Fall98/Spring99 with a possibility of a second year renewal. Area of specialization in connectionist modeling with applications to recurrent networks, brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience. Review of applications will begin immediatelybut will continue to be accepted until the position is filled. Starting date is flexible in the Summer 98 time frame. Rutgers University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Qualified women and minority candidates are especially encouraged to apply. Send CV to Professor S. J. Hanson, Chair, Department of Psychology Post Doc Search, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ 07102. Email enquirys can be made to jose at psychology.rutgers.edu please include POSTDOC in the subject heading. From blebaron at ssc.wisc.edu Mon May 18 19:46:42 1998 From: blebaron at ssc.wisc.edu (Blake LeBaron) Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 18:46:42 -0500 Subject: Call for papers: Computational Finance 99 Message-ID: <9805182350.AA02388@duncan.ssc.wisc.edu> Leonard N. Stern School of Business New York University Computational Finance (CF99) January 6, 1999 (Tutorials) January 7 - 8 (Conference) The sixth international conference Computational Finance (CF99) will be held at NYU's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. CF99 is sponsored by the New York University Salomon Center, the Center for Research on Information Systems and the Department of Statistics and Operations Research. Computational Finance has emerged as a genuinely cross- disciplinary research meeting. CF99 is the sixth in a series of conferences that have been sponsored by the California Institute of Technology and the London Business School. In the past, this conference was called Neural Networks in the Capital Markets (NNCM). The expanding set of computational tools has moved this meeting from its original emphasis on neural network techniques to a broad spectrum of different methodologies. With several hundred attendees, this fully refereed conference has become an international forum where original research in advanced computational applications in finance is presented and discussed. CF99 brings together decision-makers and strategists from the financial industries, with academics from finance, statistics, economics, information systems and other disciplines. In the last few years, the conference has seen papers covering many different computational techniques including: statistical machine learning, Monte Carlo simulation, data mining, knowledge discovery, bootstrapping, genetic algorithms, nonparametric methods, information theory and fuzzy logic. Applications in many different areas are welcome, including but not limited to: risk management, asset allocation, dynamic trading and hedging strategies, forecasting, numerical solutions of derivative PDEs, exotic options and trading cost control. Studies may cover any major international financial market including equity, foreign exchange, bond, commodity and derivatives. The conference emphasizes in-depth analysis and comparative evaluation with established approaches. CF99 begins with a full day of tutorials designed to inform the diverse group of participants on a selection of the latest tools and research results. Tutorial speakers include Professor Stephen Figlewski of the Stern School of Business. The conference also features several invited speakers sharing their expertise from both the academic and applied perspectives. The keynote speaker is David E. Shaw, PhD, Chairman and CEO of D. E. Shaw & Co., Inc. The conference will have several talk and poster sessions for accepted papers. A selection of the presentations will be invited to appear in a volume published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. Submissions to CF99: Authors who wish to present papers should submit four copies along with full contact information, including e-mail addresses, to: CF99 / Andreas Weigend Information Systems Department Leonard N. Stern School of Business New York University 44 W 4th St., MEC 9-171 New York, NY 10012, USA E-mail: cf99 at stern.nyu.edu Web: www.stern.nyu.edu/cf99 All submissions must be received by August 15, 1998. Full papers are preferred, but extended abstracts clearly stating the results are acceptable. Only original, relevant research work will be accepted. Registration material will be put up on the Web at www.stern.nyu.edu/cf99 in August. Deadline for early registration is December 1, 1998. Conference Chairs: General Chair Y. S. Abu-Mostafa, Caltech Organizational Chair A. S. Weigend, NYU Stern Program Co-chairs B. LeBaron, University of Wisconsin A. W. Lo, MIT Sloan Organizing Committee: A. Atiya, Cairo University J. Cowan, University of Chicago R. Gencay, University of Windsor M. Jabri, Sydney University J. E. Moody, Oregon Graduate Institute C. E. Pedreira, Catholic Univ. PUC-Rio A.-P. N. Refenes, London Business School M. Steiner, Universitaet Augsburg D. Tavella, Align Risk Analysis A. Timmermann, U.of Calif., San Diego H. White, Univ. of California, San Diego L. Xu, Chinese University of Hong Kong The Stern School: Founded in 1900, the Stern School has grown into one of the most highly ranked business schools in the world. A talented and diverse student body benefits in many ways from Stern's long-standing excellence, top faculty and its central New York City location. Stern offers several specializations in computational finance that include a highly quantitative MBA financial engineering track, an MS in statistics with specialization in financial engineering, and PhD programs in the fields of finance, statistics and information systems. Further conferences, symposia and workshops at Stern for 1999 include Derivatives: What's New?; Market Risk: Advances and Challenges; and Data Mining in Finance. From robert at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de Tue May 19 05:10:10 1998 From: robert at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de (Robert Urbanczik) Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 11:10:10 +0200 (METDST) Subject: preprint available Message-ID: The following preprint (13 pages, to appear in Phys.Rev.E) is available for download from: ftp://ftp.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/pub/preprint/1998/WUE-ITP-98-016.ps.gz Multilayer Perceptrons May Learn Simple Rules Quickly Robert Urbanczik Zero temperature Gibbs learning is considered for a connected committee machine with $K$ hidden units. For large $K$, the scale of the learning curve strongly depends on the target rule. When learning a perceptron, the sample size $P$ needed for optimal generalization scales so that $N\ll P\ll KN$, where $N$ is the dimension of the input. This even holds for a noisy perceptron rule if a new input is classified by the majority vote of all students in the version space. When learning a committee machine with $M$ hidden units, $1\ll M\ll K$, optimal generalization requires $\sqrt{MK} N \ll P$. From p.j.b.hancock at psych.stir.ac.uk Tue May 19 09:01:18 1998 From: p.j.b.hancock at psych.stir.ac.uk (Peter Hancock) Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 14:01:18 +0100 (BST) Subject: Lectureships in UK Message-ID: I'd be keen to get connectionist people to apply for the following: Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Scotland LECTURESHIPS IN PSYCHOLOGY Three positions are available within the Department. One appointment will be in Perception/Cognition, and the others in any of the Department's existing areas of research strength: Perception, Cognition, Neuroscience, Neuropsychology, Comparative and Developmental Psychology, and Social, Health Clinical and Community Psychology. Two of the posts are fixed term (5 years) initially, and we are particularly keen to attract applicants who have recently completed PhDs and demonstrated their ability to conduct and publish high quality research. Salary: £16045-£27985 per annum. Informal enquiries may be made to Dr Lindsay Wilson, Head of Department on 01786 467640, e-mail jtlw1 at stir.ac.uk. Details of the Department can be found at http://www-psych.stir.ac.uk/psychHome.html. For further information please contact the Personnel Office, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA. Closing date 31 July 1998 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Hancock Department of Psychology 0 0 Face Centre for University of Stirling | Research and Cognitive and FK9 4LA, UK \_/ Group Computational Phone 01786 467675 Fax 01786 467641 Neuroscience pjh at psych.stir.ac.uk http://www-psych.stir.ac.uk/~pjh ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From black at signal.dera.gov.uk Tue May 19 12:48:19 1998 From: black at signal.dera.gov.uk (John V. Black) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 17:48:19 +0100 Subject: CFP: EuroFusion98 Conference Message-ID: EuroFusion98 Conference 6th-7th October 1998 The EuroFusion98 Conference will be held on Tuesday 6th (pm only) and Wednesday 7th October 1998 in the Elgar Suite at the Abbey Hotel, Great Malvern, UK. The official language of the conference will be English. The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers, users and others interested in any aspect of data fusion. The conference will comprise presentations, practical demonstrations, displays and posters on theoretical developments and practical applications on data fusion topics including, but not limited to, the following: Bayesian methods Dempster-Shafer techniques Probability Fusion Decision-level Fusion Neural networks Medical applications Condition monitoring Aerospace applications Financial applications Defence applications Security applications Transport applications Remote sensing Demining Original papers on research and development are solicited for a regular session of refereed presentations and for a workshop of selected unrefereed short presentations. Workshop papers will be selected for originality of the approach or the importance of the application. The conference also offers keynote talks by invited speakers. If you are interested in presenting your work at this conference please send a one-page abstract to the programme chair at the address below by Monday 8th June, indicating the presenting author, his / her contact details and whether the work is to be considered for a standard refereed paper, a short workshop paper or a poster. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Anyone wishing to give a practical demonstration or display should also contact the programme chair as soon as possible. Authors will be notified by Monday 29th June regarding the acceptance of their paper and camera-ready papers must be submitted by Monday 7th September. Conference General Chair Jane O'Brien Pattern and Information Processing DERA St. Andrews Road Malvern Worcestershire, WR14 3PS, UK Telephone: +44 1684 895618 Fax: +44 1684 894384 Email: job at signal.dera.gov.uk Conference Programme Chair Mark Bedworth Pattern and Information Processing DERA St. Andrews Road Malvern Worcestershire, WR14 3PS, UK Telephone: +44 1684 894521 Fax: +44 1684 894384 Email: bedworth at signal.dera.gov.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- Registration Registration forms can be obtained from Jenny Green Conference Administrator Pattern and Information Processing DERA St. Andrews Road Malvern Worcestershire WR14 3PS UK Phone: +44 1684 894300 Fax: +44 1684 89 4384 Email: jagreen at signal.dera.gov.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- Accommodation and Travel A limited number of rooms have been reserved at the Abbey Hotel at a special rate of L65 single occupancy (inclusive of breakfast) and at the Foley Arms Hotel (two minutes walk from The Abbey) at a special rate of L58 single occupancy (inclusive of breakfast). Bookings should be made directly with the hotels quoting "EuroFusion98". Abbey Hotel Foley Arms Hotel Abbey Road Worcester Road Great Malvern Great Malvern Worcestershire Worcestershire Phone: +44 1684 892332 Phone: +44 1684 573397 DERA Malvern's General Administration Office will be pleased to advise on and arrange other accommodation. Some of the hotels in the area offer a discount to our visitors provided they are booked through the General Administration Office, Telephone +44 1684 894387. Travel by Air: Malvern is approximately 50 miles south of Birmingham International Airport and can be reached from the airport easily by either rail or road. Travel by Rail: There are two railway stations in Malvern - Malvern Link and Great Malvern. The closest to all the hotels is Great Malvern. Trains run regularly from London Paddington to Great Malvern and from Birmingham International Airport via Birmingham New Street to Great Malvern. There are also rail links from Gatwick and Heathrow airports via Reading. Travel by Road: Visitors travelling on the M5 from the south should exit on the M50 at Junction 8. Leave the M50 at Junction 1 and follow the signposts for Great Malvern. >From the north, leave the M5 at Junction 7 and follow the route signposted to Malvern. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Dr John V Black |Pattern and Information Processing Group black at signal.dera.gov.uk|Defence Evaluation and Research Agency Tel: +44 (0)1684 894206 |Malvern, Worcs WR14 3PS, United Kingdom. Fax: +44 (0)1684 894384 |http://www.dera.gov.uk/ From mashouq at ksu.edu.sa Wed May 20 07:26:07 1998 From: mashouq at ksu.edu.sa (Dr. Khalid Al-Mashouq) Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 14:26:07 +0300 Subject: Position Available Message-ID: <3562BDCF.E6114CC9@ksu.edu.sa> Two positions are available immediately this coming fall, 1998 to work as an instructor in EE Dept. King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The applicant should hold Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and specialized in one of the following areas 1. Signal Processing 2. Mobile communications 3. Electromagnetics 4. Neural signal processing The positions require teaching undergraduate and graduate students as well as carrying high quality research in the area of specialty. Please send resumes and inquiries to the following address: Dr. Mohammad Al-Eshikh P.O.Box 800 Riyadh 11421 Saudi Arabia Fax +966-1-4676757 E-mail Eshaikh at ksu.edu.sa From luca at idsia.ch Wed May 20 08:22:10 1998 From: luca at idsia.ch (Luca Gambardella) Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 14:22:10 +0200 Subject: Position Available in Collective Robotics Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19980520142210.00a3ca70@mailhost.idsia.ch> We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this announcement. ------------------------------------------------------------------ =============================== POST DOC POSITION AVAILABLE =============================== IDSIA - (http://www.idsia.ch) Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale, Lugano, Switzerland RESEARCH ASSOCIATE http://www.idsia.ch/luca/opening_coll_rob.htm In Collective/Cooperative Autonomous Robotics For a period of 1 year, starting summer 1998, with possible extensions. Candidates for this position need to have a PhD in Mobile Robotics and experience with learning and/or adaptation paradigms or a PhD in Computer Science and basic knowledge of mobile robotics. Experience with real robot is appreciated. IDSIA's research focuses on artificial neural nets, reinforcement learning, combinatorial optimization, evolutionary computation. More precisely, IDSIA is involved with LAMI EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne) in a project supported by Swiss National Science Foundation concerning with "Methodology for Collective Robot Design". The goal is to study how to combine reactive behaviour with learning or adaptation capabilities in order to obtain complex, robust and perhaps emergent group behaviors with a team of simple robots. SALARY: commensurate with experience - There is travel funding in case of papers accepted at important conferences. DEADLINE: June 15th 1998 Applications (including curriculum vitae, names and addresses of at least three references, and a list of publications) should be sent to the following address, where also further information can be obtained: Luca Maria Gambardella IDSIA C.so Elvezia 36 6900 Lugano Switzerland Phone : +41 91-911 98 38 Fax : +41 91-911 98 39 email: luca at idsia.ch http://www.idsia.ch/luca From harnad at coglit.soton.ac.uk Wed May 20 10:53:55 1998 From: harnad at coglit.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 15:53:55 +0100 (BST) Subject: Amnesia & Hippocampus: BBS Call for Commentators Message-ID: Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on: EPISODIC MEMORY, AMNESIA AND THE HIPPOCAMPAL/ANTERIOR-THALAMIC AXIS by John P. Aggleton & Malcolm W. Brown This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send EMAIL to: bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/ ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/ ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/ gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ EPISODIC MEMORY, AMNESIA AND THE HIPPOCAMPAL/ANTERIOR-THALAMIC AXIS John P. Aggleton School of Psychology Cardiff University PO Box 901 Cardiff CF1 3YG Wales aggleton at cardiff.ac.uk Malcolm W. Brown Department of Anatomy University of Bristol University Walk Bristol BS8 1TD U.K. m.w.brown at bristol.ac.uk KEYWORDS: amnesia, memory, hippocampus, fornix, thalamus, temporal cortex ABSTRACT: Based on new information from both clinical and experimental studies in animals (lesion, electrophysiological, and gene-activation), the anatomy underlying anterograde amnesia is reformulated. The distinction between temporal lobe and diencephalic amnesia is of limited value because a common feature of anterograde amnesia is damage to part of an 'extended hippocampal system' comprising the hippocampus, the fornix, the mamillary bodies and the anterior thalamic nuclei. This view, which can be traced back to Delay and Brion (1969), differs from other recent models in placing critical importance on the efferents from the hippocampus via the fornix to the diencephalon. These are necessary for the encoding and hence the effective subsequent recall of episodic memory. An additional feature of this hippocampal/anterior-thalamic axis is the presence of projections back from the diencephalon to the temporal cortex and hippocampus that also support episodic memory. In contrast, this hippocampal system is not required for tests of item recognition that primarily tax familiarity judgements. Familiarity judgements reflect an independent process that depends on a distinct system involving the perirhinal cortex of the temporal lobe and the medial dorsal nucleus of the thalamus. In the large majority of amnesic cases, both the hippocampal/anterior-thalamic and the perirhinal/ mediodorsal-thalamic systems are compromised, leading to severe deficits in both recall and recognition. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide Web or by anonymous ftp or gopher from the US or UK BBS Archive. Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.aggleton.html ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.aggleton ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.aggleton gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp ftp.princeton.edu or ftp 128.112.128.1 When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin at yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.aggleton When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit From lyle at cogni.iaf.cnrs-gif.fr Thu May 21 02:05:40 1998 From: lyle at cogni.iaf.cnrs-gif.fr (Lyle Borg-Graham) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 02:05:40 EDT Subject: Paper announcement: Interpretations of Data and Mechanisms Message-ID: <9805210605.AA00389@cogni.iaf.cnrs-gif.fr> for Hippocampal Pyramidal Cell Models FTP-host: ftp.cis.ohio-state.edu FTP-file: pub/neuroprose/borg-graham.hpc-models.ps.Z * or see * http://www.cnrs-gif.fr/iaf/iaf9/surf-hippo.html The file borg-graham.hpc-models.ps.Z (97 pages) is now available for copying from the Neuroprose and Surf-Hippo repositories: Interpretations of Data and Mechanisms for Hippocampal Pyramidal Cell Models Lyle J Borg-Graham Equipe Cognisciences Institut Alfred Fessard - CNRS 91198 Gif-sur-Yvette, France ABSTRACT: Biophysically detailed models of single neurons which draw on a wide variety of experimental and theoretical foundations are increasingly important in the understanding of the functional role of various cellular mechanisms. In this paper, such an approach is detailed for pyramidal neurons of the hippocampus. Included is a review of the experimental literature, descriptions of biophysical models appropriate for the analysis of single cell behaviour, a comparative review of several published models, and parameters for an updated model of this cell type. This paper will appear as a chapter in the book ``Cerebral Cortex, Volume 13: Cortical Models'' Edited by P. S. Ulinski, E. G. Jones and A. Peters, New York: Plenum Press, 1998 From georgiou at wiley.csusb.edu Thu May 21 00:51:29 1998 From: georgiou at wiley.csusb.edu (georgiou@wiley.csusb.edu) Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 21:51:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Last Call for Papers: ICCIN'98 Message-ID: <199805210451.VAA21678@wiley.csusb.edu> 3rd International Conference on COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND NEUROSCIENCE (ICCIN'98) Sheraton Imperial Hotel & Convention Center Research Triangle Park, North Carolina October 24-28, 1998 (Tutorials are on October 23) Summary Submission Deadline: June 1, 1998 Decision & Notification: August 1, 1998 Conference Co-chairs: Subhash C. Kak, Louisiana State University Jeffrey P. Sutton, Harvard University Plenary Speakers include the following: +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |James Anderson |Panos J. Antsaklis |John Baillieul |Walter Freeman | |-----------------+-------------------+----------------+----------------| |David Fogel |Stephen Grossberg |Stuart Hameroff |Yu Chi Ho | |-----------------+-------------------+----------------+----------------| |Thomas S.Huang |George J. Klir |Teuvo Kohonen |John Koza | |-----------------+-------------------+----------------+----------------| |Richard G. Palmer|Zdzislaw Pawlak |Karl Pribram |Azriel Rosenfeld| |-----------------+-------------------+----------------+----------------| |Julius T. Tou |I.Burhan Turksen |Paul J. Werbos |A.K.C.Wong | |-----------------+-------------------+----------------+----------------| |Lotfi A. Zadeh |Hans J.Zimmermann | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ This conference is part of the Fourth Joint Conference Information Sciences. Organizing Committee: George M. Georgiou, California State University, Chair Grigorios Antoniou, Griffith University, Australia Catalin Buiu, Romania Richard Burright, State Univ. of N.Y., Binghamton Ian Cresswell, University of Central England, U.K. S. Das, University of California, Berkeley S.C. Dutta Roy, India Laurene Fausett, Florida Institute of Technology Paulo Gaudiano, Boston, University Masafumi Hagiwara, Keio Univ., Japan Ugur Halici, METU, Turkey Akira Hirose, University of Tokyo Arun Jagota, University of California, Riverside Boris Kovalerchuk, Central Washington University E.V. Krishnamurthy, Australian National University, Canberra Ping Liang, University of California, Riverside Jacek Mandziuk, Warsaw Univ. of Technology, Poland Jonathan Marshall, University of N. Carolina Bimal Mathur, Rockwell CA Kishan Mehrotra, Syracuse Ouri Monchi, King's College London, UK Haluk Ogmen, University of Houston Ed Page, South Carolina Mitja Perus, National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia Vladimir Radevski, Univ. of Paris, FRANCE Raghu Raghavan, National Univ. of Singapore W.A. Porter, University of Alabama Ed Rietman, Bell Labs Christos Schizas, University of Cyprus Harold Szu, USL M. Trivedi, UCSD Sudhir Trivedi, Southern University John Sutherland, AND Corporation, Canada Nicolae Varachiu, National Institute of Microtechnology, Romania Dan Ventura, Brigham Young University E. Vityaev, Russia Paul Wang, Duke University Sumio Watanabe, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Edward K. Wong, Polytechnic University, NY, USA Areas for which papers are sought include: o Artificial Life o Artificially Intelligent NNs o Associative Memory o Cognitive Science o Computational Intelligence o Efficiency/Robustness Comparisons o Evolutionary Computation for Neural Networks o Feature Extraction & Pattern Recognition o Implementations (electronic, Optical, Biochips) o Intelligent Control o Learning and Memory o Neural Network Architectures o Neurocognition o Neurodynamics o Neuro-Quantum Information Processing o Optimization o Parallel Computer Applications o Quantum Neurocomputing o Theory of Evolutionary Computation Summary Submission Deadline: June 1, 1998 Decision & Notification: August 1, 1998 Papers will be accepted based on summaries. A summary shall not exceed 4 pages of 10-point font, double-column, single-spaced text, with figures and tables included. Required deposits and other information: http://www.ee.duke.edu/~gu/JCIS98/conf.html For the 3rd ICCIN, send 3 copies of summaries to: George M. Georgiou Computer Science Department California State University San Bernardino, CA 92407-2397 U.S.A. georgiou at csci.csusb.edu Tutorial and other registration information can be found in the announcement of the Fourth Joint Conference Information Sciences: http://www.ee.duke.edu/~gu/JCIS98/ ICCIN'98 Conference Web site: http://www.csci.csusb.edu/iccin From dror2 at coglit.soton.ac.uk Thu May 21 10:50:20 1998 From: dror2 at coglit.soton.ac.uk (Itiel Dror) Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 15:50:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS Pragmatics & Cognition announces a special issue on FACIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE Guest Editors Itiel E. Dror and Sarah V. Stevenage In many senses, faces are at the center of human interaction. At a very basic level, faces indicate identity. However, faces are remarkably rich information carriers. For example, facial gestures may be used as means of conveying intentions. Faces may also permit a direct glimpse into the person's inner self (by unintentionally revealing, for example, aspects of character or mood). Given their salient role, the processing of the information conveyed by faces and its integration with other sources of interactional information raise important issues in cognition and pragmatics. Research on facial information processing has investigated these (and other) issues utilizing a variety of approaches and methodologies, and developments in both computer and cognitive sciences have recently carried this research forward. The emerging picture is that there are cognitive subsystems which specialize in different aspects of facial processing. This has been supported by neuropsychological evidence suggesting that brain damaged patients show dissociations between the different aspects of face processing. In addition, research on the development of facial processing abilities, and on aspects of the face itself which affect these processing abilities, has contributed to our understanding of how facial information is perceived. This special issue of Pragmatics and Cognition is intended to provide a common forum for a variety of the topics currently under investigation. Given the breadth of issues and approaches used to investigate faces, we encourage submissions from a wide range of disciplines. Our aim is that this special issue will tie together the diverse research on faces, and show their links and interdependencies. Deadline for submission: August 1, 1998 Editorial decisions: November 1, 1998 Revised papers due: February 1, 1999 Expected publication: October 1999 Papers should be submitted according to the guidelines of the journal (see WWW URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~dror/guideline.html). All submissions will be peer reviewed. Please send five copies of your submission either to: Dr. Itiel Dror (dror at coglab.psy.soton.ac.uk) or: Dr. Sarah Stevenage (svs1 at soton.ac.uk) Dept. of Psychology Southampton University Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ England For additional and updated information see WWW URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~dror/faces.html or contact either of the guest editors. #======================================================================# | Itiel E. Dror, Ph.D. http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~dror/ | | Department of Psychology dror at coglab.psy.soton.ac.uk | | University of Southampton Office 44 (0)1703 594519 | | Highfield, Southampton Lab. 44 (0)1703 594518 | | England SO17 1BJ Fax. 44 (0)1703 594597 | #======================================================================# ******************************************************************************* From jbower at bbb.caltech.edu Wed May 20 21:33:43 1998 From: jbower at bbb.caltech.edu (James M. Bower) Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 17:33:43 -0800 Subject: No subject Message-ID: ************************************************************************ SEVENTH ANNUAL COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE MEETING (CNS*98) July 26 - 30, 1998 Santa Barbara, California REGISTRATION INFORMATION ************************************************************************ Registration is now open for this year's Computational Neuroscience meeting (CNS*98). This is the seventh in a series of annual inter-disciplinary conferences intended to address the broad range of research approaches and issues involved in the general field of computational neuroscience. As in previous years, this meeting will bring together experimental and theoretical neurobiologists along with engineers, computer scientists, cognitive scientists, physicists, and mathematicians interested in understanding how biological neural systems compute. The meeting will equally emphasize experimental, model-based, and more abstract theoretical approaches to understanding neurobiological computation. The meeting in 1998 will take place at Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara, California and include plenary, contributed, and poster sessions. The first session starts at 9 am, Sunday July 26th and the meeting ends with the annual CNS banquet on Thursday evening, July 30th. There will be no parallel sessions. The meeting includes two half days of informal workshops focused on current issues in computational neuroscience. Day care will be available for children and given the beauty and recreational interest of the area, we encourage families to attend. LOCATION: The meeting will take place at the Fess Parker's Double Tree Resort in Santa Barbara, California. MEETING ACCOMMODATIONS: Accommodations for the meeting have been arranged at Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort. Information concerning reservations, hotel accommodations, etc. are available at the meeting web site indicated below. A block of rooms are reserved at special rates. 30 student rate rooms are available on a first-come-first-served basis, so we recommend students acting quickly to reserve these slots. NOTE that registering for the meeting, WILL NOT result in an automatic room reservation. Instead you must make your own reservations by contacting the hotel itself. As this is the high season for tourists in Santa Barbara, you should make sure and reserve your accommodations quickly by contacting: Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort (RESERVATION REQUEST ORDER FORM LOCATED BELOW) NOTE: IN ORDER TO GET THE AVAILABLE ROOMS, YOU MUST CONFIRM HOTEL REGISTRATIONS BY JUNE 24, 1997. When making reservations by phone, make sure and indicate that you are registering for the Computational Neuroscience (CNS*98) meeting. Students will be asked to verify their status on check in with a student ID or other documentation. MEETING REGISTRATION FEES: Registration received on or before June 26, 1998: Student: $ 95 Regular: $ 225 Meeting registration after June 26, 1998: Student: $ 125 Regular: $ 250 BANQUET: Registration for the meeting includes a single ticket to the annual CNS Banquet. Additional Banquet tickets can be purchased for $35 each person. The banquet will be held on Thursday, July 30th. DAY CARE: Day care will be available at the conference for those who inform us in advance of their day care needs. Note that day care will not be provided during the evening. Please send e-mail to judy at bbb.caltech.edu. Please provide the following information: 1. name of parent(s), 2. e-mail address, 3. age of children and 4. estimated times during which children will need day care. Day care will be provided free of charge accept for children under the age of 2 years old for whom a fee may be charged. AIRFARE: Santa Barbara has its own small airport with daily flights from Los Angeles and San Francisco. In addition, ground transportation is available to Santa Barbara from Los Angeles International Airport (and a one and a half hour drive). Special discount rates have been arranged with United and Northwest airlines, if you mention the following group ID with airline reservations: Northwest Airlines - Phone No: 1-800-328-1111 Meeting I.D. No: NMG66 United Airlines - Phone No: 1-800-521-4041 (U.S. and Canada) Meeting I.D. No: 525SV ********************************************************************* ADDITIONAL INFORMATION (including the agenda with list of talks) can be obtained by: o Using our on-line WWW information and registration server, URL of: http://www.bbb.caltech.edu/cns/cns98/cns98.html o ftp-ing to our ftp site. yourhost% ftp ftp.bbb.caltech.edu Name (ftp.bbb.caltech.edu:<): ftp Password: yourname at yourhost.yourside.yourdomain ftp> cd cns98 ftp> ls o Sending Email to: cns98 at bbb.caltech.edu From sml%essex.ac.uk at seralph10.essex.ac.uk Fri May 22 14:11:23 1998 From: sml%essex.ac.uk at seralph10.essex.ac.uk (Simon Lucas) Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 19:11:23 +0100 Subject: Time Series Prediction Applet (SVM v KNN) Message-ID: <3565BFCB.21B3@essex.ac.uk> Dear Connectionists, I've written a Time Series Prediction Applet that may be of interest. It allows a comparison of a simplified Support Vector Machine versus a K-NN predictor (see notes on link from applet), and plots the series and the predictions as they unfolds in time. Follow the link from my homepage http://esewww.essex.ac.uk/~sml Best regards, Simon Lucas N.B. it uses the Java 1.1 event model, so you'll need a browser that supports this - e.g. a recent release of Netscape Communicator -- ------------------------------------------------ Dr. Simon Lucas Department of Electronic Systems Engineering University of Essex Colchester CO4 3SQ United Kingdom Tel: (+44) 1206 872935 Fax: (+44) 1206 872900 Email: sml at essex.ac.uk http://esewww.essex.ac.uk/~sml secretary: Mrs Wendy Ryder (+44) 1206 872437 ------------------------------------------------- From radford at cs.toronto.edu Fri May 22 15:22:28 1998 From: radford at cs.toronto.edu (Radford Neal) Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 15:22:28 -0400 Subject: Preprint available Message-ID: <98May22.152235edt.1056@neuron.ai.toronto.edu> The following preprint is now available: Assessing Relevance Determination Methods Using DELVE Radford M. Neal, University of Toronto Empirically assessing the predictive performance of learning methods is an essential component of research in machine learning. The DELVE environment was developed to support such assessments. It provides a collection of datasets, a standard approach to conducting experiments with these datasets, and software for the statistical analysis of experimental results. In this paper, DELVE is used to assess the performance of neural network methods when the inputs available to the network have varying degrees of relevance. The results confirm that the Bayesian method of ``Automatic Relevance Determination'' (ARD) is often (but not always) helpful, and show that a variation on ``early stopping'' inspired by ARD is also beneficial. The experiments also reveal some other interesting characteristics of the methods tested. This example illustrates the essential role of empirical testing, and shows the strengths and weaknesses of the DELVE environment. To appear in Generalization in Neural Networks and Machine Learning, C. M. Bishop (editor), Springer-Verlag, 33 pages. You can get this paper (in compressed Postscript) directly from: ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/radford/ard-delve.ps.Z or via my home page (see URL below). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Radford M. Neal radford at cs.utoronto.ca Dept. of Statistics and Dept. of Computer Science radford at utstat.utoronto.ca University of Toronto http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~radford ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From tewon at salk.edu Wed May 27 02:54:31 1998 From: tewon at salk.edu (Te-Won Lee) Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 23:54:31 -0700 Subject: ICA-CNL website, new ICA paper & matlab code. Message-ID: <199805270654.XAA15802@helmholtz.salk.edu> Dear Connectionists, *** Visit the ICA - CNL website! *** http://www.cnl.salk.edu/~tewon/ica_cnl.html Independent Component Analysis (ICA) has received a lot of attention recently. The ICA - CNL website shows a variety of ICA research performed in the Computational Neuroscience Laborabory (CNL) at the Salk Institute (Terry Sejnowski's Lab). The goal of this webpage is to provide detailed services to scientists, engineers and industrials about ICA or Blind Source Separation (BSS). The following services are available: - Introduction to ICA - ICA Projects - Researchers - Papers - Matlab Code - ICA Demos - ICA News - Links - ICA FAQs If you have questions or comments please send email to tewon at salk.edu *** New ICA paper and Matlab code available *** "Independent component analysis using an extended infomax algorithm for mixed sub-Gaussian and super-Gaussian sources" T-W. Lee, M. Girolami and T.J. Sejnowski. to appear in Neural Computation, MIT Press. Paper: http://www.cnl.salk.edu/~tewon/Public/nc97.ps.gz (1470k, 33 pages) Matlab code: http://www.cnl.salk.edu/~tewon/ica_cnl.html and go to Matlab Code and download the extended infomax algorithm Abstract: An extension of the infomax algorithm of Bell and Sejnowski (1995) is presented that is able to blindly separate mixed signals with sub- and super-Gaussian source distributions. This was achieved by using a simple type of learning rule first derived by Girolami (1997) by choosing negentropy as a projection pursuit index. Parameterized probability distributions that have sub- and super-Gaussian regimes were used to derive a general learning rule that preserves the simple architecture proposed by Bell and Sejnowski (1995), is optimized using the natural gradient by Amari (1997), and uses the stability analysis of Cardoso and Laheld (1996) to switch between sub- and super-Gaussian regimes. We demonstrate that the extended infomax algorithm is able to easily separate 20 sources with a variety of source distributions. Applied to high-dimensional data from electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings, it is effective at separating artifacts such as eye blinks and line noise from weaker electrical signals that arise from sources in the brain. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Te-Won Lee EMAIL: tewon at salk.edu Computational Neurobiology Lab, WORK: (619) 453-4100 x1215 Salk Institute, HOME: (619) 450-9036 10010 N. Torrey Pines Rd. FAX: (619) 587-0417 La Jolla, CA 92037 WEB: http://www.cnl.salk.edu/~tewon ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From ken at phy.ucsf.EDU Wed May 27 22:21:17 1998 From: ken at phy.ucsf.EDU (Ken Miller) Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 19:21:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Paper available: Model of Contrast-Invariant Orientation Tuning in V1 Message-ID: <199805280221.TAA04818@coltrane.ucsf.edu> FTP-host: ftp.keck.ucsf.edu FTP-filename: pub/ken/jnpaper.ps.gz URL: ftp://ftp.keck.ucsf.edu/pub/ken/jnpaper.ps.gz The following paper is available by anonymous ftp. It can also be obtained from my web page: http://www.keck.ucsf.edu/~ken (click on 'Publications'; then click on 'Models of Neuronal Integration and Circuitry'; or alternatively, go directly to http://www.keck.ucsf.edu/~ken/miller.htm#circuitry) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Troyer, T.W., A.E. Krukowski, N.J. Priebe and K.D. Miller (1998). ``Contrast-Invariant Orientation Tuning in Visual Cortex: Feedforward Tuning and Correlation-Based Intracortical Connectivity.'' In press, Journal of Neuroscience. ABSTRACT: The origin of orientation selectivity in visual cortical responses is a central problem for understanding cerebral cortical circuitry. In cats, many experiments suggest that orientation selectivity arises from the arrangement of LGN afferents to layer 4 simple cells. However, this explanation is not sufficient to account for the contrast invariance of orientation tuning. To understand contrast invariance, we first characterize the input to cat simple cells generated by the oriented arrangement of LGN afferents. We demonstrate that it has two components: a spatial-phase-specific component (i.e., one that depends on receptive field spatial phase), which is tuned for orientation; and a phase-nonspecific component, which is untuned. Both components grow with contrast. Second, we show that a correlation-based intracortical circuit -- in which connectivity between cell pairs is determined by the correlation of their LGN inputs -- is sufficient to achieve well-tuned, contrast-invariant orientation tuning. This circuit generates both spatially opponent, ``anti-phase'' inhibition (``push-pull''), and spatially matched, ``same-phase'' excitation. The inhibition, if sufficiently strong, suppresses the untuned input component and sharpens responses to the tuned component at all contrasts. The excitation amplifies tuned responses. This circuit agrees with experimental evidence showing spatial opponency between, and similar orientation tuning of, the excitatory and inhibitory inputs received by a simple cell. Orientation tuning is primarily input driven, accounting for the observed invariance of tuning width after removal of intracortical synaptic input, as well as for the dependence of orientation tuning on stimulus spatial frequency. The model differs from previous push-pull models in requiring dominant rather than balanced inhibition, and in predicting that a population of layer 4 inhibitory neurons should respond in a contrast-dependent manner to stimuli of all orientations, although their tuning width may be similar to that of excitatory neurons. The model demonstrates that fundamental response properties of cortical layer 4 can be explained by circuitry expected to develop under correlation-based rules of synaptic plasticity, and shows how such circuitry allows the cortex to distinguish stimulus intensity from stimulus form. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Warning: The last two pages of this paper contain dense figures that can take many minutes to load in a postscript viewer or to print. You can also get these separately: All but last two pages: ftp://ftp.keck.ucsf.edu/pub/ken/jnpaper-1-53.ps.gz Last two pages: ftp://ftp.keck.ucsf.edu/pub/ken/jnpaper-54-55.ps.gz Uncompressed versions are available in all cases by omitting the '.gz'. Ken Miller Kenneth D. Miller internet: ken at phy.ucsf.edu Dept. of Physiology www: http://www.keck.ucsf.edu/~ken UCSF 513 Parnassus San Francisco, CA 94143-0444 From biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de Thu May 28 03:46:02 1998 From: biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de (Michael Biehl) Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 09:46:02 +0200 (METDST) Subject: preprint: phase transitions in soft-committee Message-ID: <199805280746.JAA24711@wptx08.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de> FTP-host: ftp.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de FTP-filename: /pub/preprint/1998/WUE-ITP-98-014.ps.gz ----------------------------------------------------------------- A revised version of our recently announced paper Ref. WUE-ITP-98-014 [8 pages] Phase transitions in soft--committee machines M.Biehl, E. Schl\"osser, and M. Ahr is now available through anonymous ftp (see below) or from the Wuerzburg Theoretical Physics preprint server in the WWW: http://theorie.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~publications.shtml Unfortunately, it had escaped our attention that soft-committee machines have been analysed earlier in the limit of infinitely many hidden units by K. Kang, J.-H. Oh, C. Kwon, and Y. Park in Phys. Rev. E 48 (1993) 4805 We thank J. Hertz for drawing our attention to this fact. In the revised version we focus on the novel results for finite K and give appropriate reference to the above publication. Michael Biehl ------------------------------------------------------------------- Retrieval procedure via anonymous ftp: unix> ftp ftp.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de Name: anonymous Password: {your e-mail address} ftp> cd pub/preprint/1998 ftp> binary ftp> get WUE-ITP-98.014.ps.gz (*) ftp> quit unix> gunzip WUE-ITP-98-014.ps.gz e.g. unix> lp -odouble WUE-ITP-98-014.ps (*) can be replaced by "get WUE-ITP-98-014.ps". The file will then be uncompressed before transmission (slow!). ___________________________________________________________________ e-mail : biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de From niall.griffith at ul.ie Thu May 28 09:28:35 1998 From: niall.griffith at ul.ie (Niall Griffith) Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 14:28:35 +0100 Subject: Connectionist Bibliography for Music Message-ID: <9805281328.AA13880@zeus.csis.ul.ie> An extensive bibliography of connectionist publications on music, is available (in html, Word, bibtex, and plain text) at http://www.csis.ul.ie/staff/NiallGriffith/mnpdpp_bib0.htm This is part of a new book due this summer from MIT Press. Musical Networks: Parallel Distributed Perception and Performance eds. Niall Griffith and Peter M. Todd We intend to keep this an up-to-date list. If you have published anything in this area (or know of other work) that is not included, please email full details to niall.griffith at ul.ie and it will be added. Niall Griffith and Peter Todd From yweiss at psyche.mit.edu Thu May 28 18:29:09 1998 From: yweiss at psyche.mit.edu (Yair Weiss) Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 18:29:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: TR available Message-ID: <199805282229.SAA07061@maxwell1> Hi, The following paper describing a Bayesian theory for human motion perception is now available online via: http://www-bcs.mit.edu/~yweiss/weiss.html#slowSmooth This paper forms part of my dissertation that is also downloadable from http://www-bcs.mit.edu/~yweiss/thesis.html Comments are most welcome. Yair -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Slow and Smooth: a Bayesian theory for the combination of local motion signals in human vision Author: Yair Weiss and Edward H. Adelson Reference: MIT AI Memo 1624, MIT CBCL Paper 158. Abstract: In order to estimate the motion of an object, the visual system needs to combine multiple local measurements, each of which carries some degree of ambiguity. We present a model of motion perception whereby measurements from different image regions are combined according to a Bayesian estimator --- the estimated motion maximizes the posterior probability assuming a prior favoring slow and smooth velocities. In reviewing a large number of previously published phenomena we find that the Bayesian estimator predicts a wide range of psychophysical results. This suggests that the seemingly complex set of illusions arise from a single computational strategy that is optimal under reasonable assumptions. From jagota at cse.ucsc.edu Thu May 28 20:56:04 1998 From: jagota at cse.ucsc.edu (Arun Jagota) Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 17:56:04 -0700 Subject: NCS survey paper Message-ID: <199805290056.RAA18938@arapaho.cse.ucsc.edu> New e-publication: survey paper David A. Medler, A Brief History of Connectionism, Neural Computing Surveys, 1, 61-101, 1998, 123 references. http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~jagota/NCS medler at cnbc.cmu.edu Abstract: Connectionist research is firmly established within the scientific community, especially within the multi-disciplinary field of cognitive science. This diversity, however, has created an environment which makes it difficult for connectionist researchers to remain aware of recent advances in the field, let alone understand how the field has developed. This paper attempts to address this problem by providing a brief guide to connectionist research. The paper begins by defining the basic tenets of connectionism. Next, the development of connectionist research is traced, commencing with connectionism's philosophical predecessors, moving to early psychological and neuropsychological influences, followed by the mathematical and computing contributions to connectionist research. Current research is then reviewed, focusing specifically on the different types of network architectures and learning rules in use. The paper concludes by suggesting that neural network research---at least in cognitive science---should move towards models that incorporate the relevant functional principles inherent in neurobiological systems. From gaijin at yha.att.ne.jp Sat May 2 10:45:56 1998 From: gaijin at yha.att.ne.jp (Sam Joseph) Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 14:45:56 -0000 Subject: Thesis on Adaptive Neural Growth Message-ID: <199805020633.PAA11791@yha.att.ne.jp> Dear Connectionists, For your information, the phd thesis entitled: "Theories of Adaptive Neural Growth" by Sam Joseph, Edinburgh University 1998 is available to download in gzipped postscript format at: http://www.cns.ed.ac.uk/students/sam/work.html On the same web page is a shorter paper entitled "Feature Generation Mechanism" that summarises some of the main results from the phd thesis, regarding the construction of boolean neural networks that takes inspiration from the relationship between electrical activity and outgrowth in biological neurons. All comments gratefully received, particularly on the shorter (draft) paper, which is designed to be in a more digestable format. Full abstract of thesis follows at end of this mail. Sincerely Sam Joseph email to: sam at cns.ed.ac.uk **************** Abstract of "Theories of Adaptive Neural Growth" When interpreting the results of experiments that investigate biological development, one is faced with a wealth of data. Producing a model of such development must always involve some degree of abstraction. The appropriate level of abstraction and the importance of particular experimental evidence is determined by one's modelling objective. Models may potentially be motivated by one of two complementary aims: 1. To understand how biological neurons achieve their mature interconnectivity. 2. To improve the learning ability of artificial neural nets (ANNs) by taking inspiration from the growth of biological nervous systems. These aims are exemplified in the thesis by two simulated neural models. The first is a model of neuromuscular development that places an emphasis on achieving biological plausibility. The second is a platform for modifying the connectivity of artificial neural networks. This feature generation mechanism (FGM) platform supports a variety of growth procedures that are inspired by evidence from biological development. The model of development at the mammalian neuromuscular junction (NMJ) focusses on the achievement of single innervation, and is an extension of the existing dual constraint model (DCM). The identities of the molecules involved in the DCM are proposed and the framework is adjusted accordingly. This extension allows a variety of developmental phenomena to be replicated, including the presence of both activity-dependent \& independent competition between terminals. A further framework is established that provides a potential explanation for the paradoxical results of synaptic interaction under focal blockade conditions. The FGM model concerns feed-forward ANNs and attempts to improve their unsupervised pattern recognition ability. Different FGMs consist of functions that in the right combination produce connectivity patterns that maximise the average Shannon information provided by the output of individual nodes. They also allow the network to construct partial input features which form an any-of-N representation of a given input pattern. FGM networks are shown to outperform other straightforward unsupervised ANNs in trials on simple data sets. More demanding tests are performed indicating that an FGM net with Boolean weights outperforms a competitive network using continuous weights. The slight superiority of the FGM performance is achieved with a third of the free parameters of the competitive net. The nature of the FGM induced partial connectivity implies that these networks would scale up to larger problems more easily their fully connected counterparts. From ted.carnevale at yale.edu Sat May 2 22:20:08 1998 From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale) Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 22:20:08 -0400 Subject: NEURON summer course Message-ID: <354BD458.197A@yale.edu> Announcing THE NEURON SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT An intensive hands-on course Date: Saturday, August 1, through Wednesday, August 5, 1998 Place: San Diego Supercomputer Center Course faculty includes: Ted Carnevale Michael Hines Bill Lytton Terry Sejnowski This course is designed for experimentalists who wish to incorporate empirically-based modeling into their research plans. It will be of interest to three broad classes of participants. 1. Those who have little or no modeling experience will learn not only the technical aspects of modeling but also its philosophical basis and scientific rationale. 2. Intermediate users will learn how best to approach common tasks, and under what circumstances special components of NEURON's rich feature set might be particularly helpful. 3. Experienced users will benefit from an update on new features and a review of important topics that may have escaped their attention when they first learned how to use NEURON. Partial listing of the topics that will be covered: Design and construction of models of biophysical mechanisms, individual neurons, and networks of neurons Strategies for efficient design and project management Adding new biophysical mechanisms Optimization NEURON's new variable order, variable timestep method Powerful features of the Vector and Impedance classes The graphical user interface for simulation control and data analysis Registration is limited to 20 individuals on a first-come, first-serve basis. The registration fee is $525, which covers expenses that include room and board. Deadline for registration is Wednesday, July 1, 1998. For more information about this course, including an electronic registration form, see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/sdsc98/sdsc98.htm For more information about NEURON see http://www.neuron.yale.edu and in particular the article "The NEURON simulation environment" (Hines and Carnevale, Neural Computation 9:1179-1209, 1997), which is posted in HTML format at http://www.neuron.yale.edu/papers/nc97/nctoc.htm --Ted From harnad at coglit.soton.ac.uk Mon May 4 16:33:42 1998 From: harnad at coglit.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 21:33:42 +0100 (BST) Subject: Citation Linking: Temporary Access to ISI Database Message-ID: The BBS and Psycoloquy Archives have been temporarily linked to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) database (till the end of May only) in connection with the JISC/Elib-funded Open Journal Project. You can go to an article, click on what it cites and jump to its abstract and references in the ISI database. There are gaps, but with a little imagination, you will have a foretaste of what will soon be possible with citation linking of electronic journals and databases I suggest you start with the "MOST-LINKED PAPERS" in BBS and Psycoloquy. As you scan the text, click on a cited paper you want to see. It will first jump to the full citation in the bibliography; click again and you will find yourself in the ISI database, navigating the abstracts through citations. (Imagine it was all full text.) Please try it: http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cogsci.htm Then PLEASE let the Open Journal Project (funded by JISC/ELib) know what you thought and what you suggest to make it better by filling out the Web form at: http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cogsci-yourview.htm For background information on citation linking see our published papers. Webs of Research: Putting the User in Control http://sosig.ac.uk/iriss/papers/paper42.htm Citation Linking: Improving Access to Online Journals http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/acmdl97.htm All relevant papers are listed at http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/papers.htm From honavar at cs.iastate.edu Mon May 4 14:14:23 1998 From: honavar at cs.iastate.edu (Vasant Honavar) Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 13:14:23 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Call for Participation: ICGI-98 Message-ID: <199805041814.NAA10661@ren.cs.iastate.edu> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text Size: 11250 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/00000000/20c8218a/attachment-0001.ksh From iiass at tin.it Tue May 5 04:54:59 1998 From: iiass at tin.it (IIASS) Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 10:54:59 +0200 Subject: JOB POSITION AVAILABLE AT IIASS Message-ID: <354ED3E3.4020@tin.it> PLEASE POST ***************************************************************** 5 Job positions available at IIASS The International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS) located in Vietri sul Mare (Salerno), Italy, is seeking for young highly motivated individuals to join his research group. Position Available are: a) One-year Research Fellowship in "Image and Pattern Processing of Remotely Sensed Data" Potential candidates should belong to the regions of Objective 1 of European Community. Candidate's Qualifications: i) M.S. or "Laurea", or Ph.D in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or a related discipline; ii) Strong programming skills in C, or C++ language, and UNIX operating system; iii) Knowledge of linear and nonlinear image processing and pattern recognition techniques. Expertise in at least one of the fields listed below: *) Computer vision; *) Fuzzy System, Neural Networks; The position is within an EEC-funded research project investigating hybrid knowledge-based classification of remotely sensed data. Job Reference Code: BOELIM98 Deadline: April 30 1998 b) One year research fellowship in speech processing and speech recognition Candidate's Qualifications: M.S. or "Laurea", or Ph.D in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or a related discipline; Strong programming skills in C, or C++ language; Expertise in at least one of the fields listed below: *) Computational and corpus linguistics, text processing; *) Neural Networks, genetic algorithms; *) Signal and Speech processing, speech coders, speech production. Job Reference Code: ANN198 c) One year research fellowship in Virtual Environments and Multimedia Systems Candidate's Qualifications: M.S. or "Laurea" , or Ph.D in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or a related discipline; Strong programming skills in C, or C++ language, and in the Irix or Windows NT environments; Expertise in at least one of the fields listed below: *) Computer Graphics; *) Audio and Video Motion; *) Signal and Image processing. Partial Knowledge of at least one of the following software packages: CorelDraw, SoftImage, Studio 3D Job Reference Code: ANT198 d) One year Teaching Assistant position Candidate's Qualifications: Ph.D in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or a related discipline; The position call for candidates who are effective teacher at graduated level. Job Reference Code: TUT98 c) One year research fellowship in Electronics Candidate's Qualifications: M.S. or Laurea Degree in Physics or in Electronic Engineering; The position call for candidates who have spent at least one year working in an electronic laboratory and are familiar with electronics tools. Job Reference Code: ELE98 Salary depends on age and experience. Applicants must be graduated after 1992. Send CV, 2 letter of recommendation, and a selected number of publications (including the thesis dissertation) to: Prof. Marinaro, IIASS - Via G. Pellegrino 19 - 84019 Vietri sul MAre (Salerno) - ITALY. Job position reference code.... e-mail: iiass at tin.it phone: +39 (0) 89 761167 phone: +39 (0) 89 761189 IIASS is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Qualified women and minority candidates are especially encouraged to apply. From rmeir at dumbo.technion.ac.il Sun May 10 08:26:08 1998 From: rmeir at dumbo.technion.ac.il (Ron Meir) Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 15:26:08 +0300 (IDT) Subject: Workshop on non-linear time series Message-ID: * APOLOGIES TO MULTIPLE RECIPIENTS OF THIS MESSAGE A workshop titled ``Non-linear Time Series for Learning, Prediction and Control'' will be held at the Technion, Israel, between June 29 and July 2 1998. The main thrust of the workshop will be the presentation of current research on the rapidly evolving field of non-linear models for time series, with applications in machine learning, prediction, filtering and control. The workshop will consist of 30-45 minute talks by several invited speakers from Israel and abroad (see list below), as well as several contributed half hour talks. The workshop will provide both faculty and students with a unique opportunity to be introduced to the field of non-linear time series modeling, and to discuss their research interests with some of the leading people in the field. The invited speakers in the workshop come from a variety of disciplines including: Statistics, Econometrics, Information Theory, Dynamical Systems, Physics and Machine learning; the main intention being to achieve a truly inter-disciplinary workshop. All invited speakers have been asked to provide a short introduction to their respective field. People interested in attending the workshop are requested to send an e-mail message to this effect to either Dr. Ron Meir (rmeir at dumbo.technion.ac.il) or to Dr. Hava Siegelman (iehava at ie.technion.ac.il), as soon as possible, as the number of participants is restricted for reasons of space. No resgistration fee will be required. ============================================================================ Research Workshop of the Israel Science Foundation Non-linear Time Series for Learning, Prediction and Control June 29 - July 2 1998 Technion, Israel http://www-ee.technion.ac.il/~rmeir/WORKSHOP/conference.html http://www-ee.technion.ac.il/~rmeir/WORKSHOP/schedule.html Organizing Committee: Ron Meir, Robert Adler, Yoram Baram, Offer Lieberman, Hava Siegelman, Naftali Tishby. Invited Speakers: Feder, M. Universal prediction with finite memory. Glass, L. Control of complex rhythms in medicine. Granger C. (1) A general introduction to non-linear time series. (2) Co-monotone processes. Kanter, I. Analytical study of time series prediction by feedforward networks. Lo J. Neural filtering. Merhav, N. Universal prediction for indexed classes of sources. Opper, M. Worst case analysis for individual sequences. Ott, E. Controlling chaos using unstable periodic orbits. Masry, E. Additive nonlinear time series. Nobel, A. Nonparametric estimation from ergodic processes. Priestley, M. Time-frequency decomposition via wavelet analysis. Robinson, P. Long memory conditionally heteroscedastic errors in semiparametric estimation of long memory. Sjoberg, J. Nonlinear black-box modeling in signal processing. Tong, H. Testing for common structure in a panel of threshold models. Weigend, A. Title to be announced. Zakai, M. Nonlinear filtering. Zeitouni, O. On the memory length of optimal nonlinear estimation of Markovian processes Financial Support Israel Science Foundation, Institute for Advanced Studies in Mathematics at the Technion, Departments of Electrical Engineering and Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion. From mieko at hip.atr.co.jp Mon May 11 05:06:33 1998 From: mieko at hip.atr.co.jp (Mieko Namba) Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 18:06:33 +0900 Subject: Contents Information [Neural Networks Vol.11, No.2] Message-ID: <199805110906.SAA06965@mailhost.hip.atr.co.jp> Dear Members, Let me introduce the latest issue of "Neural Networks" as below. It is an official international compilation of the Journals of the International Neural Networks Society, the European Neural Networks Society and the Japanese Neural Networks Society. If you would like to continue receiving contents information, please refer to the "Contents Direct " service at the bottom of this mail. Thank you very much. Sincerely yours, Mitsuo Kawato Co-Editor-in-Chief Neural Networks (ATR Human Information Proc. Res. Labs.) ****************************************************************** Neural Networks Vol.11, No.2 ****************************************************************** pp. 189-208 A neural network model for the development of simple and complex cell receptive fields within cortical maps of orientation and ocular dominance SJ Olson, S Grossberg pp. 209-213 Multilayer neural networks and Bayes decision theory K Funahashi pp. 215-234 Hybrid interior point training of modular neural networks PT Szymanski, M Lemmon, CJ Bett pp. 235-248 Cubic approximation neural network for multivariate functions D Stein, A Feuer pp. 249-257 A learning model for oscillatory networks J Nishii pp. 259-270 Learning and approximation capabilities of adaptive spline activation function neural networks L Vecci, F Piazza, A Uncini pp. 271-282 Deterministic annealing EM algorithm N Ueda, R Nakano pp. 283-296 Evolution and generalization of a single neurone: I. Single-layer perception as seven statistical classifiers S Raudys pp. 297-313 Evolution and generalization of a single neurone: II. Complexity of statistical classifiers and sample size considerations S Raudys pp. 315-322 Encoded pattern classification using constructive learning algorithms based on learning vector quantization CNS Ganesh Murthy, YV Venkatesh pp. 323-336 ARTMAP-IC and medical diagnosis: instance counting and inconsistent cases GA Carpenter, N Markuzon pp. 337-346 A hybrid neural network model in handwritten word recognition JH Chiang pp. 347-357 The neural network approach to a parallel decentralized network routing H Kurokawa, CY Ho, S Mori pp. 359-376 Learning reaching strategies through reinforcement for a sensor-based manipulator P Martin, J Del R Millan ****************************************************************** Information about Contents Direct ****************************************************************** If you have any questions about ContentsDirect, please send an e-mail to: CDhelp at elsevier.co.uk An automatic reply only will be returned with information and instructions. If you wish to cancel your registration(s) automatically, simply visit our ContentsDirect registration site at http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/ContentsDirect or, alternatively, send a message to: Cdstop at elsevier.co.uk stating: 1. Your name 2. The e-mail address to which the contents are now sent 3. Your full mailing address 4. The journal title(s) for which you no longer want the ContentsDirect service. E-mail cancellations are not automatic and some delay may be experienced before you no longer receive your ContentsDirect. We regret that we cannot suspend temporarily your registration for periods of time when you are unreachable at your e-mail address. Copyright Elsevier Science Ltd, 1998 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Elsevier Science Ltd, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, UK. No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. ****************************************************************** end. ========================================================= Mieko Namba Secretary to Dr. Mitsuo Kawato Editorial Administrator of NEURAL NETWORKS ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories 2-2 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto 619-0288, Japan TEL +81-774-95-1058 FAX +81-774-95-1008 E-MAIL mieko at hip.atr.co.jp ========================================================= From lautrup at nbi.dk Mon May 11 09:28:30 1998 From: lautrup at nbi.dk (Benny Lautrup) Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 15:28:30 +0200 Subject: Spontaneous Order of Life II (1998) Message-ID: <001201bd7ce0$b05b3d90$1ed4e182@lautrup.nbi.dk> SUMMER SCHOOL The Second Copenhagen International Multidisciplinary School in the Biological Sciences: The Spontaneous Order of Life (SOL`98) Self-Organized Criticality and Non-Linear Dynamics in Physical, Biological, Social and Economic Systems to be held at the Niels Bohr Institute 10-19 August 1998 Topics include: *The Science of Self-Organized Criticality *Solving Problems with Collective, Distributed Self-Organizing Systems *The Nonlinear Dynamics of Collective Behavior in Animals *The Technological and Commercial Perspectives of Applied Molecular Evolution *The Origin of Life from Interactions of Amino Acids and Membranes *Cosmological Natural Selection Confirmed Speakers: Per Bak (Niels Bohr Institute) Eric Bonabeau (Santa Fe Institute) Stuart Kauffman(Santa Fe Institute) Roger Penrose (Oxford) Peter Schuster (Vienna) Lee Smolin (Penna. State Univ. Geoffrey West (Los Alamos) Peter Wills (Santa Fe Institute) International Advisory Committee: Brian Goodwin (Schumacher College) Stuart Kauffman (Santa Fe Institute) Roger Penrose (Oxford) Local Organizing committee: Per Bak (Niels Bohr Inst.) Don Bennett (Niels Bohr Inst.) Benny Lautrup (Niels Bohr Inst.) Erik Mosekilde (Tech. Univ. of Denmark) Ole Mouritsen (Tech. Univ. of Denmark) Holger Bech Nielsen (Niels Bohr Inst.) Bjoern Quistorff (Univ. of Copenhagen) Bodil Soegaard (Roy. Vet. & Agricult. Univ.) For more information and to apply, please utilize the SOL`98 homepage at http://www.nbi.dk/~sol98 Support from the Nordic Academy for Advanced Study provides SOL`98 with a limited number of full grants that can be applied for primarily by Scandinavian students. For other attendees, there is a fee of 2500. DKR if registration and remittance is completed before June 15, 1998. After this date the fee is 3000. DKR. The registration fee (included in a NorFA grant) includes lunches, several working dinners, and copies of the three books: Per Bak: How Nature Works Lee Smolin: The Life of the Cosmos Author & Book: To be announced If you don't have access to the web, contact the SOL'98 Secretariat at hnchristen at nbi.dk or telefax (+45) 35325400. From srg at ecs.soton.ac.uk Mon May 11 08:13:06 1998 From: srg at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Steve Gunn) Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 13:13:06 +0100 Subject: Research Studentship, University of Southampton, U.K. Message-ID: <000901bd7cd6$2756afc0$16734e98@hurricane.ecs.soton.ac.uk> Image, Speech and Intelligent Systems Research Group University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K. http://www.isis.ecs.soton.ac.uk Support Vector Machines for Classification and Regression Applications are invited for a 3 year PhD studentship in the area of empirical data modelling, in conjunction with a Unilever sponsored project. The project will investigate the method of Support Vector Machines for solving classification and regression problems. Applicants should have, or expect to gain, a First Class or Upper Second Class (or equivalent) in a numerate discipline. Additionally, knowledge of approximation theory, optimisation and numerical analysis would be advantageous. The person appointed will have a good background in programming with C/C++. The appointment is open to U.K. and EU nationals, and the studentship is ?5295 (97/98), and for exceptional candidates a CASE award will be available. The project will start in October 1998. Applications in the form of a CV and names and addresses of three referees should be sent, as soon as possible and at the latest by 30th June 1998, to Dr. Steve Gunn, Image Speech and Intelligent Systems Research Group, Building 1, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, U.K.. Further information is available from Dr. Steve Gunn (Tel: +44 (0)1703 592338, Fax: +44 (0)1703 594498, E-mail: S.R.Gunn at ecs.soton.ac.uk) and on the ISIS web site at http://www.isis.ecs.soton.ac.uk/resources/svminfo. From apbraga at cisne.cpdee.ufmg.br Mon May 11 14:53:28 1998 From: apbraga at cisne.cpdee.ufmg.br (Antonio de Padua Braga) Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 15:53:28 -0300 Subject: CFP:Vth Brazilian Symposium on Neural Networks Message-ID: <35574928.FB624444@cpdee.ufmg.br> Please forward to colleagues, etc. Apologies if you have received this already. NOTE: Proceedings will be published by IEEE Computer Society Press /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ CALL FOR PAPERS Vth Brazilian Symposium on Neural Networks Brazilian Computer Society Federal University of Minas Gerais Belo Horizonte, 9 to 11th December 1998 http://www.cpdee.ufmg.br/~sbrn98 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ INTEREST AREAS Submissions of papers related to the following areas are wellcome : Theory, Applications, Architectures, Associative memories, Associative memories, Cognitive science, Electronic and optical implementation, Hybrid systems, Learning, Neurobiology, Neurodynamics and Chaos, Pattern recognition, Signal Processing, Prediction, Inteligent control, Robotics, Identification, Image processing, Other themes related to artificial neural networks. SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Conference chairman: Antonio de Padua Braga (Brazil) Scientific committee chairs: Teresa Bernarda Ludermir (Brazil) Carlos Eduardo Pedreira (Brazil) Aluizio F. R. Araujo (Brazil), Andre P. L. F. Carvalho (Brazil), Antonio de Padua Braga (Brazil), Brijesh Verma (Australia), Cairo L. Nascimento Junior (Brazil), Edson Costa B.C. Filho (Brazil) Harold Szu (USA), Helge Ritter (Germany), Igor Aleksander (England), James A. Anderson (USA), Jude W. Shavlik (USA), Luiz Pereira Caloba (Brazil), Phillipe De Wilde (England), Takashi Yoneiama (Brazil) Vladimir Vapnik (USA), Walmir Matos Caminhas (Brazil) and Weber Martins (Brazil) INVITED TALKS Harold Szu (Title: Blind Demixing by Neural Network Independent Component Analyses) Igor Aleksander (Title: The Emergence of a Qualia-Like Phenomenon in a Neurocomputational System) James A. Anderson (Title: Teaching the Multiplication Tables to a Neural Network: Flexibility vs. Accuracy) Jude W. Shavlik (Title: Talking with Your Neural Networks: Putting Inference Rules In and Getting Rules Out) Vladimir Vapnik (Title: Problems of Learning and Generalization) IMPORTANT DATES Paper submission : 30 JUNE, 1998 Notification of acceptance : 30 September, 1998. ====================================================================== Detailed information can be obtained from conference WWW-page: ===================================================================== -- Antonio de Padua Braga, PhD | apbraga at cpdee.ufmg.br Depto. Engenharia Eletronica | http://www.cpdee.ufmg.br/~apbraga Campus da UFMG (Pampulha) | Tel: +55 31 499 4869 (499 4848) Caixa Postal 209 | FAX: +55 31 499 4850 30.161-970, Belo Horizonte, MG | BRAZIL From stevew at ultimode.com Tue May 12 14:08:09 1998 From: stevew at ultimode.com (Steve Waterhouse) Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 11:08:09 -0700 Subject: PhD Thesis on Mixtures of Experts Available Message-ID: <35589009.74F937BE@ultimode.com> Dear Connectionists, I am pleased to announce the availability of my PhD thesis, "Classification and Regression using Mixtures of Experts" which is now available on my web site: http://www.ultimode.com/stevew/thesis.html An outline follows: Classification and Regression using Mixtures of Experts by Steven Richard Waterhouse October 1997, Cambridge University Engineering Dept. and Jesus College Cambridge This thesis investigates a recent tool in statistical analysis: the mixtures-of-experts model for classification and regression. The aim of the thesis is to place mixtures-of-experts models in context with other statistical models. The hope of doing this is that we may better understand their advantages and disadvantages over other models. The thesis first considers mixtures-of-experts models from a theoretical perspective and compares them with other models such as trees, switching regression models and modular networks. Two extensions of the mixtures-of-experts model are then proposed. The first extension is a constructive algorithm for learning model architecture and parameters which is inspired by recursive partitioning. The second extension uses Bayesian methods for learning the parameters of the model. These extensions are compared empirically with the standard mixtures-of-experts model and with other statistical models on small to medium sized data sets. In the second part of the thesis the mixtures-of-experts framework is applied to acoustic modelling within a large vocabulary speech recognition system. The mixtures-of-experts is shown to give an advantage over standard single neural network approaches on this task. The results of both of these sets of comparisons indicate that mixtures-of-experts models are competitive with other state-of-the-art statistical models. ------------------------------------------------- Steve Waterhouse Ultimode Systems Data Mining Tools 2560 Bancroft Way #213, Berkeley, CA 94704 T: 510 548 8978 F: 510 845 2292 M: 415 420 3365 E: stevew at ultimode.com W: http://www.ultimode.com ------------------------------------------------- From terry at salk.edu Tue May 12 18:43:23 1998 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 15:43:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: NEURAL COMPUTATION 10:4 Message-ID: <199805122243.PAA24405@helmholtz.salk.edu> Neural Computation - Contents Volume 10, Number 4 - May 15, 1998 REVIEW Computational Models of Neuromodulation Jean-Marc Fellous, and Christiane Linster NOTES Weight-Value Convergence of the SOM Algorithm for Discrete Input Siming Lin and Jennie Si Reading Neuronal Synchrony with Depressing Synapses W. Senn, I. Segev, and M. Tsodyks LETTERS Neural Networks with Dynamic Synapses Misha V. Tsodyks, Klaus Pawelzik, and Henry Markram Spike Frequency Adaptation Affects the Synchronization Properties of Networks of Cortical Oscillator Sharon M. Crook, G. Bard Ermentrout, and James M. Bower GABAergic Inhibitory Control of the Transient and Sustained Components of Orientation Selectivity in a Model Microcolumn In Layer 4 of Cat Visual Cortex Paul Bush and Nicholas Priebe Changes in GABAB Modulation During a Theta Cycle May Be Analogous to the Fall of Temperature During Annealing Vikaas S. Sohal and Michael E. Hasselmo RST: A Connectionist Architecture to Deal With Spatiotemporal Relationships J.-C. Chappelier and A. Grumbach A Neural Model of Contour Integration in the Primary Visual Cortex Zhaoping Li Predictive Neural Networks for Learning the Time Course of Blood Glucose Levels From the Complex Interaction of Counterregulartory Hormones Klaus Prank, Clemens Jurgens, Alexander von zur Muhlen, And Georg Brabant Properties of Support Vector Machines Massimiliano Pontil and Alessandro Verri Validation of Voting Committees Eric Bax Toward Optimally Distributed Computation Peter J. Edwards and Alan F. Murray Efficient Adaptive Learning for Classification Tasks with Binary Units J. Manuel Torres Moreno and Mirta B.Gordon A Systematic and Effective Supervised Learning Mechanism Based on Jacobian Rank Deficiency Guian Zhou and Jennie Si ----- ABSTRACTS - http://mitpress.mit.edu/NECO/ SUBSCRIPTIONS - 1998 - VOLUME 10 - 8 ISSUES USA Canada* Other Countries Student/Retired $50 $53.50 $78 Individual $82 $87.74 $110 Institution $285 $304.95 $318 * includes 7% GST (Back issues from Volumes 1-9 are regularly available for $28 each to institutions and $14 each for individuals. Add $5 for postage per issue outside USA and Canada. Add +7% GST for Canada.) MIT Press Journals, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902. Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 258-6779 mitpress-orders at mit.edu ----- From espaa at soc.plym.ac.uk Wed May 13 07:47:21 1998 From: espaa at soc.plym.ac.uk (espaa) Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 11:47:21 GMT Subject: PAA Journal Papers Message-ID: <3EBAA0C1EE6@scfs3.soc.plym.ac.uk> PATTERN ANALYSIS AND APPLICATIONS SPRINGER-VERLAG LIMITED FORTHCOMING PAPERS IN THE PAA JOURNAL (Vol.1 , No. 1 , 1998) Digital Boundary Tracking Gabor T Herman, University of Pennsylvania, USA David Robinson, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Combining Classifiers: A Theoretical Framework Joseph Kittler, University of Surrey, UK LED Cosmetic Flaw Inspection System Ahmad Fadzil, Institute of Technology-Petronas, Malaysia Chu Jenn Weng, Hewlett Packard, Malaysia Recognition of Legal Amounts on Bank Cheques Didier Guillevic, CENPARMI, Concordia University Ching Y Suen, CENPARMI, Concordia University Resolution of Pattern Recognition Problems using a Hybrid Genetic/Random Neural Network Learning Algorithm Jose Aguilar, Universidad de los Andes, Venezuela Adrana Colmenares, Universidad de los Andes, Venezuela Reclustering Techniques improve Early Vision Feature Maps A Cozzi and F Worgotter, Ruhr Universitat Bochum, Germany Book Reviews Affective Computing (Rosalind Pickard), MIT Press Principal Component Neural Networks-Theory and Applications (KI Diamantaras and SY Kung), Jon Wiley Further information is available through: Journal web site: http://www.soc.plym.ac.uk/soc/sameer/paa.htm Journal secretary: Barbara Davies, School of Computing, University of Plymouth, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK; e-mail: espaa at soc.plym.ac.uk From Simon.N.CUMMING at British-Airways.com Wed May 13 06:50:16 1998 From: Simon.N.CUMMING at British-Airways.com (Simon.N.CUMMING@British-Airways.com) Date: 13 May 1998 10:50:16 Z Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: NCAF Conference, Derby, UK, 30Jun-1Jul98 Message-ID: <"BSC400A1 980513105012690511*/c=GB/admd=ATTMAIL/prmd=BA/o=British Airways PLC/s=CUMMING/g=SIMON/i=N/"@MHS> NEURAL COMPUTING APPLICATIONS FORUM CONFERENCE, 30 JUNE - 1 JULY 1998 DERBY, ENGLAND. The purpose of the Neural Computing Applications Forum (NCAF) is to promote widespread exploitation of neural computing technology by: ]providing a focus for neural network practitioners ]disseminating information on all aspects of neural computing ]encouraging close co-operation between industrialists and academics The Summer meeting will be hosted by -------------- Rolls-Royce in Derby, UK, on Tuesday 30th June and Wednesday 1st July. For the first time NCAF will be visiting Derby where the host organisation will be Rolls-Royce. This is the home for the current NCAF chairman, Peter Cowley. His team is arguably the leading UK industrial group in the application of Neural and other AI techniques. The 2 days will be packed with applications oriented papers as usual. There will also be adequate time for networking with other practitioners, during coffee, lunch and the Tuesday evening event...... NCAF Conference in DERBY 30th June - 1st July 1998 ================================================== Programme --------- Tuesday 30th June 1998 ---------------------- Introduction and Welcome Peter Cowley, Rolls-Royce Tutorial: Genetic Algorithms - An Evolutionary Tale Rachel Pearce, Rolls-Royce Condition Monitoring Using Kernel Density Estimation Matt Desforges and Phil Jacob, University of Manchester Invited Talk: Support Vector Machines Alex Gammerman, Royal Holloway College Cleaning Aircraft Data Paul Zanelli, University of York Neural Network Applications in Ship Survivability Philip Thompson, DERA Rosyth Wednesday 1st July 1998 ----------------------- What Can Neurons Compute? Gary Green, University of Newcastle Time and Relative Dimensions in Space with ANN Paul Beatty and David Asbridge, University of Manchester Wavelet Feature Extraction for Pattern Recognition Wieslaw Staszewski, University of Sheffield Case Studies in Finance Doug Hird, Abbey National Recent Applications Brian Kett, Neural Computer Sciences Social Programme ---------------- The City Centre Ghost Walk (30 June, evening). The story begins to unfold when you leave Derby Heritage Centre and head towards Lock-up Yard. A moment's reprieve permits the Ghosthunter to partake in liquid refreshment in the Tiger Bar before you are taken into the barrel-vaulted tunnels beneath Market Hall. The story continues as you head across Market Place towards The Bell; eventually ending the first leg of the tour at Lafferty's. Subject to their availability visits to the Police Museum and the Shire Hall are included before returning to the Centre for a Ghosthunter's Supper. plus Puzzle Corner: Dumb and Dumber Graham 'Rottweiler' Hesketh (Rolls-Royce) ..... Also Rolls-Royce Advanced Technology Exhibition An opportunity for an informal tour of the aerospace exhibition ..... -------------------------------------------------------------- Conference fees (in Sterling): --------------- 100 pounds for non-members (lunch and evening social event extra). 20 pounds for NCAF members (lunch and evening social event extra). Membership fees: --------------- All amounts are in pounds Sterling, per annum. All members receive a quarterly newsletter and are eligible to vote at the AGM (but see note on corporate membership). Full (Corporate) Membership : 300 pounds (allows any number of people in the member organisation to attend meetings at member rates; voting rights are restricted to one, named, individual. Includes automatic subscription to the journal Neural Computing and Applications.) Individual Membership : 170 pounds (allows one, named, individual to attend meetings at member rates; includes journal) Associate Membership: 110 pounds: includes subscription to the journal and newsletter but does not cover admission to the meetings. Reduced (Student) Membership : 65 pounds including Journal; 30 pounds without journal. Applications for student membership should be accompanied by a copy of a current full-time student ID card, UB40, etc. ------------------------------------------------------------------- For further information please e-mail NCAFsec at brunel.ac.uk or Phone our Voice Mail on (+44/0)1784 477271 From barba at cvs.rochester.edu Wed May 13 09:51:04 1998 From: barba at cvs.rochester.edu (Barbara Arnold) Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 08:51:04 -0500 Subject: 21st CVS Symposium Message-ID: 21st CVS Symposium "Environmental Structure, Statistical Learning & Visual Perception" June 4 - 6, 1998 CENTER FOR VISUAL SCIENCE University of Rochester Rochester, NY The Center for Visual Science at the University of Rochester is proud to present the 21st Symposium, "Environmental Structure, Statistical Learning and Visual Perception". The three-day symposium will consist of five sessions plus an open house and lab tours on Saturday afternoon. The meeting will begin with a Reception/Buffet on Wednesday evening, June 3. Formal sessions start Thursday morning, June 4, and end at noon on Saturday. There will be optional banquets held on Thursday and Friday evenings, and a cookout lunch on Saturday. Informal discussion gatherings will follow the banquets. PROGRAM Wednesday, June 3 4:00-10:00 PM Registration 6:00-8:00 PM Reception/Buffet Thursday, June 4 SESSION I: Image Statistics E Simoncelli, New York University C Chubb, University of CA Irvine D Ruderman, The Salk Institute SESSION II: Color Constancy D. Brainard, Univ of CA Santa Barbara S Shevell, University of Chicago A Hurlbert, Univ of Newcastle, England Friday, June 5 SESSION III:Surface Perception T Adelson, MIT L Maloney, New York University Zili Liu, NEC Research Institute SESSION IV: Object Perception D Knill , University of Pennsylvania K Nakayama, Harvard University P Kellman, University of CA Los Angeles Saturday, June 6 SESSION V: Neural Coding and Plasticity W Geisler, University of Texas Austin N Logothetis, Max-Planck Institute M Sur, MIT SESSION VI: OPEN HOUSE Center for Visual Science Open House and Lab Tours REGISTRATION FEES Preregistration, Regular $125.00 Preregistration, Student $ 95.00 On-site, Regular $180.00 On-site, Student $130.00 To preregister, please return the form posted on our website http://www.cvs.rochester.edu/symposium/propsymposia98.html Please send a separate form for each person registering. No preregistrations will be accepted after May 22. If you do not have access to our website please contact Barbara Arnold at barba at cvs.rochester.edu or 716-275-8659 ACCOMMODATIONS AND MEALS The University has moderate cost rooms available for symposium attendees. Residence halls are centrally located on the campus and are a short walk to Hoyt Hall where the symposium sessions will be held. A special package of residence hall room and all meals and banquets is being offered to Symposium participants. This package includes all meals from Thursday breakfast through the Saturday barbecue. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Barbara Arnold email: barba at cvs.rochester.edu Center for Visual Science phone: 716 275 8659 Room 274 Meliora Hall fax: 716 271 3043 University of Rochester Rochester NY 14627-0270 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de Wed May 13 09:42:21 1998 From: biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de (Michael Biehl) Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 15:42:21 +0200 (METDST) Subject: 2 papers: 1. Phase transitions in multilayered nets, 2. Self-averaging and online learning Message-ID: <199805131342.PAA15449@wptx08.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de> FTP-host: ftp.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de FTP-filename: /pub/preprint/1998/WUE-ITP-98-014.ps.gz FTP-filename: /pub/preprint/1998/WUE-ITP-98-002.ps.gz The following two manuscripts are now available via anonymous ftp, see below for the retrieval procedure. Alternatively, they can be obtained from the Wuerzburg Theoretical Physics preprint server in the WWW: http://theorie.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~publications.shtml ------------------------------------------------------------------ Ref. WUE-ITP-98-014 [8 pages] Phase transitions in soft--committee machines M.Biehl, E. Schl\"osser, and M. Ahr Equilibrium statistical physics is applied to layered neural networks with differentiable activation functions. A first analysis of off-line learning in soft-committee machines with N input and K hidden units learning a perfectly matching rule is performed. Our results are exact in the limit of high training temperatures. For K=2 we find a second order phase transition from unspecialized to specialized student configurations at a critical size P of the training set, whereas for K > 2 the transition is first order. The limit K to infinity can be performed analytically, the transition occurs after presenting on the order of N K examples. However, an unspecialized metastable state persists up to P= O (N K^2). Monte Carlo simulations indicate that our results are also valid for moderately low temperatures qualitatively. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Ref. WUE-ITP-98-002 [10 pages] Self-averaging and On-line Learning G. Reents and R. Urbanczik (to appear in Phys. Rev. Letters) Conditions are given under which one may prove that the stochastic dynamics of on-line learning can be described by the deterministic evolution of a finite set of order parameters in the thermodynamic limit. A global constraint on the average magnitude of the increments in the stochastic process is necessary to ensure self-averaging. In the absence of such a constraint, convergence may only be in probability. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Retrieval procedure via anonymous ftp: unix> ftp ftp.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de Name: anonymous Password: {your e-mail address} ftp> cd pub/preprint/1998 ftp> binary ftp> get WUE-ITP-98.XXX.ps.gz (*) ftp> quit unix> gunzip WUE-ITP-98-XXX.ps.gz e.g. unix> lp -odouble WUE-ITP-98-XXX.ps (*) can be replaced by "get WUE-ITP-98-XXX.ps". The file will then be uncompressed before transmission (slow!). ___________________________________________________________________ e-mail : biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de reents at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de From HEINKED at psycho1.bham.ac.uk Thu May 14 20:22:17 1998 From: HEINKED at psycho1.bham.ac.uk (Mr Dietmar Heinke) Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 17:22:17 -0700 Subject: 2nd Call for Papers Message-ID: <355B8AB9.6543@psycho1.bham.ac.uk> ***************** Call for Papers ****************************** 5th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW) Connectionist Models in Cognitive Neuroscience University of Birmingham, England Tuesday 8th September - Thursday 10th September 1998 This workshop is the fifth in a series, following on from the first at the University of Wales, Bangor (with theme "Neurodynamics and Psychology"), the second at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland ("Memory and Language"), the third at the University of Stirling, Scotland ("Perception") and the forth at the University College, London ("Connectionist Representations"). The general aim is to bring together researchers from such diverse disciplines as artificial intelligence, applied mathematics, cognitive science, computer science, neurobiology, philosophy and psychology to discuss their work on the connectionist modelling of psychology. This year's workshop is to be hosted by the University of Birmingham. As in previous years there will be a theme to the workshop. The theme is to be: Connectionist Models in Cognitive Neuroscience. This covers many important issues ranging from modelling physiological structure to cognitive function and its disorders (in neuropsychological and psychiatric cases). As in previous years we aim to keep the workshop fairly small, informal and single track. As always, participants bringing expertise from outside the UK are particularly welcome. Speakers will include: David Plaut, George Houghton, Steve Tipper, Kim Plunkett, David Glasspool, Trevor Harley, Kate Mayall, John Taylor. A one page abstract should be sent to Professor Glyn W. Humphreys School of Psychology University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom Deadline for abstracts: 31th of May, 1998 Registration, Food and Accommodation The workshop will be held at the University of Birmingham. The conference registration fee (which includes lunch and morning and afternoon tea/coffee each day) is 60 pounds. A special conference dinner (optional) is planned for the Wednesday evening costing 20 pounds. Accommodation is available in university halls or local hotels. A special price of 150 pounds is available for 3 nights accommodation in the halls of residence and registration fee. Organising Committee Dietmar Heinke Andrew Olson Professor Glyn W. Humphreys Contact Details Workshop Email address: Manorhse at psg-fs2.bham.ac.uk Workshop Homepage: http://psgsuni.bham.ac.uk/ncpw5/ncpw5home.html Dietmar Heinke, NCPW5, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. Phone: +44 (0)121 414 4920, Fax: +44 212 414 4897 http://web.bham.ac.uk/heinkedg/ Email: heinked at psycho1.bham.ac.uk Andrew Olson, NCPW5, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. Phone: +44 (0)121 414 3328, Fax: +44 212 414 4897 http://psgsuni.bham.ac.uk/olsona.htm Email: olsona at psycho1.bham.ac.uk Glyn W. Humphreys, NCPW5, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. Phone: +44 (0)121 414 4930, Fax: +44 212 414 4897 http://psgsuni.bham.ac.uk/humphreg.htm Email: humphreg at psycho1.bham.ac.uk From annesp at vaxsa.csied.unisa.it Thu May 14 14:05:21 1998 From: annesp at vaxsa.csied.unisa.it (annesp@vaxsa.csied.unisa.it) Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 19:05:21 +0100 Subject: Extended Deadline and Reduced Student fee (E. R. Cainiello School) Message-ID: <98051419052158@vaxsa.csied.unisa.it> ***************************************************************** EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR THE SUMMER SCHOOL MAY 30 1998 REDUCED REGISTRATION FEE FOR MASTER and Ph.D STUDENTS Please post **************************************************************** International Summer School ``Neural Nets E. R. Caianiello" 3rd Course "A Course on Speech Processing, Recognition, and Artificial Neural Networks" web page: http://wsfalco.ing.uniroma1.it/Speeschool.html The school is jointly organized by: INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC STUDIES (IIASS) Vietri sul Mare (SA) Italy, ETTORE MAJORANA FOUNDATION AND CENTER FOR SCIENTIFIC CULTURE (EMFCSC) Erice (TR), Italy Supported by: EUROPEAN SPEECH COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION (ESCA) Sponsored by: SALERNO UNIVERSITY, Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche E.R. Caianiello (Italy) DIRECTORS OF THE COURSE DIRECTORS OF THE SCHOOL AND ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Gerard Chollet (France). Maria Marinaro (Italy) M. Gabriella Di Benedetto (Italy) Michael Jordan (USA) Anna Esposito (Italy) Maria Marinaro (Italy) PLACE: International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS) Via Pellegrino 19, 84019 Vietri sul Mare, Salerno (Italy) DATES: 5th-14th October 1998 POETIC TOUCH Vietri (from "Veteri", its ancient Roman name) sul Mare ("on sea") is located within walking distance from Salerno and marks the beginning of the Amalfi coast. Short rides take to Positano, Sorrento, Pompei, Herculaneum, Paestum, Vesuvius, or by boat, the islands of Capri, Ischia, and Procida. Velia (the ancient "Elea" of Zeno and Parmenide) is a hundred kilometers farther down along the coast. Day time: 3 hour in the morning, three hour in the afternoon. Day free: One day with an excursion of the places around. AIMS: The aim of this school is to present the experiments, the theories and the perspectives of acoustic phonetics, as well as to discuss recent results in the speech literature. The school aims to provide a background for further study in many of the fields related to speech science and linguistics, including automatic speech recognition. The school will bring together leading researchers and selected students in the field of speech science and technology to discuss and disseminate the latest techniques. The school is devoted to an international audience and in particular to all students and scientists who are working on some aspects of speech and want to learn other aspects of this discipline. MAJOR TOPICS The school will cover a number of broad themes relevant to speech, among them: 1) Speech production and acoustic phonetics 2) Articulatory, acoustic, and prosodic features 3) Acoustic cues in speech perception 4) Models of speech perception 5) Speech processing (Preprocessing algorithms for Speech) 6) Neural Networks for automatic speech recognition 7) Multi-modal speech recognition and recognition in adverse environments. 8) Speech to speech translation (Vermobil and CSTAR projects) 9) Applications (Foreign Language training aids, aids for handicapped, ....). 10) Stochastic Models and Dialogue systems FORMAT The meeting will follow the usual format of tutorials and panel discussions together with poster sessions for contributed papers. The following tutorials are planned: ABEER ALWAN UCLA University (CA) USA "Models of Speech Production and Their Application in Coding and Recognition" ANDREA CALABRESE University of Connecticut (USA) "Prosodic and Phonological Aspects of Language" GERARD CHOLLET CNRS - ENST France "ALISP, Speaker Verification, Interactive Voice Servers" PIERO COSI CNR-Padova Italy "Auditory Modeling and Neural Networks" RENATO DE MORI Universite d' Avignon, France "Statistical Methods for Automatic Speech Recognition" M. GABRIELLA DI BENEDETTO Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy ``Acoustic Analysis and Perception of Classes of Sounds (vowels and consonants)" BJORN GRANSTROM Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Sweden "Multi-modal Speech Synthesis with Application" JEAN P. HATON Universite Henri-Poincare, CRIN-INRIA, France "Neural Networks for Automatic Speech Recognition" HYNEK HERMANSKY Oregon Graduate Institute, USA "Goals and Techniques of Speech Analysis" HERMANN NEY Computer Science Department, Aachen Germany "Algorithms for Large Vocabulary Speech Recognition" "Text and Speech Translation using Statistical Methods" JOHN OHALA University of California at Berkeley (CA) USA "Articulatory Constraints on Distinctive Features" JEAN SYLVAIN LIENARD LIMSI-CNRS, France "Speech Perception, Voice Perception" "Beyond Pattern Recognition" PROCEEDINGS The proceedings will be published in the form of a book containing tutorial chapters written by the lecturers and possibly shorter papers from other participants. One free copy of the book will be distributed to each participant. LANGUAGE The official language of the school will be English. POSTER SUBMISSION There will be a poster session for contributed presentations from participants. Proposals consisting of a one page abstract for review by the organizers should be submitted with applications. DURATION Participants are expected to arrive in time for the evening meal on Sunday 4th October and depart on Tuesday 15th October. Sessions will take place from Monday 5th-Wednesday 14th. COST Student Fee: 1500 dollars Student fee include accommodations (arranged by the school), meals, one day of excursion, and a copy of the proceedings of the school. Transportation is not included. REDUCED REGISTRATION FEE: IIASS, thanks to foundings offered by the sponsor is able to offer to students which are taking a master or a Ph.D degree, a reduced registration fee of 1000 dollars. A few scholarships are available for students who are otherwise unable to participate at the school, and who cannot apply for the grants offered by ESCA. The scholarship will partially cover lodging and living expenses. -- A supplement of 40 dollars per night should be paid for single room. Payment details will be notified with acceptance of applications. GRANTS -- A few ESCA grants are available for participants (which cover tuition and, maybe, part of the lodging). See http://ophale.icp.inpg.fr/esca/grants.html for further information. Individual applications for grants should be sent to Wolfgang Hess by e-mail: wgh at sunwgh.ikp.uni-bonn.de ELIGIBILITY The school is open to all suitably qualified scientists from around the world. APPLICATION PROCEDURE: Important Date: Application deadline: May 30 1998 Notification of acceptance: June 15 1998 Registration fee payment deadline: July 10 1998 People with few years of experience in the field should include a recommendation letter of their supervisor or group leader Places are limited to a maximum of 60 participants in addition to the lecturers. These will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. ************************************************************************** APPLICATION FORM Title:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Family Name:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Other Names:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Name to appear on badge:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Mailing Address (include institution or company name if appropriate): ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Phone:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Fax:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ E-mail:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Date of Arrival : Date of Departure: Will you be applying for a ESCA grant ? yes/no* *(please delete the alternatives which do not apply) Will you be applying for a scholarship ? yes/no* *(please delete the alternatives which do not apply) *(please include in your application a justification for scholarship request) ***************************************************************** Please send the application form together the recommendation letter by electronic mail to: iiass at tin.it, subject: summer school; or by fax: +39 89 761 189 (att.ne Prof. M. Marinaro) or by ordinary mail to the address below: IIASS Via Pellegrino 19, I84019 Vietri sul Mare (Sa) Italy For further information please contact: Anna Esposito International Institute for advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS) Via Pellegrino, 19, 84019 Vietri sul Mare (SA) Italy Fax: + 39 89 761189 e-mail: annesp at vaxsa.csied.unisa.it ================== RFC 822 Headers ================== ================== RFC 822 Headers ================== From iiass at tin.it Wed May 13 07:47:06 1998 From: iiass at tin.it (IIASS) Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 13:47:06 +0200 Subject: summer school Message-ID: <3559883A.3E50@tin.it> From lautrup at nbi.dk Thu May 14 12:03:48 1998 From: lautrup at nbi.dk (Benny Lautrup) Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 18:03:48 +0200 Subject: Spontaneous Order of Life II, IMPORTANT MESSAGE Message-ID: <000601bd7f51$e1a8b350$1ed4e182@lautrup.nbi.dk> Due to a technical error our application form at http://www.nbi.dk/~sol98 did not send the filled out forms correctly by email. Anyone who has tried to apply via the internet is kindly requested to resubmit the application. We are sorry for this inconvenience, but computers are as unreliable as the people behind them! Hanne Christensen (hnchristen at nbi.dk) The Niels Bohr Institute Blegdamsvej 17 2100 Copenhagen From Mark.Plumbley at kcl.ac.uk Thu May 14 14:23:11 1998 From: Mark.Plumbley at kcl.ac.uk (Mark Plumbley) Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 14:23:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: PhD Studentship: Applying Neural Networks in Microwave CAD Message-ID: Please display and/or circulate... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- KING'S COLLEGE LONDON DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING PhD Studentship Applying Neural Networks in Microwave CAD Applications are invited for a PhD research studentship to participate in an EPSRC funded project on applying neural networks in microwave CAD. The aim of the project is to develop and facilitate a neural network modeling technique suitable for fast analysis and optimization of multilayer monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). The studentship covers the standard fees and an annual stipend of £7,479 for three years. Applicants should have at least an upper second class degree in one of these disciplines: electronic engineering, physics or computer science. Knowledge of microwave engineering, computer simulation or neural networks would be desirable. Further details and the application form may be obtained from: Ms Nicola Hall Postgraduate Secretary Department of Electronic Engineering King's College London Strand London WC2R 2LS Tel: +44 171 873 2592 Fax: +44 171 836 4781 Informal inquiries may be made to Dr X. Chen at xiaodong.chen at kcl.ac.uk. [Full EPSRC studentships are only available to UK residents. Candidates from other EU countries may be eligible for a fees-only award. For more details on these criteria, see the EPSRC web site URL "http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/in-depth/post-grad/eligind.htm"]. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dr Mark Plumbley Mark.Plumbley at kcl.ac.uk |_/ I N G'S Centre for Neural Networks | \ College Division of Engineering L O N D O N King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK Founded1829 Tel: +44 (0)171 873 2241, Fax: +44 (0)171 873 5071 http://www.eee.kcl.ac.uk/~mdp/ ------------------------------------------------------------------ From rybaki at eplrx7.es.dupont.com Thu May 14 15:52:24 1998 From: rybaki at eplrx7.es.dupont.com (Ilya Rybak) Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 15:52:24 -0400 Subject: positions at DuPont Message-ID: <199805141952.PAA04554@pavlov> _____________________________________________________________ OPEN POSITIONS IN COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY AT DUPONT COMPANY DuPont is a world leader in the chemical, biological and engineering sciences, including fundamental and applied research programs ranging from industrial bioprocesses for the synthesis of chemicals and materials to genetically improved crops and discovery of crop protection chemicals. We are now seeking Ph.D. Principal Investigators to join multidisciplinary teams of Life Scientists. Positions in Computational Biology We are a group of computer scientists, engineers and experimentalists using computer-based/analytical approaches to problems that arise from the complexity and overabundance of biological data. New technologies in Genomics and Functional Genomics for gathering biological information have made it reasonable to expect complete inventories of molecular components like genes, RNAs, and proteins in cells. But we still won't be able to predict biological behavior. How will we organize and understand this information to make it useful? We need new insights, new science, and technology to illuminate the landscape being created by research. We are looking for system's engineers, computer scientists and computational biologists to help develop new computational tools and analytical models to extract information from the data. Creativity and the ability to work with colleagues from different disciplines are as important as specific, strong technical credentials. BioChemical Systems Engineer ----------------------------- This position requires metabolic pathway analysis using approaches such as MCA, flux analysis, modeling and simulation, and continuous, discrete, and numerical optimization as part of a team approach. Candidates should be interested in connecting these analytical tools to genomic and functional genomic-type data collection (e.g. gene expression profiles, protein profiles, metabolites, etc.). The successful candidate will likely have a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering with strong credentials in biochemical engineering and/or biology, or some equivalent mix of education and experience. Please refer to: CRD98-2100 Systems Scientist ----------------- This position requires experience in approaching problems with a "process systems perspective". Appropriate backgrounds might include process control engineering, dynamic systems and simulation, probability and stochastic processes, decision analysis, dynamic programming, and planning under uncertainty, use of logical and mathematical models to provide insight and solutions to complex problems, large-scale data analysis and biological systems analysis. Informatics (bioinformatics) sophistication will be a plus, but not required, although interest in developing tools in this area and working with this kind of data will be required. Candidates should have a Ph.D. and experience in some area of process systems engineering, computer science, or dynamical systems or related areas of applied mathematics. Please refer to: CRD98-2123A Computational Biologist ----------------------- This position requires strong experience in modeling biological systems. Ability to work with biologists and mine the biological literature to build models. Experience in biological neural networks or computational neurobiology, for example, would be appropriate, as is demonstrated ability to create models in systems where only partial data is available. Interest in using modeling/simulation as an aid in developing system understanding and for making predictions leading from the understanding. Candidates should have a Ph.D. and both computational and biological credentials. Familiarity with bioinformatics and bioinformatic resources will be a plus. Please refer to: CRD98-2123B Whether you are just starting your career or looking for growth opportunities, we encourage you to apply. We are looking for highly motivated individuals who can become members of our research teams to enhance both our success as well as their own. You will enjoy our state-of-the-art Experimental Station and facilities. These positions offer a highly competitive salary and an excellent benefits package. We are located in Wilmington, DE, an area that offers an attractive lifestyle with easy access to all the cultural, academic and recreational activities on the Eastern Seaboard. Qualified candidates should send a resume and three references to: DuPont Human Resources CRD98-# 1007 Market Street, N12419 Wilmington, DE 19898 We are an equal opportunity employer. Please make reference to the job code when responding. _______________________________________________________________ From jose at tractatus.rutgers.edu Sun May 17 17:29:19 1998 From: jose at tractatus.rutgers.edu (Stephen Jose Hanson) Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 17:29:19 -0400 Subject: SYS ADM / RESEARCH STAFF Rutgers U. Psychology Department Message-ID: <355F56AF.9AE628A9@tractatus.rutgers.edu> COMPUTER MANAGER/RESEARCH STAFF Salary Range 27 Retirement System ABP Send resumes to: Department of Personnel, 249 University Avenue, Newark, NJ 07102 EMAIL Enquirys: jose at psychology.rutgers.edu please include in Subject Heading: SYS ADM Reporting to the chair, responsible for administering the computing resources of the department. Major component of this position involves research in Cognitive Science, especially related to Connectionist networks (or Neural Networks and Computational Neuroscience). Will plan, direct, and implement research approaches and concepts with faculty, including writing and organizing research experiments. Must be able to write program specifications designed for specific research control situations. Other responsibilities consist of installing and debugging software, and routine system maintenance administration. Will participate in planning and design for network growth and computing facilities as it relates to RU-NET 2000. Requires a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Cognitive Science, or Cognitive Neuroscience AI or other related fields or equivalent experience. Requires familiarity with C-programming, UNIX system internals (BSD, System V, Solaris, Linux) and Windows (95, NT) as well as local area networks running TCP/IP. Image processing or graphics programming experience a plus. From jose at tractatus.rutgers.edu Sun May 17 17:23:45 1998 From: jose at tractatus.rutgers.edu (Stephen Jose Hanson) Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 17:23:45 -0400 Subject: Connectionist Post Doctoral Position RUTGERS U- PSYCHOLOGY DEPT. Message-ID: <355F5560.B9CC643D@tractatus.rutgers.edu> The DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY at RUTGERS UNIVERSITY-Newark Campus POSTDOCTORAL Position A postdoctoral position that can be filled immediately running through Fall98/Spring99 with a possibility of a second year renewal. Area of specialization in connectionist modeling with applications to recurrent networks, brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience. Review of applications will begin immediatelybut will continue to be accepted until the position is filled. Starting date is flexible in the Summer 98 time frame. Rutgers University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Qualified women and minority candidates are especially encouraged to apply. Send CV to Professor S. J. Hanson, Chair, Department of Psychology Post Doc Search, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ 07102. Email enquirys can be made to jose at psychology.rutgers.edu please include POSTDOC in the subject heading. From blebaron at ssc.wisc.edu Mon May 18 19:46:42 1998 From: blebaron at ssc.wisc.edu (Blake LeBaron) Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 18:46:42 -0500 Subject: Call for papers: Computational Finance 99 Message-ID: <9805182350.AA02388@duncan.ssc.wisc.edu> Leonard N. Stern School of Business New York University Computational Finance (CF99) January 6, 1999 (Tutorials) January 7 - 8 (Conference) The sixth international conference Computational Finance (CF99) will be held at NYU's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. CF99 is sponsored by the New York University Salomon Center, the Center for Research on Information Systems and the Department of Statistics and Operations Research. Computational Finance has emerged as a genuinely cross- disciplinary research meeting. CF99 is the sixth in a series of conferences that have been sponsored by the California Institute of Technology and the London Business School. In the past, this conference was called Neural Networks in the Capital Markets (NNCM). The expanding set of computational tools has moved this meeting from its original emphasis on neural network techniques to a broad spectrum of different methodologies. With several hundred attendees, this fully refereed conference has become an international forum where original research in advanced computational applications in finance is presented and discussed. CF99 brings together decision-makers and strategists from the financial industries, with academics from finance, statistics, economics, information systems and other disciplines. In the last few years, the conference has seen papers covering many different computational techniques including: statistical machine learning, Monte Carlo simulation, data mining, knowledge discovery, bootstrapping, genetic algorithms, nonparametric methods, information theory and fuzzy logic. Applications in many different areas are welcome, including but not limited to: risk management, asset allocation, dynamic trading and hedging strategies, forecasting, numerical solutions of derivative PDEs, exotic options and trading cost control. Studies may cover any major international financial market including equity, foreign exchange, bond, commodity and derivatives. The conference emphasizes in-depth analysis and comparative evaluation with established approaches. CF99 begins with a full day of tutorials designed to inform the diverse group of participants on a selection of the latest tools and research results. Tutorial speakers include Professor Stephen Figlewski of the Stern School of Business. The conference also features several invited speakers sharing their expertise from both the academic and applied perspectives. The keynote speaker is David E. Shaw, PhD, Chairman and CEO of D. E. Shaw & Co., Inc. The conference will have several talk and poster sessions for accepted papers. A selection of the presentations will be invited to appear in a volume published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. Submissions to CF99: Authors who wish to present papers should submit four copies along with full contact information, including e-mail addresses, to: CF99 / Andreas Weigend Information Systems Department Leonard N. Stern School of Business New York University 44 W 4th St., MEC 9-171 New York, NY 10012, USA E-mail: cf99 at stern.nyu.edu Web: www.stern.nyu.edu/cf99 All submissions must be received by August 15, 1998. Full papers are preferred, but extended abstracts clearly stating the results are acceptable. Only original, relevant research work will be accepted. Registration material will be put up on the Web at www.stern.nyu.edu/cf99 in August. Deadline for early registration is December 1, 1998. Conference Chairs: General Chair Y. S. Abu-Mostafa, Caltech Organizational Chair A. S. Weigend, NYU Stern Program Co-chairs B. LeBaron, University of Wisconsin A. W. Lo, MIT Sloan Organizing Committee: A. Atiya, Cairo University J. Cowan, University of Chicago R. Gencay, University of Windsor M. Jabri, Sydney University J. E. Moody, Oregon Graduate Institute C. E. Pedreira, Catholic Univ. PUC-Rio A.-P. N. Refenes, London Business School M. Steiner, Universitaet Augsburg D. Tavella, Align Risk Analysis A. Timmermann, U.of Calif., San Diego H. White, Univ. of California, San Diego L. Xu, Chinese University of Hong Kong The Stern School: Founded in 1900, the Stern School has grown into one of the most highly ranked business schools in the world. A talented and diverse student body benefits in many ways from Stern's long-standing excellence, top faculty and its central New York City location. Stern offers several specializations in computational finance that include a highly quantitative MBA financial engineering track, an MS in statistics with specialization in financial engineering, and PhD programs in the fields of finance, statistics and information systems. Further conferences, symposia and workshops at Stern for 1999 include Derivatives: What's New?; Market Risk: Advances and Challenges; and Data Mining in Finance. From robert at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de Tue May 19 05:10:10 1998 From: robert at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de (Robert Urbanczik) Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 11:10:10 +0200 (METDST) Subject: preprint available Message-ID: The following preprint (13 pages, to appear in Phys.Rev.E) is available for download from: ftp://ftp.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/pub/preprint/1998/WUE-ITP-98-016.ps.gz Multilayer Perceptrons May Learn Simple Rules Quickly Robert Urbanczik Zero temperature Gibbs learning is considered for a connected committee machine with $K$ hidden units. For large $K$, the scale of the learning curve strongly depends on the target rule. When learning a perceptron, the sample size $P$ needed for optimal generalization scales so that $N\ll P\ll KN$, where $N$ is the dimension of the input. This even holds for a noisy perceptron rule if a new input is classified by the majority vote of all students in the version space. When learning a committee machine with $M$ hidden units, $1\ll M\ll K$, optimal generalization requires $\sqrt{MK} N \ll P$. From p.j.b.hancock at psych.stir.ac.uk Tue May 19 09:01:18 1998 From: p.j.b.hancock at psych.stir.ac.uk (Peter Hancock) Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 14:01:18 +0100 (BST) Subject: Lectureships in UK Message-ID: I'd be keen to get connectionist people to apply for the following: Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Scotland LECTURESHIPS IN PSYCHOLOGY Three positions are available within the Department. One appointment will be in Perception/Cognition, and the others in any of the Department's existing areas of research strength: Perception, Cognition, Neuroscience, Neuropsychology, Comparative and Developmental Psychology, and Social, Health Clinical and Community Psychology. Two of the posts are fixed term (5 years) initially, and we are particularly keen to attract applicants who have recently completed PhDs and demonstrated their ability to conduct and publish high quality research. Salary: £16045-£27985 per annum. Informal enquiries may be made to Dr Lindsay Wilson, Head of Department on 01786 467640, e-mail jtlw1 at stir.ac.uk. Details of the Department can be found at http://www-psych.stir.ac.uk/psychHome.html. For further information please contact the Personnel Office, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA. Closing date 31 July 1998 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Hancock Department of Psychology 0 0 Face Centre for University of Stirling | Research and Cognitive and FK9 4LA, UK \_/ Group Computational Phone 01786 467675 Fax 01786 467641 Neuroscience pjh at psych.stir.ac.uk http://www-psych.stir.ac.uk/~pjh ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From black at signal.dera.gov.uk Tue May 19 12:48:19 1998 From: black at signal.dera.gov.uk (John V. Black) Date: Tue, 19 May 98 17:48:19 +0100 Subject: CFP: EuroFusion98 Conference Message-ID: EuroFusion98 Conference 6th-7th October 1998 The EuroFusion98 Conference will be held on Tuesday 6th (pm only) and Wednesday 7th October 1998 in the Elgar Suite at the Abbey Hotel, Great Malvern, UK. The official language of the conference will be English. The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers, users and others interested in any aspect of data fusion. The conference will comprise presentations, practical demonstrations, displays and posters on theoretical developments and practical applications on data fusion topics including, but not limited to, the following: Bayesian methods Dempster-Shafer techniques Probability Fusion Decision-level Fusion Neural networks Medical applications Condition monitoring Aerospace applications Financial applications Defence applications Security applications Transport applications Remote sensing Demining Original papers on research and development are solicited for a regular session of refereed presentations and for a workshop of selected unrefereed short presentations. Workshop papers will be selected for originality of the approach or the importance of the application. The conference also offers keynote talks by invited speakers. If you are interested in presenting your work at this conference please send a one-page abstract to the programme chair at the address below by Monday 8th June, indicating the presenting author, his / her contact details and whether the work is to be considered for a standard refereed paper, a short workshop paper or a poster. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Anyone wishing to give a practical demonstration or display should also contact the programme chair as soon as possible. Authors will be notified by Monday 29th June regarding the acceptance of their paper and camera-ready papers must be submitted by Monday 7th September. Conference General Chair Jane O'Brien Pattern and Information Processing DERA St. Andrews Road Malvern Worcestershire, WR14 3PS, UK Telephone: +44 1684 895618 Fax: +44 1684 894384 Email: job at signal.dera.gov.uk Conference Programme Chair Mark Bedworth Pattern and Information Processing DERA St. Andrews Road Malvern Worcestershire, WR14 3PS, UK Telephone: +44 1684 894521 Fax: +44 1684 894384 Email: bedworth at signal.dera.gov.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- Registration Registration forms can be obtained from Jenny Green Conference Administrator Pattern and Information Processing DERA St. Andrews Road Malvern Worcestershire WR14 3PS UK Phone: +44 1684 894300 Fax: +44 1684 89 4384 Email: jagreen at signal.dera.gov.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- Accommodation and Travel A limited number of rooms have been reserved at the Abbey Hotel at a special rate of L65 single occupancy (inclusive of breakfast) and at the Foley Arms Hotel (two minutes walk from The Abbey) at a special rate of L58 single occupancy (inclusive of breakfast). Bookings should be made directly with the hotels quoting "EuroFusion98". Abbey Hotel Foley Arms Hotel Abbey Road Worcester Road Great Malvern Great Malvern Worcestershire Worcestershire Phone: +44 1684 892332 Phone: +44 1684 573397 DERA Malvern's General Administration Office will be pleased to advise on and arrange other accommodation. Some of the hotels in the area offer a discount to our visitors provided they are booked through the General Administration Office, Telephone +44 1684 894387. Travel by Air: Malvern is approximately 50 miles south of Birmingham International Airport and can be reached from the airport easily by either rail or road. Travel by Rail: There are two railway stations in Malvern - Malvern Link and Great Malvern. The closest to all the hotels is Great Malvern. Trains run regularly from London Paddington to Great Malvern and from Birmingham International Airport via Birmingham New Street to Great Malvern. There are also rail links from Gatwick and Heathrow airports via Reading. Travel by Road: Visitors travelling on the M5 from the south should exit on the M50 at Junction 8. Leave the M50 at Junction 1 and follow the signposts for Great Malvern. >From the north, leave the M5 at Junction 7 and follow the route signposted to Malvern. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Dr John V Black |Pattern and Information Processing Group black at signal.dera.gov.uk|Defence Evaluation and Research Agency Tel: +44 (0)1684 894206 |Malvern, Worcs WR14 3PS, United Kingdom. Fax: +44 (0)1684 894384 |http://www.dera.gov.uk/ From mashouq at ksu.edu.sa Wed May 20 07:26:07 1998 From: mashouq at ksu.edu.sa (Dr. Khalid Al-Mashouq) Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 14:26:07 +0300 Subject: Position Available Message-ID: <3562BDCF.E6114CC9@ksu.edu.sa> Two positions are available immediately this coming fall, 1998 to work as an instructor in EE Dept. King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The applicant should hold Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and specialized in one of the following areas 1. Signal Processing 2. Mobile communications 3. Electromagnetics 4. Neural signal processing The positions require teaching undergraduate and graduate students as well as carrying high quality research in the area of specialty. Please send resumes and inquiries to the following address: Dr. Mohammad Al-Eshikh P.O.Box 800 Riyadh 11421 Saudi Arabia Fax +966-1-4676757 E-mail Eshaikh at ksu.edu.sa From luca at idsia.ch Wed May 20 08:22:10 1998 From: luca at idsia.ch (Luca Gambardella) Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 14:22:10 +0200 Subject: Position Available in Collective Robotics Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19980520142210.00a3ca70@mailhost.idsia.ch> We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this announcement. ------------------------------------------------------------------ =============================== POST DOC POSITION AVAILABLE =============================== IDSIA - (http://www.idsia.ch) Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale, Lugano, Switzerland RESEARCH ASSOCIATE http://www.idsia.ch/luca/opening_coll_rob.htm In Collective/Cooperative Autonomous Robotics For a period of 1 year, starting summer 1998, with possible extensions. Candidates for this position need to have a PhD in Mobile Robotics and experience with learning and/or adaptation paradigms or a PhD in Computer Science and basic knowledge of mobile robotics. Experience with real robot is appreciated. IDSIA's research focuses on artificial neural nets, reinforcement learning, combinatorial optimization, evolutionary computation. More precisely, IDSIA is involved with LAMI EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne) in a project supported by Swiss National Science Foundation concerning with "Methodology for Collective Robot Design". The goal is to study how to combine reactive behaviour with learning or adaptation capabilities in order to obtain complex, robust and perhaps emergent group behaviors with a team of simple robots. SALARY: commensurate with experience - There is travel funding in case of papers accepted at important conferences. DEADLINE: June 15th 1998 Applications (including curriculum vitae, names and addresses of at least three references, and a list of publications) should be sent to the following address, where also further information can be obtained: Luca Maria Gambardella IDSIA C.so Elvezia 36 6900 Lugano Switzerland Phone : +41 91-911 98 38 Fax : +41 91-911 98 39 email: luca at idsia.ch http://www.idsia.ch/luca From harnad at coglit.soton.ac.uk Wed May 20 10:53:55 1998 From: harnad at coglit.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 15:53:55 +0100 (BST) Subject: Amnesia & Hippocampus: BBS Call for Commentators Message-ID: Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on: EPISODIC MEMORY, AMNESIA AND THE HIPPOCAMPAL/ANTERIOR-THALAMIC AXIS by John P. Aggleton & Malcolm W. Brown This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send EMAIL to: bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/ ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/ ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/ gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ EPISODIC MEMORY, AMNESIA AND THE HIPPOCAMPAL/ANTERIOR-THALAMIC AXIS John P. Aggleton School of Psychology Cardiff University PO Box 901 Cardiff CF1 3YG Wales aggleton at cardiff.ac.uk Malcolm W. Brown Department of Anatomy University of Bristol University Walk Bristol BS8 1TD U.K. m.w.brown at bristol.ac.uk KEYWORDS: amnesia, memory, hippocampus, fornix, thalamus, temporal cortex ABSTRACT: Based on new information from both clinical and experimental studies in animals (lesion, electrophysiological, and gene-activation), the anatomy underlying anterograde amnesia is reformulated. The distinction between temporal lobe and diencephalic amnesia is of limited value because a common feature of anterograde amnesia is damage to part of an 'extended hippocampal system' comprising the hippocampus, the fornix, the mamillary bodies and the anterior thalamic nuclei. This view, which can be traced back to Delay and Brion (1969), differs from other recent models in placing critical importance on the efferents from the hippocampus via the fornix to the diencephalon. These are necessary for the encoding and hence the effective subsequent recall of episodic memory. An additional feature of this hippocampal/anterior-thalamic axis is the presence of projections back from the diencephalon to the temporal cortex and hippocampus that also support episodic memory. In contrast, this hippocampal system is not required for tests of item recognition that primarily tax familiarity judgements. Familiarity judgements reflect an independent process that depends on a distinct system involving the perirhinal cortex of the temporal lobe and the medial dorsal nucleus of the thalamus. In the large majority of amnesic cases, both the hippocampal/anterior-thalamic and the perirhinal/ mediodorsal-thalamic systems are compromised, leading to severe deficits in both recall and recognition. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide Web or by anonymous ftp or gopher from the US or UK BBS Archive. Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.aggleton.html ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.aggleton ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.aggleton gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp ftp.princeton.edu or ftp 128.112.128.1 When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin at yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.aggleton When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit From lyle at cogni.iaf.cnrs-gif.fr Thu May 21 02:05:40 1998 From: lyle at cogni.iaf.cnrs-gif.fr (Lyle Borg-Graham) Date: Thu, 21 May 98 02:05:40 EDT Subject: Paper announcement: Interpretations of Data and Mechanisms Message-ID: <9805210605.AA00389@cogni.iaf.cnrs-gif.fr> for Hippocampal Pyramidal Cell Models FTP-host: ftp.cis.ohio-state.edu FTP-file: pub/neuroprose/borg-graham.hpc-models.ps.Z * or see * http://www.cnrs-gif.fr/iaf/iaf9/surf-hippo.html The file borg-graham.hpc-models.ps.Z (97 pages) is now available for copying from the Neuroprose and Surf-Hippo repositories: Interpretations of Data and Mechanisms for Hippocampal Pyramidal Cell Models Lyle J Borg-Graham Equipe Cognisciences Institut Alfred Fessard - CNRS 91198 Gif-sur-Yvette, France ABSTRACT: Biophysically detailed models of single neurons which draw on a wide variety of experimental and theoretical foundations are increasingly important in the understanding of the functional role of various cellular mechanisms. In this paper, such an approach is detailed for pyramidal neurons of the hippocampus. Included is a review of the experimental literature, descriptions of biophysical models appropriate for the analysis of single cell behaviour, a comparative review of several published models, and parameters for an updated model of this cell type. This paper will appear as a chapter in the book ``Cerebral Cortex, Volume 13: Cortical Models'' Edited by P. S. Ulinski, E. G. Jones and A. Peters, New York: Plenum Press, 1998 From georgiou at wiley.csusb.edu Thu May 21 00:51:29 1998 From: georgiou at wiley.csusb.edu (georgiou@wiley.csusb.edu) Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 21:51:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Last Call for Papers: ICCIN'98 Message-ID: <199805210451.VAA21678@wiley.csusb.edu> 3rd International Conference on COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND NEUROSCIENCE (ICCIN'98) Sheraton Imperial Hotel & Convention Center Research Triangle Park, North Carolina October 24-28, 1998 (Tutorials are on October 23) Summary Submission Deadline: June 1, 1998 Decision & Notification: August 1, 1998 Conference Co-chairs: Subhash C. Kak, Louisiana State University Jeffrey P. Sutton, Harvard University Plenary Speakers include the following: +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |James Anderson |Panos J. Antsaklis |John Baillieul |Walter Freeman | |-----------------+-------------------+----------------+----------------| |David Fogel |Stephen Grossberg |Stuart Hameroff |Yu Chi Ho | |-----------------+-------------------+----------------+----------------| |Thomas S.Huang |George J. Klir |Teuvo Kohonen |John Koza | |-----------------+-------------------+----------------+----------------| |Richard G. Palmer|Zdzislaw Pawlak |Karl Pribram |Azriel Rosenfeld| |-----------------+-------------------+----------------+----------------| |Julius T. Tou |I.Burhan Turksen |Paul J. Werbos |A.K.C.Wong | |-----------------+-------------------+----------------+----------------| |Lotfi A. Zadeh |Hans J.Zimmermann | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ This conference is part of the Fourth Joint Conference Information Sciences. Organizing Committee: George M. Georgiou, California State University, Chair Grigorios Antoniou, Griffith University, Australia Catalin Buiu, Romania Richard Burright, State Univ. of N.Y., Binghamton Ian Cresswell, University of Central England, U.K. S. Das, University of California, Berkeley S.C. Dutta Roy, India Laurene Fausett, Florida Institute of Technology Paulo Gaudiano, Boston, University Masafumi Hagiwara, Keio Univ., Japan Ugur Halici, METU, Turkey Akira Hirose, University of Tokyo Arun Jagota, University of California, Riverside Boris Kovalerchuk, Central Washington University E.V. Krishnamurthy, Australian National University, Canberra Ping Liang, University of California, Riverside Jacek Mandziuk, Warsaw Univ. of Technology, Poland Jonathan Marshall, University of N. Carolina Bimal Mathur, Rockwell CA Kishan Mehrotra, Syracuse Ouri Monchi, King's College London, UK Haluk Ogmen, University of Houston Ed Page, South Carolina Mitja Perus, National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia Vladimir Radevski, Univ. of Paris, FRANCE Raghu Raghavan, National Univ. of Singapore W.A. Porter, University of Alabama Ed Rietman, Bell Labs Christos Schizas, University of Cyprus Harold Szu, USL M. Trivedi, UCSD Sudhir Trivedi, Southern University John Sutherland, AND Corporation, Canada Nicolae Varachiu, National Institute of Microtechnology, Romania Dan Ventura, Brigham Young University E. Vityaev, Russia Paul Wang, Duke University Sumio Watanabe, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Edward K. Wong, Polytechnic University, NY, USA Areas for which papers are sought include: o Artificial Life o Artificially Intelligent NNs o Associative Memory o Cognitive Science o Computational Intelligence o Efficiency/Robustness Comparisons o Evolutionary Computation for Neural Networks o Feature Extraction & Pattern Recognition o Implementations (electronic, Optical, Biochips) o Intelligent Control o Learning and Memory o Neural Network Architectures o Neurocognition o Neurodynamics o Neuro-Quantum Information Processing o Optimization o Parallel Computer Applications o Quantum Neurocomputing o Theory of Evolutionary Computation Summary Submission Deadline: June 1, 1998 Decision & Notification: August 1, 1998 Papers will be accepted based on summaries. A summary shall not exceed 4 pages of 10-point font, double-column, single-spaced text, with figures and tables included. Required deposits and other information: http://www.ee.duke.edu/~gu/JCIS98/conf.html For the 3rd ICCIN, send 3 copies of summaries to: George M. Georgiou Computer Science Department California State University San Bernardino, CA 92407-2397 U.S.A. georgiou at csci.csusb.edu Tutorial and other registration information can be found in the announcement of the Fourth Joint Conference Information Sciences: http://www.ee.duke.edu/~gu/JCIS98/ ICCIN'98 Conference Web site: http://www.csci.csusb.edu/iccin From dror2 at coglit.soton.ac.uk Thu May 21 10:50:20 1998 From: dror2 at coglit.soton.ac.uk (Itiel Dror) Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 15:50:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS Pragmatics & Cognition announces a special issue on FACIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE Guest Editors Itiel E. Dror and Sarah V. Stevenage In many senses, faces are at the center of human interaction. At a very basic level, faces indicate identity. However, faces are remarkably rich information carriers. For example, facial gestures may be used as means of conveying intentions. Faces may also permit a direct glimpse into the person's inner self (by unintentionally revealing, for example, aspects of character or mood). Given their salient role, the processing of the information conveyed by faces and its integration with other sources of interactional information raise important issues in cognition and pragmatics. Research on facial information processing has investigated these (and other) issues utilizing a variety of approaches and methodologies, and developments in both computer and cognitive sciences have recently carried this research forward. The emerging picture is that there are cognitive subsystems which specialize in different aspects of facial processing. This has been supported by neuropsychological evidence suggesting that brain damaged patients show dissociations between the different aspects of face processing. In addition, research on the development of facial processing abilities, and on aspects of the face itself which affect these processing abilities, has contributed to our understanding of how facial information is perceived. This special issue of Pragmatics and Cognition is intended to provide a common forum for a variety of the topics currently under investigation. Given the breadth of issues and approaches used to investigate faces, we encourage submissions from a wide range of disciplines. Our aim is that this special issue will tie together the diverse research on faces, and show their links and interdependencies. Deadline for submission: August 1, 1998 Editorial decisions: November 1, 1998 Revised papers due: February 1, 1999 Expected publication: October 1999 Papers should be submitted according to the guidelines of the journal (see WWW URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~dror/guideline.html). All submissions will be peer reviewed. Please send five copies of your submission either to: Dr. Itiel Dror (dror at coglab.psy.soton.ac.uk) or: Dr. Sarah Stevenage (svs1 at soton.ac.uk) Dept. of Psychology Southampton University Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ England For additional and updated information see WWW URL: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~dror/faces.html or contact either of the guest editors. #======================================================================# | Itiel E. Dror, Ph.D. http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~dror/ | | Department of Psychology dror at coglab.psy.soton.ac.uk | | University of Southampton Office 44 (0)1703 594519 | | Highfield, Southampton Lab. 44 (0)1703 594518 | | England SO17 1BJ Fax. 44 (0)1703 594597 | #======================================================================# ******************************************************************************* From jbower at bbb.caltech.edu Wed May 20 21:33:43 1998 From: jbower at bbb.caltech.edu (James M. Bower) Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 17:33:43 -0800 Subject: No subject Message-ID: ************************************************************************ SEVENTH ANNUAL COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE MEETING (CNS*98) July 26 - 30, 1998 Santa Barbara, California REGISTRATION INFORMATION ************************************************************************ Registration is now open for this year's Computational Neuroscience meeting (CNS*98). This is the seventh in a series of annual inter-disciplinary conferences intended to address the broad range of research approaches and issues involved in the general field of computational neuroscience. As in previous years, this meeting will bring together experimental and theoretical neurobiologists along with engineers, computer scientists, cognitive scientists, physicists, and mathematicians interested in understanding how biological neural systems compute. The meeting will equally emphasize experimental, model-based, and more abstract theoretical approaches to understanding neurobiological computation. The meeting in 1998 will take place at Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara, California and include plenary, contributed, and poster sessions. The first session starts at 9 am, Sunday July 26th and the meeting ends with the annual CNS banquet on Thursday evening, July 30th. There will be no parallel sessions. The meeting includes two half days of informal workshops focused on current issues in computational neuroscience. Day care will be available for children and given the beauty and recreational interest of the area, we encourage families to attend. LOCATION: The meeting will take place at the Fess Parker's Double Tree Resort in Santa Barbara, California. MEETING ACCOMMODATIONS: Accommodations for the meeting have been arranged at Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort. Information concerning reservations, hotel accommodations, etc. are available at the meeting web site indicated below. A block of rooms are reserved at special rates. 30 student rate rooms are available on a first-come-first-served basis, so we recommend students acting quickly to reserve these slots. NOTE that registering for the meeting, WILL NOT result in an automatic room reservation. Instead you must make your own reservations by contacting the hotel itself. As this is the high season for tourists in Santa Barbara, you should make sure and reserve your accommodations quickly by contacting: Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort (RESERVATION REQUEST ORDER FORM LOCATED BELOW) NOTE: IN ORDER TO GET THE AVAILABLE ROOMS, YOU MUST CONFIRM HOTEL REGISTRATIONS BY JUNE 24, 1997. When making reservations by phone, make sure and indicate that you are registering for the Computational Neuroscience (CNS*98) meeting. Students will be asked to verify their status on check in with a student ID or other documentation. MEETING REGISTRATION FEES: Registration received on or before June 26, 1998: Student: $ 95 Regular: $ 225 Meeting registration after June 26, 1998: Student: $ 125 Regular: $ 250 BANQUET: Registration for the meeting includes a single ticket to the annual CNS Banquet. Additional Banquet tickets can be purchased for $35 each person. The banquet will be held on Thursday, July 30th. DAY CARE: Day care will be available at the conference for those who inform us in advance of their day care needs. Note that day care will not be provided during the evening. Please send e-mail to judy at bbb.caltech.edu. Please provide the following information: 1. name of parent(s), 2. e-mail address, 3. age of children and 4. estimated times during which children will need day care. Day care will be provided free of charge accept for children under the age of 2 years old for whom a fee may be charged. AIRFARE: Santa Barbara has its own small airport with daily flights from Los Angeles and San Francisco. In addition, ground transportation is available to Santa Barbara from Los Angeles International Airport (and a one and a half hour drive). Special discount rates have been arranged with United and Northwest airlines, if you mention the following group ID with airline reservations: Northwest Airlines - Phone No: 1-800-328-1111 Meeting I.D. No: NMG66 United Airlines - Phone No: 1-800-521-4041 (U.S. and Canada) Meeting I.D. No: 525SV ********************************************************************* ADDITIONAL INFORMATION (including the agenda with list of talks) can be obtained by: o Using our on-line WWW information and registration server, URL of: http://www.bbb.caltech.edu/cns/cns98/cns98.html o ftp-ing to our ftp site. yourhost% ftp ftp.bbb.caltech.edu Name (ftp.bbb.caltech.edu:<): ftp Password: yourname at yourhost.yourside.yourdomain ftp> cd cns98 ftp> ls o Sending Email to: cns98 at bbb.caltech.edu From sml%essex.ac.uk at seralph10.essex.ac.uk Fri May 22 14:11:23 1998 From: sml%essex.ac.uk at seralph10.essex.ac.uk (Simon Lucas) Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 19:11:23 +0100 Subject: Time Series Prediction Applet (SVM v KNN) Message-ID: <3565BFCB.21B3@essex.ac.uk> Dear Connectionists, I've written a Time Series Prediction Applet that may be of interest. It allows a comparison of a simplified Support Vector Machine versus a K-NN predictor (see notes on link from applet), and plots the series and the predictions as they unfolds in time. Follow the link from my homepage http://esewww.essex.ac.uk/~sml Best regards, Simon Lucas N.B. it uses the Java 1.1 event model, so you'll need a browser that supports this - e.g. a recent release of Netscape Communicator -- ------------------------------------------------ Dr. Simon Lucas Department of Electronic Systems Engineering University of Essex Colchester CO4 3SQ United Kingdom Tel: (+44) 1206 872935 Fax: (+44) 1206 872900 Email: sml at essex.ac.uk http://esewww.essex.ac.uk/~sml secretary: Mrs Wendy Ryder (+44) 1206 872437 ------------------------------------------------- From radford at cs.toronto.edu Fri May 22 15:22:28 1998 From: radford at cs.toronto.edu (Radford Neal) Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 15:22:28 -0400 Subject: Preprint available Message-ID: <98May22.152235edt.1056@neuron.ai.toronto.edu> The following preprint is now available: Assessing Relevance Determination Methods Using DELVE Radford M. Neal, University of Toronto Empirically assessing the predictive performance of learning methods is an essential component of research in machine learning. The DELVE environment was developed to support such assessments. It provides a collection of datasets, a standard approach to conducting experiments with these datasets, and software for the statistical analysis of experimental results. In this paper, DELVE is used to assess the performance of neural network methods when the inputs available to the network have varying degrees of relevance. The results confirm that the Bayesian method of ``Automatic Relevance Determination'' (ARD) is often (but not always) helpful, and show that a variation on ``early stopping'' inspired by ARD is also beneficial. The experiments also reveal some other interesting characteristics of the methods tested. This example illustrates the essential role of empirical testing, and shows the strengths and weaknesses of the DELVE environment. To appear in Generalization in Neural Networks and Machine Learning, C. M. Bishop (editor), Springer-Verlag, 33 pages. You can get this paper (in compressed Postscript) directly from: ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/radford/ard-delve.ps.Z or via my home page (see URL below). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Radford M. Neal radford at cs.utoronto.ca Dept. of Statistics and Dept. of Computer Science radford at utstat.utoronto.ca University of Toronto http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~radford ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From tewon at salk.edu Wed May 27 02:54:31 1998 From: tewon at salk.edu (Te-Won Lee) Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 23:54:31 -0700 Subject: ICA-CNL website, new ICA paper & matlab code. Message-ID: <199805270654.XAA15802@helmholtz.salk.edu> Dear Connectionists, *** Visit the ICA - CNL website! *** http://www.cnl.salk.edu/~tewon/ica_cnl.html Independent Component Analysis (ICA) has received a lot of attention recently. The ICA - CNL website shows a variety of ICA research performed in the Computational Neuroscience Laborabory (CNL) at the Salk Institute (Terry Sejnowski's Lab). The goal of this webpage is to provide detailed services to scientists, engineers and industrials about ICA or Blind Source Separation (BSS). The following services are available: - Introduction to ICA - ICA Projects - Researchers - Papers - Matlab Code - ICA Demos - ICA News - Links - ICA FAQs If you have questions or comments please send email to tewon at salk.edu *** New ICA paper and Matlab code available *** "Independent component analysis using an extended infomax algorithm for mixed sub-Gaussian and super-Gaussian sources" T-W. Lee, M. Girolami and T.J. Sejnowski. to appear in Neural Computation, MIT Press. Paper: http://www.cnl.salk.edu/~tewon/Public/nc97.ps.gz (1470k, 33 pages) Matlab code: http://www.cnl.salk.edu/~tewon/ica_cnl.html and go to Matlab Code and download the extended infomax algorithm Abstract: An extension of the infomax algorithm of Bell and Sejnowski (1995) is presented that is able to blindly separate mixed signals with sub- and super-Gaussian source distributions. This was achieved by using a simple type of learning rule first derived by Girolami (1997) by choosing negentropy as a projection pursuit index. Parameterized probability distributions that have sub- and super-Gaussian regimes were used to derive a general learning rule that preserves the simple architecture proposed by Bell and Sejnowski (1995), is optimized using the natural gradient by Amari (1997), and uses the stability analysis of Cardoso and Laheld (1996) to switch between sub- and super-Gaussian regimes. We demonstrate that the extended infomax algorithm is able to easily separate 20 sources with a variety of source distributions. Applied to high-dimensional data from electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings, it is effective at separating artifacts such as eye blinks and line noise from weaker electrical signals that arise from sources in the brain. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Te-Won Lee EMAIL: tewon at salk.edu Computational Neurobiology Lab, WORK: (619) 453-4100 x1215 Salk Institute, HOME: (619) 450-9036 10010 N. Torrey Pines Rd. FAX: (619) 587-0417 La Jolla, CA 92037 WEB: http://www.cnl.salk.edu/~tewon ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From ken at phy.ucsf.EDU Wed May 27 22:21:17 1998 From: ken at phy.ucsf.EDU (Ken Miller) Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 19:21:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Paper available: Model of Contrast-Invariant Orientation Tuning in V1 Message-ID: <199805280221.TAA04818@coltrane.ucsf.edu> FTP-host: ftp.keck.ucsf.edu FTP-filename: pub/ken/jnpaper.ps.gz URL: ftp://ftp.keck.ucsf.edu/pub/ken/jnpaper.ps.gz The following paper is available by anonymous ftp. It can also be obtained from my web page: http://www.keck.ucsf.edu/~ken (click on 'Publications'; then click on 'Models of Neuronal Integration and Circuitry'; or alternatively, go directly to http://www.keck.ucsf.edu/~ken/miller.htm#circuitry) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Troyer, T.W., A.E. Krukowski, N.J. Priebe and K.D. Miller (1998). ``Contrast-Invariant Orientation Tuning in Visual Cortex: Feedforward Tuning and Correlation-Based Intracortical Connectivity.'' In press, Journal of Neuroscience. ABSTRACT: The origin of orientation selectivity in visual cortical responses is a central problem for understanding cerebral cortical circuitry. In cats, many experiments suggest that orientation selectivity arises from the arrangement of LGN afferents to layer 4 simple cells. However, this explanation is not sufficient to account for the contrast invariance of orientation tuning. To understand contrast invariance, we first characterize the input to cat simple cells generated by the oriented arrangement of LGN afferents. We demonstrate that it has two components: a spatial-phase-specific component (i.e., one that depends on receptive field spatial phase), which is tuned for orientation; and a phase-nonspecific component, which is untuned. Both components grow with contrast. Second, we show that a correlation-based intracortical circuit -- in which connectivity between cell pairs is determined by the correlation of their LGN inputs -- is sufficient to achieve well-tuned, contrast-invariant orientation tuning. This circuit generates both spatially opponent, ``anti-phase'' inhibition (``push-pull''), and spatially matched, ``same-phase'' excitation. The inhibition, if sufficiently strong, suppresses the untuned input component and sharpens responses to the tuned component at all contrasts. The excitation amplifies tuned responses. This circuit agrees with experimental evidence showing spatial opponency between, and similar orientation tuning of, the excitatory and inhibitory inputs received by a simple cell. Orientation tuning is primarily input driven, accounting for the observed invariance of tuning width after removal of intracortical synaptic input, as well as for the dependence of orientation tuning on stimulus spatial frequency. The model differs from previous push-pull models in requiring dominant rather than balanced inhibition, and in predicting that a population of layer 4 inhibitory neurons should respond in a contrast-dependent manner to stimuli of all orientations, although their tuning width may be similar to that of excitatory neurons. The model demonstrates that fundamental response properties of cortical layer 4 can be explained by circuitry expected to develop under correlation-based rules of synaptic plasticity, and shows how such circuitry allows the cortex to distinguish stimulus intensity from stimulus form. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Warning: The last two pages of this paper contain dense figures that can take many minutes to load in a postscript viewer or to print. You can also get these separately: All but last two pages: ftp://ftp.keck.ucsf.edu/pub/ken/jnpaper-1-53.ps.gz Last two pages: ftp://ftp.keck.ucsf.edu/pub/ken/jnpaper-54-55.ps.gz Uncompressed versions are available in all cases by omitting the '.gz'. Ken Miller Kenneth D. Miller internet: ken at phy.ucsf.edu Dept. of Physiology www: http://www.keck.ucsf.edu/~ken UCSF 513 Parnassus San Francisco, CA 94143-0444 From biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de Thu May 28 03:46:02 1998 From: biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de (Michael Biehl) Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 09:46:02 +0200 (METDST) Subject: preprint: phase transitions in soft-committee Message-ID: <199805280746.JAA24711@wptx08.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de> FTP-host: ftp.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de FTP-filename: /pub/preprint/1998/WUE-ITP-98-014.ps.gz ----------------------------------------------------------------- A revised version of our recently announced paper Ref. WUE-ITP-98-014 [8 pages] Phase transitions in soft--committee machines M.Biehl, E. Schl\"osser, and M. Ahr is now available through anonymous ftp (see below) or from the Wuerzburg Theoretical Physics preprint server in the WWW: http://theorie.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~publications.shtml Unfortunately, it had escaped our attention that soft-committee machines have been analysed earlier in the limit of infinitely many hidden units by K. Kang, J.-H. Oh, C. Kwon, and Y. Park in Phys. Rev. E 48 (1993) 4805 We thank J. Hertz for drawing our attention to this fact. In the revised version we focus on the novel results for finite K and give appropriate reference to the above publication. Michael Biehl ------------------------------------------------------------------- Retrieval procedure via anonymous ftp: unix> ftp ftp.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de Name: anonymous Password: {your e-mail address} ftp> cd pub/preprint/1998 ftp> binary ftp> get WUE-ITP-98.014.ps.gz (*) ftp> quit unix> gunzip WUE-ITP-98-014.ps.gz e.g. unix> lp -odouble WUE-ITP-98-014.ps (*) can be replaced by "get WUE-ITP-98-014.ps". The file will then be uncompressed before transmission (slow!). ___________________________________________________________________ e-mail : biehl at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de From niall.griffith at ul.ie Thu May 28 09:28:35 1998 From: niall.griffith at ul.ie (Niall Griffith) Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 14:28:35 +0100 Subject: Connectionist Bibliography for Music Message-ID: <9805281328.AA13880@zeus.csis.ul.ie> An extensive bibliography of connectionist publications on music, is available (in html, Word, bibtex, and plain text) at http://www.csis.ul.ie/staff/NiallGriffith/mnpdpp_bib0.htm This is part of a new book due this summer from MIT Press. Musical Networks: Parallel Distributed Perception and Performance eds. Niall Griffith and Peter M. Todd We intend to keep this an up-to-date list. If you have published anything in this area (or know of other work) that is not included, please email full details to niall.griffith at ul.ie and it will be added. Niall Griffith and Peter Todd From yweiss at psyche.mit.edu Thu May 28 18:29:09 1998 From: yweiss at psyche.mit.edu (Yair Weiss) Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 18:29:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: TR available Message-ID: <199805282229.SAA07061@maxwell1> Hi, The following paper describing a Bayesian theory for human motion perception is now available online via: http://www-bcs.mit.edu/~yweiss/weiss.html#slowSmooth This paper forms part of my dissertation that is also downloadable from http://www-bcs.mit.edu/~yweiss/thesis.html Comments are most welcome. Yair -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Slow and Smooth: a Bayesian theory for the combination of local motion signals in human vision Author: Yair Weiss and Edward H. Adelson Reference: MIT AI Memo 1624, MIT CBCL Paper 158. Abstract: In order to estimate the motion of an object, the visual system needs to combine multiple local measurements, each of which carries some degree of ambiguity. We present a model of motion perception whereby measurements from different image regions are combined according to a Bayesian estimator --- the estimated motion maximizes the posterior probability assuming a prior favoring slow and smooth velocities. In reviewing a large number of previously published phenomena we find that the Bayesian estimator predicts a wide range of psychophysical results. This suggests that the seemingly complex set of illusions arise from a single computational strategy that is optimal under reasonable assumptions. From jagota at cse.ucsc.edu Thu May 28 20:56:04 1998 From: jagota at cse.ucsc.edu (Arun Jagota) Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 17:56:04 -0700 Subject: NCS survey paper Message-ID: <199805290056.RAA18938@arapaho.cse.ucsc.edu> New e-publication: survey paper David A. Medler, A Brief History of Connectionism, Neural Computing Surveys, 1, 61-101, 1998, 123 references. http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~jagota/NCS medler at cnbc.cmu.edu Abstract: Connectionist research is firmly established within the scientific community, especially within the multi-disciplinary field of cognitive science. This diversity, however, has created an environment which makes it difficult for connectionist researchers to remain aware of recent advances in the field, let alone understand how the field has developed. This paper attempts to address this problem by providing a brief guide to connectionist research. The paper begins by defining the basic tenets of connectionism. Next, the development of connectionist research is traced, commencing with connectionism's philosophical predecessors, moving to early psychological and neuropsychological influences, followed by the mathematical and computing contributions to connectionist research. Current research is then reviewed, focusing specifically on the different types of network architectures and learning rules in use. The paper concludes by suggesting that neural network research---at least in cognitive science---should move towards models that incorporate the relevant functional principles inherent in neurobiological systems.