Interview with 2006 Nobel Laureate in Literature Orhan Pamuk
Interview excerpts with the 2006 Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature Orhan Pamuk describes his idea of a writer and the solitude and soul searching required to write. For the complete interview visit: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2006/pamuk-interview.html
Duration : 0:1:0
HPV: Treating Cancer Caused by Viruses (Science Bulletins)
Scientists estimate that as much as 17% of all cancers are caused by viruses, including human papillomaviruses (HPV), a ubiquitous viral family. In this new documentary by Science Bulletins, the American Museum of Natural History’s current-science video program, doctors and molecular biologists uncover HPV’s complex life history to treat cervical and oral cancers — and even prevent them. This video was funded by a NIH Science Education Partnership Award.
For more information visit http://www.amnh.org/sciencebulletins
Duration : 0:7:30
Effective Query Log Anonymization
Google Tech Talks
December 8, 2008
ABSTRACT
User search query logs have proven to be very useful, but have vast potential for misuse. Several incidents have shown that simple removal of identifiers is insufficient to protect the identity of users. Publishing such inadequately anonymized data can cause severe breach of privacy. While significant effort has been expended on coming up with anonymity models and techniques for microdata/relational data, there is little corresponding work for query log data — which is different in several important aspects. In this work, we take a first cut at tackling this problem. Our main contribution is to define effective anonymization models for query log data, along with techniques to achieve such anonymization.
Speaker: Dr. Jaideep Vaidya
Dr. Jaideep Vaidya is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University. He received his Masters and Ph.D. at Purdue University and his Bachelors degree at the University of Mumbai. His research interests are in Data Mining, Privacy, Security, and Information Sharing. He has published over 30 papers in international conferences and archival journals, and has received two best paper awards from the premier conferences in data mining and databases. He is also the recipient of a NSF Career Award and is a member of the ACM, and the IEEE Computer Society.
Duration : 0:56:14
Team Cornell and the 2007 Urban Challenge: Research, Results and Next Steps
Google Tech Talks
January, 17 2008
ABSTRACT
Team Cornell was one of six teams to complete the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, completing over 55 miles of autonomous driving in an urban environment in approximately seven hours, including competition stops. The competition included many urban driving scenarios such as staying in a lane, merging into traffic, passing, intersections, parking, and even robot-robot interaction. Team Cornell designed and built a vehicle around technological innovations in vehicle automation, a real time UDP based data distribution system, tightly coupled pose estimation, scene estimation including localization within an urban environment and tracking all obstacles with a fusion of laser, radar and vision sensors, and hierarchical intelligent planning. Team Cornell’s vehicle was designed to drive “human-like” with smooth, intelligent behaviors, even in the presence of a vast array of uncertainties. The systematic approach taken by Team Cornell led to an innovative, robust solution to the complex problem proposed in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. This seminar will present the key technologies, semi-final and final results, and plans for future research.
Speaker: Dan Huttenlocher
Dan Huttenlocher is the John P. and Rilla Neafsey Professor of Computing, Information Science and Business at Cornell University, where he holds a joint appointment in the Computer Science Department and the Johnson Graduate School of Management. His research interests are in computer vision, social and information networks, collaboration tools, geometric algorithms and financial trading systems. He has been recognized for his research and teaching contributions on several occasions, including being named an NSF Presidential Young Investigator, New York State Professor of the Year and a Fellow of the ACM. In addition to academic posts he has been chief technical officer of Intelligent Markets, a provider of advanced trading systems on Wall Street, and spent more than ten years at Xerox PARC directing work that led to the ISO JBIG2 image-compression standard.
Speaker: Mark Campbell
Mark Campbell is an Associate Professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. His research interests are in the areas of autonomous systems, probabilistic models of human decision making, nonlinear estimation theory, cooperative vehicle control and estimation, and sensor fusion. He has been recognized from NASA for his modeling and control work on the Middeck Active Control Experiment, flown on STS-67 in 1995. He received best paper awards from the AIAA and Frontiers in Education conference, and teaching awards Cornell, University of Washington, and the ASEE. He was also an Australian Research Council International Fellowship in 2006 while on sabbatical at the University of Sydney. He is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA, an Associate Director of the AACC board, and member of the AIAA GNC Technical Committee, and is active in both IEEE and ASEE.
Duration : 1:6:12
Symmetry Group-based Learning for Regularity Discovery from Real World Patterns
Google Tech Talks
December 15, 2008
ABSTRACT
We explore a formal and computational characterization of real world regularity using discrete symmetry groups (hierarchy) as a theoretical basis, embedded in a well-defined Bayesian framework. Our existing work on “A Computational Model for Periodic Pattern Perception Based on Frieze and Wallpaper Groups” (TPAMI 2004), ‘Near-regular texture analysis and manipulation’ (SGIGRAPH 2004), and “A Lattice-based MRF Model for Dynamic Near-regular Texture Tracking” (PAMI 2007) already demonstrate the power of such a formalization on a diverse set of real problems, such as texture analysis, synthesis, tracking, perception and manipulation in terms of regularity. Symmetry and symmetry group detection from real world data turns out to be a very challenging problem that has been puzzling computer vision researchers for the past 40 years. Our novel formalization will lead the way to a more robust and comprehensive algorithmic treatment of the whole regularity spectrum, from regular (perfect symmetry), near-regular (deviations from symmetry), to various types of irregularities. The recent results of the proposed methodology will be illustrated in this talk by several real world applications such as deformed lattice detection, rotation and glide-reflection detection, gait recognition, grid-cell clustering, symmetry of dance, automatic geo-tagging and image de-fencing.
Speaker: Yanxi Liu
Yanxi Liu received her B.S. degree in physics/electrical engineering and her Ph.D. degree in computer science for group theory applications in robotics (UMass Amherst). Her postdoctoral training was performed in LIFIA/IMAG, Grenoble, France. She spent one year at DIMACS (NSF center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science) with an NSF research-education fellowship award. Before joining the Departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering at Penn State in Fall 2006 as a tenured faculty member, Dr. Liu had been with the faculty of the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, and affiliated with the Machine Learning Department of CMU. She is also an adjunct associate professor in the Radiology Department of University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Liu is the co-director of the Laboratory for Perception, Action, and Cognition (LPAC) at Penn State (http://vision.cse.psu.edu/). Dr. Liu’s research interests span a wide range of applications in computer vision and pattern recognition, computer graphics, medical image analysis and robotics, with two main research themes: computational (a)symmetry and discriminative subspace learning. With her colleagues, Dr. Liu won first place in the clinical science category and the best paper overall at the Annual Conference of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons for their work on “Measurement of Asymmetry in Persons with Facial Paralysis.” Dr. Liu chaired the First International Workshop on Computer Vision for Biomedical Image Applications (CVBIA) in conjunction with ICCV 2005 in Beijing, and co-edited the book: “CVBIA: Current Techniques and Future Trends,” Springer-Verlag LNCS 3765. Dr. Liu serves as an area chair/reviewer/committee member/panelist for all major journals, conferences, and NIH/NSF panels in computer vision, computer graphics, pattern recognition, biomedical image analysis, and machine learning. She has served as a chartered NIH study section member. She is a senior member of IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society.
Duration : 1:14:13
DMC: NSF Grant announcement
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $5 million grant to Del Mar College (DMC) and project partners to establish the National Geospatial Technology Center of Excellence at DMC.
Duration : 0:2:39
The Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience of Categorization, Novelty-Detec…
Google Tech Talks
November, 15 2007
ABSTRACT
Neurocomputational models provide fundamental insights towards
understanding the human brain circuits for learning new associations
and organizing our world into appropriate categories. In this talk I
will review the information-processing functions of four interacting
brain systems for learning and categorization:
(1) the basal ganglia which incrementally adjusts choice behaviors using environmental
feedback about the consequences of our actions,
(2) the hippocampus which supports learning in other brain regions through the creation of
new stimulus representations (and, hence, new similarity
relationships) that reflect important statistical regularities in the
environment,
(3) the medial septum which works in a feedback-loop with
the hippocampus, using novelty-detection to alter the rate at which
stimulus representations are updated through experience,
(4) the frontal lobes which provide for selective attention and executive
control of learning and memory.
The computational models to be described have been evaluated through a variety of empirical
methodoligies including human functional brain imaging, studies of
patients with localized brain damage due to injury or early-stage
neurodegenerative diseases, behavioral genetic studies of
naturally-occuring individual variability, as well as comparative
lesion and genetic studies with rodents. Our applications of these
models to engineering and computer science including automated anomaly
detection systems for mechanical fault diagnosis on US Navy
helicopters and submarines as well more recent contributions to the
DoD’s DARPA program for Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures
(BICA).
Speaker: Dr. Mark Gluck
Mark Gluck is a Professor of Neuroscience at Rutgers University – Newark, co-director of the Rutgers Memory Disorders Project, and publisher of the public health newsletter, Memory Loss and the Brain. He works at the interface between neuroscience, psychology, and computer science, where his research focuses on the neural bases of learning and memory, and the consequences of memory loss due to aging, trauma, and disease. He is the co-author of “Gateway to Memory: An Introduction to Neural Network Models of the Hippocampus and Memory ” (MIT Press, 2001) and a forthcoming undergraduate textbook, “Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior.” He has edited several other books and has published over 60 scientific journal articles. His awards include the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions from the American Psychological Society and the Young Investigator Award for Cognitive and Neural Sciences from the Office of Naval Research. In 1996, he was awarded a NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by President Bill Clinton. For more information, see http://www.gluck.edu.
Duration : 1:2:13
Teen Awarded Mix it Up Grant to provide Free Books to Schools
May 15, 2009–Schools from all over the world will simultaneously read the children’s book, “Buddy Booby’s Birthmark”, in an effort to raise birthmark awareness and increase public education and tolerance for each other’s differences — whatever they may be. The book was written by a New York teen with a facial port-wine stain birthmark. He’s the first-known person to ever bring so many world nations together, in order to raise birthmark awareness, tolerance issues, and funds (by donating a portion of his book’s profits to the Vascular Birthmarks Foundation). Get teachers (K-5) to register on-line. It’s free! And, it’s in honor of the Vascular Birthmarks Foundation “International Day of Birthmark Awareness.” The First 100 Schools to register on-line receive a free copy of “Buddy Booby’s Birthmark” ($21.99 value) courtesy of a grant from Mix it Up Organization (www.mixitup.org) and The Light For You Charitable Foundation. All registrants receive an official Certificate of Participation. May is Birthmark Awareness Month! Spread the Word! Offer ends May 30, 2009
Duration : 0:1:36
LEGO Engineering: From Kindergarten to College
Google Tech Talks
December 19, 2008
ABSTRACT
For the past 10 years, Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach has been working with the LEGO Group to bring engineering into every classroom as a way to teach creativity, teamwork, and systems engineering as well as math, science, and literacy. We believe that as the world becomes more technical, and more dependent on technology, it is imperative that those who vote and who make policy understand the fundamentals of science and engineering so that they will make informed decisions on policies like developing a sustainable energy plan or reducing global warming. We do this by bringing engineering into the pre-college classroom and challenging students to design and build solutions to open-ended problems. Chris Rogers will show a number of examples from around the world of how teachers have used LEGO Robots to teach everything from how to graph to how to problem-solve. From LEGO snowplows (made by 1st graders) to automated hamburger makers (made by 13 year olds) to a LEGO robot driven by a fruit fly (made by a doctoral student), students have been excited, innovative, and very enthusiastic to learn. He will conclude by explaining how you can help affect your local school and classroom. Kids (of all ages) welcome.
Speaker: Chris Rogers
Chris got all three of his degrees at Stanford Univ., where he worked with John Eaton on his thesis looking at particle motion in a boundary layer flow. From Stanford, he went to Tufts as a faculty member, where he has been for the last million years, with a few exceptions. His first sabbatical was spent at Harvard and a local kindergarten looking at methods of teaching engineering. He spent half a year in New Zealand on a Fulbright Scholarship looking at 3D reconstruction of flame fronts to estimate heat fluxes. In 2002-3 he was at Princeton as the Kenan Professor of Distinguished Teaching where he played with underwater robots, wind tunnels, and LEGO bricks. In 2006-7, he spent the year at ETH in Zurich playing with very very small robots and measuring the lift force on a fruit fly. He received the 2003 NSF Directors Distinguished Teaching Scholar Award for excellence in both teaching and research. Chris is involved in several different research areas: particle-laden flows (a continuation of his thesis), telerobotics and controls, slurry flows in chemical-mechanical planarization, the engineering of musical instruments, measuring flame shapes of couch fires, measuring fruit-fly locomotion, and in elementary school engineering education. His work has been funded by numerous government organizations and corporations, including the NSF, NASA, Intel, Boeing, Cabot, Steinway, Selmer, National Instruments, Raytheon, Fulbright, and the LEGO Corporation. His work in particle-laden flows led to the opportunity to fly aboard the NASA 0g experimental aircraft. He has flown over 700 parabolas without getting sick.
Chris also has a strong commitment to teaching, and at Tufts has started a number of new directions, including learning robotics with LEGO bricks and learning manufacturing by building musical instruments. He was awarded the Carnegie Professor of the Year in Massachusetts in 1998 and is currently the director of the Center for Engineering Education Outreach (www.ceeo.tufts.edu). His teaching work extends to the elementary school, where he talks with over 1000 teachers around the world every year on ways of bringing engineering into the younger grades. He has worked with LEGO to develop ROBOLAB, a robotic approach to learning science and math. ROBOLAB has already gone into over 50,000 schools worldwide and has been translated into 15 languages. He has been invited to speak on engineering education in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the UK, and in the US. He works in various classrooms once a week, although he has been banned from recess for making too much noise.
Most importantly, he has three kids – all brilliant – who are responsible for most of his research interests and efforts.
Duration : 0:52:55
The Walter Reed Award Lecture: Which Road to the Nobel Prize? (October 14, 2009)
Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D. (Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine (1998), Regental Professor and John S. Dunn Distinguished Chair in Physiology and Medicine; Texas Nobel Scholar at the University of Texas at Houston; Director Emeritus, Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases and Director of the IMM Center for Cell Signaling, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas) showed and discussed a promotional video that he and others made for public affairs education on the Nobel Prize. Dr. Murad described the Nobel Foundation, the founder, Alfred Nobel, and the prize process. Lastly, Dr. Murad, presented the history and current state of research in nitric oxide, an area of work for which he won the Nobel Prize.
Duration : 0:58:27