neuron-request@HPLABS.HP.COM ("Neuron-Digest Moderator Peter Marvit") (10/31/89)
Neuron Digest Monday, 30 Oct 1989 Volume 5 : Issue 43 Today's Topics: INNC-90-PARIS DOD Small Business Innovation Research Program Job Posting position offered Job Announcement Neural Networks for Industry: A two-day tutorial Send submissions, questions, address maintenance and requests for old issues to "neuron-request@hplabs.hp.com" or "{any backbone,uunet}!hplabs!neuron-request" Use "ftp" to get old issues from hplpm.hpl.hp.com (15.255.176.205). ------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: INNC-90-PARIS From: ff%FRLRI61.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU, Francoise Fogelman <ff%FRLRI61.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> Date: Thu, 12 Oct 89 15:30:12 +0100 - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- INNC 90 PARIS - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- INTERNATIONAL NEURAL NETWORK CONFERENCE JULY 9-13, 1990 PALAIS DES CONGRES PARIS FRANCE - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Co-chairmen of the Conference: B. Widrow (Stanford University) B. Angeniol (Thomson-CSF) Program committee chairman: T. Kohonen (Helsinki University) members: I. Aleksander (Imperial College) S. Ichi Amari (Univ. of Tokyo) L. Cooper (Brown Univ.) R. Eckmiller (Univ. of Dusseldorf) F. Fogelman (Univ. of Paris 11) S. Grossberg (Boston Univ.) D. Rumelhart (Stanford Univ.) *: to be confirmed P. Treleaven (University College London) C. von der Malsburg (Univ.of South California) - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Members of the international community are invited to submit original papers to the INNS-90-PARIS by january 20,1990, in english, on scientific and industrial developments in the following areas: A-APPLICATIONS B-IMPLEMENTATIONS C-THEORY D-COMMERCIAL - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE CONFERENCE will include one day of tutorials four days of conference poster sessions prototype demonstrations A forum with workshop sessions:specific interest groups,products sessions deal sessions. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- For information, contact: Nina THELLIER NTC INNC-90-PARIS 19 rue de la Tour 75116 PARIS-FRANCE Tel: (33-1) 45 25 65 65 Fax: (33-1) 45 25 24 22 - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Francoise Fogelman ------------------------------ Subject: DOD Small Business Innovation Research Program From: will@ida.org (Craig Will) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 89 17:39:39 -0400 SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION RESEARCH PROGRAM Department of Defense The U. S. Department of Defense has announced its fis- cal year 1990 solicitation for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. The SBIR program provides for research contracts for small businesses in various program areas designated by DoD component agencies, including the Army, Navy, Air Force, Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), and Stra- tegic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). This year there are 16 topics specifically targeting neural networks, and another 13 topics that specifically mention neural networks as possible approaches that might be used. This compares with 4 topics in the 1989 solicitation that were specifically for neural network research, and 7 in which neural network approaches were mentioned as possible. The program is in three Phases. Phase I awards are essentially feasibility studies of 6 months and with a dol- lar amount of about $50,000, intended for a one-half person-year effort. Phase I contractors compete for Phase II awards of 2 years in length and up to $500,000, intended for 2 to 5 person-years of effort. Phase III is the commer- cial application phase of the research. Proposals must be no longer than 25 pages in length, including the cover sheet, summary, cost proposal, resumes and any attachments. Deadline for proposals is January 5, 1990. Principal investigators must be employees (50% or more time) of small business firms. The program encourages small businesses to make use of university-based and other consultants when appropriate. A brief description of each of the 29 neural network- related topics has been published as a 4-page Special Sup- plementary Issue of Neural Network Review. Copies of the special issue are available upon request by sending a mes- sage to pinna@ida.org on milnet, or U. S. postal mail to Neural Network Review, P. O. Box 427, Dunn Loring, VA 22027. (Note that subscription orders and requests for information or samples of regular issues should go to Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Journal Subscription Department, 365 Broadway, Hillsdale, NJ 07642.) For more details on the SBIR program and forms necessary for submitting a proposal obtain a copy of the SBIR Program Solicitation book (438 pages in length) from the Defense Technical Information Center: Attn: DTIC/SBIR, Building 5, Cameron Station, Alexandria, VA 22304-6145. Telephone: Toll-free, (800) 368-5211. For Virginia, Alaska, Hawaii: (202) 274-6902. Craig Will Institute for Defense Analyses will@ida.org ------------------------------ Subject: Job Posting From: Jordan B Pollack <pollack@cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: Fri, 13 Oct 89 10:48:47 -0400 My dept is recruiting a couple of faculty in areas which migbt be of interest to this group. The advertisement for COMPUTATIONAL MODELS of NEURAL INFO. PROCESSING, going out to press is enclosed below. Since the area is quite large and vague, we have two subareas in mind, but quality will overrule discipline. The first subarea is "Biologically Realistic Connec- tionism", and would deal with working models of neurons, organs, or small creatures. The second potentially skips over biology and goes right to math and physics. "Non- Linear Cognition", or the study of complex dynamical systems related either to brain or mind (e.g. self-organizing circu- itry, cellular automata (reversibility?) chaos and complex- ity theory, fractal patterns in speech/music, and so on. We are also recruiting on a separate billet in SPEECH PROCESSING, which could easily be in neural networks as well. Please contact me if you want to discuss it, or know of anybody good. Columbus is an especially nice place to live. Jordan pollack@cis.ohio-state.edu - -------------------------------------------------------------------- Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Research Department of Computer and Information Science and The Center for Cognitive Science at the The Ohio State University Position Announcement in Computational Neuroscience A tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant Pro- fessor level is expected to be available in the area of Com- putational Neuroscience. We are seeking outstanding appli- cants who have a strong background and research interest in developing computational models of neural information pro- cessing. A Ph.D. in computer science, or in some other appropriate area with a sufficiently strong background in computation, is required. The candidate will be a regular faculty member in the Department of Computer & Information Science, and will promote interactions among cognitive science, computer science and brain science through the Center for Cognitive Science. The LAIR has strong symbolic and connectionist projects underway, the Department has wide interests in parallel com- putation, and the University has the major facilities in place to support the computational neuroscience enterprise, including several parallel computers, a Cray Y/MP, and a full range of brain imaging systems in the medical school. Applicants should send a resume along with the names and addresses of at least three professional references to Prof. B. Chandrasekaran Department of Computer & Information Science Ohio State University 2036 Neil Ave. Columbus, OH 43210 The Ohio State University is an Equal Opportunity Affirmative Action Employer, and encourages applications from qualified women and minorities. ------------------------------ Subject: position offered From: ted@nmsu.edu (Ted Dunning) Organization: NMSU Computer Science Date: 13 Oct 89 17:33:23 +0000 GRADUATE STUDY IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AT NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY Computer Science Department & Computing Research Laboratory - ----------------------------------------------------------- We are looking for able new students to join the Master's and Doctoral programs in the Computer Science Department, with possible involvement in projects at the Computing Research Laboratory (CRL). Areas of interest in the Department and Laboratory include Artificial Intelligence, Parallel Processing (software and architectures), Programming Languages, Interfaces, Databases, Computer Security and Theory. Interdisciplinary research is encouraged: there are interdisciplinary MS and PhD programs, and CRL includes faculty and students from several departments apart from CS, notably Psychology, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering. The University is the prime research university in New Mexico, and is in the Carnegie R1 research category. An MS program in computer science has existed since 1966 and the CS department's Doctoral program was set up in 1980. CRL is a Center of Excellence created in 1983 with funding from the New Mexico state legislature, and is now self-supporting through a variety of federal and industrial grants and contracts. CRL is engaged largely in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science research. Its AI research includes work on natural language processing, knowledge representation, model-based problem solving, neural and connectionist networks and computer vision. There is also a variety of research on other topics, such as genome classification and atmospheric analysis. There are fertile working relationships with the Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories. The CS Department and CRL are housed, together with the psychology and mathematics departments, in a new, well-appointed building with special facilities for local computer networks. The working environment is superb, making it pleasurable to come in early and stay late. CS/CRL equipment includes a large Sun network (including several Sparc workstations), various other workstations, a 64-node Intel Hypercube, a new, 8-node IBM ACE machine, and image processing equipment. There are high-quality links to regional and national networks, allowing convenient access to Connection Machines and other computers elsewhere in the state and the country. The university is in Las Cruces, a pleasant, inexpensive, uncrowded, medium-sized town (although it is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country). The area features clean air, very low humidity, and moderate winters. There is good Mexican food, and Mexico itself is only an hour's drive away. New Mexico as a whole benefits from a mixed Anglo/Hispanic/Indian culture, well reflected in its architecture, art and activities. The state is renowned for the highly variegated beauty of its scenery. It is one of the larger states in the Union but has one of the smallest populations. Las Cruces is in a partly mountainous, semi-arid region, but is blessed with lush pecan orchards and a surprising variety of other greenery, and with being only an hour and a half's drive from forests and ski areas. The spectacular White Sands National Monument and Gila Wilderness are also within easy reach. Enquiries should be directed to either: John Barnden, OR Yorick Wilks, Director, Graduate Committee Chair, Computing Research Laboratory, Computer Science Dept, Box 30001/3CRL, Box 30001/3CU, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003-0001. (505) 646-6108 (505) 646-5466 E-mail enquiries should go to jbarnden@nmsu.edu. (In any type of enquiry please state where you saw this announcement and what research areas you're interested in.) - -- ted@nmsu.edu Dem Dichter war so wohl daheime In Schildas teurem Eichenhain! Dort wob ich meine zarten Reime Aus Veilchenduft und Mondenschein ------------------------------ Subject: Job Announcement From: Steve Hanson <jose@neuron.siemens.com> Date: Thu, 19 Oct 89 07:21:40 -0400 Learning & Knowledge Acquisition Siemens Corporate Research, Inc, the US research branch of Siemens AG with sales in excess of 30$ Billion worldwide has research openings in the Learning and Knowledge Acquisition Group for research staff scientists. The group does basic and applied studies in the areas of Learning (Connectionist and AI), adaptive processes, and knowledge acquisition. Above and beyond Laboratory facilities, the group has a network of sun workstations (sparcs), file and compute servers, Lisp machines and a mini-supercomputer all managed by a group systems administrator/research programmer. Connections exist with our sister laboratory in Munich, Germany as well as with various leading Universities including MIT, CMU and Princeton University, in the form of joint seminars, shared postdoctoral position, and collaborative research. The susscessful candidate should have a Ph.D. in Computer Science Electrical Engineering, or any other AI-related or Cognitive Science field. Areas that we are soliciting for presently are in Neural Computation, or Connectionist Modeling especially related to Learning Algorithms, Novel Architectures, Dynamics, Biological Modeling, and including any of the following application areas Pattern Classification/Categorization, Speech Recognition, Visual Processing, Sensory Motor Control (Robotics), Problem Solving, Natural Language Understanding, Siemens is an equal opportunity employer, Please send your resume and a reference list to Stephen J. Hanson Learning and Knowledge Acquisition Group Siemens Corporate Research, Inc. 755 College Road East Princeton, NJ 08540 jose@tractatus.siemens.com jose@clarity.princeton.edu ------------------------------ Subject: Neural Networks for Industry: A two-day tutorial From: itrctor@csri.toronto.edu (Ron Riesenbach) Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI Date: 23 Oct 89 20:29:56 +0000 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH CENTRE and TELECOMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF ONTARIO are pleased to sponsor: A Two-Day Tutorial on N E U R A L N E T W O R K S F O R I N D U S T R Y Presented by: Dr. Geoffrey Hinton Regal Constellation Hotel 900 Dixon Road (near Person International Airport) Toronto, Ontario December 12 and 13, 1989 Why Neural Networks? Serial computation has been very successful at tasks that can be character- ized by clean logical rules, but it has been much less successful at tasks like real-world perception or common sense reasoning that typically require a massive amount of uncertain evidence to be combined to reach a reliable decision. The brain is extremely good at these computations and there is now a growing con- sensus that massively parallel "neural" computation may be the best way to solve these problems. The resurgence of interest in neural networks has been fuelled by several factors. Powerful new search techniques such as simulated annealing and its deterministic approximations can be embodied very naturally in these networks, so parallel hardware implementations promise to be extremely fast at performing the best-fit searches required for content-addressable memory and real-world perception. Recently, new learning procedures have been developed which allow networks to learn from examples. The learning procedures automatically construct the internal representations that the networks require in particular domains, and so they may remove the need for explicit programming in ill-structured tasks that contain a mixture of regular structure, partial regularities and excep- tions. There has also been considerable progress in developing ways of represent- ing complex, articulated structures in neural networks. The style of representa- tion is tailored to the computational abilities of the networks and differs in important ways from the style of representation that is natural in serial von- Neuman machines. It allows networks to be damage resistant which makes it much easier to build massively parallel networks. Who Should Attend This tutorial is directed at Industry Researchers and Managers who would like to understand the basic principles underlying the recent progress in neural network research. Some impressive applications of neural networks to real-world problems already exist, but there are also many over-enthusiastic claims and it is hard for the non-expert to distinguish between genuine results and wishful thinking. The tutorial will explain the main learning procedures and show how these are used effectively in current applications. It will also describe research in progress at various laboratories that may lead to better learning procedures in the future. At the end of the tutorial attendees will understand the current state-of- the-art in neural networks and will have a sound basis for understanding future developments in this important technology. Attendees will also learn the major limitations of existing techniques and will thus be able to distinguish between real progress and grandiose claims. They will then be in a position to make informed decisions about whether this technology is currently applicable, or may soon become applicable, to specific problems in their area of interest. Overview of the Tutorial EARLY NEURAL NETWORKS & THEIR LIMITATIONS Varieties of Parallel Computation; Alternative Paradigms for Computation A Comparison of Neural Models and Real Brains: The Processing Elements and the Connectivity Major Issues in Neural Network Research The Least Mean Squares Learning Procedure: Convergence Rate, Practical Applications and Limitations The Perceptron Convergence Procedure and the Limitations of Perceptrons The Importance of Adaptive "Hidden Units" BACK-PROPAGATION LEARNING: THE THEORY & SIMPLE EXAMPLES The Back-Propagation Learning Procedure The NetTalk example Extracting the Underlying Structure of a Domain: The Family Trees Example Generalizing from Limited Training Data: The Parity Function Theoretical guarantees on the generalization abilities of neural nets Improving generalization by encouraging simplicity SUCCESSFUL APPLICATIONS OF BACK-PROPAGATION LEARNING Sonar Signal Interpretation Finding Phonemes in Spectrograms Using Time-Delay Nets Hand-written character recognition Bomb detection Adaptive interfaces for controlling complex physical devices Promising Potential Applications IMPROVEMENTS, VARIATIONS & ALTERNATIVES TO BACK-PROPAGATION Ways of Optimizing the Learning Parameters for Back-Propagation How the Learning Time Scales with the Size of the Task Back-Propagation in Recurrent Networks for Learning Sequences Using Back-Propagation with Complex Post-Processing Self-Supervised Back-Propagation Pre-Processing the Input to Facilitate Learning Comparison with Radial Basis Functions UNSUPERVISED LEARNING PROCEDURES Competitive Learning for discovering clusters Kohonen's Method of Constructing Topographic Maps: Applications to Speech Recognition Linsker's method of learning by extracting principal components Using spatio-temporal coherence as an internal teacher Using spatial coherence to learn to recognize shapes ASSOCIATIVE MEMORIES, HOPFIELD NETS & BOLTZMANN MACHINES Linear Associative Memories: Inefficient One-Pass Storage Versus Efficient Iterative Storage Early Non-Linear Associative Memories: Willshaw Nets Coarse-coding and Kanerva's sparse distributed memories Hopfield Nets and their Limitations Boltzmann Machines, Simulated Annealing and Stochastic Units Relationship of Boltzmann Machines to Bayesian Inference MEAN FIELD NETWORKS Appropriate Languages and Computers for Software Simulators Predictions of Future Progress in the Theory and Applications of Neural Nets GUEST LECTURE Neural Signal Processing, by Dr. Simon Haykin, Director, Communications Research Laboratory, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. In this talk Dr. Haykin will present the results of neural signal process- ing research applied to radar-related problems. The algorithms considered include (a) the backpropagation algorithm, (b) the Kohomen feature map, and (c) the Boltzman machine. The radar data bases used in the study include ice-radar as encountered in the Arctic, and air traffic control primary radar. The neural processing is performed on the Warp systolic machine, which is illustrative of a massively parallel computer. Seminar Schedule Tuesday, December 12, 1989 Wednesday, December 13, 1989 8:00 a.m. Registration and Coffee 8:00 a.m. Coffee 9:00 Opening words: Mike Jenkins, 9:00 Tutorial Session #5 Exec. Director, ITRC and Peter Leach, Exec. Director,TRIO 9:15 Tutorial Session #1 10:30 Break 10:30 Break 11:00 Tutorial Session #6 11:00 Tutorial Session #2 12:30 p.m. Lunch 12:30 p.m. Lunch 2:00 Tutorial Session #7 2:00 Tutorial Session #3 3:30 Break 3:30 Break 4:00 Guest lecture: Dr. Simon Haykin, "Neural Signal Processing" 4:00 Tutorial Session #4 5:00 Closing words 5:30 Wine and Cheese reception Registration and Fees: The tutorial fee is $100 for employees of companies who are members of ITRC's Industrial Affiliates Program or who's companies are members of TRIO. Non-members fees are $375/person. Payment can be made by Visa, MasterCard, AMEX or by cheque (Payable to: "Information Technology Research Centre"). Due to limited space ITRC and TRIO members will have priority in case of over- subscription. ITRC and TRIO reserve the right to limit the number of regis- trants from any one company. Included in the fees are a copy of the course notes and transparencies, coffee and light refreshments at the breaks, a luncheon each day as well as an informal wine and cheese reception Tuesday evening. Participants are responsi- ble for their own hotel accommodation, reservations and costs, including hotel breakfast, evening meals and transportation. PLEASE MAKE YOUR HOTEL RESERVA- TIONS EARLY: Regal Constellation Hotel 900 Dixon Road Etobicoke, Ontario M9W 1J7 Telephone: (416) 675-1500 Telex: 06-989511 Fax: (416) 675-1737 Registrations will be accepted up to and including the day of the event however, due to limited space, attendees who register by December 6th will have priority over late registrants. All cancellations after December 6th will result in a $50 withdrawal fee. To register, complete the registration form attached to the end of this message then mail or fax it to either one of the two sponsors. Dr. Geoffrey E. Hinton Geoffrey Hinton is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and a princi- pal researcher with the Information Technology Research Centre. He received his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. He has been working on computational models of neural networks for the last fifteen years and has published 55 papers and book chapters on applications of neural networks in vision, learning, and knowledge representation. These publications include the book "Parallel Models of Associative Memory" (with James Anderson) and the original papers on distributed representations, on Boltzmann machines (with Ter- rence Sejnowski), and on back-propagation (with David Rumelhart and Ronald Wil- liams). He is also one of the major contributors to the recent collection "Parallel Distributed Processing" edited by Rumelhart and McClelland. Dr. Hinton was formerly an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon University where he created the connectionist research group and was responsible for the graduate course on "Connectionist Artificial Intelli- gence". He is on the governing board of the Cognitive Science Society and the governing council of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cognitive Science, Neural Computation and Computer Speech and Language. Dr. Hinton is an expert at explaining neural network research to a wide variety of audiences. He has given invited lectures on the research at numerous international conferences and workshops, and has twice co-organized and taught at the Carnegie-Mellon "Connectionist Models Summer School". He has given three three-day industrial tutorials in the United States for the Technology Transfer Institute. He has also given tutorials at AT&T Bell labs, at Apple, and at two annual meetings of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Dr. Simon Haykin Simon Haykin received his B.Sc. (First-Class Honours) in 1953, Ph.D. in 1956, and D.Sc. in 1967, all in Electrical Engineering from the University of Birmingham, England. In 1980, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is co-recipient of the Ross Medal from the Engineering Institute of Canada and the J.J. Thomson Premium from the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London. He was awarded the McNaughton Gold Medal, IEEE (Region 7), in 1986. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. He is presently Director of the Communications Research Laboratory and Pro- fessor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. His research interests include image processing, adaptive filters, adaptive detection, and spectrum estimation with applications to radar. ----------------------------- Registration Form ----------------------------- Neural Networks for Industry Tutorial by Geoffrey Hinton December 12-13, 1989 Regal Constellation, 900 Dixon Rd. Name _________________________________________ Title _________________________________________ Organization _________________________________________ Address _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Postal Code _______________________ Telephone __________________ Fax ___________________ E-mail _______________________ Registration Fee (check one): _ ITRC/TRIO Members - $100 _ Non-members - $375 Method of Payment (check one): _ Cheque (Make cheques payable to "Information Technology Research Centre") _ VISA Card Number _________________________ _ MasterCard ==> Expiration Date _____________________ _ American Express Surname _____________________________ Signature ___________________________ Please note: There will be a $50 cancellation charge after December 6/89. Please fax or mail your registration to ITRC or TRIO: ITRC, Rosanna Reid TRIO, Debby Sullivan 203 College St., Suite 303 300 March Rd., Suite 205 Toronto, Ontario, M5T 1P9 Kanata, Ontario, K2K 2E2 Phone (416) 978-8558 Phone (613) 592-9211 Fax (416) 978-8597 Fax (613) 592-8163 PRIORITY REGISTRATION DEADLINE: DECEMBER 6/89. ------------------------------ End of Neurons Digest *********************