18.879, Calls: Comp Ling/Bulgaria; Cognitive Science,Comp Ling/USA

Fri Mar 23 05:13:26 UTC 2007

LINGUIST List: Vol-18-879. Fri Mar 23 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.879, Calls: Comp Ling/Bulgaria; Cognitive Science,Comp Ling/USA

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1)
Date: 20-Mar-2007
From: Marina Santini < santinim at inwind.it >
Subject: Workshop on Genre and NLP 

2)
Date: 20-Mar-2007
From: Christopher Prince < chris at cprince.com >
Subject: 7th International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics 

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 01:08:22
From: Marina Santini < santinim at inwind.it >
Subject: Workshop on Genre and NLP 

Full Title: Workshop on Genre and NLP 

Date: 30-Sep-2007 - 30-Sep-2007
Location: Borovets, Bulgaria 
Contact Person: Marina Santini
Meeting Email: MarinaSantini.MS at gmail.com
Web Site: http://www.sics.se/use/genre-ws/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 15-Jun-2007 

Meeting Description
RANLP-2007 Workshop: 'Towards Genre-Enabled Search Engines: The Impact of NLP' 

First Call for Papers

Workshop
''Towards Genre-Enabled Search Engines: The Impact of NLP''

Workshop held in conjunction with RANLP-2007  
Location: Borovets, Bulgaria 
Workshop Date: 30 September 2007 

Organizers
Marina Santini and Georg Rehm

Workshop website: http://www.sics.se/use/genre-ws/ 

RANLP 2007 website: http://lml.bas.bg/ranlp2007/  

Aims 
Generally speaking, genres are textual categories that streamline communication
by relying on acknowledged conventions and raising predictable expectations. For
instance, the conventions underlying the Blog genre are represented by a
sequence of daily entries that contain narratives, opinions, and feelings of the
blogger, an individual who wishes to participate in a discussion on a certain
subject. These entries are public and other bloggers can directly comment on
them by sending their own postings. These conventions are different from those
underlying the Editorial genre, where a single person presents an argumentative
statement of views that are considered to be representative of a newspaper as a
whole. In brief, genres convey the context of communication. This context is
essential when determining the relevance of the information contained in a text.

The concept of genre has great potential for Information Retrieval (IR). One
application is its integration in a search-engine architecture, enabling the
user to combine topic-based search with genre-based search. 

The distinction between topical and non-topical textual dimensions is crucial
when it comes to features. Traditionally, topics and domains rely on features
based on content words (e.g. in the bag-of-words approach), while genre classes
appear to be more easily identified through the use of grammatical features
(like function words, POS tags, and syntactic features). As Natural Language
Processing (NLP) provides methods to retrieve grammatical features, an
investigation of the influence of NLP on automatic genre identification appears
of primary importance. For this reason, we wish to investigate to what extent
NLP can help identify genre in an IR scenario. 

The main aims of the workshop are as follows: 

- To identify the key features that help classify documents by genre, and their
efficiency and effectiveness within an IR framework. 
- To explore how genres can improve search engines, and in particular how it can
be integrated with topic-based retrieval. 
- To bring together researchers working on genre in different communities - such
as Computational Linguistics, NLP, Information Retrieval and Extraction, Text
and Web Mining, or Summarization - in order to investigate the extent to which
NLP can assist or enable automatic genre identification. 

Topics 
The topics of interests include but are not limited to: 

- Computational modelling of genres for web applications; 
- Implementation of genre-based applications for retrieval; 
- The impact of lexis, morphology and syntax on automatic genre identification; 
- Genre-revealing features and their automatic extraction; 
- Genre-driven NLP tools, such as genre-driven taggers, parsers, or discourse
annotation; 
- Genre classification schemes accounting for multi-genre and no-genre documents; 
- Test collections and evaluation metrics for genre-enabled applications; 
- Clustering and visualization of results based on genre. 

Categories of Papers 
Papers can be submitted to one of two categories: regular paper and poster.
Authors must designate one of these categories at submission time. Regular
papers are full-length papers and must not exceed 8 pages. Posters are submitted
as extended abstracts (max 4 pages). If accepted, a poster is presented in the
workshop poster session. Both regular papers and poster papers are included in
the workshop proceedings. 

Submissions Instructions 
Format. Authors are invited to submit papers and posters on *original and
unpublished* work in the topic area of this workshop. Papers and posters should
be submitted as PDF files, formatted according to the RANLP 2007 stylefiles,
without author name(s) and affiliation(s). Papers and posters should not exceed
the length indicated above. The RANLP 2007 stylefiles are available at:
http://lml.bas.bg/ranlp2007/submissions.htm 

Please, send papers and posters to both MarinaSantini.MS at gmail.com and
georg.rehm at uni-tuebingen.de 

Reviewing. Each submission will be reviewed at least by three members of the
Program Committee. Reviewing will be blind. Reviewers will be asked to provide
detailed comments, and to score submissions on the following factors: 

- Relevance to the workshop 
- Significance and originality 
- Technical/methodological accuracy 
- References to related work 
- Presentation (clarity, organisation, English) 

Accepted papers policy. Accepted papers (regular papers and posters) will be
published in the workshop proceedings. By submitting a paper at the workshop the
authors agree that, in case the paper is accepted for publication, at least one
of the authors will attend the workshop; all workshop participants are expected
to pay the RANLP-2007 workshop registration fees. 

Dual submissions to the main RANLP 2007 conference and this workshop are
allowed; if you submit to the main session, please do indicate this when you
submit to the workshop. If your paper or poster is accepted for the main
session, you should withdraw it from the workshop upon notification by the main
session. 

Registration 
Information on registration and registration fees will be provided at the
conference website. 

Important Dates 
First Call for papers: March 20, 2007
Second Call for papers: May 2, 2007
Workshop paper submission deadline: June 15, 2007
Workshop paper acceptance notification: July 25, 2007 
Camera-ready papers for workshop proceedings due: August 31, 2007
Workshop date: September 30, 2007 

Program Committee 
Shlomo Argamon (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA) 
Roberto Basili (University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy) 
Pavel Braslavski (Institute of Engineering Science, RAS, Russia) 
Kevin Crowston (Syracuse University, USA) 
Aidan Finn (DERI, Ireland) 
Jussi Karlgren (Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden) 
Alexander Mehler (Bielefeld University, Germany) 
Sven Meyer zu Eissen (University of Weimar, Germany) 
Alessandro Moschitti (University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy) 
Michael Oakes (University of Sunderland, UK) 
Andreas Rauber (Vienna University of Technology, Austria) 
Maarten de Rijke (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) 
Georg Rehm (University of Tübingen, Germany) 
Mark Rosso (North Carolina Central University, USA) 
Dmitri Roussinov (Arizona State University, USA) 
Marina Santini (University of Brighton, UK) 
Serge Sharoff (University of Leeds, UK) 
Michael Shepherd (Dalhousie University, Canada) 
Efstathios Stamatatos (University of the Aegean, Greece) 
Benno Stein (University of Weimar, Germany) 
John Tait (University of Sunderland, UK) 
Ozlem Uzuner (State University of New York, USA) 

Organising Committee 
Marina Santini (University of Brighton, UK) 
Email: MarinaSantini.MS at gmail.com 
Personal Home Page: http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Marina.Santini/ 

Georg Rehm (University of Tübingen, Germany) 
Email: georg.rehm at uni-tuebingen.de 
Personal Home Page: http://georg-re.hm/ 

Contact Information 
For questions or comments, please contact Marina Santini
(MarinaSantini.MS at gmail.com), or Georg Rehm (georg.rehm at uni-tuebingen.de).

-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 01:08:38
From: Christopher Prince < chris at cprince.com >
Subject: 7th International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics 

Full Title: 7th International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics 
Short Title: EpiRob 2007 

Date: 05-Nov-2007 - 07-Nov-2007
Location: Piscataway, NJ, USA 
Contact Person: Christopher Prince
Meeting Email: epirob07 at epigenetic-robotics.org
Web Site: http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org 

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Computational Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 01-Jun-2007 

Meeting Description:

In the past 6 years, the Epigenetic Robotics annual conference has established
itself as a unique place where original interdisciplinary research from
developmental sciences, neuroscience, biology, cognitive robotics, and
artificial intelligence is being presented. 

Call for Papers: Epigenetic Robotics 2007
5-7 November 2007, Piscataway, NJ, USA

Seventh International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics: 
Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems

http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org
Email: epirob07 at epigenetic-robotics.org

Location: 	

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey,
Piscataway, NJ, USA

Submission Deadline: 1 June 2007

Keynote Speakers:

Hod Lipson
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Computing & 
Information Science, Cornell University, USA

Daniel Messinger
Department of Psychology, University of Miami, USA

Carolyn Rovee-Collier and Peter Gerhardstein (co-presenter)
Department of Psychology, Rutgers, NJ, USA (Rovee-Collier)
Department of Psychology, Binghamton University-SUNY, NY, USA (Gerhardstein)

Conference Themes:

Epigenetic systems, either natural or artificial, share a prolonged
developmental process through which varied and complex cognitive and perceptual
structures emerge as a result of the interaction of an embodied system with a
physical and social environment.

Epigenetic robotics has goals including: (1) understanding biological systems by
the interdisciplinary integration of social and engineering sciences and (2)
enabling robots and other artificial systems to autonomously develop skills for
new environments (instead of programming them to solve problems in fixed
environments).

Psychological theory and empirical evidence is being used to inform epigenetic
robotic models, and these models can be used as theoretical tools to make
experimental predictions in developmental psychology.

Epigenetic Robotics themes include, but are not limited to:

- The development of emotion, imitation, synchrony processing,
intersubjectivity, joint attention, intentionality, non-verbal and verbal
communication, sensorimotor schemata, shared meaning and symbolic reference,
social learning, social relationships, social cognition (''mind reading'',
''theory of mind'');
- The scope and limits of maturation, the mechanisms of open-ended development;
- The mechanisms of stage formation and stage transitions;
- The epistemological foundations of using robots to study development;
- The role of motivations, emotions, and value systems in development;
- Interaction between innate structure, ongoing developing structure, and
experience;
- The interplay between embodiment, learning biases and environment;
- The differences between learning and development;
- Algorithms for self-supervision, autonomous exploration, representation
making, and methods for evolving new representations during ontogeny;
- Using robots as theoretical tools (e.g., to make predictions) in experiments
with children;
- Using robots in applied settings (e.g., autism therapy) with children;
- Architectures for autonomous development;
- Robots that can undergo morphological changes and how they can be used to
study the interplay between cognitive and morphological development;

Important Dates:

1 June 2007: Deadline for submission of papers & posters
18 July 2007: Notification of acceptance of papers & posters
5 Sept 2007: Deadline for camera-ready papers
5-7 Nov 2007: EpiRob07 @ Rutgers

Modes of Submission:

(1) Regular Submission (8-page max). After review, regular submissions will
either be accepted or rejected (no revision as short papers or posters). Regular
submissions will be allocated 8 pages in the Proceedings.

(2) Abstract Submission (1-page max). After review, selected authors will be
invited to present a poster. Abstract submissions will be allocated 1 page in
the Proceedings.

Submission instructions will be available from the EpiRob website:
http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org

Related Events:

IROS (Intelligent Robots and Systems)
http://www.crim.ncsu.edu/iros2007
29 October - 2 November 2007 (San Diego)

Organizing Committee:

Christian Balkenius (Lund University, Sweden)
Luc Berthouze (University of Sussex, UK)
Hideki Kozima (NICT, Japan)
Michael Littman (Rutgers, USA)
Christopher G. Prince (University of Minnesota Duluth, USA)

Program Committee:

Pierre Andry (ENSEA, France)
Minoru Asada (Osaka University, Japan)
Christian Balkenius (Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden)
Mark Bickhard (Lehigh University, USA)
Alexander Bernardino (Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa, Portugal)
Luc Berthouze (University of Sussex, UK)
Nadia Berthouze (University College London, UK)
Aude Billard (EPFL, Switzerland)
Lola Canamero (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Robert Clowes (University of Sussex, UK)
Kerstin Dautenhahn (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Yiannis Demiris (Imperial College, UK)
Luciano Fadiga (University of Ferrara, Italy)
Simone Fiori (Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy)
Paul Fitzpatrick (CSAIL, MIT, USA)
Philippe Gaussier (Universite de Cergy-Pointoise & ENSEA, France)
Lakshmi Gogate (SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn, USA)
Rod Grupen (University of Massachusetts, USA)
George Hollich (Purdue University, USA)
Frédéric Kaplan (EPFL, Switzerland)
Benjamin Kuipers (University of Texas, USA)
Hideki Kozima (NICT, Japan)
Max Lungarella (University of Tokyo, Japan)
Lisa Meeden (Swarthmore college, USA)
Giorgio Metta (LIRA-Lab, Genoa, Italy)
Jacqueline Nadel (CNRS, France)
Yukie Nagai (NICT, Japan)
Chrystopher Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Paris, France)
Rolf Pfeifer (University of Zurich, Switzerland)
Christopher G. Prince (University of Minnesota Duluth, USA)
Arnaud Revel (CNRS, ENSEA, University of Cergy Pontoise, France)
Brian Scassellati (Yale University, USA)
Matthew Schlesinger (Southern Illinois University, USA)
Sylvain Sirois (Manchester University, UK)
Michael Spratling (Birkbeck College, UK)
Georgi Stojanov (SS Cyril and Methodius University, Macedonia)
Gert Westermann (Oxford Brookes University, UK)
Tom Ziemke (University of Skovde, Sweden)

For questions or more information, please contact: 
epirob07 at epigenetic-robotics.org

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