This Week's Talks
More detailed information may be found from the following
group seminar pages
Formal Analysis,
Theory and Algorithms Research Group
GIST
Information
Retrieval
Embedded, Networked, and Distributed Systems
Research Corner
Cakes Talks
Week Beginning Monday March 8, 2010
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
4:00, Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room
The session will be about Measuring Search User Experience. I aim to show that by changing the underlying representation to focus on user experience it is possible to measure a whole range of Information Access Systems from filtering to retrieval to browsing using the same conceptual framework.
The aim of an Information Retrieval (IR) application is to support the user accessing relevant information effectively and efficiently. It is well known that system performance, in terms of finding relevant information is heavily dependent upon the IR application (i.e. the IR system exposed through the application's interface), as well as how the application is used by the user (i.e. how the user interacts with the system through the interface). Thus, a very pragmatic evaluation question that arises at the application level is: what is the effectiveness experienced by the user during the usage of the application? To be able to answer this question, we represent the usage of an application by the stream of documents the user encounters while interacting with the application. This representation enables us to monitor and track the performance over time and usage. By taking a stream-based, time-centric view of the IR process, instead of a rank-list, topic/task centric view, the evaluation can be performed on any IR based application. To illustrate the difference and the utility of this approach, we demonstrate how a new suite of usage based effectiveness measures can be applied. This work provides the conceptual foundations for measuring, monitoring and modeling the performance of any IR application which needs to be evaluated over time and in context.
See the following paper for details of the content: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1646034
As opposed to giving the usual research seminar, I will be giving a tutorial/lecture as this session will be observed and assessed by Dr. Velda McCune, as part of the excellent New Lecturer Teaching and Learning Programme I am undertaking. If you would feel uncomfortable about her presence please notify me so that we can arrange an alternative.
[IR Talk] Measuring Search User Experience
Leif Azzopardi (University of Glasgow)
4:00, Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room
[FATA Talk] Signalling pathway cross-talk: a top-down and bottom-up approach
Robin Donaldson
Biochemical signalling pathways can be thought of as information flow within a cell. Cross-talk, an interaction between two signalling pathways, accounts for many of the complex behaviours and is often critical in producing the correct signal-response relationship. I will briefly describe past work, a bottom-up approach to modelling
cross-talk: a new categorisation of cross-talk and a modelling approach based on generic modules in PRISM. The main focus of the talk will be a top-down approach to decompose a large biological network into signalling pathways and reason over the interactions. I will discuss Invariant analysis from the world of Petri nets, and ask Can we do better?.
11:00, Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room
[ Inference Seminar ] Slice sampling with latent Gaussian models
Iain Murray (University of Edinburgh)
Many probabilistic models incorporate multivariate Gaussian
distributions to explain dependencies between observed variables. Very
easy to apply inference algorithms would be useful for rapidly
developing and exploring such models. We have developed Elliptical Slice
Sampling, a slice-sampling variant that requires zero free parameters
and is suitable for updating strongly coupled a-priori Gaussian variates
given non-Gaussian observations. We are also developing new robust slice
samplers for updating covariance parameters.
4:30, other
Applicant Information Session Campus Tour
6:00, Sir Alwyn Williams Building, Level 5 Open Area
Applicant Information Session
4:00, Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room
The past several years have seen Grid software mature to the
point where it is now at the heart of some of the largest science
data analysis systems - notably the CMS and Atlas experiments
at the LHC. Systems like these, with their integrated, distributed
data management and work flow management routinely treat
computing and storage resources as services. That is, resources
that that can be discovered, queried as to present and future
state, and that can be scheduled with guaranteed capacity. In
Grid based systems the network provides the communication
among these service-based resources, yet historically the network
is a best effort resource offering no guarantees and little state
transparency. Recent work in the R&E network community, that
is associated with the science community, has made progress
toward developing network capabilities that provide service-like
characteristics: Guaranteed capacity can be scheduled in advance
and transparency for the state of the network from end-to-end.
The US Dept. of Energy, Office of Science national network -
ESnet - has pioneered such a service. The service -OSCARS -
is based on a particular use of MPLS virtual circuit capability,
combined with non-strict rate-limiting the source and admission
control based on a temporal topology database that tracks the
current and future service commitments in the network.
ESnet uses OSCARS to manage internal (engineering) circuits in
the network, to do traffic engineering that keeps the very large
science data flows off of the general IP network, and to provide
a schedulable, guaranteed bandwidth service to the user
community.
In this talk I will discuss the motivation for such a service, and its
implementation and use in ESnet. I will also describe the
international collaboration that is defining the inter-domain
protocols that will allow diverse implementations of the service
(of which several exist) communicate in order to set up end-to-
end, cross-domain virtual circuits (e.g. from a physics lab in the
US to CERN).
[ ENDS Seminar ] ESnet's OSCARS Virtual Circuit Service - A Realization of a Hybrid Packet-Circuit Network
William E. Johnston, ESnet
[ ENDS Seminar ] From higher-order programming languages to hardware via game semantics
Dan Ghica, Birmingham University
This talk will give an overview of my project Geometry of Synthesis, the semantics-directed compilation of programming languages into hardware. I will give a brief introduction to game semantics and show how the game model can be easily represented using asynchronous hardware. The synthesis of synchronous hardware involves a less straightforward process, and I will touch upon some of the technical issues that arise, including optimisation strategies. I will show some simple example programs and their execution on a Virtex 5 FPGA and conclude with plans for the future.
4:00, Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 423 Seminar RoomThe Role of Computation in the Future of European Aviation
Prof. Chris Johnson
If you have ever been stuck at an airport due to Air Traffic Control restrictions then I'll explain what causes the delays. I will then describe the European Commission's SESAR Joint Undertaking. This is a 2.1 Billion Euro programme that is using innovative computational techniques to reduce the bottle necks in aviation. If you come to the talk then at least you'll be able to tell your friends what will be delaying them in the future. I chair the Scientific Advisory Panel for SESAR - there are significant research funds available for many different areas of computing. I will describe some of these opportunities especially in the areas of systems engineering, inference, optimization, human factors and safety.