http://www.oliverobst.eu Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:29:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en To get a quick overview on what is happening this year at NIPS, I have taken the titles of accepted papers and used the resulting text to produce a word cloud (a screen shot created using http://www.wordle.net/). The word cloud shows the hottest topics as the largest words (unsurprisingly, 'learning' ... http://www.oliverobst.eu/archives/91 Our new paper describes a mathematical model for generic neural microcircuits, with potential engineering applications, as well as implications to understand how networks in biology are shaped to be optimally adapted to requirements of their environment. Reservoir computing (RC) is a recent paradigm in the field of recurrent neural networks. Networks ... http://www.oliverobst.eu/archives/79 The principle of least effort in communications has been shown, by Ferrer i Cancho and Solé, to explain emergence of power laws (e.g., Zipf's law) in human languages. In our new paper, Origins of Scaling in Genetic Code (O. Obst, D. Polani, M. Prokopenko), published on ECAL 2009, we  apply ... http://www.oliverobst.eu/archives/67 I was excited to find one of my approaches being used in a commercial product for emergency egress simulation, sold by a company in the US: Back in 2006, Heni, Jan and I published an approach we called Inverse Steering Behaviors in the chapter "Fast, Neat, and Under Control: Arbitrating ... http://www.oliverobst.eu/archives/49 In a paper that was recently accepted at the European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks (ESANN 2009), we look at different ways to influence the performance of echo state networks. Traditionally, echo state networks and other reservoir computing approaches use a fixed random connected reservoir, which leads to significant variation ... http://www.oliverobst.eu/archives/44 ICDL is a multidisciplinary conference pertaining to all subjects related to the development and learning processes of natural and artificial systems, including perceptual, cognitive, behavioral, emotional and all other mental capabilities that are exhibited by humans, higher animals, and robots. Its visionary goal is to understand autonomous development in humans and higher animals in ... http://www.oliverobst.eu/archives/37 Finally, the book Computers in Sport (edited by P. Dabnicki and A. Baca) appeared. In this book, my colleagues and I have a chapter "Approaching a Formal Soccer Theory from the Behavior Specification in Robotic Soccer", where we discuss a top-down approach to modelling soccer knowledge, as it can be ... http://www.oliverobst.eu/archives/34 The Idiap research institute (http://www.idiap.ch) seeks several PhD students in the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) to work in the team of Prof. José del R. Millán (http://people.epfl.ch/jose.millan). The doctoral student will work in the framework of European and Swiss projects related to the development of noninvasive brain-actuated devices in areas ... http://www.oliverobst.eu/archives/36 At CSIRO, we have an open position for a Sensor and Sensor Networks Platform Leader. CSIRO has identified four capability platforms of strategic importance to its future. One of these is Sensors & Sensor Networks which has the potential to radically transform the way science is done by measuring ... http://www.oliverobst.eu/archives/35 There is an international summer school on Functional Genomics at the Baia Samuele Conference Centre, Scicli, Sicily, Italy, July 5th-19th 2008. The webpage is http://www.functional-genomics.it/school, registration deadline May 20th. Also in Italy, there is the Bertinoro International Summer School of Natural Computation - BNC 2008. It is to be held at ... http://www.oliverobst.eu/archives/32