HCSNet Update Newsletter Volume 4 Number 12

Tuesday, 25th March 2008
HCSNet Update
Wednesday 26 March 2008

Participant Spotlight

Nikki Rickard, Monash University

Research area: Memory

My research has historically been in behavioural neuroscience, exploring biological mechanisms of memory formation. Over the past 8 years, my focus has shifted to exploring the emotional and cognitive impact of music experiences from a behavioural and cognitive neuroscience perspective (see Rickard, Toukhsati & Field (2005) The effect of music on cognitive performance: Insight from neurobiological and animal studies. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, 4(4), 235-261.) I also have an interest in the fundamental effects of basic music components (such as rhythm) on the physiological system as I believe that these more 'primal' effects may be responsible for some of our most powerful experiences with music. Our research team has previously explored the anxiolytic effects of music on the stress response, the facilitatory effects of rhythmic auditory stimuli on memory in an animal model and the physiological responses to self-selected emotionally powerful music. Current research projects include a large scale evaluation of the impact of school-based music education on cognitive and psychosocial functioning (3 year ARC funded project), modulation of memory via emotionally arousing or calming music, and an examination of verbal memory benefits in people with performance and non-performance based music experience.

Contact:
Nikki Rickard
Monash University
School of Psychology, Psychiatry & Psychological Medicine
email: nikki.rickard@med.monash.edu.au     www: www.med.monash.edu.au/spppm/research/staff/nrickard.html

News

HCSNet International Visiting Speaker Program 2008

HCSNet International Visiting Speaker, Professor Sharon Oviatt of Incaa Designs, Washington, recently presented seminars entitled 'Designing Interfaces that Help Students Think' and 'Implicit User-Adaptive System Engagement in Speech, Pen and Multimodal Interfaces' at NICTA, the Australian Technology Park, Sydney, the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne. Presentation slides are now available at http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/hcsnetevents/2008/oviatt and an event photo is here. Our thanks to IVSP hosts Fang Chen, Penny Sanderson and Frank Vetere for their assistance with Sharon's visit.

Joint HCSNet-EII Workshop on Interactive and Ubiquitous Information Access: Call for Participation

We'd like to remind you that HCSNet and the ARC Research Network in Enterprise Information Infrastructure (EII) Taskforce on Mobility and Accessing Information Infrastructures (MAII) (http://www.eii.edu.au/taskforce0607/maii) are organising a joint workshop on Interactive and Ubiquitous Information Access to be held at NICTA, the Australian Technology Park, Sydney on 16 and 17 May 2008. This workshop is designed to bring together researchers in designing systems, methodologies, infrastructure, and interactive interfaces for information access in mobile and/or ubiquitous environments. HCSNet and EII-MAII will fund travel for a number of Australian participants from outside the Sydney area. Closing date for abstracts: 4 April 2008; for more information, please click here.

SPIRE 2008 - String Processing and Information Retrieval

The University of Melbourne will be hosting the 2008 SPIRE Conference from 10-12 November. Closing date for submissions: 19 May 2008. For further information, including the call for papers and submission requirements, see http://spire2008.csse.unimelb.edu.au.

Upcoming Submission Deadlines

We list here upcoming submission deadlines that fall in the next month. A more complete list of submission deadlines can be found here. Please note that any enquiries regarding these events should be directed to the event organisers, typically identified on the event's website which you can reach from the link below.

Language Diversity and the Acquisition of Linguistic Semantic Knowledge

Wroclaw, Poland
Due date: 27 Mar 2008
URL: http://www.zsi.pwr.wroc.pl/MISSI2008/LDALSK/

8th ISSP 8th International Seminar on Speech Production

Strasbourg, France
Due date: 28 Mar 2008
URL: http://issp2008.loria.fr/

Coling 2008 22nd Intl Conference on Computational Linguistics

Manchester, United Kingdom
Due date: 30 Mar 2008
URL: http://www.coling2008.org.uk/

The Eighth IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems

Nara, Japan
Due date: 31 Mar 2008
URL: http://www.u-pat.org/das08/

MLMI 2008 5th Joint Workshop on Machine Learning and Multimodal Interaction

Utrecht, Netherlands
Due date: 31 Mar 2008
URL: http://www.mlmi.info

Biolinguistics: acquisition and language evolution

North Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Due date: 31 Mar 2008
URL: http://www.york.ac.uk/conferences/bale2008/index.html

TIE3 Third TIE Conference on Tone and Intonation

Lisboa, Portugal
Due date: 1 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.fl.ul.pt/LaboratorioFonetica/TIE3/

Academy of Aphasia

Turku, Finland
Due date: 1 Apr 2008
URL: http://academyofaphasia.org

TIR-08 5th International Workshop on Text-Based Information Retrieval

Turin, Italy
Due date: 1 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.aisearch.de/tir-08

Sociolinguisticsfest

Bloomington, IN, United States
Due date: 1 Apr 2008
URL: http://jones.ling.indiana.edu/~socfest/index.html

2nd Postgraduate Conference in Cognitive Linguistics

Brighton, United Kingdom
Due date: 2 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.languageandcognition.net/pgccl

Software engineering, testing, and quality assurance for natural language processing

Columbus, OH, United States
Due date: 4 Apr 2008
URL: https://www.softconf.com/acl08/ACL08-WS04/

LAGB 2008 Linguistics Association of Great Britain 2008 Meeting

Colchester, United Kingdom
Due date: 4 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.essex.ac.uk/LAGB2008

Creating Second Lives

Gwynedd, United Kingdom
Due date: 5 Apr 2008
URL: http://nieci.bangor.ac.uk/conf/?q=callforpapers/3

Human-machine comparisons of consonant recognition in quiet and noise

Brisbane, Australia
Due date: 7 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.interspeech2008.org/

AAAI-08 Workshop on What Went Wrong and Why: Lessons from AI Research and Applications

Chicago, United States
Due date: 7 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.whatwentwrongandwhy.org/

INTERSPEECH 2008

Brisbane, Australia
Due date: 7 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.interspeech2008.org/

Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning

Sydney, Australia
Due date: 7 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.kr.org/KR2008/

Referring Expression Generation Challenge 2008

Ohio, United States
Due date: 7 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/research/reg08

AAAI 2008 WORKSHOP ON ENHANCED MESSAGING

Chicago, United States
Due date: 7 Apr 2008
URL: http://enhancedmessagingworkshop.googlepages.com/

CAFFEi Comp Aspects of Affectual and Emotional Interaction

Patras, Greece
Due date: 10 Apr 2008
URL: http://caffei.iit.demokritos.gr/

CMNA 2008 8th Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument

Patras, Greece
Due date: 10 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.cmna.info/CMNA8/

IVA-08 The Eighth International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

Tokyo, Japan
Due date: 11 Apr 2008
URL: http://research.nii.ac.jp/~iva2008/

SuB13 13th Sinn und Bedeutung Conference

Stuttgart, Germany
Due date: 13 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.ilg.uni-stuttgart.de/SuB13/index.html

Sixth International Workshop on Authoring of Adaptive and Adaptable Hypermedia

Hannover, Germany
Due date: 14 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.ah2008.org/index.php?section=40

BioSem Biosemantics

Amsterdam, Netherlands
Due date: 15 Apr 2008
URL: http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html.

The 27th International Conference on Lexis and Grammar

L'Aquila, Italy
Due date: 15 Apr 2008
URL: http://infolingu.univ-mlv.fr/Colloques/lgc/

UICM2 Utterance Interpretation and Cognitive Models 2

Brussels, Belgium
Due date: 15 Apr 2008
URL: http://homepages.ulb.ac.be/~uicm2/

FG-2008 The 13th Conference on Formal Grammar

Hamburg, Germany
Due date: 20 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.sfb441.uni-tuebingen.de/fg08/

EEE'08 Conference on Enterprise Computing, E-Commerce and E-Services

Washington, D.C, United States
Due date: 21 Apr 2008
URL: http://cec2008.cs.georgetown.edu/

FOIS-08 5th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems

Saarbruecken, Germany
Due date: 24 Apr 2008
URL: http://fois08.dfki.de

CID III Workshop on Constraints in Discourse III

Potsdam, Germany
Due date: 25 Apr 2008
URL: http://www.constraints-in-discourse.org/cid08

Upcoming Conferences

We list here upcoming conferences and workshops that fall in the next month. A more complete list of events can be found here. Please note that any enquiries regarding these events should be directed to the event organisers, typically identified on the event's website which you can reach from the link below.

Reference to Abstract Objects in Natural Language

Barcelona, Spain
Date: 28 Mar 2008
to 29 Mar 2008 URL: URL TBA

The Neurocognition of Memory and Language

Washington DC, United States
Date: 28 Mar 2008
URL: http://cbbc.georgetown.edu/workshops/2008RA.html

Workshop on Empirical Approaches to Speech Rhythm

London, United Kingdom
Date: 28 Mar 2008
URL: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/rhythm2008

ACCEL-08 Advanced Concepts - Cognizance of English Language

Tamilnadu, India
Date: 28 Mar 2008
URL: http://www.velammal.org

ECIR 2008 30th European Conference on Information Retrieval

Glasgow, United Kingdom
Date: 30 Mar 2008
to 3 Apr 2008 URL: http://ecir2008.dcs.gla.ac.uk/

ECIR'08 Workshop - Exploiting Semantic Annotations in Information Retrieval

Glasgow, United Kingdom
Date: 30 Mar 2008
URL: http://www.yr-bcn.es/esair08

Second International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media

Washington, United States
Date: 31 Mar 2008
to 2 Apr 2008 URL: http://www.icwsm.org/2008/

OPEN REPOSITORIES 2008

University of Southampton, United Kingdom
Date: 1 Apr 2008
to 4 Apr 2008 URL: http://www.openrepositories.org/2008

AISB 2008 Convention Symposium on Affective Language in Human and Machine

Scotland, United Kingdom
Date: 1 Apr 2008
to 2 Apr 2008 URL: http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~cmellish/aisb08/

Sociolinguistic Issues in the Use of Language Analysis to Determine National Origin

Amsterdam, Netherlands
Date: 3 Apr 2008
to 5 Apr 2008 URL: http://www.taalstudio.nl

FSIM 4 Formal Semantics in Moscow 4

Moscow, Russian Federation
Date: 5 Apr 2008
to 6 Apr 2008 URL: http://syntactic-structures.ru

Vagueness and Language Use

Paris, France
Date: 7 Apr 2008
to 9 Apr 2008 URL: http://paulegre.free.fr/Vagueness/index.html

Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody

Ithaca, NY, United States
Date: 11 Apr 2008
to 13 Apr 2008 URL: http://ling.cornell.edu/prosody08

S2S Workshop - Beyond Short Units

Naples, Italy
Date: 16 Apr 2008
to 19 Apr 2008 URL: http://www.sound2sense.eu/index.php/s2s/workshop/beyond-short-units/

18 CGG 18th Colloquium on Generative Grammar

Lisbon, Portugal
Date: 17 Apr 2008
to 19 Apr 2008 URL: http://www.fl.ul.pt/18CGG

Fourth International Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web

Beijing, China
Date: 22 Apr 2008
URL: http://airweb.cse.lehigh.edu/2008/

NLPIX 2008 NLP Challenges in the Information Explosion Era

Beijing, China
Date: 22 Apr 2008
URL: http://www-tori.jaist.ac.jp:8000/NLPIX2008/index.html

Reconciling Language Learning and Assessment

Illinois, United States
Date: 25 Apr 2008
to 26 Apr 2008 URL: http://www.uic.edu/depts/lclc/Research/symposium08.shtml
HCSNet Update is a weekly electronic publication of HCSNet, the ARC Research Network in Human Communication Science, and is emailed to all Network participants. If you have received this newsletter by some other means, or you'd like to find out more about HCSNet, visit our website at www.hcsnet.edu.au. For enquiries about this newsletter or to stop receiving it, please email newsletter@hcsnet.edu.au.