Dissertation Defense

Towards Relational Theory Formation
from Undifferentiated Sensor Data

Marc Pickett

10:00am Monday, 18 April 2011
ITE 325b, UMBC

Human adults have rich theories in their heads of how the world works. These theories include objects and relations for both concrete and abstract concepts. Everything we know either must be innate or learned through experience. Yet it's unclear how much of this model needs to be innate for a computer. The core question this dissertation addresses is how a computer can develop rich relational theories using only its raw sensor data. We address this by outlining a "bridge" between raw sensors and a rich relational theory. We have implemented parts of this bridge, with other parts as feasibility studies, while others remain conceptual.

At the core of this bridge is Ontol, a system that constructs a conceptual structure or "ontology" from feature-set data. Ontol is inspired by cortical models that have been shown to be able to express invariant concepts, such as images independent of any translation or rotation. As a demonstration of the utility of the ontologies created by Ontol, we present a novel semi-supervised learning algorithm that learns from only a handful of positive examples. Like humans, this algorithm doesn't require negative examples. Instead, this algorithm uses the ontologies created by Ontol from unlabeled data, and searches for a Bayes-optimal theory given this "background knowledge".

The rest of the dissertation shows in principle how Ontol can be used as the "workhorse" for a system that finds analogies, discovers useful mappings, and might ultimately create theories, such as a "gisty" theory of "number".

Committee:

• Tim Oates, Associate Professor, UMBC
• Tim Finin, Professor, UMBC
• Rob Goldstone, Professor, Indiana University
• Sergei Nirenburg, Professor, UMBC
• Matt Schmill, Research Faculty, UMBC

I wear many hats here at UMBC, and one of which happens to be a programmer for the Student Events Board. We are currently booking food venders to come sell food (for VERY cheap) to students at the all-day festival on April 16^th.

Our list includes:

• Funnel Cake
• Fries
• Pit Beef Sandwiches
• Curry choices with rice
• Falafel
• Crepes
• Blend-your-own smoothies (via bicycle)
• Cotton Candy
• Watermelon
• Popsicles

Not all of these are confirmed, but it’s a rough list.

What sounds good? What are you excited for? What sounds gross? How do you pronounce “falafel”? Comment and let me know what you think so far. Keep in mind that many of these options will be either free or for just a dollar (except pit beef).

What would you add to the list? Is there anything that you have been craving? What would be an awesome food to try?

Put all your thoughts in the comment section and we will try to see what we can do with your requests.

Quadmania is April 16^th, just around the corner! And this year will feature music and food extensively. Don’t miss this great chance to try some things you have never eaten. When was the last time you blended your own smoothie using a bicycle?

The Committee to Protect Journalists has issued an alert for UMBC alumnus Matthew VanDyke ’02, political science, who has gone missing in Libya. He is one of 15 journalists currently missing or in government custody in Libya.

Read the full story here and please share.  Keeping Matthew in the public eye is important!

Celebrate National Library Week with free database trials from Gale. Trials run through April 24, 2011.

* Gale NewsVault — More than 10 million digitized pages
* Global Issues in Context — Today’s world issues from a global perspective
* Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive — The largest, most ambitious collection devoted to slavery studies
* GREENR — An interdisciplinary approach to environmental studies
* Powerspeak Languages — The ultimate language learning resource
* Science in Context — How scientific disciplines relate to real-world issues

Please let us know what you think. Leave a comment or send your comments to Drew Alfgren at alfgren@umbc.edu.

Great Gates

Michael Young ’11, philosophy, was recently awarded the Gates Cambridge scholarship, one of the world’s most selective academic awards. This fall, Young will enroll at the University of Cambridge to pursue his master’s degree in philosophy.

“It’s a great honor and I’m very humbled. I look forward to representing our community,” said Young.

The Gates Cambridge program, which is funded by Bill and Melinda Gates, aims to build a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others. The awards cover the full cost of full-time graduate study and research in any subject available at the University of Cambridge. Other 2011 U.S. scholars include students from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, MIT, the University of Chicago and other universities.

Young, who has also taken a heavy course load in biological sciences while at UMBC, plans to attend medical school after completing his degree at Cambridge. His goal is to work in bioethics, examining the philosophical framework and ethical theory grounding standards of care in medicine and public health.

“I think that the combination of philosophy and medicine can make medicine a more examined practice,” said Young. “It’s not something that people typically think about, because the alliance is not always clear… but the ways in which philosophers think, and the critical tools they use to analyze arguments, are ones that can be applied across the disciplines.”

In addition to his work in philosophy and biological sciences, Young is the founding director of Healing Harmonies, a student-run volunteer organization that organizes performances by student musicians for the elderly and sick, on the editorial board for Bartleby and a fencer on the UMBC fencing team.

“He’s a jack of all trades but he’s also a master of many of them. It’s rare to find that kind of excellence in more than one field,” said Simon Stacey, associate director of the Honors College, who helped Young prepare his application.

In order to be considered for the award, Young had to first gain acceptance to Cambridge. Then, his essay was reviewed by a selection committee and he was interviewed by a panel of scholars.

“The interview turned into a very interesting discussion about the dialogue between the disciplines and the utility of such a dialogue as it pertains to philosophy and medicine,” Young said.

Young is one of 30 2011 U.S. Gates Cambridge Scholars. The scholars were chosen from 800 applicants from 21 states and 30 U.S. colleges and universities. The American scholars will be joined by 60 Gates Scholars from other parts of the world.

UMBC alumni Philip Graff ’08, physics, and Simon Gray ’08, chemical engineering, received Gates Cambridge Scholarships in 2008. Ian Ralby ’02, modern languages and linguistics, M.A. intercultural communication, received the scholarship in 2007 and 2008.

“I think it’s really quite remarkable that a UMBC student, once again, should be among the few chosen,” said Stacey.

(4/8/11)

Bad news for Beer: Drinking too much can give you cancer

Cairo Gets tense:  The battle for Egypt is not over yet

Going to college? Wait a year!

Every April, Rwanda is awash with purple, the color of mourning. This April, the 17th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, is no different.

The genocide in 1994 was a frenetic killing spree. 800,000 people were dead after 100 days. That’s 8,000 people dying every day, 333 people dying every hour, 5 people dying every minute.

The killing was driven by many factors. Rwanda is made up of two main people groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis.

Hutus and Tutsis speak the same language, live in the same country, share the same culture. But like so many other countries, Rwanda was wrecked by colonialism, which set up artificial differences between the two groups.

The Background

Here’s a shortened version of the lead-up to the genocide (find out more about the whole story here).

Rwanda was a colony of Belgium.  For decades under Belgian rule, Tutsis were the favored tribe. Laws were put in place to suppress Hutus. Then, in the 1950’s everything changed.

Belgium began to withdraw from the country, old laws were thrown out. The Hutus were given more power and soon turned the tables on their Tutsi persecutors.

The Tutsis spent the next few decades being exiled and oppressed by the Hutus.

There were several small massacres (is there ever such a thing?) before 1994.

However, 1994 saw an explosion of violence. It started when the Rwandan President’s plane was shot down in April of that year.

The Hutu extremists blamed the Tutsis (that fact is still contested. Many,  think  Hutu extremists shot down the plane as an excuse to start the genocide).

Soon the killings started. Radio stations were used to spread the horror… announcing names of Tutsis to be killed.

It is very important to note that not all Hutus were contributing to the killing. Rather, there were many Hutus who actively saved Tutsi lives.

Too often, Hutus have been painted in a bad light.  It should be understood that some Hutus were victims as well. Some were forced at gunpoint to take part in the rampage while other Hutus were killed for refusing to do so.

The Tutsi Response

Over the decades, A number of Tutsi exiles have ended up in neighboring Uganda. There they started an army of sorts whose aim was to overthrow the Hutu government. When the genocide began, this Tutsi army came into Rwanda to fight. Many people credit the Tutsi army (the Rwandan Patriotic Front) with stopping the genocide.

The International Community

The international community knew what was going on… but did little to stop it.

A small group of U.N. troops were already stationed in Rwanda at the time. The troops, led by Romeo Dallaire,  did try to stop the genocide, but they were ill-equipped. Their reports calling the situation in Rwanda genocide were dismissed by U.N. officials in New York, including Kofi Annan, who later became the U.N. Secretary General.

France was the only country to get actively involved, launching Operation Turquoise.

They said that Operation Turquoise was to help stop the genocide.

Some question this fact. The French were very close to Hutu leaders and brought in airplanes to fly important Hutu officials out of Rwanda.

There are also numerous reports of French soldiers helping the Interhamwe (the extremist Hutu group that carried out most of the killing) cover up the genocide by burying bodies in mass graves- and then proceeding to play volleyball over those graves.

The End

The genocide ended in mid-July, with the Rwandan Patriotic Front pushing the Hutu extremists out of the country.

Those who participated in the genocide, called genocidaires, fled to refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Many Hutus who did not mastermind the genocide also fled because they had been told that the Tutsis would want revenge.

The international community finally decided to get involved then, giving aid to the refugee camps.

This is a worthy cause, however these same camps were havens for genocidaires.

The genocidaires surrounded themselves with innocent civilians for protection. Now an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has been set up to prosecute the genocidaires.

The Reason

Some of you might wonder why this warrants a US Democrazy post.

We have noticed  chilling stories and images emerging from another African country, the Ivory Coast.

An estimated 1000 people have been killed in that new conflict. It is important that another genocide like the one in Rwanda is avoided at all costs.

The story of Rwanda needs to be told and never forgotten.