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December 3, 2007 Hyatt Regency Vancouver, BC, Canada December 2007 7 2007 2007 December 3, 2007 Hyatt Regency Vancouver, BC, Canada December 3-6, 2007 Hyatt Regency Vancouver, BC, Canada 2007 December 7-8, 2007 Westin Resort & Spa Hilton Whistler Resort & Spa Whistler, BC, Canada 2007 7 Sponsored by the Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation, Inc. There are 6 invited talks and 217 accepted papers selected from a total of 975 submissions considered by the program committee. Because the program stresses interdisciplinary interactions, there are no parallel sessions. Papers presented at the conference will appear in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 20, edited by John Platt, Daphne Koller, Yoram Singer, and Sam Roweis, to be published by NIPS in 2008. Contents Organizing Committee . 7 Program Committee . 7 NIPS Foundation Offices and Board Members . 8 Sponsors................................................... 9 Core Logistics Team . 9 Outstanding Student Paper Awards . 10 Student Paper Honorable Mentions . 10 Program Highlights 11 Schedule of Presentations 15 Schedule, Monday, Tutorials . 15 Schedule, Monday . 15 Schedule, Tuesday . 23 Schedule, Wednesday . 34 Schedule, Thursday . 45 Abstracts of Tutorials 47 Tutorials, Monday, Session 1 . 47 Tutorials, Monday, Session 1 . 48 Tutorials, Monday, Session 2 . 49 Tutorials, Monday, Session 2 . 50 Tutorials, Monday, Session 3 . 51 Tutorials, Monday, Session 3 . 52 Abstracts, Monday 53 Abstracts, Monday, Oral Session — Opening Spotlights (Chair: Dale Schuurmans, University of Alberta) . 53 Abstracts, Monday, Posters . 56 Abstracts, Monday, Demos . 84 Abstracts, Tuesday 87 Abstracts, Tuesday, Oral Session — Structured Statistical Models (Chair: Michael Black, Brown University) . 87 Abstracts, Tuesday, Oral Session — Probabilistic Optimization (Chair: Francis Bach, Ecole Normale Superieure) . 89 Abstracts, Tuesday, Oral Session — Optimization for Learning (Chair: John Platt, Microsoft Research) . 92 Abstracts, Tuesday, Oral Session — Theory and Sequential Decision Making (Chair: Sanjoy Dasgupta, University of California San Diego) . 94 Abstracts, Tuesday, Posters . 97 Abstracts, Tuesday, Demos . 124 Abstracts, Wednesday 127 Abstracts, Wednesday, Oral Session — Probabilistic Models and Methods (Chair: William Noble, University of Washington) . 127 Abstracts, Wednesday, Oral Session — Probabilistic Representations and Learning (Chair: YeeWhye Teh, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit) . 129 Abstracts, Wednesday, Oral Session — Cognitive Processes (Chair: Mark Steyvers, University of California Irvine) . 132 Abstracts, Wednesday, Oral Session — Systems and Applications (Chair: Fei Sha, University of California Berkeley) . 134 Abstracts, Wednesday, Posters . 137 Abstracts, Thursday 167 Abstracts, Thursday, Oral Session — Neuroscience I (Chair: Alan Stocker, New York University) . 167 Abstracts, Thursday, Oral Session — Neuroscience II (Chair: Odelia Schwartz, Albert Einstein College of Medicine) . 170 Reviewers 172 Notes 179 Subject Index 181 Author Index 184 Poster and Demo Floor Plan Maps 191 Useful Local Information 197 Instructions for Authors 203 Authors! Please, see the last two pages of the book. 7 Organizing Committee General Chair John C. Platt, Microsoft Research Program Co-Chairs Daphne Koller, Stanford University Yoram Singer, Google Tutorial Chair Chris Burges, Microsoft Research Workshop Co-Chairs Adrienne Fairhall, University of Washington Charles Isbell, Georgia Institute of Technology Bob Williamson, National ICT Australia Demonstration Co-Chairs Giacomo Indiveri, INI ETH Zurich Xubo Song, Oregon Graduate Institute Publications Chair Sam Roweis, University of Toronto Publicity Chair Sumit Basu, Microsoft Research Online Proceedings Chair Andrew McCallum, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Volunteers Chair Fernando Perez Cruz, Princeton Univeristy Program Committee Program Co-Chairs Daphne Koller, Stanford University Yoram Singer, Google Program Committee Area Chairs Francis Bach, Ecole des Mines de Paris Michael Black, Brown University Nicolo Cesa-Bianchi, Universita degli Studi di Milano Olivier Chapelle, Yahoo Research Sanjoy Dasgupta, UC San Diego Virginia de Sa, UC San Diego David Fleet, University of Toronto Isabelle Guyon, ClopiNet Bert Kappen, University of Nijmegen Dan Klein, UC Berkeley Chih-Jen Lin, National Taiwan University Kevin Murphy, University of British Columbia William Noble, University of Washington Stefan Schaal, University of Southern California Dale Schuurmans, University of Alberta Odelia Schwartz, Salk Institute & Albert Einstein College Fei Sha, UC Berkeley Mark Steyvers, UC Irvine Alan Stocker, New York University Yee Whye Teh, Gatsby Unit, UCL Nikos Vlassis, Technical University of Crete Ulrike von Luxburg, MPI for Biological Cybernetics Chris Williams, University of Edinburgh Andrew Zisserman, University of Oxford 8 NIPS Foundation Officers and Board Members President Terrence Sejnowski, The Salk Institute Vice President for Development Sebastian Thrun, Stanford University Treasurer Robert Jacobs, University of Rochester Secretary Michael Mozer, University of Colorado, Boulder Executive Board Sue Becker, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada Thomas G. Dietterich, Oregon State University Todd K. Leen, Oregon Graduate Institute Lawrence Saul, University of Pennsylvania Bernhard Scholkopf¨ , Max Planck Institute Sara A. Solla, Northwestern University Medical School Phil Sotel, Pasadena, CA Yair Weiss, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Advisory Board Gary Blasdel, Harvard Medical School Jack Cowan, University of Chicago Stephen Hanson, Rutgers University Michael I. Jordan, University of California, Berkeley Michael Kearns, University of Pennsylvania Scott Kirkpatrick, Hebrew University, Jerusalem Richard Lippmann, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bartlett Mel, University of Southern California John Moody, International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley and Portland Gerald Tesauro, IBM Watson Labs Dave Touretzky, Carnegie Mellon University Emeritus Members Terrence L. Fine, Cornell University Eve Marder, Brandeis University NIPS 2007 General Chair John C. Platt, Microsoft Research 9 Sponsors NIPS gratefully acknowledges the generosity of those individuals and organizations who have provided financial support for the NIPS 2007 conference. The financial support enabled us to sponsor student travel and participation, the outstanding student paper awards, the demonstration track and the opening buffet. Google IBM Research Intel Microsoft Research Pascal Network Springer Machine Learning Journal Toyota Technical Institute Two Sigma Investments Yahoo Research Core Logistics Team The running of NIPS would not be possible without the help of many volunteers, students, researchers and administrators who donate their valuable time and energy to assist the conference in various ways. However, there is a core team at the Salk Institute whose tireless efforts make the conference run smoothly and efficiently every year. This year, NIPS would particularly like to acknowlege the excep- tional work of: Rajat Raina (Stanford) Chris Adams Lee Campbell Sarah Cercone Chris Hiestand Sheri Leone Kristen Michener Bryan Nielsen Rosemary Miller Mary Ellen Perry 10 Outstanding Student Paper Awards Markov Chain Monte Carlo with People Adam Sanborn and Thomas Griffiths New Outer Bounds on the Marginal Polytope David Sontag and Tommi Jaakkola Student Paper Honorable Mentions Inferring Elapsed Time from Stochastic Neural Processes Maneesh Sahani and Misha Ahrens Efficient Inference for Distributions on Permutations Jonathan Huang, Carlos Guestrin and Leonidas Guibas An Analysis of Convex Relaxations for MAP Estimation Pawan Mudigonda, Vladimir Kolmogorov and Philip Torr PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS 11 Program Highlights Monday, December 3rd 7:30am–9:00am Breakfast: Regency A — Conference Level 8:00am–6:00pm Registration Desk Open 8:00am–6:00pm Internet Access Room Open 9:30am–5:30pm Tutorials ................................................................... 15 1:00pm–6:30pm Poster/Demo Setup and Preview 6:30pm–7:30pm Buffet and Opening Remarks (Dinner buffet open until 9pm; dessert buffet until 10pm.) 7:30pm–8:00pm Human Computation Luis von Ahn 8:10pm–8:25pm Oral Session: Opening Spotlights ....................................... 15 8:30pm–midnight Poster Sessions ............................................................ 17 8:30pm–midnight Demo Sessions............................................................. 22 Tuesday, December 4th 7:30am–9:00am Breakfast: Perspectives Level 8:00am–9:00am Breakfast: also in Regency A — Conference Level 8:00am–6:00pm Registration Desk Open 8:00am–6:00pm Internet Access Room Open 8:30am–9:30am Invited Talk: Statistical Models for Social Networks with Application to HIV Epidemiology Mark Handcock 9:30am–10:00am Oral Session: Structured Statistical Models............................ 23 10:00am–10:30am Break 10:30am–12:00pm Oral Session: Probabilistic Optimization ............................... 24 12:00pm–2:00pm Break for Lunch 1:00pm–6:00pm Poster/Demo Setup and Preview 2:00pm–3:00pm Invited Talk: Projection Methods: Algorithmic Structures, Bregman Projections, and Acceleration Techniques Yair Censor 12 PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS 3:00pm–3:30pm Oral Session: Optimization for Learning ............................... 25 3:30pm–4:00pm Break 4:00pm–5:30pm Oral Session: Theory and Sequential Decision Making . 26 7:30pm–midnight Poster Sessions ............................................................ 28 7:30pm–midnight Demo Sessions............................................................
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