Google TechTalks
March 7, 2006

Ola Rosling
Anna Rosling Rönnlund
Johan Nystrand

Google TechTalks
May 24, 2006

Washington Taylor

ABSTRACT
Recent developments in string theory, combined with the experimental observation that the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing, have led theoretical physicists to a radical (and controversial) new picture of the universe. In this new picture, the universe is enormously larger than our parochial observable region of radius 13.7 light years.

In other patches of the universe, the laws of physics may be quite different, though in each patch the local physics is governed by a metastable solution of string theory. Since there may be something like $10^{1000}$ or more distinct solutions of string theory giving physics roughly like…

Google TechTalks
May 9, 2006

Kevin Kelly

ABSTRACT
The scientific method which provides us with so many technological goodies does not resemble the science of 1600. Ever since Bacon, science has undergone a slow evolution.

Landmarks in the history of the scientific method are the invention of libraries, indexes, citations, controlled experiments, peer review, placebos, double blind experiments, randomization, and search among others. At the core of the scientific method is the structuring of information.

In the next 50 years, as the technologies of information and knowledge accelerate, the nature of the scientific process will change even more than it has in the last 400 years. We can’t…

Google TechTalks
August 2, 2006

Sebastian Thrun

ABSTRACT
The DARPA grand challenge, technical details enabling Sebastian Thrun’s win, and an introduction to the next phase called “The Urban Grand Challenge”.

Google Tech Talks
January 30, 2006

Prof. Sanjeev Khudanpur
Sanjeev Khudanpur is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and a member of the Center for Language and Speech Processing at Johns Hopkins University. He obtained a B. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, in 1988, and a Ph. D. from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1997, both in Electrical Engineering. ABSTRACT
We will describe the use of hidden Markov models (HMMs) for content-based retrieval of images and video via text queries. In this model, objects or concepts present in an image or video clip constitute the state-space of a Markov chain, and the observed visual…

Google TechTalks
January 26, 2006

Dr. Monika Kress

Dr. Kress was a member of the ANSMET 2003-04 Expedition. (ANSMET = Antarctic search for meteorites)
http://geology.cwru.edu/~ansmet/

ABSTRACT
Every year since the late 70’s the US National Science Foundation has supported a team of space scientists to search for meteorites in Antarctica. Why Antarctica? The polar desert environment best preserves these precious samples of other worlds, which include shattered planetesimals, fragments of asteroids, and even rocks from the Moon and Mars. In this talk, I will discuss the scientific importance of meteorites, and the methods used to recover them from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Google TechTalks
May 24, 2006

Cyrus Shahabi
Cyrus Shahabi is currently an Associate Professor and the Director of the Information Laboratory (InfoLAB) at the Computer Science Department and also a Research Area Director at the NSF’s Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) at the University of Southern California.

ABSTRACT
The vision of GeoDec is to enable an information-rich and realistic 3-dimensional visualization and/or simulation of a geographical location (e.g., a city), rapidly and accurately. The idea is not just to allow navigation through a 3-D model, but to be able to ask queries and get information about the area seamlessly and effortlessly. Our main focus it to build tools to quickly…

Google TechTalks
August 23, 2006

Chris Holmes

ABSTRACT
This talk will introduce GeoServer, an open source server to publish and edit geospatial data using open standards with Google Earth, Google Maps, and more. The talk will highlight the recent the work done to interoperate with Earth and Maps, and how GeoServer fits in to the stack of software to share and collaborate around geospatial information. Also discussed will be the relevant open standards used by GeoServer, including WMS, WFS, SLD and GML, and how they were leveraged to create KML network links with the existing GeoServer core. The close of the talk will look towards the future, with more speculative questions such as what a true…

Google TechTalks
February 24, 2006

Dennis Strelow

Robust motion from monocular image measurements would be an enabling technology for Mars rover, micro air vehicle, and search and rescue robot navigation; and for modeling complex environments from video.
While algorithms exist for estimating six degree of freedom motion from monocular image measurements, motion from image measurements suffers from inherent problems. These include sensitivity to incorrect or insufficient image feature tracking; sensitivity to camera modeling and calibration errors; and long-term drift in scenarios with missing observations, i.e., where image features enter and leave the field of view.
The integration of image…