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Calendar of Events
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
4:00 pm Clayton Scott - University of MichiganTitle: Classification with Asymmetric Label Noise. Abstract: In many real-world classification problems, the labels of training examples are randomly corrupted. That is, the set of training examples for each class is contaminated by examples of the other class. Existing approaches to this problem assume that the two classes are separable, that the label noise is independent of the true class label, or that the noise proportions for each class are known. We introduce a general framework for classification with label noise that eliminates these assumptions. In particular, we identify necessary and sufficient distributional assumptions for the existence of a consistent estimator of the optimal risk, with associated estimation strategies. We find that learning in the presence of label noise is possible even when the class-conditional distributions overlap and the label noise is not symmetric. A key to our approach is a universally consistent estimator of the maximal proportion of one distribution that is present in another, or equivalently, of the so-called "separation distance" between two distributions. The methodology is motivated by a problem in nuclear particle classification.
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
4:30 pm "The Plight of Shi'a Religious Schools in Ba'thist Iraq: A Study of the Captured Ba'th Party Archive" - Abbas KhadimProfessor Kadhim is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He also holds Visiting Scholar status at Stanford University, a position he has held since 2005. Between 2003 and 2005, he taught courses on Islamic theology and ethics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. From 2001 to 2005, he was an Instructor of Arabic language at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1999 and 2001, he taught Political Science at the Woodland Community College, Woodland, California. Professor Kadhim is a member of the editorial board of History Compass. Recently, Professor Khadim had an opportunity to review the Ba'th Party's archives in Iraq. This presentation will highlight some of his findings from the materials left behind by the former regime.
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
5:00 pm Joan Margarit and his poetic rationalismThere are poets whom maturity leaves without any literary affairs, and there are poets for whom maturity becomes the main affair. Joan Margarit belongs to this second type, a poet in the most classic tradition, a widely read poet and an avid reader himself, sober and intense, but above all courageous in a way that is very unusual among poets (but frequent in excellent ones). Sponsored by Instituto Cervantes Boston and Voces Hispánicas/ Hispanic Voices, an initiative of the Department of Romance Studies, Boston University, made possible by the generosity of Santander Universities Global Division.
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
5:00 pm The Lyrical Rationality of the Catalan Poet Joan MargaritTalk with the author and reading of his texts. There are poets whom maturity leaves without any literary affairs, and there are poets for whom maturity becomes the main affair. Joan Margarit belongs to this second type. From this classic tradition, he is a legible and widely read poet, sober and intense, but above all courageous in a way that is very unusual among poets (but frequent in excellent ones). Romance Studies Department and Instituto Cervantes.
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
5:30 pm The Strange Tale of the Richard Lane CollectionJoin the Department of the History of Art & Architecture and the Center for the Study of Asia for a lecture by Dr. Stephen Little, Curator and Head of the Chinese & Korean Art Department of the Los Angeles County Museum. The lecture introduces the enormous and largely unknown art collection of Dr. Richard Lane, the great late scholar of Ukiyo-e literature and art. Refreshments will be served.
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
5:30 pm Object Lessons and American Material Culture - Sarah CarterPlease mark your calendars for the next event in the American and New England Studies Program Material Culture Lecture Series. Sarah Carter of Harvard University will present "Object Lessons and American Material Culture", exploring the explicit ways material things—objects and pictures—were used to reason about moral issues, the differences between reality and representation, race, citizenship, and capitalism in the nineteenth-century United States. The event is free and open to the public. It will be held in CAS 200 and will be followed by a reception with food and drinks. For further information please contact: georgehs@bu.edu The American Conversations Series is supported by the Boston University Center for the Humanities.
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
5:30 pm The Strange Tale of the Richard Lane CollectionDr. Stephen Little, Curator and Head of the Chinese & Korean Art Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University introduces the enormous and largely unknown art collection of Dr. Richard Lane, the great late scholar of Ukiyo-e literature and art, who passed away in Kyoto in 2002. The lecture explores Lane's history as a collector in Japan between 1952-2002, the bizarre and eclectic mix of works in the collection (roughly 10,000 scroll paintings and over 8,000 rare woodblock-illustrated books), and the collection's eventual acquisition by the Honolulu Art Museum when Little was its director. While the Lane Collection comprises primarily Edo period paintings and printed book, it also includes Chinese and Korean paintings and an enormous trove of Meiji-era paintings and books.
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Friday, November 30, 2012
9:30 am Fall 2012 Iraq Studies WorkshopAs of now, the program for the November 30th Iraq Workshop has solidified and features the following speakers who will present their papers, and a panel of other scholars and experts will comment and participate: <br /><br /> - Professor Haider Ala Hamoudi (University of Pittsburgh), “Thinking Beyond the Original Bargain: Post Ratification Constitution Making and the Case of Iraq."<br /><br /> - Mark Kukis (Doctoral candidate, Boston University), “The Probability of Insurgency amid the U.S. Presence in Iraq.”<br /><br /> - Professor ‘Abbas Kadhim (Naval Postgraduate School), “The Hawza and Its Role in Post-War Iraq.”<br /><br /> - Ms. Sara Abdullah, Esq. (JBM Legal LLC, Pittsburgh), “Women and Nationality under Iraqi Law and the Constitution."<br /><br /> The Institute for Iraqi Studies annual workshop provides an opportunity for BU faculty with an interest in contemporary Iraq to meet one another to discuss research interests and the possibilities for collaborative research. The workshop has in the past hosted scholars Dr. Shakir Abdulla, Prof. Tahir Albakaa, Prof Kecia Ali, Prof. Roger Owen, Prof. Betty Anderson, and Prof. A. Richard Norton, and many more.<br /><br /> To RSVP for the workshop, please contact Michael Carroll at mcarroll@bu.edu
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Friday, November 30, 2012
12:00 pm Brown Bag Lecture: "New Directions in Three-Dimensional Recording in Archaeology"Lecture by Brandon Olson, Ph.D. Candidate, Boston University Department of Archaeology
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Friday, November 30, 2012
5:00 pm Javier Cercas, FilmFilm screening of Soldados de Salamina based on the novel by Javier Cercas. Presented by Marta Villar (BU lecturer). Synopsis: A novelist who has stopped writing investigates a true story from the final days of the Civil War. The writer and Falangist Rafael Sánchez Mazas was shot by firing squad together with 50 other prisoners, but was able to flee and hide in the forest. It seems that a soldier, combing the zone for his capture, found him but allowed him to escape. The writer puts these pieces together, a puzzle plagued by contradictions and enigmatic characters. Through this investigation, and though she is not aware of it, the writer doesn’t only search for the truth, but also for herself.
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Friday, November 30, 2012
5:00 pm Film Screening: Soldados de SalaminaBased on the novel by Javier Cercas. Presented by Marta Villar (BU lecturer). Synopsis: A novelist who has stopped writing investigates a true story from the final days of the Civil War. The writer and Falangist Rafael Sánchez Mazas was shot by firing squad together with 50 other prisoners, but was able to flee and hide in the forest. It seems that a soldier, combing the zone for his capture, found him but allowed him to escape. The writer puts these pieces together, a puzzle plagued by contradictions and enigmatic characters. Through this investigation, and though she is not aware of it, the writer doesn’t only search for the truth, but also for herself.
