Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

CFP: EVIA 2010

***** CALL FOR PAPERS *****

The Third International Workshop on Evaluating Information Access
(EVIA 2010), a Satellite Workshop of NTCIR-8
http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/ntcir-ws8/EVIA-2010/

June 15, 2010 at NII, Tokyo, Japan.
***************************************

Information Access technologies provide the interface between
human information needs and digital information resources. The
reliable evaluation of these technologies has long been
recognized as central to technological development in the field.
As information retrieval becomes more pervasive, the forms of
retrieval more diverse, and retrieval tools richer, the
importance of effective, efficient, and innovative evaluation
grows as well.

In recognition of the need for a forum dedicated to the intensive
discussion of evaluation issues, we have held two successful
International Workshops on Evaluating Information Access (EVIA
2007 and 2008). Proceedings and reports can be found below:

EVIA 2007 online proceedings:
http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/workshop/OnlineProceedings6/EVIA/
EVIA 2008 online proceedings:
http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/workshop/OnlineProceedings7/toc_evia.html

SIGIR Forum Report on EVIA 2007:
http://sigir.org/forum/2007D/2007d_sigirforum_sanderson.pdf
SIGIR Forum Report on EVIA 2008:
http://sigir.org/forum/2009J/2009j-sigirforum-sakai.pdf

Following these successes, we are happy to announce the Third
International Workshop on Evaluating Information Access (EVIA
2010), to be held on June 15, 2010 (coinciding with Day 1 of the
NTCIR-8 Workshop Meeting) at the National Institute of
Informatics (NII), Tokyo, Japan. We invite papers addressing one
or more of the following topics:

- Test collection formation, evaluation metrics, and evaluation
environments
- Statistical issues in retrieval evaluation
- User studies and the evaluation of human-computer interaction
in information retrieval (HCIR)
- Evaluation methods for multilingual, multimedia, or mobile
information access
- Novel information access tasks and their evaluation
- Evaluation and assessment using implicit user feedback,
crowdsourcing, living labs, or inferential methods
- Evaluation issues in industrial and enterprise retrieval
systems

*** SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS ***

Submissions will be subject to double-blind reviewing. Accepted
papers will be included in the EVIA 2010 online proceedings, and
summarized in a report to SIGIR Forum.

We invite submissions of regular papers (up to 9 pages) and
short papers (up to 5 pages).
Submitted papers should be in the ACM Conference style
(for LaTeX, use the "Option 2" style) and must be submitted
as pdf files. Templates are available at:
http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates
Papers exceeding the page limits will be rejected without review.

The pdf files must be submitted via our START submission webpage.
A link to the submission page will be available at the EVIA
website in early March:
http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/ntcir-ws8/EVIA-2010/

*** IMPORTANT DATES ***

- March 31, 2010 *submissions due*
- April 18, 2010 notification of acceptance
- May 10, 2010 final manuscripts due
- June 15, 2010 EVIA 2010@NII, Tokyo, Japan
- June 15-18, 2010 NTCIR-8@NII, Tokyo, Japan

*** EVIA 2010 PROGRAM COMMITTEE ***

Akiko Aizawa NII Japan
Javed Aslam Northeastern University USA
Nicholas Belkin Rutgers University USA
Ben Carterette University of Delaware USA
Charlie Clarke University of Waterloo Canada
Georges Dupret Yahoo! Research Chile
Norbert Fuhr Universitaet Duisburg-Essen Germany
Atsushi Fujii Tokyo Institute of Technology Japan
Donna Harman NIST USA
Hideo Joho University of Tsukuba Japan
Gareth Jones Dublin City University Ireland
Noriko Kando NII Japan
Evangelos Kanoulas University of Sheffield UK
Jaana Kekalainen University of Tampere Finland
Mounia Lalmas University of Glasgow UK
Gary Geunbae Lee POSTECH Korea
Mun-Kew Leong National Library Board Singapore
Jimmy Lin University of Maryland USA
Chin-Yew Lin Microsoft Research Asia China
Iadh Ounis University of Glasgow UK
Carol Peters IEI-CNR Italy
Ian Ruthven University of Strathclyde UK
Tetsuya Sakai Microsoft Research Asia China
Mark Sanderson University of Sheffield UK
Falk Scholer RMIT University Australia
Ian Soboroff NIST USA
Paul Thomas CSIRO Australia
William Webber University of Melbourne Australia
Emine Yilmaz Microsoft Research Cambridge UK

*** EVIA 2010 CO-CHAIRS ***

Tetsuya Sakai (Microsoft Research Asia, China)
tetsuyasakai
at acm.org
Mark Sanderson (University of Sheffield, UK)
m.sanderson
at sheffield.ac.uk
William Webber (University of Melbourne, Australia)
wew
at csse.unimelb.edu.au

Friday, January 15, 2010

MSRA Anthem

The two lines in the chorus,
"Where people work so hard and play harder" and
"Let's turn our ideas into reality" are
Hon's contribution.

MSRA Anthem


words by Tetsuya Sakai and Hsiao-Wuen Hon
music by Tetsuya Sakai


Asus4 A Asus4 A Gsus4 G Gsus4 G

A D Dmaj7 D6

We've come from 'round the world
Dm E7sus4 E7
We're here to innovate
A D Dmaj7 D6
One song, different voices
Dm E7sus4 E7
We sing and celebrate

A Amaj7 F#m F#m7
Microsoft Research Asia
Bm Bm7 E7sus4 E7
Where people work so hard and play harder
A Amaj7 F#m F#7
Microsoft Research Asia
Bm7 E7sus4 Asus4 A Asus4 A Gsus4 G Gsus4 G
Let's turn our ideas into reality

A D Dmaj7 D6
This is where the heart is
Dm E7sus4 E7
This is where the brains are
A D Dmaj7 D6
Don't stop, let's go beyond
Dm E7sus4 E7
The things we've done so far

A Amaj7 F#m F#m7
Microsoft Research Asia
Bm Bm7 E7sus4 E7
Where people work so hard and play harder
A Amaj7 F#m F#7
Microsoft Research Asia
Bm7 E7sus4 G F# F E7sus4 E7
Let's turn our ideas into reality

A Amaj7 A7 F7# Bm Bm7 E7sus4 E7
[girls] M-----S-----R-----A----- M--S--R--A-- MSRA
A Amaj7 A7 F7# Bm Bm7 E7sus4 E7
[boys] M-----S-----R-----A----- M--S--R--A-- MSRA
A Amaj7 A7 F7# Bm Bm7 E7sus4 E7
[all] M-----S-----R-----A----- M--S--R--A-- MSRA
A Amaj7 A7 F7# Bm Bm7 E7sus4 E7
[all] M-----S-----R-----A----- M--S--R--A-- MSRA

A Amaj7 F#m F#m7
Microsoft Research Asia
Bm Bm7 E7sus4 E7
Where people work so hard and play harder
A Amaj7 F#m F#7
Microsoft Research Asia
Bm7 E7sus4 Asus4 A Asus4 A Gsus4 G Gsus4 G
Let's turn our ideas into reality

Fsus4 F Fsus4 F E7sus4 E7 E7sus4 E7 Aadd9

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Fight the cold with hot live music

Minus sixteen degrees celcius outside?
Come inside and join the world's hottest lab!





Saturday, January 2, 2010

Hello 2010


Visited a small Japanese shrine to say hi to God