IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development: Volume 5, Issue 1, 2013

1. The Coordinating Role of Language in Real-Time Multimodal Learning of Cooperative Tasks
Author(s): Petit, M. ; Lallee, S. ; Boucher, J.-D. ; Pointeau, G. ; Cheminade, P. ; Ognibene, D. ; Chinellato, E. ; Pattacini, U. ; Gori, I. ; Martinez-Hernandez, U. ; Barron-Gonzalez, H. ; Inderbitzin, M. ; Luvizotto, A. ; Vouloutsi, V. ; Demiris, Y. ; Metta, G. ; Dominey, P.F.
Page(s): 3 - 17
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6249732

2. A Survey of the Ontogeny of Tool Use: From Sensorimotor Experience to Planning
Author(s): Guerin, F. ; Kruger, N. ; Kraft, D.
Page(s): 18 - 45
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6248675

3. Learning Information Acquisition for Multitasking Scenarios in Dynamic Environments
Author(s): Karaoguz, C. ; Rodemann, T. ; Wrede, B. ; Goerick, C.
Page(s): 46 - 61
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6341054

4. A Spike-Based Model of Neuronal Intrinsic Plasticity
Author(s): Li, C. ; Li, Y.
Page(s): 62 - 73
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6257429

5. Autonomous and Interactive Improvement of Binocular Visual Depth Estimation through Sensorimotor Interaction
Author(s): Mann, T.A. ; Park, Y. ; Jeong, S. ; Lee, M. ; Choe, Y.
Page(s): 74 - 84
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6293858

6. Erratum to "Human-Recognizable Robotic Gestures" [Dec 12 305-314]
Author(s): Cabibihan, J.-J. ; So, W.-C. ; Pramanik, S.
Page(s): 85
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6479278

IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games: Volume 5, Issue 1, 2013

1. A Neurally Controlled Computer Game Avatar With Humanlike Behavior
Author(s): Gamez, D. ; Fountas, Z. ; Fidjeland, A.K.
Page(s): 1 - 14
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6357232

2.  Designing Automated Allocation Mechanisms for Service Procurement of Imperfectly Substitutable Services
Author(s): Kruse, S. ; Brintrup, A. ; McFarlane, D. ; Sanchez Lopez, T. ; Owens, K. ; Krechel, W.E.
Page(s): 15 - 32
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6320688

3. Optimization of an Evaluation Function of the Four-Sided Dominos Game Using a Genetic Algorithm
Author(s): Antonio, N.S. ; Costa Filho, C.F.F. ; Costa, M.G.F.
Page(s): 33 - 43
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6327342

4.  Job-Level Proof Number Search
Author(s): Wu, I.-C. ; Lin, H.-H. ; Sun, D.-J. ; Kao, K.-Y. ; Lin, P.-H. ; Chan, Y.-C. ; Chen, P.-T.
Page(s): 44 - 56
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6329938

5. Monte Carlo Tree Search for Collaboration Control of Ghosts in Ms. Pac-Man
Author(s): Nguyen, K.Q. ; Thawonmas, R.
Page(s): 57 - 68
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6307831

6. A Problem Case for UCT
Author(s): Browne, C.
Page(s): 69 - 74
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6310042

Reminder: paper submission deadline for SOCO 2013

A reminder that the deadline for submitting papers to the International Conference on Soft Computing Models in Industrial and Environmental Applications (SOCO) 2013 is 20 April 2013. This conference will be held in Salamanca, Spain, 11-13 September, 2013.

IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems: Volume 24, Issue 4, April 2013

1. Stability Analysis for Neural Networks With Time-Varying Delay Based on Quadratic Convex Combination
Authors: Huaguang Zhang; Feisheng Yang; Xiaodong Liu; Qingling Zhang
Page(s): 513 - 521
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6410434

2. Factor Analysis of Auto-Associative Neural Networks With Application in Speaker Verification
Authors: Sri Garimella; Hynek Hermansky
Page(s): 522 - 528
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6414643

3. Projection-Based Fast Learning Fully Complex-Valued Relaxation Neural Network
Authors: Ramasamy Savitha; Sundaram Suresh; Narasimhan Sundararajan
Page(s): 529 - 541
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6414644

4. Granular Neural Networks: Concepts and Development Schemes
Authors: Mingli Song; Witold Pedrycz
Page(s): 542 - 553
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6415282

5. Noise-Shaping Gradient Descent-Based Online Adaptation Algorithms for Digital Calibration of Analog Circuits
Authors: Shantanu Chakrabartty; Ravi K. Shaga; Kenji Aono
Page(s): 554 - 565
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6416072

6. Cluster Consensus in Discrete-Time Networks of Multiagents With Inter-Cluster Nonidentical Inputs
Authors: Yujuan Han; Wenlian Lu; Tianping Chen
Page(s): 566 - 578
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6418037

7. Common Nature of Learning Between Back-Propagation and Hopfield-Type Neural Networks for Generalized Matrix Inversion With Simplified Models
Authors: Yunong Zhang; Dongsheng Guo; Zhan Li
Page(s): 579 - 592
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6421040

8. Online Support Vector Machine Based on Convex Hull Vertices Selection
Authors: Di Wang; Hong Qiao; Bo Zhang; Min  Wang
Page(s): 593 - 609
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6420961

9. Optimizing Spatial Filters by Minimizing Within-Class Dissimilarities in Electroencephalogram-Based Brain–Computer Interface
Authors: Mahnaz Arvaneh; Cuntai Guan; Kai Keng Ang; Chai Quek
Page(s): 610 - 619
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6423303

10. Just-In-Time Classifiers for Recurrent Concepts
Authors: Cesare Alippi; Giacomo Boracchi; Manuel Roveri
Page(s): 620 - 634
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6425489

11. Least Square Regularized Regression in Sum Space
Authors: Yong-Li Xu; Di-Rong Chen; Han-Xiong Li; Lu Liu
Page(s): 635 - 646
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6425490

12. Dynamic Sampling Approach to Training Neural Networks for Multiclass Imbalance Classification
Authors: Minlong Lin; Ke Tang; Xin  Yao
Page(s): 647 - 660
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6449324

13. New Parameter-Free Simplified Swarm Optimization for Artificial Neural Network Training and its Application in the Prediction of Time Series
Authors: Wei-Chang Yeh
Page(s): 661 - 665
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6410433

14. Distributed Consensus Tracking for Multiple Uncertain Nonlinear Strict-Feedback Systems Under a Directed Graph
Authors: Sung Jin Yoo
Page(s): 666 - 672
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6415283

15. Ensemble Pruning Using Spectral Coefficients
Authors: Terry Windeatt; Cemre Zor
Page(s): 673 - 678
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6423293

Applications of ECoS: First article available online

The first article accepted for my special issue of Evolving Systems on Applications of Kasabov's Evolving Connectionist Systems is now available online. This article is a comprehensive review of the mechanisms and applications of evolving spiking neural networks. I can thoroughly recommend this article to anyone interested in spiking networks. Congratulations to the authors Stefan Schliebs and Nik Kasabov and my thanks to the reviewers for their time and efforts.

On Being a Postdoc 2: Postdoc survival

One of my favourite quotes from the television series Babylon 5 is: "You do not make history, you can only hope to survive it". As it is with history, so it is with being a postdoc. You do not make history as a postdoc, you can only hope to survive being one. I have done three postdocs, one in New Zealand and two in Australia. Now I'm in a permanent academic position, a head of department no less. But I have seen people destroyed by the postdoc system, who have not just lost their jobs but been pushed out of academia completely. Make no mistake, the postdoc process can be brutal, but there are some techniques that I found useful for surviving.

Be nice. While some people seem to think that the ends justify the means, if you mistreat people, eventually you will get a reputation such that no-one wants to work with you. There is no point in being able to attract research funding if you can't find staff to employ with it, and there is no point being a professor in your early thirties if your research group collapses by the time you're forty, thanks to mismanagement of staff. Be nice to people, and they will be nice to you. As my best friend is fond of saying, good things happen to good people. This isn't due to some mystical Karmic process: rather, people will go out of their way to help someone who is nice to them. Loyalty is something that can only be earned, it doesn't magically spring forth from the payment of salary. On the other hand, some people see niceness as weakness and will try to exploit you. Beware of the users!

Be diplomatic. Your supervisor may be egregiously wrong about something, but you don't have to point it out. Far better to subtly lead them to this conclusion, to let them think that they have worked it out by themselves. While it is nice to think that science runs on the free and frank exchange of ideas and opinions, it is in reality a very delicate egosystem. Beware of the toes you step on-they may be connected to a fragile ego and a peevish personality.

Get everything in writing. It never hurts to have written evidence in case everything goes wrong. People break their word, sometimes you need a little bit of evidence to remind them of what they promised.

Write everything down. A career is not built on a single action or accomplishment. Instead, it is built on a long list of actions and accomplishments. If you don't write down everything you do, then you might forget something vital when you go for your next job. In other words, having a comprehensive and up-to-date CV is vital for keeping track of the evidence that shows that you have built a worthwhile career.

Be diverse. Work in different fields and expand your horizons. Each field of research has its own way of doing things, if you work in a different field you will gain fresh perspectives on your own field of study. I spent eight years working in ecology, and what I learned has made me much better at designing experiments in computational intelligence. Beware of staying in a different field for too long: your own field may move on so much that you can't catch up again.

Get involved with professional organisations. For computational intelligence, the best organisation to get involved with is the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), especially the IEEE computational Intelligence Society (CIS). Volunteering for service on committees of professional organisations is a great way to develop your reputation as a competent, hard working professional. It is also a great way of building your network of professional contacts.

Be useful. Work with other people and broaden your network of research collaborators. Help other people out where you can. Not only is this a great way of increasing your publication output, it's also a good way of diversifying your research experience. Collaborating with other researchers can also lead to other research and employment opportunities.

Know when to get out. Sometimes a field is no longer worth pursuing. Sometimes, you have simply gone as high as you can in that field. This is partly why I left ecological modelling, as I'd risen as high as I could without an ecology degree (something I had no interest in acquiring). Sometimes groups get mismanaged to the point that they can't survive, and start losing staff at such a rate that you have no choice but to flee. There is no point being the last person on the Titanic. In other words, don't go down with the ship

Get enough sleep. I have found that every hour of sleep I miss at night costs me two hours of productivity the following day. It is important to sleep during the night: after the sun comes up, the quality of your sleep is cut in half. Missing sleep also depresses your immune system which makes it more likely that you'll get sick. You might miss out on a bit of work time by going to bed early, but how much work time will you miss if you're sick every three weeks?

Work hard. But not too hard. Success comes to those who work the hardest, and in many ways hard work is more important than native ability. But don't work so hard that you miss out on too much sleep. You especially shouldn't work so hard that your family suffers. At the end of they day, your job is just a job, it's not worth sacrificing your quality of life over. You can always catch up on work later, but missed time with your kids is lost forever.

Plan your next move. Within six months of starting a post-doc position you should be planning the move to your next position. This means that you need to have some idea of where you want to go in your career.

You also need to be flexible, you probably won't end up with your dream job, but you probably will end up with a job that is just as good.

Being a postdoc is hard, and really it is best for young, single people. I was thirty-one when I started my first postdoc, and had a brand-new daughter, which made it much harder for me. But I survived, and I'm a better person for it. I hope these strategies are useful for other people.

Conference paper deadline: ICACI 2013

The deadline for submitting papers to the International Conference on Advanced Computational Intelligence (ICACI) 2013 is June 1 2013. This conference will be held in Hangzhou, China, 19-21 October, 2013.

Conference paper deadline: TAAI 2013

The deadline for submitting paper to the Conference on Technologies and Applications of Artificial Intelligence 2013 is 1 August 2013. This conference will be held in Taipei, Taiwan, 6-8 December 2013.

Paper submission deadline: CIS 2013

The deadline for submitting papers to the 9th International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Security (CIS) 2013 is 30 June 2013. This conference will be held at Mount Emei, Sichuan Province, China, December 14-15 2013.

Reminder: paper submission deadline for ICONIP 2013

A reminder that the paper submission deadline for the 20th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP) 2013 is 1 June 2013. This conference will be held in Daegu, Korea, 3-7 November, 2013.

Paper submission deadline: UKCI 2013

The paper submission deadline for the UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence (UKCI) 2013 is 17 May 2013. This workshop will be held in Guildford, UK, 9-11 September, 2013.

Paper submission deadline: AAIA 2013

The deadline for submitting papers to the 8th International Symposium Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Applications is 12 May 2013. This conference will be held in Krakow, Poland, 8-11 September 2013.

Neural Networks: New articles 15-21 February 2013

1. Local minima in hierarchical structures of complex-valued neural networks 
Author(s): Tohru Nitta
   
2. Nucleo-olivary inhibition balances the interaction between the reactive and adaptive layers in motor control  
Author(s): Ivan Herreros, Paul F.M.J. Verschure
   
3. A supervised multi-spike learning algorithm based on gradient descent for spiking neural networks
Author(s): Yan Xu, Xiaoqin Zeng, Lixin Han, Jing Yang

4. Adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo for auxiliary variable method and its application to parallel tempering
Author(s): Takamitsu Araki, Kazushi Ikeda

5. Efficient self-organizing multilayer neural network for nonlinear system modeling
Author(s): Hong-Gui Han, Li-Dan Wang, Jun-Fei Qiao

6. First experiments with PowerPlay
Author(s): Rupesh Kumar Srivastava, Bas R. Steunebrink, Jürgen Schmidhuber