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3. Publication News


Call for Nomination of 2008 Multimedia Prize Paper Award - IEEE Transactions on Multimedia

The nomination period of the 2008 IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (T-MM) Prize Paper Award is open until May 4, 2008. Any paper published in T-MM in 2005, 2006, or 2007 is eligible. Nominations should include the following information: (1) Nominator's name and contact information;  (2) Bibliographic information for the nominated paper; (3) A short statement of support (less than 500 words) explaining the rationale for the nomination.

Judging shall be on the bases of general quality, originality, subject matter, and timeliness. The winner will be announced at ICME 2008 in June 2008.

Nominations should be sent to the T-MM Editor-in-Chief Sheila Hemami at <hemami AT ece.cornell.edu> in plain text form (no attachments please). More information about the award can be found at this link.

Special Issue Deadlines of SPS Publications

Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing

• Visual Media Quality Assessment - Deadline: 30 April 2008
   
• DSP Techniques for RF/Analog Circuit Impairments - Deadline: 1 June 2008
   
• Advanced Signal Processing for GNSS and Robust Navigation - Deadline: 1 July 2008

IEEE Transactions on Multimedia

• Communities and Media Computing - Deadline: 15 May 2008

Recent Issues of SPS Sponsored and Co-sponsored Publications

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4. TC News

Technical Committee Meetings Held at ICASSP 2008

The Signal Processing Society has 13 technical committees (TCs) that support a broad selection of signal processing related activities defined by the scope of the Society. Technical committees are actively involved in awards, conferences, publications, and educational activities, and provide technical advice to the Society's leadership. During this month's ICASSP 2008, the Society's TCs held their regular meetings to review the TCs' recent activities and lay out plans for future activities and directions. The 2008 SPS award nomination and vetting is one of the main efforts that the TCs are coordinating (see the call for award nomination announcement under the "Society News" of this issue). URLs and more information about the 13 TCs in the Society can be found at this web link.

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Do you know?  IEEE SPS provides travel support for local chapters to invite SPS Distinguished Lecturers.  See a list of SPS 2007 and 2008 Distinguished Lecturers, and check each issue of the E-News for upcoming SPS Distinguished Lectures near you.  
 

If you are interested in organizing a new SPS chapter, or participating in activities in a SPS local chapter near you, please check out Local Chapter Resources. Additional questions and comments can be addressed to the SPS Chapters Committee.
 

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6. New Initiatives and Trends

Compressive Sensing: Theory and Applications

The Shannon/Nyquist sampling theory underlies most sensing, signal acquisition, and analog-to-digital conversion protocols in use today. Over the last few years, an alternative sampling/sensing theory, known as “compressive sampling” or “compressed sensing”, enables the faithful recovery of signals, images,
and other data from what appear to be highly sub-Nyquist-rate samples. To find out how this is possible, check out the Special Section on Compressive Sensing in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine March 2008 issue.  This special section includes ten survey and tutorial articles, aiming to present the key ideas underlying the new compressive sensing theory as well as selected applications areas where the theory promises to have a significant impact.

Learn Standards in a Nutshell from the latest issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine in March 2008 on
"The Scalable Video Coding Extension of the H.264/AVC Standard" by H. Schwarz and M. Wien.

Interested readers may also check out the article from the previous issue of E-Newsletter on the adoption and application trends of H.264 video coding standards.
 

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7. New PhD Theses

Mehrdad Fatourechi (University of British Columbia, Canada):
"Design of a Self-paced Brain Computer Interface (SBCI) System Using Features Extracted from Three Neurological Phenomena," January 2008.  Advised by Prof. Rabab K. Ward and Prof. Gary E. Birch.

Self-paced Brain computer interface (SBCI) systems allow individuals with motor disabilities to use their brain signals to control devices, whenever they wish. To improve the performance of SBCI systems, a novel SBCI is proposed that classifies features extracted from three neurological phenomena: Movement-related potentials, changes in the power of the Mu and Beta rhythms. We achieved an average true positive (TP) rate of 56.2% at the false positive (FP) rate of 0.1%. These results were found to be significantly lower than those achieved in other SBCI systems, where FP rates vary between 1-10%. We also show that the proposed SBCI achieves a good performance of TP of 51.8% and FP of 0.4% in the presence of eye movement artifacts. Further tests of the performance of the proposed system in a pseudo-online environment, shows an average TP rate of 48.8% at the FP rate of 0.8%.

We also proposed a framework for choosing a suitable evaluation metric for SBCI systems. This framework shows that Kappa coefficient is more suitable than other metrics in evaluating the performance during the model selection procedure.

Click here for more information about the thesis.

Interested in submitting or recommending a recent Ph.D. thesis?
Please prepare the following material and visit the web submission site to provide your input. Contact Associate Editor Prof. Alessandro Piva at <piva AT lci.det.unifi.it> if you have any questions.
(1) thesis author's information (full name, contact, current affiliation, URL if available), Ph.D. granting institution, thesis advisor's name and contact information;
(2) title, URL, and a short summary of the thesis (100-150 words); and
(3) an email from the thesis advisor to Associate Editor at <piva AT lci.det.unifi.it>, confirming that the author has already successfully defended the Ph.D. thesis and that a final version of the thesis has officially been submitted according to the Ph.D. degree requirements of the author's institution.

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8. New Books

Automatic Speech Recognition on Mobile Devices and over Communication Networks,
edited by Z-H. Tan and B. Lindberg, Springer, 2008.

Description from the publisher: The remarkable advances in computing and networking have sparked an enormous interest in deploying automatic speech recognition on mobile devices and over communication networks. This trend is accelerating.

This book brings together leading academic researchers and industrial practitioners to address the issues in this emerging realm and presents the reader with a comprehensive introduction to the subject of speech recognition in devices and networks. It covers network, distributed and embedded speech recognition systems, which are expected to co-exist in the future. It offers a wide-ranging, unified approach to the topic and its latest development, also covering the most up-to-date standards and several off-the-shelf systems.

Visit the book's website for more information.

A Software-Defined GPS and Galileo Receiver: A Single-Frequency Approach, 
by K. Borre, D.M. Akos, N. Bertelsen, P. Rinder, and S.H. Jensen, Birkhauser Publishing, 2007.

Description from the publisher: Satellite navigation receivers are used to receive, process, and decode space-based navigation signals, such as those provided by the GPS constellation of satellites. There is an increasing need for a unified open platform that will enable enhanced receiver development and design, as well as cost-effective testing procedures for various applications. This book and companion DVD provide hands-on exploration of new technologies in this rapidly growing field.

Visit the book's website for more information.
 

Medical Imaging: Signals and Systems, 
by Jerry L. Prince and Jonathan M. Links, Prentice Hall, 2006.

Description from the publisher: With signal processing as its foundation, this text covers the most important imaging modalities in radiology: projection radiography, x-ray computed tomography, nuclear medicine, ultrasound imaging, and magnetic resonance imaging. Organized into parts to emphasize key overall conceptual divisions, Medical Imaging is most appropriate for engineering students who have taken the prerequisite signals and systems courses as well as elementary probability.

An in-depth review is available in SPM January 2008. Visit the book's website for detailed Table of Contents and ordering information.

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Postdoctoral Fellowship on Vision and Pattern Analysis
Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey

The Vision and Pattern Analysis (VPA) Lab of Sabancı University (Istanbul, Turkey) invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the area of signal processing for vehicular driving signals. The fellowship will support post-doctoral researchers who will work on driving signal analysis for the Drive-Safe project supported by National Planning Organization of Turkey. The project is a collaboration among three major universities (Sabanci University, Koc University, Istanbul Technical University) and three car companies (Fiat, Ford, Renault) in Turkey. The project involves using driving signals acquired from the vehicle in addition to visual and auditory signals to determine the fatigue and cognitive-load state of a driver. It also involves comparing real-world driving data with data collected from a simulator.

The researcher is expected to have some background in signal processing and/or pattern recognition areas. A familiarity with vehicular signals and data acquisition for vehicles is a plus. Applicants must have earned a Ph.D. degree from an accredited university. Please send a resume and a brief statement of purpose to Prof. Aytül Erçil <aytulercil AT sabanciuniv.edu> and Asst. Prof. Hakan Erdoğan <haerdogan AT sabanciuniv.edu>. Applications must be received by June 1st, 2008.

The VPA Lab has excellent facilities and has been involved in many international projects.  Visit the lab's website for further information.

Ph.D. Research Assistantship and Postdoctoral Position in Multimedia Indexing
Institut EURECOM, France

• PhD Scholarship on medical signal processing at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

• Postdoctoral Position in digital forensics at Dartmouth College

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