Informatics High School Summer Camp

In case you know high-school age students who might be interestested in a summer learning opportunity, the School of Informatics will be hosting an Informatics High School Summer Camp.

June 21-25, 2009
IU – Bloomington

The Informatics High School Summer Camp is designed to give high school students the chance to interact with IU faculty/staff and students, and learn about the latest trends in information technology, the internet and Web design, networking, new media, databases, gaming and more.

More details can be found on the website: http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/summercamp/

Colloquia: Rebecca Knickmeyer

You are invited to the 2009 Spring IU Animal Behavior Colloquia.

Friday, May 1, 2009
2:00 p.m.
Student Building, Room 150

Rebecca Knickmeyer, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, will present, "Sex on the Brain: Gonadal steroids and genetic factors in human neurodevelopment."

Abstract:
Relative risk levels for many psychiatric disorders are dramatically different in males and females. Early-onset neurodevelopmental disorders occur significantly more often in males then females, including autism, ADHD, and early onset persistent antisocial behavior. Other conditions, such as schizophrenia, occur at similar rates in males and females, but the sexes differ in age of onset, symptomatology and course of disease. It has been hypothesized that the prevalence and expression of these disorders is related to sex differences in brain development and that sex chromosome effects and early exposure to gonadal hormones (especially androgens and estrogens) are strong candidates for a causal role. The speaker will discuss strategies for studying sex hormone and sex chromosome effects in human populations. She will characterize sex-differences in brain morphology during infancy and childhood, review evidence linking variation in prenatal testosterone exposure to social and communicative development and present recent data on whether early testosterone exposure and sex chromosome abnormalities predict variation in neonatal brain morphology.

Sponsored by the Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior (CISAB). This speaker is part of the A501 Animal Behavior Seminar on “Hormones and Human Behavior” organized by Dr. Michael Muehlenbein.

Symposium: Critical Period for Language

Multiple Perspectives on the Critical Period for Language will be hosted by The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics.

June 5-6, 2009
10 Page Hall
The Ohio State University

The traditional view of the critical period for language - going back to Lenneberg - is that it is part of a biological process: the decline in language ability reflects a maturational change in brain development. This view makes two strong predictions, namely, that children will be better at acquiring language than adults and that short of some kind of brain disorder, there's no way to change that fact.

We wish to address two related issues in this event: First, to what extent do language acquisition abilities decline in adulthood? Second, to the extent that adults are worse than children in acquiring language, what is the mechanism that causes this decline? We plan to consider these
questions from many different perspectives that include different dimensions of language (Phonology, Syntax), different empirical approaches (Linguistics, Psychology, Neuroscience), and different empirical domains (L1 acquisition, L2 acquisition, Computational Linguistics). The goal of the symposium is to bring together scholars with a range of views and thereby foster debate and discussion.

Featuring invited talks by:
JAMES FLEGE, University of Alabama, Birmingham
SILVINA MONTRUL, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
ANN SENGHAS, Barnard College
JASON ZEVIN, Sackler Institute

Registration is FREE! Please pre-register by sending an e-mail containing your name and affiliation to springsym@ling.osu.edu

For more information, please visit:
www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~springsym/

The Symposium is made possible through the generous support of the Targeted Investment in Excellence in the College of Humanities, The Ohio State University.

Lecture: Eva Anton

The Linda & Jack Gill Center for Biomolecular Science & The Program in Neuroscience are pleased to present the following talk.

Eva Anton, Ph.D., University of North Carolina School of Medicine, will present, "Mechanisms of neuronal placement and differentiation in the developing cerebral cortex."

Wednesday, April 29, 2009
4:00 p.m.
Psychological & Brain Sciences Building
Room PY101
IUB

Midwest Computational Linguistics Colloquium - May 2-3

The IU Computational Linguistics group is hosting the Sixth Midwest Computational Linguistics Colloquium (MCLC) this coming Saturday and Sunday, May 2 and 3 (in Ballantine 006). This is a less formal venue for researchers, generally from the midwest, to get together to present
ideas and research results.

This year's program promises a range of different interesting topics, and we welcome anyone from the IU community to join us for all or part of it:
http://cl.indiana.edu/~mclc09/program.html

Hope to see you there!

Markus Dickinson & Sandra Kuebler (organizers)
http://cl.indiana.edu/~mclc09/