| 7-1 | JAIR Special Track on Cross-language Algorithms and Applications (UPDATE) 
 
JAIR Special Track on Cross-language Algorithms and Applications
 Track EditorLluís Màrquez, Qatar Computing Research InstituteAssociate Track EditorsMarta R. Costa-jussà, Instituto Politécnico NacionalSrinivas Bangalore, AT&T Labs-ResearchPatrik Lambert, Universitat Pompeu FabraElena Montiel-Ponsoda, Universidad Politécnica de MadridThe Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) is pleased to announce the launch of the Special Track on Cross-language Algorithms and Applications. The core Artificial Intelligence technologies of speech and natural language processing need to address the challenges of processing multiple languages. While the first challenge of multilingualism is to bridge the nomenclature gap for the same concepts, the next significant challenge is to develop algorithms and applications that not only scale to multiple languages but also leverage cross-lingual similarities for improved natural language processing.The goal of this special track is to serve as a home for the publication of leading research on Cross-language Algorithms and Applications, focusing on developing unified themes leading to the development of the science of multi- and cross-lingualism.  Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: efforts in the direction of multilingual transliteration; multilingual document summarization; rapid prototyping of cross language tools for low resource languages; and machine translation.Articles published in the Cross-language Algorithms and Applications track must meet the highest quality standards as measured by originality and significance of the contribution and clarity of presentation. Papers will be coordinated by the track editor and associate editors, and reviewed by peer reviewers drawn from the JAIR Editorial Board and the larger community. All articles should be submitted using the normal JAIR submission process. Please indicate that the submission is intended for the Special Track in the section 'Special Information for editors'. For more information and submission instructions, please see:http://www.jair.org/specialtrack-claa.html Timetable
24th March 2015                 *EXTENDED*  Deadline for Submissions24th June 2015                    Notification of Acceptance/Revision/Rejection5th August 2015                   Deadline for Re-submission of papers requiring revision5th October 2015                 Notification of Final Acceptance24th November 2015           Final manuscript dueContact: martaruizcostajussa@gmail.comSubmission Instructions: Use JAIR conventional submissions instructions available at http://www.jair.org/submission_info.html
  
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| 7-2 | Tipa. Travaux interdisciplinaires sur la parole et le langage 
   Tipa. Travaux interdisciplinairessur la parole et le langage
  http://tipa.revues.org/ The impact of language contact: from structural interferences to typological convergences Guest editor: Cyril Aslanov               The 31st issue of TIPA will be dedicated to the study of the impact of language contact on the hard core of grammatical systems. In order to counterbalance the strictly internalist approaches to diachronic evolution, we will adopt the theoretical perspective provided by the studies on contact-induced linguistic changes.             The contributors are requested to cast a new light on the results of language contact, either as an occasional interference at the level of social or individual speech or as a structural convergence deeply rooted in the grammatical structure. The contact-induced linguistic changes may be considered in the dynamic perspective of the diachrony of language contact or through the study of a given state of language examined synchronically as the present result of a previous contact.             Besides the impact of language contact on the inner system of languages, it is important to involve also a sociolinguistic dimension in order to grasp the continuity or the reccursivity that unite the empirical modalities of language contacts (code-switching; code-mixing; hybridization) with considerations more centered on the study of the linguistic systems themselves, especially as far as fusion languages like Yiddish, Romani or Swahili are concerned. Indeed, the very existence of such languages is due to language contact and multilingualism.             Lastly, the scientific debate on the impact of language contact on the systems should also take into account the individual dimension. Psycholinguists interested in interference, convergence and mimetism, specialists of individual bilingualism and didacticians dealing with Interlingua are invited to enrich this issue on the results of language contact.       The language of publication will be either English or French. Each article should contain a detailed two-page abstract in the other language, in order to make papers in French more accessible to English-speaking readers, and vice versa, thus insuring a larger audience for all the articles.
 
 Important datesJuly 25, 2015  (Extension):  deadline for submission of articles
 September 15: notification of acceptance
 October 30:  receipt of final version
 December: publication.
 Submission guidelines
 Please send your proposal in 3 files to: tipa@lpl-aix.fr
 - one in .doc containing the title, name and affiliation of the author(s).
 - the other anonymous in .doc  and .pdf
 Instructions for authors can be found at http://www.lpl-aix.fr/index.php?id=27
 
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| 7-3 | IEEE Transactions on Multi-Scale Computing Systems: Special Issue on Design and Applications of Neuromorphic Computing System 
 IEEE Transactions on Multi-Scale Computing Systems
 Special Issue on Design and Applications of Neuromorphic Computing System
 
 GUEST EDITORS:
 Hai (Helen) Li, hal66@pitt.edu, University of Pittsburgh
 Qinru Qiu, qiqiu@syr.edu, Syracuse University
 Yu Wang, yu-wang@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn, Tsinghua University
 
 TOPIC SUMMARY:
 As artificial intelligence technology becomes pervasive in society and ubiquitous in our lives, the desire for embedded-everywhere and human-centric computational intelligence systems calls for an intelligent computation paradigm. However, the applications of machine learning and neural networks involve large, noisy, incomplete, natural data sets that do not lend themselves to convenient solutions from current systems. Neuromorphic systems that are inspired by the working mechanism of human brains possess a massively parallel architecture with closely coupled memory and computing. This special issue aims at the computing methodology and systems across multiple technology scales to accelerate the development the neuromorphic hardware systems and the adoption for machine learning applications. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
 
 - Neuromorphic circuit, architectures, and systems
 - Hardware-software co-design and optimization
 - Computing system for neural network applications (machine vision, machine learning, sensor network, big data, signal processing & coding, pattern recognition, nature language processing, etc.)
 - Software and hardware architecture for deep learning
 - Bio-inspired computing model and/or hardware design
 
 IMPORTANT DATES:
 Open for submissions in ScholarOne Manuscripts: November 1, 2015
 Closed for submissions: January 15, 2016
 Results of first round of reviews: April 30, 2016
 Submission of revised manuscripts: May 31, 2016
 Results of second round of reviews: July 31, 2016
 Publication materials due: August 31, 2016
 
 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
 Prospective authors are invited to submit their manuscripts electronically after the ?open for submissions? date, adhering to the IEEE Transactions on Multi-Scale Computing Systems guidelines (http://www.computer.org/portal/web/tmscs/author). Please submit your papers through the online system (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tmscs-cs) and be sure to select the special issue name. Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Please submit only full papers intended for review, not abstracts, to the ScholarOne portal. If requested, abstracts should be sent by e-mail to the Guest Editors directly.
 
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| 7-4 | Special Issue CSL on Language and Interaction Technologies for Children 
 Special Issue on Language and Interaction Technologies for ChildrenThe link:
 goo.gl/CFSjTR
 
 Description:
 The purpose of this special edition of CSL is to publish the results of new research in the area of speech, text and language technology applied specifically to children?s voices, texts and applications. Children are different to adults both at the acoustic and linguistic level as well as in the way that they interact with people and technology. To address these issues appropriately, it is necessary to work across many disciplines, including cognitive science, robotics, speech processing, phonetics and linguistics, health and education.
 
 Linguistic characteristics of children's speech are widely different from those of adults. This is manifested in their interactions, their writings and their speech. The processing of queries, texts and spoken interactions therefore opens challenging research issues on how to develop effective interaction, language, pronunciation and acoustic models for reliable processing of children?s input. The behavior of children interacting with a computer or a mobile device is also different from that of adults. When using a conversational interface for example, children have a different language strategy for initiating and guiding conversational exchanges, and may adopt different linguistic registers than adults. The aim of the special edition is to provide a platform for collecting mature research in this area.
 
 Technical Scope:
 The special issue will focus on how children use text and speech in all aspects of communication, including human-human and human-computer interaction. We invite the submission of original, unpublished papers on topics including but not limited to:
 
 - Speech Interfaces: acoustic and linguistic analysis of children's speech, discourse analysis of spoken language in child-machine interaction, age-dependent characteristics of spoken language, automatic speech recognition for children and spoken dialogue systems
 - Text Analysis: Analysis of complexity and accuracy in children?s text productions, understanding progression and development in orthography and syntax skills, use of vocabulary and registers or handwriting skills.
 - Multi-modality, Robotics and Avatars: multi-modal child-machine interaction, multi-modal input and output interfaces, including robotic interfaces, intrusive, non-intrusive devices for environmental data processing, pen or gesture/visual interfaces
 - User Modeling: user modeling and adaptation, usability studies accounting for age preferences in child-machine interaction
 - Cognitive Models: internal learning models, personality types, user-centered and participatory design
 - Application Areas: training systems, educational software, gaming interfaces, medical conditions, such as autism or speech disorders, diagnostic tools and (speech) therapy
 
 Important Dates:
 Paper submission deadline: March 1, 2016
 Target publication date: January 1, 2017
 
 Guest Editors:
 Berkling Kay, Cooperative State University, Berkling@dhbw-karlsruhe.de
 Russell Martin, University of Birmingham, m.j.russell@bham.ac.uk
 Evanini Keelan, ETS, kevanini@ets.org
 
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| 7-5 | Computer Speech and Language Journal, Special Issue on Spoken Language Understanding and Interaction 
  Computer Speech and Language Journal, Special Issue on Spoken Language Understanding and Interaction  For more information: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/computer-speech-and-language/call-for-papers/special-issue-on-spoken-language-understanding-and-interacti/ 
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| 7-6 | Numero spécial de TAL: l'éthique dans le TALP 
 un numéro spécial de la revue TAL sera consacré à l'éthique dans le TALP.Voici les informations, que vous retrouverez aussi sur :
 http://tal-57-2.sciencesconf.org/
 
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| 7-7 | Call for papers - Journal TIPA no 32, 2016 
 Call for papers - Journal TIPA no 32, 2016   Tipa. Travaux interdisciplinaires sur la parole et le langage https://tipa.revues.org/     Conflict in discourse and discourse in conflict   Guest editors: Tsuyoshi KIDA* & Laura-Anca PAREPA** *Language and Communication Science Laboratory (LCSL)-Institute for Comparative Research in Human and Social Sciences (ICR), University of Tsukuba, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences **Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Research Fellow, University of Tsukuba, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences     Description   Nowadays, conflict between individuals, countries or groups seems omnipresent. The reasons for this are numerous, be they religious, cultural, ideological, territorial, patrimonial or familial. Conflict manifests itself in numerous forms of expression and resolution, which can include diplomatic declarations, civil demonstrations, ideological clashes, family disputes, intercultural misunderstandings, lawsuits or other negotiations.   In the public or private sphere, conflict is triggered through the process of discourse being produced, disseminated, interpreted and amplified –therefore having an effect the opinions and attitudes of its receivers. At the same time, human beings are inherently endowed with the ability to manage and overcome these conflicts through lexical choice, ways of speaking, non-verbal communication, deconfliction techniques and conflict resolution methods. In other words, conflict is mediated through discourse.   The thematic concept for volume 32 of TIPA –conceived following collaboration between a linguist and an expert in political discourse – proposes to focus on the relations between discourse and conflict, within various disciplinary frameworks, in order to address the following questions: What type of discourse engenders conflict? What are the features specific to conflictual discourse in terms of prosody, semantics, pragmatics, discursive or interactional structure? How can conflict be dealt with and resolved? How can identities and images be constructed or deconstructed through speech acts? How can lexical choice influence the success or failure of strategic narratives in an official speech?   These are just some of the questions to which linguistics and language sciences, as well as other neighbouring disciplines, can be sensitive and to which the scientific community may propose comprehensive answers by engaging in interdisciplinary research.   This call for papers is open to theoretical and/or empirical contributions coming from researchers and experts from a wide range of disciplines including but not limited to: discourse analysis (political, media, forensic, international relations), pragmatics, sociolinguistics, interactional analysis, rhetoric, semantics, intercultural communication, discourse prosody, multimodality, neurolinguistics, etc.   The language of publication will be either English or French. Each article should contain a detailed two-page abstract in the other language, in order to make papers in French more accessible to English-speaking readers, and vice versa, thus insuring a larger audience for all the articles.   Important dates   June 30: due date for submission of articles September 15: notification of acceptance October 30: receipt of final version December: publication.   Submission guidelines   Please send your proposal in three files to: tipa@lpl-aix.fr - one file in .doc containing the title, name and affiliation of the author(s).
 - two anonymous files, in .doc and .pdf formatInstructions for authors can be found at http://tipa.revues.org/222
     
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| 7-8 | Special Issue of Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering : Signal Processing Platforms and Algorithms for Real-life Communications and Listening to Digital Audio 
 Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering    Special Issue on Signal Processing Platforms and Algorithms for Real-life Communications and Listening to Digital Audio   Call for Papers: Design of modern electronic communication systems involves diversified scientific areas including algorithms, architectures, and hardware development. Variety of existent multimedia devices gives rise to development of platform-dependent signal processing algorithms. Their integration into existent digital environment is an urgent problem for application engineers.  Considering a wide range of applications including hearing aids, real-life communications, and listening to digital audio, the following research areas are of particular importance: advanced time-frequency representations, audio user interfaces, audio and speech enhancement, assisted listening, and perception and phonation modeling. This special issue aims at publishing papers presenting novel methodologies and techniques (including theoretical methods, algorithms, software, and hardware) correspondent to these research areas indicated above.   Potential topics include, but are not limited to: 
Speech modeling, analysis, and synthesis
Signal processing for hearing aids and natural hearing
Speech intelligibility improvement in noisy environment
Low-delay speech and audio processing
Automatic speech recognition
Text-to-speech synthesis
Speech-based assistive technologies
Hardware platforms for real-time signal processing
Rapid prototyping and project portability   Authors can submit their manuscripts via the Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/jece/signal.processing/spp/.    Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (Hindawi publishing corporation) is a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal (http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jece). According to the publisher policy, publishing a research article in this journal requires article processing charges ($600) that will be billed to the submitting author following the acceptance of an article for publication.   Important Dates: 
Manuscript Due Friday, 24 June 2016
First Round of Reviews Friday, 16 September 2016
Publication Date Friday, 11 November 2016   Guest Editors: 
Wanggen Wan, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China, wanwg@staff.shu.edu.cn 
Manuel R. Zurera, University of Alcala, Madrid, Spain, manuel.rosa@uah.es 
Alexey Karpov, St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia, karpov@iias.spb.su    Web: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jece/si/324109/cfp/ 
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| 7-9 | CfP TAL Special issue: Natural Language Processing and Ethics 
 CALL FOR ARTICLES
 Natural Language Processing and Ethics
 
 Natural Language Processing (NLP) has always posed ethical or legal problems. These
 problems are particularly sensitive in this age of Big Data and of data duplication,
 areas in which NLP is involved. In addition to legal and economic matters (search for
 patents and rights associated with data/software), there are military issues (monitoring
 of conversations) and social issues (the ?right to be forgotten? imposed on Google).
 
 The crucial problem today is access to data (including sensitive) and personal privacy
 protection for citizens. Indeed, our domain produces applications considered to be
 effective for both areas (data access and protection), but without their known
 limitations being clear to the general public and governments.
 
 Diversifying work on corpora has also led the community to be able to process more and
 more sensitive sources, be it personal data, medical data or even that of a criminal
 nature.
 
 For privacy protection, anonymizing data, whether oral or written, is as much an
 industrial as an academic stake, with sometimes strong coverage constraints depending on
 the application or research needs, issues regarding the nature of the resources and the
 information to be anonymized, or legal limits.
 
 Some NLP tools also join the ethical concerns, such as tools for plagiarism detection,
 facts checking and speaker identification. In addition, the advent of Web 2.0 and with it
 the development of crowdsourcing raises new questions as to the way in which to consider
 participants in the creation of linguistic resources.
 
 This special issue of the TAL journal aims to highlight the NLP contributions to ethics
 and data protection and to uncover the limitations of the field both in terms of real
 possibilities (evaluation) and societal dangers.
 
 We encourage submissions on all aspects related to ethics for and by Natural Language
 Processing, and in particular on the following problems or tasks:
 
 
 sensitive corpus processing, including medical, police or personal data
 language resource production, in particular using crowdsourcing, and ethics
 ethical questions linked to the use of tools or the result of NLP processing
 ethical questions related to NLP practices
 quality and ways of evaluating applications and/or language resources
 anonymization, de-identification and re-identification of NLP corpora
 plagiarism detection by NLP
 facts checking
 paralinguistic and ethics, in particular speaker identification or detection of
 pathologies
 historical perspective of ethics in NLP
 definition of ethics as applied to NLP
 
 We also welcome position papers on the subject.
 
 LANGUAGE
 
 Manuscripts may be submitted in English or French. French-speaking authors are requested
 to submit in French. Submissions in English are accepted only in case of one of the
 authors not being a French speaker.
 
 
 
 IMPORTANT DATES
 
 
 ** extension ** end of March 2016 Deadline for submission
 end of May 2016 Notification to authors after first review
 beg. of July 2016 Deadline for submission of revised version
 mid-July 2016 Notification to authors after second review
 end of Sept. 2016 Deadline for submission of final version
 December 2016 Publication
 
 PAPER SUBMISSION
 
 Authors who intend to submit a paper are encouraged to upload their contribution (no more
 than 25 pages, PDF format) via the menu 'Paper submission' of the issue page of the
 journal. To do so, you will need to have an account on the Sciencesconf platform. To
 create an account, go to the Sciencesconf site and click on 'create account' next to the
 'Connect' button at the top of the page. To submit, come back to this page, connect to
 you account and upload your submission.
 
 TAL perfoms double blind reviewing. Your paper should be anonymised.
 
 Style sheets are available for download on the Web site of the journal
 (http://www.atala.org/IMG/zip/tal-style.zip).
 
 Invited editors: Karën Fort (U. Paris-Sorbonne/STIH), Gilles Adda (LIMSI-CNRS/IMMI), K.
 Bretonnel Cohen (U. of Colorado, School of Medicine)
 
 REVIEWING COMMITTEE
 
 Maxime Amblard (U. de Lorraine/LORIA)
 Jean-Yves Antoine (U. de Tours/LI)
 Philippe Blache (CNRS / LPL)
 Jean-François Bonastre (LIA/U. D'Avignon)
 Alain Couillault (U. de La Rochelle/L3i)
 Gaël de Chalendar (CEA LIST)
 Patrick Drouin (U. de Montréal/OLST)
 Cécile Fabre (U. de Toulouse/CLLE-ERSS)
 Cyril Grouin (LIMSI-CNRS)
 Lynette Hirschman (MITRE Corporation)
 Larry Hunter (U. of Colorado, School of Medicine)
 Nancy Ide (Vassar College/Dpt of Computer Science)
 Juliette Kahn (LNE)
 Mark Liberman (UPenn/LDC)
 Joseph Mariani (LIMSI-CNRS/IMMI)
 Yann Mathet (U. de Caen/GREYC)
 Claude Montacié (U. Paris-Sorbonne/STIH)
 Jean-Philippe Prost (U. de Montpellier/LIRMM)
 Rafal Rzepka (Hokkaido University/Language Media Laboratory)
 Björn Schuller (University of Passau)
 Michel Simard (National Reseach Council Canada)
 Mariarosaria Taddeo (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford)
 
 THE JOURNAL
 
 TAL (Traitement Automatique des Langues) is an international journal that has been
 published by ATALA (Association pour le Traitement Automatique des Langues) for the past
 40 years with the support of the CNRS. Over the past few years, it has become an online
 journal, with possibility of ordering the paper versions. This does not, in any way,
 affect the selection and review process.
 
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| 7-10 | CfP Neurocomputing: Special Issue  on Machine Learning for Non-Gaussian Data Processing 
   
Neurocomputing: Special Issue on Machine Learning for Non-Gaussian Data Processing    With the widespread explosion of sensing and computing, an increasing number of industrial applications and an ever-growing amount of academic research generate massive multi-modal data from multiple sources. Gaussian distribution is the probability distribution ubiquitously used in statistics, signal processing, and pattern recognition. However, not all the data we are processing are Gaussian distributed. It has been found in recent studies that explicitly utilizing the non-Gaussian characteristics of data (e.g., data with bounded support, data with semi-bounded support, and data with L1/L2-norm constraint) can significantly improve the performance of practical systems. Hence, it is of particular importance and interest to make thorough studies of the non-Gaussian data and the corresponding non-Gaussian statistical models (e.g., beta distribution for bounded support data, gamma distribution for semi-bounded support data, and Dirichlet/vMF distribution for data with L1/L2-norm constraint). 
 In order to analyze and understand such kind of non-Gaussian data, the developments of related learning theories, statistical models, and efficient algorithms become crucial. The scope of this special issue is to provide theoretical foundations and ground-breaking models and algorithms to solve this challenge. 
 We invite authors to submit articles to address the aspects ranging from case studies of particular problems with non-Gaussian distributed data to novel learning theories and approaches, including (but not limited to): 
Machine Learning for Non-Gaussian Statistical ModelsNon-Gaussian Pattern Learning and Feature SelectionSparsity-aware Learning for Non-Gaussian DataVisualization of Non-Gaussian DataDimension Reduction and Feature Selection for Non-Gaussian DataNon-Gaussian Convex OptimizationNon-Gaussian Cross Domain AnalysisNon-Gaussian Statistical Model for Multimedia Signal ProcessingNon-Gaussian Statistical Model for Source and/or Channel CodingNon-Gaussian Statistical Model for Biomedical Signal ProcessingNon-Gaussian Statistical Model for BioinformaticsNon-Gaussian Statistical Model in Social NetworksPlatforms and Systems for Non-Gaussian Data Processing Timeline SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Oct 15, 2016 ACCEPTANCE DEADLINE: June 15, 2017 EXPECTED PUBLICATION DATE: Sep 15, 2017 
 Guest Editors 
 Associate Professor Zhanyu Ma Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT) 
 Professor Jen-Tzung Chien National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) 
 Associate Professor Zheng-Hua Tan Aalborg University (AAU) 
 Senior Lecture Yi-Zhe Song Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) 
 Postdoctoral Researcher Jalil Taghia Stanford University 
 Associate Professor Ming Xiao KTH ? Royal Institute of Technology 
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| 7-11 | IEEE Trans. on Affective Computing, Special Issue on Laughter Computing: towards machines able to deal with laughter 
 IEEE Transactions on Affective ComputingSpecial Issue on Laughter Computing: towards machines able to deal with laughter
 
 
 TOPIC SUMMARY:
 Laughter is a significant feature of human-human communication. It
 conveys various meanings and accompanies different emotions, such as
 amusement, relief, irony, or embarrassment. It has strong social
 dimensions: e.g., it can reduce the sense of threat in a group and
 facilitate sociability and cooperation. It also may have positive
 effects on learning, creativity, health, and well-being. Because of its
 relevance in human-human communication, research on laughter deserves
 important attention from the Affective Computing community. Several
 recent initiatives, such as the Special Session on Laughter at the 6th
 International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent
 Interaction (ACII2015) and the series of Interdisciplinary Workshops on
 Laughter and other Non-Verbal Vocalizations in Speech, witness the
 importance of the topic. Recent research projects focused on laughter by
 investigating automatic laughter processing, and by developing proof-of
 concepts, experiments, and prototypes exploiting laughter for enhancing
 human-computer interaction.
 Most research questions, however, are still unanswered. These address,
 for example, theoretical issues (e.g., how can laughter be modelled and
 analysed as a multimodal phenomenon, including non-verbal full-body
 expression? Which is the relation between different expressions of
 laughter, their perceived meanings and their social functions?),
 analysis (e.g., to what extent is multimodal analysis of laughter in
 complex social scenarios feasible and effective?), and synthesis
 techniques (e.g., can speech laughter be synthesized effectively?).
 Overcoming the lack of HCI/HRI/HHI applications that exploit the
 positive (as well as a critical analysis of negative) effects of
 laughter is also of high interest. The issue of acceptability of
 laughing machines, either virtual agent or robot, needs to be addressed as well.
 The goal of this special issue is to gather recent achievements in
 laughter computing in order to trigger new research directions in this
 field. The interest is on computational models that deal with laughter
 in human-computer and human-human interaction. Laughter is characterized
 by a complex expressive behaviour that includes major expressive
 modalities: auditory, facial expressions, body movements and postural
 attitudes, and physiological signals. This special issue aims at taking
 into account the multimodal nature of laughter and its variety of
 contexts and meanings, and providing an interdisciplinary perspective of
 ongoing scientific research and ICT developments.
 
 Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
 ? Multimodal laughter detection and synthesis
 ? Computational models of laughter mimicry and contagion
 ? Multimodal datasets of different laughter types in both controlled and ecological context
 ? Laughter analysis in human-human communication
 ? Individual differences in the expression of laughter
 ? Modelling of different communicative meanings of laughter
 ? Laughter-based applications in HCI/HRI/HHI and future user-centric media
 ? Acceptability of laughter in HCI/HRI applications
 ? Laughter elicitation mechanisms (e.g., 'computational humour', KANSEI)
 ? Laughter as an expression of different emotions (e.g., amusement,
 embarrassment, relief, and so on)
 
 IMPORTANT DATES:
 Deadline for submissions: June 24, 2016
 Review results: September 16, 2016
 Deadline for submission of revised manuscripts: October 14, 2016
 Final reviews: November 11, 2016
 
 GUEST EDITORS:
 ? M. Mancini, DIBRIS, University of Genoa (Italy), maurizio.mancini@unige.it
 ? R. Niewiadomski, DIBRIS, University of Genoa (Italy),
 radoslaw.niewiadomski@dibris.unige.it
 ? S. Hashimoto, SHALAB, Dept. of Applied Physics, Waseda University
 (Japan), shuji@waseda.jp
 ? M.E. Foster, School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow
 (Scotland, UK), maryellen.foster@glasgow.ac.uk
 ? S. Scherer, Institute for Creative Technologies, University of
 Southern California (USA), scherer@ict.usc.edu
 ? G. Volpe, DIBRIS, University of Genoa (Italy), gualtiero.volpe@unige.it
 
 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
 Prospective authors are invited to submit their manuscripts
 electronically after the ?open for submissions? date, adhering to the
 IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing guidelines
 (http://www.computer.org/web/tac/author). Please submit your papers
 through the online system (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/taffc-cs)
 and be sure to select the special issue or special section name.
 Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for
 publication elsewhere. Please submit only full papers intended for
 review, not abstracts, to the ScholarOne portal. If requested, abstracts
 should be sent by e-mail to the Guest Editors directly.
 
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| 7-12 | revue Études Créoles-Nouvelle série 
 Nous avons le plaisir de vous annoncer la parution en ligne du premier numéro de la revue Études Créoles-Nouvelle série. Études Créoles est une revue qui existe depuis 1978 et qui a connu une parution papier régulière (1 à 2 numéros annuels). Il s'agit de la première revue du domaine disciplinaire de la créolistique qui a toujours eu une orientation pluridisciplinaire accueillant des articles sur les langues et la linguistique, les littératures, l'anthropologie et l'éducation dans les mondes créoles.  Suite au 14e Colloque des Études Créoles qui s'est tenu à Aix-en-Provence en octobre 2014 avec le soutien du Laboratoire Parole et Langage, le Comité International des Études Créoles a confié la relance de la revue à une nouvelle équipe éditoriale.
 Elle est désormais sous format électronique et en libre accès :
 Études Créoles-Nouvelle série : Numéro 2015 l 1 : http://www.lpl-aix.fr/index.php?id=974?
 
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| 7-13 | CFP: Machine Translation Journal/Special Issue on Spoken Language Translation 
 Alex Waibel (Carnegie Mellon University / Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
 Sebastian Stüker (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
 
 Marcello Federico (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)
 
 Satoshi Nakamura (Nara Institute of Science and Technology)
 
 Hermann Ney (RWTH Aachen University)
 
 Dekai Wu (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 Spoken language translation (SLT) is the science of automatic translation of spoken language.  It may be tempting to view spoken language as nothing more than language (as in text) with an added spoken verbalization preceding it.  Translation of speech could then be achieved by simply applying automatic speech recognition (ASR or ?speech-to-text?) before applying traditional machine translation (MT).
 
 Unfortunately, such an overly simplistic approach does not address the complexities of the problem.  Not only do speech recognition errors compound with errors in machine translation, but spoken language also differs considerably in form, structure and style, so as to render the combination of two text-based components as ineffective.  Moreover, automatic spoken language translation systems serve different practical goals than voice interfaces or text translators, so that integrated systems and their interfaces have to be designed carefully and appropriately (mobile, low-latency, audio-visual, online/offline, interactive, etc.) around their intended deployment.
 
 
 
Unlike written texts, human speech is not segmented into sentences, does not contain punctuation, is frequently ungrammatical, contains many disfluencies, or sentence fragments.  Conversely, spoken language contains information about the speaker, gender, emotion, emphasis, social form and relationships and ?in the case of dialog- there is discourse structure, turn-taking, back-channeling across languages to be considered. SLT systems, therefore, need to consider a host of additional concerns related to integrated recognition and translation performance, use of social form and function, prosody, suitability and (depending on deployment) effectiveness of human interfaces, and task performance under various speed, latency, context and language resource constraints. Due to continuing improvements in underlying spoken language ASR and MT components as well as in the integrated system designs, spoken language systems have become increasingly sophisticated and can handle increasingly complex sentences, more natural environments, discourse and conversational styles, leading to a variety of successful practical deployments. In the light of 25 years of successful research and transition into practice, the MT Journal dedicates a special issue to the problem of Spoken Language Translation.  We invite submissions of papers that address issues and problems pertaining to the development, design and deployment of spoken language translation systems.  Papers on component technologies and methodology as well as on system designs and deployments of spoken language systems are both encouraged.   --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Submission guidelines: - Authors should follow the 'Instructions for Authors' available on the MT Journal website:http://www.springer.com/computer/artificial/journal/10590 - Submissions must be limited to 25 pages (including references) - Papers should be submitted online directly on the MT journal's submission website: http://www.editorialmanager.com/coat/default.asp, indicating this special issue in ?article type?   Important dates: - Paper submission: July 15th 2016. - Notification to authors: August 3rd 2016. - Camera-ready*: November 19th 2016. * tentative - depending on the number of review rounds required 
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