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NEST Conference 2020 Registration now open
by Dennis Terhorst 04 Jun '20

04 Jun '20

The NEST Conference organization team would like to share the following exciting news: Dear Colleagues! The NEST Conference Website is open again on https://nest-simulator.org/conference and we have now opened for registration as well. Registration by 22 June 2020 is required for attendance. Only registered users will receive log-in information for the conference. Registration to the conference is * free of charge for members of the NEST Initiative * 35 CHF for non-members To qualify for the member rate, you must apply for membership in the NEST Initiative by 10 June. See http://www.nest-initiative.org/membership/ for information on how to join. Membership is currently free of charge for students, including PhD students, and 25 CHF annually for everyone else. We are looking forward to seeing you on 29/30 June! Hans Ekkehard -- Prof. Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser Head, Data Science Section Faculty of Science and Technology Norwegian University of Life Sciences PO Box 5003, 1432 Aas, Norway Phone +47 6723 1560 Email hans.ekkehard.plesser(a)nmbu.no Home http://arken.nmbu.no/~plesser

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NEST Conference 2020 Registration now open
by Hans Ekkehard Plesser 03 Jun '20

03 Jun '20

Dear Colleagues! The NEST Conference Website is open again on https://nest-simulator.org/conference and we have now opened for registration as well. Registration by 22 June 2020 is required for attendance. Only registered users will receive log-in information for the conference. Registration to the conference is * free of charge for members of the NEST Initiative * 35 CHF for non-members To qualify for the member rate, you must apply for membership in the NEST Initiative by 10 June. See http://www.nest-initiative.org/membership/ for information on how to join. Membership is currently free of charge for students, including PhD students, and 25 CHF annually for everyone else. We are looking forward to seeing you on 29/30 June! Hans Ekkehard -- Prof. Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser Head, Data Science Section Faculty of Science and Technology Norwegian University of Life Sciences PO Box 5003, 1432 Aas, Norway Phone +47 6723 1560 Email hans.ekkehard.plesser(a)nmbu.no Home http://arken.nmbu.no/~plesser

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NEST Conference Abstract Submission via EMAIL
by Hans Ekkehard Plesser 02 Jun '20

02 Jun '20

Dear Colleagues, Regrettably, the website for the NEST Conference 2020 became unavailable shortly before the abstract submission deadline. We are currently working to restore the website. In the meantime, please submit your abstract BY EMAIL to conference(a)nest-initiative.org using the attached template (DOCX). Please also find an example abstract with detailed instructions attached. We extend the deadline to 2 June 2020. Best regards, Hans Ekkehard

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NEST 2.20.1
by Ing Jyh Tsang 02 Jun '20

02 Jun '20

Hi, Is NEST 2.20.1<https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/milestone/8> the installed version (when following https://nest-simulator.readthedocs.io/en/stable/installation/index.html), since it solves issue #1394<https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/issues/1394>? it seems it is completed. If this is not, when will this happen? Thanks a lot Ing Jyh Tsang

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send() function
by Itaru Kitayama 01 Jun '20

01 Jun '20

Hi, How do I check where send() function implemented in connector_base.h is generated and stored in which object file? Itaru.

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NEST Conference website not reachable
by Bruno Golosio 30 May '20

30 May '20

Hello, the deadline for submission of contributions is approaching and the NEST Conference website is down since yesterday. Is there an alternative way to submit contributions? Bruno -- Bruno Golosio, PhD Associate Professor of Applied Physics Coordinator of the School of Medical Physics Department of Physics University of Cagliari (Italy) [image: image.gif]

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Finding the right parameters for the balanced network
by nosratullah mohammadi 26 May '20

26 May '20

Dear Nest Users, I hope all of you be in health during these times. I want to create a balanced network as it’s the first step of my master thesis. The model I want to use is “iaf_cond_exp” which is a must for later purposes. There’s an example in Pynest folder of a balanced network, unless it’s using “iaf_psc_alpha” and it doesn’t fit my goals. When I try to change the model, and run the program, the network doesn’t get active and there’s nothing to record. I divided my question into two part: - Does anyone have a balanced network with “iaf_cond_exp” neurons and all of its necessary parameters to run? - In general, how do people find or calculate their network parameters to fit the neuron model they use and don’t get lost in the massive number of parameters. Note: I also tried to use the example of “brunel_alpha_evolution_strategies.py” example which is a genetic algorithm to find the best parameter, although it finds the parameters after 50 generation, I use those parameters afterwards. It just doesn’t work! Kind regards, Nosratullah Mohammadi

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NEST Conference 2020 — Submission deadline 1 June 2020
by Anne Elfgen 26 May '20

26 May '20

Dear all, Just a little reminder that the submission deadline for the (virtual) NEST Conference 2020 is *this Monday, June 1st. *We are looking forward to your contributions. The NEST Conference provides an opportunity for the NEST Community to meet, exchange success stories, swap advice, learn about current developments in and around NEST spiking network simulation and its application. This year's conference will take place as a *virtual conference* on *Monday/Tuesday 29/30 June 2020*. We are inviting contributions to the conference, including plenary talks, "posters" and breakout sessions on specific topics. *Important dates* *01 June 2020* — Deadline for submission of contributions *08 June 2020* — Notification of acceptance *10 June 2020* — Deadline for NEST Initiative Membership applications (registration is free for members in 2020) *22 June 2020* — Registration deadline *29 June 2020* — NEST Conference 2020 starts For more information on how to submit your contribution, register and participate, please visit the conference website *https://nest-simulator.org/conference* We are looking forward to seeing you all in June! Hans Ekkehard Plesser, Susanne Kunkel, Dennis Terhorst, Anne Elfgen & many more

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Open NEST Developer Video Conference Monday 25 May 2020 11:30 CEST (UTC+2)
by Dennis Terhorst 25 May '20

25 May '20

Dear NEST Users & Developers! I would like to invite you to our next fortnightly Open NEST Developer Video Conference on Monday 25 May, 11.30-12.30 CEST (UTC+2). In the Project team round, a contact person of each team will give a short statement summarizing ongoing work in the team and cross-cutting points that need discussion among the teams. The remainder of the meeting we would go into a more in-depth discussion suggested from the teams. Agenda Welcome Review of NEST User Mailing List Project team round In-depth discussion The agenda for this meeting is also available online, see https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/2020-05-25-Open-NEST-Developer-… Looking forward to seeing you soon! best, Dennis Terhorst ------------------ Log-in information ------------------ We use a virtual conference room provided by DFN (Deutsches Forschungsnetz). You can use the web client to connect. We however encourage everyone to use a headset for better audio quality or even a proper video conferencing system (see below) or software when available. Web client * Visit https://conf.dfn.de/webapp/conference/97938800 * Enter your name and allow your browser to use camera and microphone * The conference does not need a PIN to join, just click join and you're in. In case you see a dfnconf logo and the phrase "Auf den Meetingveranstalter warten", just be patient, the meeting host needs to join first (a voice will tell you). VC system/software How to log in with a video conferencing system, depends on you VC system or software. - Using the H.323 protocol (eg Polycom): vc.dfn.net##97938800 or 194.95.240.2##97938800 - Using the SIP protocol:97938800@vc.dfn.de - By telephone: +49-30-200-97938800 For those who do not have a video conference system or suitable software, Polycom provides a pretty good free app for iOS and Android, so you can join from your tablet (Polycom RealPresence Mobile, available from AppStore/PlayStore). Note that firewalls may interfere with videoconferencing in various and sometimes confusing ways. For more technical information on logging in from various VC systems, please see http://vcc.zih.tu-dresden.de/index.php?linkid=1.1.3.4

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Reset Kernel + STDP Performance
by Benedikt S. Vogler 22 May '20

22 May '20

Hello everyone! I am writing to you regarding two matters: Reset Network/Kernel in nest2->nest 3 In the last developer conference, Daphne Cornelisse talked about that she used ResetNetwork() to solve her problem. ResetNetwork() is marked as deprecated. No one said anything, so I got confused why this is apparently the recommended way or at least approved. She showed me, that it works (in her case). It is deprecated, so there is probably some good reasoning behind it. The documentation says: "ResetNetwork is deprecated and will be removed in NEST 3, because this function is not fully able to reset network and simulator state. What are the edge cases where the use causes problems? In this ticket, it is stated that the feature is just removed with any replacement. https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/issues/525 Thus, in nest3 there is only ResetKernel(). This means that you have to rebuild the network for any application where you do multiple simulations with different input or parameter changes. I am using nest3 for reinforcement learning and in each training episode, I have to extract all the weights and save them, reset the kernel, reconstruct the net, then load all the weights. This adds a lot of overhead in performance and bloats my code. I basically have another front-end storing the net and talking to the nest back-end. Therefore, the update to nest3 is a downgrade for many applications. I don’t have a solution for this issue, but I want to spark some discussion as I learned that I am not the only nest user to stumble into this issue. STDP Performance boost by manual computation in python In the paper "Demonstrating Advantages of Neuromorphic Computation: A Pilot Study“ by Wunderlich et al. (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00260/full) some performance improvement on STDP was reported. "The synaptic weight updates in each iteration were restricted to those synapses which transmitted spikes, i.e., the synapses from the active input unit to all output units (32 out of the 1,024 synapses), as the correlation a+ of all other synapses is zero in a perfect simulation without fixed-pattern noise. This has the effect of reducing the overall time required to simulate one iteration[…]“ The provided source code (https://github.com/electronicvisions/model-sw-pong/blob/976e0778ca05cfd96c4… <https://github.com/electronicvisions/model-sw-pong/blob/976e0778ca05cfd96c4…>) indeed contains a manual computation of STDP. When using the nest library I don’t expect to do some computation in python to be faster. It appears to me that the nest implementation is computing STDP every time, even without spikes? Maybe someone can comment on this whether this can be improved in nest? Kind regards, Benedikt S. Vogler -- Benedikt S. Vogler benedikt.s.vogler(a)tum.de Student M.Sc. Robotics, Cognition, Intelligence

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