This article traces the unstable semantics of use cases from Jacobson to UML 1.3. The UML 1.1 metamodel formally defined the «uses» and «extends» use case relationships as stereotypes of generalisation, yet both received interpretations that varied between inheritance and composition, reflecting a large degree of confusion among developers. The recently revised UML 1.3 has quietly dropped these...

In 1987 the State of Wisconsin, in authorizing a state lottery, required the Wisconsin Lottery Board to contract with IRP to undertake a study of the impact of the lottery on Wisconsin residents of various income levels. Titled "Who Plays the Lottery? A Comparison of Patterns in Wisconsin and the Nation," the study was carried out by Irving Piliavin and Michael Polakowski and is available as IR...

We show that in language learning, contrary to received wisdom, keeping exceptional training instances in memory can be beneecial for generalization accuracy. We investigate this phenomenon empirically on a selection of benchmark natural language processing tasks: grapheme-to-phoneme conversion, part-of-speech tagging, prepositional-phrase attachment, and base noun phrase chunking. In a rst ser...

Piping vibration which is mainly caused by the torsional vibration of rotary compressor can be a major noise source of air-conditioner. Especially, the tangential vibration of rotary compressor which is due to the torsional vibration is much higher than the radial vibration or the vertical vibration of compressor. A study as to how the tangential vibration of rotary compressor is related with t...

This invited paper reviews experimental studies of the frequency-dependence of absolute thresholds for the perception of vibration, equivalent comfort contours, temporary changes in sensation caused by vibration, and reductions in finger blood flow caused by hand-transmitted vibration. Absolute thresholds depend on the contact conditions but for a typical hand grip the thresholds show greatest ...