Goal modeling and analysis techniques help stakeholders consider possible tradeoff alternatives in their requirements and answer “what if” questions about those alternatives. Software projects today exist in an ephemeral state, and current goal modeling approaches do not answer questions about model evolution and changes in actors’ intentionality. We have developed a technique [8] that allows s...

Traditional approaches to simulate airflow movements in buildings are computationally expensive and do not achieve realtime prediction of results. This paper discusses an Adaptive Localization Method (ALM) that significantly minimizes the simulation domain to achieve close to real-time predictions. As the user interacts with the space by modifying boundary conditions (opening a window, etc.), w...

We’re going to take a short break from the problem of private query release to develop another fundamental technique in differential privacy. Don’t worry – we’ll soon use this to improve our query release algorithms. Suppose that a data analyst wants to know the answers to k adaptively chosen, low-sensitivity queries on a private database. At the moment, the only way we know how to handle adapt...

Software engineering provides the method, tools and processes to support the development of complex software systems. As a discipline it must necessarily respond and adapt to the types of system that people want to build and the business context in which software development takes place. We have already seen major changes away from monolithic, custom-built systems to much more highly componenti...

Inferences about counterfactuals are essential for prediction, answering ‘‘what if ’’ questions, and estimating causal effects. However, when the counterfactuals posed are too far from the data at hand, conclusions drawn from well-specified statistical analyses become based on speculation and convenient but indefensible model assumptions rather than empirical evidence. Unfortunately, standard s...

Current techniques for providing collaborative visual analysis of remote scientific data using the Internet are reviewed. It is shown why the tools in common use today, such as Microsoft’s NetMeeting, do not provide scientists with highly interactive viewing of high resolution dynamic scenes of remote data when using typical Internet connections. New tools that do provide these capabilities in ...

Exploration is the act of investigating unknown regions. An analyst exploring a database cannot, by definition, compose the right query or use the appropriate data mining algorithm. However, current data management tools cannot operate without well defined instructions. Therefore, browsing an unknown database can be a very tedious process. Our project, Atlas, is an attempt to circumvent this pr...

One of the most important resources we need today is electricity to carry out comfortably our day-to-day activities. While many nations in the world are abundantly enjoying this resource, more than 1.2 billion people do not have access to electricity. Most of these people are from developing nations typically from Africa and India. They happen to be poor and living in remote villages and mounta...

need to understand the documents it is accessing. But what if the document collections you want to search are domain-specific or limited in size? This type of data source is everywhere, from corporate intranets to local Web sites. Wouldn’t it be useful to have a simple dialogue system that knows what data is available and can assist users in the search process? Furthermore, shouldn’t such a sys...

Inferences about counterfactuals are essential for prediction, answering “what if” questions, and estimating causal effects. However, when the counterfactuals posed are too far from the data at hand, conclusions drawn from well-specified statistical analyses become based on speculation and convenient but indefensible model assumptions rather than empirical evidence. Unfortunately, standard stat...