Using process simulation and AI search methods, we compare software reuse against other possible changes to a project. such as reducing functionality or improving the skills of the programmer population. In one case, two generations of reuse were as good or better than any other project change (but a third and fourth generation of reuse was not useful). In another case, applying reuse to a proj...

OBJECTIVES To compare the usability of different Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) workstations, determine whether a usability test has added value with respect to the traditional way of comparing PACSs based on functional requirements, and to evaluate the appropriateness of a task-based methodology for a PACS usability test. METHODS A task-based usability test of four PACS wo...

As a group of scientists working within academia, we are concerned by the implications of your feature suggesting that industry should stop funding external research. Universities are one of the best types of institution to carry out nutrition research because academic researchers are interested in finding out the truth. Would it be better if all universities refused to work with the food indus...

One of the most compute intensive dataprep operations for 90nm PC level is the model-based optical proximity correction (MBOPC). The running time and output data size are growing unacceptably, particularly for ASICs and designs containing large macros built out of library cells (books). The reason for this growth is that the region-of-interest for MBOPC is approximately 600nm, which means that ...

In 1841 Magendi pioneered to measure cerebrospinal fluid pressure using the ‘‘sphygmometer,’’ an instrument originally designed for assessment of blood pressure. From then on, it took 110 years before the first intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring data has been published in 1951, first ever introducing the important key-word of ‘‘monitoring’’ in the context of the human brain [1]. From this m...

This paper demonstrates that vertical divestiture may increase consumer welfare even when the divestiture eliminates substantial scope economies and precludes only limited sabotage. More generally, the merits of vertical divestiture are shown to vary with: (1) the type and the intensity of competition in the retail market; (2) the locus of scope economies under vertical integration; and (3) the...

Most states now fund merit-based financial aid programs, the effects of which depend on how strongly students react to changes in college costs. I estimate such reactions using quasiexperimental aspects of a recent Massachusetts merit scholarship program intended to attract talented students to the state’s public colleges. Despite its small monetary value, the Adams Scholarship induced 6% of wi...

This survey is the expanded version of my talk at the AMS meeting in April 1997. I explain to non-experts how to use the orbit method, discuss its strong and weak points and advertise some open problems.

Feature merits are used for feature selection in classi cation and regression as well as for decision tree generation. Commonly used merit functions exhibit a bias towards features that take a large variety of values. We present a scheme based on randomization for neutralizing this bias by normalizing the merits. The merit of a feature is normalized by division by the expected merit of a featur...