Argumentative formalisms have been widely recognized as knowledge representation and reasoning tools able to deal with incomplete and potentially contradictory informa- tion. All such formalisms are computationally demanding. Hence, optimizing argumen- tative systems has been approached from di erent views.

Effective document retrieval using domain knowledge and semantics is one of the major challenges in Information Retrieval. Over the last years, there has been a growing interest in ontologies as an artifact for human knowledge representation and a critical component…

Modeling is one of the most important activities throughout any software development life cycle. Within object-oriented modeling, class generalization is a powerful, yet simple concept for abstracting commonalities between classes. Although, as classes evolved in the model, their semantics may…

his dissertation analyzes how local knowledge improves environmental decisions. The premise is that controlling pollution and addressing public health disparities are not problems that professionals alone can solve. Concerned lay publics, especially low-income populations and people of color that experience…

by Kimberly G. Waters., Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2002., Includes bibliographical references (p. 45-46).

Conversational interfaces have received much attention as a promising natural communication channel between humans and computers. A typical conversational interface consists of three major systems: speech understanding, dialog management and spoken language generation. In such a conversational interface, speech recognition…

Most neural network learning algorithms cannot use knowledge other than what is provided in the training data. Initialized using random weights, they cannot use prior knowledge such as knowledge stored in previously trained networks. This manuscript thesis addresses this problem.…

The activity of designing and developing large, complex, discrete, physical, and engineered products faces the challenges in the physical product system, the organization of people, and the larger systems in which the product resides-the natural and societal systems. This thesis…

by Kazunori Yamagata., Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2002., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-99).

by Jose Maria Gonzalez Pinto., Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2002., Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-69).