In this paper we explore the degree to which patents are representative of the magnitude,
direction, and impact of the knowledge spilling out of the university by focusing on MIT, and in particular on the departments of Mechanical and Electrical…

This paper describes some problems and opportunities associated with conceptual modeling for the kind of "open systems" we foresee must and will be increasingly recognized as a central line of computer system development. Computer applications will be based on communication…

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…

We develop a qualitative method for understanding and representing phase space structures of complex systems and demonstrate the method with a program, MAPS --- Modeler and Analyzer for Phase Spaces, using deep domain knowledge of dynamical system theory. Given a…

Current approaches to generation for machine translation make use of direct-replacement templates, large grammars, and knowledge-based inferencing techniques. Not only are rules language-specific, but they are too simplistic to handle sentences that exhibit more complex phenomena. Furthermore, these systems are…

Automated Program Analysis is the process of discovering decompositions of a system into sub-units such that the behavior of the whole program can be inferred from the behavior of its parts. Analysis can be employed to increase the explanatory power…

This paper describes the connection memory, a machine for concurrently manipulating knowledge stored in semantic networks. We need the connection memory because conventional serial computers cannot move through such networks fast enough. The connection memory sidesteps the problem by providing…

by Shawn W. Ritchie., Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 1999., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-81).

We report on a study of how people look for information within email, files, and the Web. When locating a document or searching for a specific answer, people relied on their contextual knowledge of their information target to help them…

Consider a world of 'objects.' Our goal is to place these objects into categories that are useful to the observer using sensory data. One criterion for utility is that the categories allow the observer to infer the object's potential behaviors,…