Requirements acquisition is one of the most important and least well supported parts of the software development process. The Requirements Apprentice (RA) will assist a human analyst in the creation and modification of software requirements. Unlike current requirements analysis tools,…

Webster P. Dove., Originally presented as author's thesis (Ph. D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology), 1986., Bibliography: p. 209-213., Supported in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency monitored by ONR under contract no. N00014-81-K-0742 Supported in part by the National Science…

Many systems have been developed for constructing decision trees from collections of examples. Although the decision trees generated by these methods are accurate and efficient, they often suffer the disadvantage of excessive complexity that can render them incomprehensible to experts.…

This thesis focuses on the cultural construction of cancer experience in a modern clinical context. A French Canadian center, specializing in cancer treatment, was the main source of information for this study. Facts obtained from this setting served for the…

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,…

Explanation-based Generalization requires that the learner obtain an explanation of why a precedent exemplifies a concept. It is, therefore, useless if the system fails to find this explanation. However, it is not necessary to give up and resort to purely…

This paper describes ARLO, a representation language loosely modelled after Greiner and Lenant's RLL-1. ARLO is a structure-based representation language for describing structure-based representation languages, including itself. A given representation language is specified in ARLO by a collection of structures…

The use of ribonucleoside phosphoramidites protected at the 2$ sp prime$-hydroxyl with alkylsilyl ethers was developed for the solid phase synthesis of oligoribonucleotides. A series of pentadecameric oligomers of various base composition was synthesized using this methodology and a complete…

This thesis examines the relationship between moral experience and moral knowledge in contemporary analytic meta-ethics. It begins with a critical examination of the work of Michael Smith, notably his book The Moral Problem, which leaves out of consideration the notion…

During recent years, industry has increasingly focused on knowledge processes. Similar to traditional or manufacturing processes, knowledge processes need to be managed and controlled in order to provide the expected results for which they were designed. During the last decade,…