An Exploratory Study of Forces and Frictions affecting Large-Scale Model-Driven Development

In this paper, we investigate model-driven engineering, reporting on an exploratory case-study conducted at a large automotive company. The study consisted of interviews with 20 engineers and managers working in different roles. We found that, in the context of a large organization, contextual forces dominate the cognitive issues of using model-driven technology. The four forces we identified that are likely independent of the particular abstractions chosen as the basis of software development are the need for diffing in software product lines, the needs for problem-specific languages and types, the need for live modeling in exploratory activities, and the need for point-to-point traceability between artifacts. We also identified triggers of accidental complexity, which we refer to as points of friction introduced by languages and tools. Examples of the friction points identified are insufficient support for model diffing, point-to-point traceability, and model changes at runtime.Comment: To appear in proceedings of MODELS 2012, LNCS Springe

Towards Ecology Inspired Software Engineering

Ecosystems are complex and dynamic systems. Over billions of years, they have developed advanced capabilities to provide stable functions, despite changes in their environment. In this paper, we argue that the laws of organization and development of ecosystems provide a solid and rich source of inspiration to lay the foundations for novel software construction paradigms that provide stability as much as openness.Comment: No. RR-7952 (2012

Catalyzing Capital for Invention: Spotlight on India

The Lemelson Foundation has observed first hand a number of obstacles limiting the impact of India's scientists, engineers, and inventors. The resources these entrepreneurs need, such as financing and mentorship, are limited and often difficult to identify. As a result, many of the invention-based ventures The Lemelson Foundation supports struggle to identify sources of funding and business assistance to suit their unique needs.To understand the scale of these challenges and how to meaningfully address them, the Foundation, with assistance from Enclude, undertook a field study to examine India's "impact ecosystem," which is what the Foundation calls the broad network of businesses, funders, and intermediaries that enable social enterprise. The study hones in on the "invention ecosystem," the Foundation's term for a subset of the impact ecosystem that includes "invention-based entrepreneurs."Detailed observations and data collected from interviews with more than 60 investors, entrepreneurs and intermediaries are presented in this report, along with actionable solutions for addressing challenges. While the study focused on India, lessons are applicable to evolving ecosystems in other developing countries

The U.S. Census Bureau Adopts Differential Privacy

The U.S. Census Bureau announced, via its Scientific Advisory Committee, that it would protect the publications of the 2018 End-to-End Census Test (E2E) using differential privacy. The E2E test is a dress rehearsal for the 2020 Census, the constitutionally mandated enumeration of the population used to reapportion the House of Representatives and redraw every legislative district in the country. Systems that perform successfully in the E2E test are then used in the production of the 2020 Census. Motivation: The Census Bureau conducted internal research that confirmed that the statistical disclosure limitation systems used for the 2000 and 2010 Censuses had serious vulnerabilities that were exposed by the Dinur and Nissim (2003) database reconstruction theorem. We designed a differentially private publication system that directly addressed these vulnerabilities while preserving the fitness for use of the core statistical products. Problem statement: Designing and engineering production differential privacy systems requires two primary components: (1) inventing and constructing algorithms that deliver maximum accuracy for a given privacy-loss budget and (2) insuring that the privacy-loss budget can be directly controlled by the policy-makers who must choose an appropriate point on the accuracy-privacy-loss tradeoff. The first problem lies in the domain of computer science. The second lies in the domain of economics. Approach: The algorithms under development for the 2020 Census focus on the data used to draw legislative districts and to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). These algorithms efficiently distribute the noise injected by differential privacy. The Data Stewardship Executive Policy Committee selects the privacy-loss parameter after reviewing accuracy-privacy-loss graphs

Where Rhetoric and Lean Meet

This paper aims at an initial analysis and explanation of lean through the lens of the discipline of rhetoric. First, the ancient origin, central ideas, subsequent history and current interpretations of rhetoric are outlined. Then, the overall meeting points of rhetoric and lean are discussed. At the outset, it is contended that certain arguments that can be used as a justification in rhetoric seem fertile for understanding the difference between lean and conventional management. Then, persuasion towards compliance in production is discussed. The field of visual management is argued to have an implicit foundation in rhetoric. The existence of a common ground of values, facts and presumptions between the speaker and the audience is emphasized in rhetoric; it is contended that lean construction in many ways endeavours to create such a common ground among the project participants. Regarding deliberation, the rhetorical dimensions in the methods of A3 and Choosing by Advantages are discussed. Further, Target Value Design is identified as based, for their part, on rhetorical ideas. In conclusion, it is contended that many aspects of lean, which as such may seem odd and perhaps peri

Farmers doing it for themselves: how farmer-inventors are frustrated by their interactions with the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System

Notwithstanding recent policy commitments to formally involve farmers in innovation through initiatives such as the European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI), the traditional perspective of the policy and academic literature in Europe has been that agricultural innovations are provided by others for farmers to adopt. In this context there has been relatively little research on the approaches of farmers who independently invent useful products and processes for themselves. This paper presents an analysis of Irish farmers’ inventing processes as a form of user innovation, using data generated from in-depth interviews with farmer-inventors and semi-structured interviews with key informants from agricultural organisations. The farmer-inventors mostly use tacit knowledge and practical skills to create their inventions with the objective of increasing efficiency as a means to improving family farm viability. Farmer-inventors with entrepreneurial intentions were less inclined to share their ideas freely and described financial and temporal constraints in commercialising their inventions. The Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) concept was used to frame an analysis of farmer-inventors’ interactions with innovation support organisations from the perspective of the farmers themselves. This allowed appraisal of the Irish AKIS’ support of farmer-led innovation relating to the positioning, visibility, and representation of farmers’ knowledge, inventions, and networks. This study contributes new knowledge about user innovation in European agriculture as EIP-AGRI co-production structures become established. It is proposed that farmers are a hitherto underappreciated source of independent knowledge and inventions in agricultural development and are poorly supported by AKIS institutions

European Research Area (ERA) from the Innovation Perspective: Knowledge Spillovers, Cost of Inventing and Voluntary Cooperation

The paper analyses the European Research Area policy (ERA) from the innovation perspective. The Lisbon Treaty gives the Union the objective of free circulation of researchers, scientific knowledge and technology. The five ERA initiatives implement the ERA policy on the basis of voluntary cooperation. The ERA and innovation are linked through the business sector R&D investment. The economic value of the ERA comes from accelerated cross-European knowledge spillovers reducing the cost of inventing. In general, important obstacles hinder the knowledge spillovers making them largely intra-national. These obstacles arise due to the incentives in providing and sharing knowledge and to costs of capturing knowledge spillovers. Funding of knowledge from national budgets and uncertain benefits from knowledge circulation across the heterogenous member states complicates situation further. The analysis of Joint Programming and Better Careers and Mobility initiatives reveals multiple sources of obstacles to cross-European knowledge spillovers. Weak incentives in the member states and limited possibilities at the EU level block the implementation of ERA. In this constellation, the ERA initiatives need to support openness and competition in publicly funded research and universities as well as better models of scientific management to guarantee highest scientific quality. Accelerated (ERA) knowledge spillovers require extended and dynamic markets.European Research Area (ERA), knowledge spillovers, innovation, incentives, voluntary cooperation

AI: Inventing a new kind of machine.

A means-ends approach to engineering an artificial intelligence machine now suggests that we focus on the differences between human capabilities and the best computer programs. These differences suggest two basic limitations in the "symbolic" approach. First, human memory is much more than a storehouse where structures are put away, indexed, and rotely retrieved. Second, human reasoning involves more than searching, matching, and recombining previously stored descriptions of situations and action plans. Indeed, these hypotheses are related: Remembering and reasoning both involve reconceptualization. This short paper outlines recent work in situated cognition, robotics, and neural networks that suggests we frame the problem if AI in terms of inventing a new kind of machine

Attributing scientific and technical progress: the case of holography

Holography, the three-dimensional imaging technology, was portrayed widely as a paradigm of progress during its decade of explosive expansion 1964–73, and during its subsequent consolidation for commercial and artistic uses up to the mid 1980s. An unusually seductive and prolific subject, holography successively spawned scientific insights, putative applications and new constituencies of practitioners and consumers. Waves of forecasts, associated with different sponsors and user communities, cast holography as a field on the verge of success—but with the dimensions of success repeatedly refashioned. This retargeting of the subject represented a degree of cynical marketeering, but was underpinned by implicit confidence in philosophical positivism and faith in technological progressivism. Each of its communities defined success in terms of expansion, and anticipated continual progressive increase. This paper discusses the contrasting definitions of progress in holography, and how they were fashioned in changing contexts. Focusing equally on reputed ‘failures’ of some aspects of the subject, it explores the varied attributes by which success and failure were linked with progress by different technical communities. This important case illuminates the peculiar post-World War II environment that melded the military, commercial and popular engagement with scientific and technological subjects, and the competing criteria by which they assessed the products of science

Inventing the Future: Barlow and Beyond

Syfte: Syftet med studien var att kartlägga preventiva omvårdnadsåtgärder för att förhindra ventilator-associerad pneumoni på en thoraxintensivvårdsavdelning. Bakgrund: De vanligaste vårdrelaterade infektionerna på intensivvårdsavdelningar är pneumonier och bland dessa är 80 % ventilatorassocierade. Vårdrelaterade infektioner innebär stora kostnader för samhället och ökat vårdlidande för den drabbade patienten. För att förhindra uppkomsten av ventilator-associerad pneumoni (VAP) finns ett antal omvårdnadsåtgärder som har visat sig vara effektiva vad gäller att motverka VAP. Design: Studien är en journalgranskning med retrospektiv deskriptiv design. Metod: Ett klusterurval gjordes där patienter som vårdats minst två påbörjade dygn i respirator valdes ut. Totalt togs 126 journaler fram varav 17 journaler exkluderades och slutligen ingick totalt 109 journaler i studien. Journalerna granskades med hjälp av ett protokoll där följande omvårdnadsåtgärder kontrollerades: tandborstning, munvård med klorhexidinlösning, antal utförda kufftrycksmätningar, registrerat kufftryck, höjd huvudända, subglottisaspiration, sederingsgrad enligt Richmond Agitation Sedation Scale (RASS) samt gurgling med klorhexidinlösning. Datan analyserades i statistikprogrammet SPSS. Resultat: Deltagarna delades in i två grupper utifrån ålder (grupp 1 ≤ 69 år, grupp 2 ≥ 70 år). Munvård med klorhexidin var den åtgärd som utfördes flest gånger per dygn med medianvärde fyra i båda åldersgrupperna. Därefter följde kufftrycksmätning med en median på två kontroller per dygn. Medianvärdet för höjd huvudända var ett i båda grupperna. Tandborstning var den åtgärd som utfördes minst antal gånger. Det var inga signifikanta skillnader mellan de olika åldersgrupperna vad gäller utförda omvårdnadsåtgärder. Konklusion och kliniska implikationer: En rimlig bedömning är att kontinuerlig uppdatering beträffande den senaste forskningen hos vårdpersonal samt revidering av PM kommer att ge bättre vårdresultat, kortare vårdtider, mindre kostnader för samhället och mindre vårdlidande. Resultatet pekar på behov av antingen bättre följsamhet till befintliga rekommendationer, eller noggrannare och tydligare dokumentation av utförda åtgärder