6,158 research outputs found
Modeling and managing tacit product line requirements knowledge
The success of very large product lines systems with
globally distributed stakeholders often builds significantly on the implicit knowledge of individuals. Final products are typically built by integrating numerous detailed specifications of subsystems. But how exactly all these parts can and need to be integrated to build valid end products is often left unspecified and to numerous discussions, reviews and the expertise of senior architects and product managers.
Building a high-level product line requirements model that explicitly and formally specifies common and variable requirements, their precise integration semantics and the constraints for selecting variable features helps significantly to manage this crucial and often tacit requirements knowledge. Based on an industrial exemplar we motivate and demonstrate such an approach and discuss our early ďŹndings regarding knowledge and rationale management in product line requirements engineering
Fairness Testing: Testing Software for Discrimination
This paper defines software fairness and discrimination and develops a
testing-based method for measuring if and how much software discriminates,
focusing on causality in discriminatory behavior. Evidence of software
discrimination has been found in modern software systems that recommend
criminal sentences, grant access to financial products, and determine who is
allowed to participate in promotions. Our approach, Themis, generates efficient
test suites to measure discrimination. Given a schema describing valid system
inputs, Themis generates discrimination tests automatically and does not
require an oracle. We evaluate Themis on 20 software systems, 12 of which come
from prior work with explicit focus on avoiding discrimination. We find that
(1) Themis is effective at discovering software discrimination, (2)
state-of-the-art techniques for removing discrimination from algorithms fail in
many situations, at times discriminating against as much as 98% of an input
subdomain, (3) Themis optimizations are effective at producing efficient test
suites for measuring discrimination, and (4) Themis is more efficient on
systems that exhibit more discrimination. We thus demonstrate that fairness
testing is a critical aspect of the software development cycle in domains with
possible discrimination and provide initial tools for measuring software
discrimination.Comment: Sainyam Galhotra, Yuriy Brun, and Alexandra Meliou. 2017. Fairness
Testing: Testing Software for Discrimination. In Proceedings of 2017 11th
Joint Meeting of the European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM
SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE),
Paderborn, Germany, September 4-8, 2017 (ESEC/FSE'17).
https://doi.org/10.1145/3106237.3106277, ESEC/FSE, 201
Increase the Number and Quality of Students in Your MAcc Program without Additional Funding: A Case Study
In the late 1980s, a majority of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) voted to require 150 hours of education for its membership after the year 2000. As of December 31, 2000, there were six states or territories that did not enact the 150-hour requirement. Like many states, Iowa passed the law in 1992 to be effective in the year 2000. As states passed the new 150-hour requirement, universities and colleges were forced to look at their programs to see how they would deal with this new education requirement. Renner and Tanner (2001) surveyed members of the AICPA, Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and recruiters of accounting graduates from a regional Midwestern university and found that some of the popular choices (not in order of preference) were: (a) BA with a double major in accounting and fi nance, (b) BA with a double major in accounting and management information systems, (c) BA in accounting/MBA, (d) BA in accounting/ master in accounting, and (e) BA in accounting/master in taxation. At many schools, the first two options were already available but were deemed unacceptable for the better accounting undergraduate students. Option (c) may be a good one, but could require a student to stay in school for six years. Therefore, many schools looked at options (d) and (e) as being logical choices. These options are cost-effective ways for students to complete the 150-hour requirement and leave a university with a mastersâ degree
Annual Research Report, 2009-2010
Annual report of collaborative research projects of Old Dominion University faculty and students in partnership with business, industry and governmenthttps://digitalcommons.odu.edu/or_researchreports/1001/thumbnail.jp
Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice
The term dual-use characterizes technologies that can have both military and civilian applications. What is the state of current efforts to control the spread of these powerful technologiesânuclear, biological, cyberâthat can simultaneously advance social and economic well-being and also be harnessed for hostile purposes? What have previous efforts to govern, for example, nuclear and biological weapons taught us about the potential for the control of these dual-use technologies? What are the implications for governance when the range of actors who could cause harm with these technologies include not just national governments but also non-state actors like terrorists? These are some of the questions addressed by Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice, the new publication released today by the Global Nuclear Future Initiative of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The publication's editor is Elisa D. Harris, Senior Research Scholar, Center for International Security Studies, University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. Governance of Dual-Use Technologies examines the similarities and differences between the strategies used for the control of nuclear technologies and those proposed for biotechnology and information technology. The publication makes clear the challenges concomitant with dual-use governance. For example, general agreement exists internationally on the need to restrict access to technologies enabling the development of nuclear weapons. However, no similar consensus exists in the bio and information technology domains. The publication also explores the limitations of military measures like deterrence, defense, and reprisal in preventing globally available biological and information technologies from being misused. Some of the other questions explored by the publication include: What types of governance measures for these dual-use technologies have already been adopted? What objectives have those measures sought to achieve? How have the technical characteristics of the technology affected governance prospects? What have been the primary obstacles to effective governance, and what gaps exist in the current governance regime? Are further governance measures feasible? In addition to a preface from Global Nuclear Future Initiative Co-Director Robert Rosner (University of Chicago) and an introduction and conclusion from Elisa Harris, Governance of Dual-Use Technologiesincludes:On the Regulation of Dual-Use Nuclear Technology by James M. Acton (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)Dual-Use Threats: The Case of Biotechnology by Elisa D. Harris (University of Maryland)Governance of Information Technology and Cyber Weapons by Herbert Lin (Stanford University
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