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The use of function points to find cost analogies
Finding effective techniques for the early estimation of project effort remains an important — and frustratingly elusive — research objective for the software development community. We have conducted an empirical study of 21 real time projects for a major software developer. The study collected a range of counts and measures derived from specification documents, including a derivative of Function Points intended for highly constrained systems. Notwithstanding the fact that the projects were drawn from a comparatively stable environment, traditional approaches for building prediction systems, (for example, regression analysis) failed to yield a useful predictive model. By contrast, estimation based upon the automated search for analogous projects produced more accurate estimates. How much this is a characteristic of this particular dataset and how much these findings might be more generally replicated is uncertain. Nevertheless, these results should act as encouragement for follow up research on a much under utilised estimation technique
Triplanar Model for the Gap and Penetration Depth in YBCO
YBaCuO_7 is a trilayer material with a unit cell consisting of a CuO_2
bilayer with a CuO plane of chains in between. Starting with a model of
isolated planes coupled through a transverse matrix element, we consider the
possibility of intra as well as interplane pairing within a nearly
antiferromagnetic Fermi liquid model. Solutions of a set of three coupled BCS
equations for the gap exhibit orthorhombic symmetry with s- as well as d-wave
contributions. The temperature dependence and a-b in plane anisotropy of the
resulting penetration depth is discussed and compared with experiment.Comment: To appear in Physical Review B1 01Mar97; 12 pages with 10 figures;
RevTeX+eps
A spectral method for elliptic equations: the Dirichlet problem
An elliptic partial differential equation Lu=f with a zero Dirichlet boundary
condition is converted to an equivalent elliptic equation on the unit ball. A
spectral Galerkin method is applied to the reformulated problem, using
multivariate polynomials as the approximants. For a smooth boundary and smooth
problem parameter functions, the method is proven to converge faster than any
power of 1/n with n the degree of the approximate Galerkin solution. Examples
in two and three variables are given as numerical illustrations. Empirically,
the condition number of the associated linear system increases like O(N), with
N the order of the linear system.Comment: This is latex with the standard article style, produced using
Scientific Workplace in a portable format. The paper is 22 pages in length
with 8 figure
Digital computer processing of LANDSAT data for North Alabama
Computer processing procedures and programs applied to Multispectral Scanner data from LANDSAT are described. The output product produced is a level 1 land use map in conformance with a Universal Transverse Mercator projection. The region studied was a five-county area in north Alabama
A study and evaluation of image analysis techniques applied to remotely sensed data
An analysis of phenomena causing nonlinearities in the transformation from Landsat multispectral scanner coordinates to ground coordinates is presented. Experimental results comparing rms errors at ground control points indicated a slight improvement when a nonlinear (8-parameter) transformation was used instead of an affine (6-parameter) transformation. Using a preliminary ground truth map of a test site in Alabama covering the Mobile Bay area and six Landsat images of the same scene, several classification methods were assessed. A methodology was developed for automatic change detection using classification/cluster maps. A coding scheme was employed for generation of change depiction maps indicating specific types of changes. Inter- and intraseasonal data of the Mobile Bay test area were compared to illustrate the method. A beginning was made in the study of data compression by applying a Karhunen-Loeve transform technique to a small section of the test data set. The second part of the report provides a formal documentation of the several programs developed for the analysis and assessments presented
Diagnosing faults in autonomous robot plan execution
A major requirement for an autonomous robot is the capability to diagnose faults during plan execution in an uncertain environment. Many diagnostic researches concentrate only on hardware failures within an autonomous robot. Taking a different approach, the implementation of a Telerobot Diagnostic System that addresses, in addition to the hardware failures, failures caused by unexpected event changes in the environment or failures due to plan errors, is described. One feature of the system is the utilization of task-plan knowledge and context information to deduce fault symptoms. This forward deduction provides valuable information on past activities and the current expectations of a robotic event, both of which can guide the plan-execution inference process. The inference process adopts a model-based technique to recreate the plan-execution process and to confirm fault-source hypotheses. This technique allows the system to diagnose multiple faults due to either unexpected plan failures or hardware errors. This research initiates a major effort to investigate relationships between hardware faults and plan errors, relationships which were not addressed in the past. The results of this research will provide a clear understanding of how to generate a better task planner for an autonomous robot and how to recover the robot from faults in a critical environment
Dark Solitons in Discrete Lattices: Saturable versus Cubic Nonlinearities
In the present work, we study dark solitons in dynamical lattices with the
saturable nonlinearity and compare them with those in lattices with the cubic
nonlinearity. This comparison has become especially relevant in light of recent
experimental developments in the former context. The stability properties of
the fundamental waves, for both on-site and inter-site modes, are examined
analytically and corroborated by numerical results. Furthermore, their
dynamical evolution when they are found to be unstable is obtained through
appropriately crafted numerical experiments.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure
The c axis optical conductivity of layered systems in the superconducting state
In this paper, we discuss the c axis optical conductivity Re [sigma_c(omega)]
in the high T_c superconductors, in the superconducting state. The basic
premise of this work is that electrons travelling along the c axis between
adjacent CuO_2 layers must pass through several intervening layers. In earlier
work we found that, for weak inter-layer coupling, it is preferable for
electrons to travel along the c axis by making a series of interband
transitions rather than to stay within a single (and very narrow) band.
Moreover, we found that many of the properties of the normal state optical
conductivity, including the pseudogap could be explained by interband
transitions. In this work we examine the effect of superconductivity on the
interband conductivity. We find that, while the onset of superconductivity is
clearly evident in the spectrum, there is no clear signature of the symmetry of
the superconducting order parameter.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Density of states "width parity" effect in d-wave superconducting quantum wires
We calculate the density of states (DOS) in a clean mesoscopic d-wave
superconducting quantum wire, i.e. a sample of infinite length but finite width
. For open boundary conditions, the DOS at zero energy is found to be zero
if is even, and nonzero if is odd. At finite chemical potential, all
chains are gapped but the qualtitative differences between even and odd
remain.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, new figures and extended discussio
An explainable approach to deducing outcomes in european court of human rights cases using ADFs
In this paper we present an argumentation-based approach to representing and reasoning about a domain of law that has previously been addressed through a machine learning approach. The domain concerns cases that all fall within the remit of a specific Article within the European Court of Human Rights. We perform a comparison between the approaches, based on two criteria: ability of the model to accurately replicate the decision that was made in the real life legal cases within the particular domain, and the quality of the explanation provided by the models. Our initial results show that the system based on the argumentation approach improves on the machine learning results in terms of accuracy, and can explain its outcomes in terms of the issue on which the case turned, and the factors that were crucial in arriving at the conclusion
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