The Genealogy of Ideology: Predicting Agreement and Persuasive Memes in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

We employ machine learning techniques to identify common characteristics and features from cases in the US courts of appeals that contribute in determining dissent. Our models were able to predict vote alignment with an average F1 score of 73%, and our results show that the length of the opinion, the number of citations in the opinion, and voting valence, are all key factors in determining dissent. These results indicate that certain high level characteristics of a case can be used to predict dissent. We also explore the influence of dissent using seating patterns of judges, and our results show that raw counts of how often two judges sit together plays a role in dissent. In addition to the dissents, we analyze the notion of memetic phrases occurring in opinions - phrases that see a small spark of popularity but eventually die out in usage - and try to correlate them to dissent

The Genealogy of Ideology: Predicting Agreement and Persuasive Memes in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

We employ machine learning techniques to identify common characteristics and features from cases in the US courts of appeals that contribute in determining dissent. Our models were able to predict vote alignment with an average F1 score of 73%, and our results show that the length of the opinion, the number of citations in the opinion, and voting valence, are all key factors in determining dissent. These results indicate that certain high level characteristics of a case can be used to predict dissent. We also explore the influence of dissent using seating patterns of judges, and our results show that raw counts of how often two judges sit together plays a role in dissent. In addition to the dissents, we analyze the notion of memetic phrases occurring in opinions - phrases that see a small spark of popularity but eventually die out in usage - and try to correlate them to dissent

The black bone disease: a case report of ochronotic hip arthropathy

Ochronotic arthropathy is a rare complication in patients with alkaptonuria (AKU) that arises as a result of accumulation of ochronotic pigment in the joints. This case report presented a 70-year-old female patient with chronic pain in B/L knee and right hip with decreased e range of motion. The physical and radiographic findings were agreeable with end-stage hip osteoarthritis and knee osteoarthritis. The diagnosis was done by finding of a dark capsule and femoral head during the total hip replacement. The surgical treatments significantly minimized and enhanced the range of motion (ROM). AKU normally emerges after age 40 and is normally asymptomatic till the involvement of the spine, hip, knee and shoulder joints. Therefore, orthopedic surgeons must be observant of clinical manifestations of this rare condition, before and during the surgery. Arthroplasty is an appropriate therapeutic recourse for patients suffering from ochronotic arthropathy

Non-functional Requirement Prioritization Approach

This paper proposes a non-functional requirement prioritization technique where both functional and non-functional requirements are prioritized and that is based on AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) technique employing suitable aspects. The non-functional requirements are further re-prioritized based on their dependency with high priority functional requirements and usage counts. The usage of the proposed method is illustrated with a hypothetical example. The technique is also executed on a case study of the evolving software and the technique resulted in selection of 16 requirements out of 30, yielding considerable reduction in the number of requirements to be implemented. Although the use of the AHP technique may limit the optimization, the use of the numerical assignment technique based on the usage count and dependency count do considerably reduce the number of requirements. The proposed technique prioritizes non-functional requirements independently from functional requirements but they are further selected in terms of their dependencies and usage counts with respect to functional requirements

Towards a Systematic Literature Review of Non-Functional Requirement Prioritization Approaches

The success of any software system depends on implementation of functional requirements followed by non-functional ones. There are various studies about prioritizing functional requirements and improving the prioritization techniques, but the work related to non-functional requirements prioritization is limited and there are no guidelines about which technique to be executed under particular circumstances. This paper does an empirical systematic review of the literature to identify and critically review the disseminated work based on empirical studies of software industries or presenting the non-functional requirement (NFR) prioritization approaches. The literature review yielded various insights; prominent amongst them includes, ad-hoc manner of NFR prioritization, neglection of NFRs, and the need for validation of existing NFR prioritization approaches on live data set with large number of NFRs which are always changing