In designing most systems, requirements analysts face many competing requirements, such as performance, usability, costs, and so forth. Ideally, analysts would like to quantitatively measure consequences of solutions on requirements and risks, and extract stakeholders’ preferences in terms of numerical weights. However, during the early stages of requirements and system design, it is hard to qu...

Quality of Service (QoS) support for wireless sensor networks (WSN) is a fairly new topic that is gaining more and more interest. This paper introduces a method for determining the node configurations of a WSN such that application-level QoS constraints are met. This is a complex task, since the search space is typically extremely large. The method is based on a recent algebraic approach to Par...

In this paper we examine the operationalityigenerality trade-off and how it affects performance of explanation-based learning systems. Experience with the ARMS learning apprentice system, presented in the form of an empirical performance analysis, illustrates both sides of the trade-off.

We demonstrate a meaningful prospective power analysis for an (admittedly idealized) illustrative connectome inference task. Modeling neurons as vertices and synapses as edges in a simple random graph model, we optimize the trade-off between the number of (putative) edges identified and the accuracy of the edge identification procedure. We conclude that explicit analysis of the quantity/quality...

It has long been posited that detectability of sensory inputs can be sacrificed in favor of improved discriminability and that sensory adaptation may mediate this trade-off. The extent to which this trade-off exists behaviorally and the complete picture of the underlying neural representations that likely subserve the phenomenon remain unclear. In the rodent vibrissa system, an ideal observer a...

The software product line approach has been applied as a successful software reuse technique for specific domains. Such an approach takes advantage of domain and application engineering concepts. One of its most important artifacts is the product line architecture because it explicitly represents similarities and variabilities of a product line, as well as the products that can be generated. Pr...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS A ban on multi-buy discounts of off-trade alcohol was introduced as part of the Alcohol Act in Scotland in October 2011. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of this legislation on alcohol sales, which provide the best indicator of population consumption. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Interrupted time-series regression was used to assess the impact of the Alco...