Engineering topics

Cowell, Andrew J

Publications and source records attributed to Cowell, Andrew J.

6 records

DOE OSTI2014

Automatic identification of abstract online groups

Online abstract groups, in which members aren't explicitly connected, can be automatically identified by computer-implemented methods. The methods involve harvesting records from social media and extracting content-based and structure-based features from each record. Each record includes a social-media posting and is associated with one or more entities. Each feature is stored on a data storage device and includes a computer-readable representation of an attribute of one or more records. The methods further involve grouping records into record groups according to the features of each record. Further still the methods involve calculating an n-dimensional surface representing each record group and defining an outlier as a record having feature-based distances measured from every n-dimensional surface that exceed a threshold value. Each of the n-dimensional surfaces is described by a footprint that characterizes the respective record group as an online abstract group.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2012

Hypothesis analysis methods, hypothesis analysis devices, and articles of manufacture

Hypothesis analysis methods, hypothesis analysis devices, and articles of manufacture are described according to some aspects. In one aspect, a hypothesis analysis method includes providing a hypothesis, providing an indicator which at least one of supports and refutes the hypothesis, using the indicator, associating evidence with the hypothesis, weighting the association of the evidence with the hypothesis, and using the weighting, providing information regarding the accuracy of the hypothesis.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2011

Automatically Identifying Groups Based on Content and Collective Behavioral Patterns of Group Members

Online communities, or groups, have largely been defined based on links, page rank, and eigenvalues. In this paper we explore identifying abstract groups, groups where member's interests and online footprints are similar but they are not necessarily connected to one another explicitly. We use a combination of structural information and content information from posts and their comments to build a footprint for groups. We find that these variables do a good job at identifying groups, placing members within a group, and help determine the appropriate granularity for group boundaries.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2011

Technosocial Predictive Analytics for Illicit Nuclear Trafficking

Illicit nuclear trafficking networks are a national security threat. These networks can directly lead to nuclear proliferation, as state or non-state actors attempt to identify and acquire nuclear weapons-related expertise, technologies, components, and materials. The ability to characterize and anticipate the key nodes, transit routes, and exchange mechanisms associated with these networks is essential to influence, disrupt, interdict or destroy the function of the networks and their processes. The complexities inherent to the characterization and anticipation of illicit nuclear trafficking networks requires that a variety of modeling and knowledge technologies be jointly harnessed to construct an effective analytical and decision making workflow in which specific case studies can be built in reasonable time and with realistic effort. In this paper, we explore a solution to this challenge that integrates evidentiary and dynamic modeling with knowledge management and analytical gaming, and demonstrate its application to a geopolitical region at risk.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

DOE OSTI2010

Social Media and Social Reality - Theory, Evidence and Validation

Social Media provide an exciting and novel view into social phenomena. The vast amounts of data that can be gathered from the Internet coupled with massively parallel supercomputers such as the Cray XMT open new vistas for research. Conclusions drawn from such analysis must recognize that social media are distinct from the underlying social reality. Rigorous validation is essential. This paper briefly presents results obtained from computational analysis of social media - utilizing both blog and twitter data. Validation of these results is discussed in the context of a framework of established methodologies from the social sciences. Finally, an outline for a set of supporting studies is proposed.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2010

Collaborative Knowledge Discovery & Marshalling for Intelligence & Security Applications

This paper discusses the Knowledge Encapsulation Framework, a flexible, extensible evidence-marshalling environment built upon a natural language processing pipeline and exposed to users via an open-source semantic wiki. We focus our discussion on applications of the framework to intelligence and security applications, specifically, an instantiation of the KEF environment for researching illicit trafficking in nuclear materials.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗