In the last decade, the availability of massive amounts of new data, and the development of new machine learning technologies, have augmented reasoning systems to give rise to a new class of computing systems. These "Cognitive Systems" learn from data, reason from models, and interact naturally with us, to perform complex tasks better than either humans or machines can do by themselves. In essence, cognitive systems help us perform like the best by penetrating the complexity of big data and leverage the power of models. One of the first cognitive systems, called Watson, demonstrated through a Jeopardy! exhibition match, that it was capable of answering complex factoid questions as effectively as the world's champions. Follow-on cognitive systems perform other tasks, such as discovery, reasoning, and multi-modal understanding in a variety of domains, such as healthcare, insurance, and education. We believe such cognitive systems will transform every industry and our everyday life for the better. In this talk, I will give an overview of the applications, the underlying capabilities, and some of the key challenges, of cognitive systems.

The way mobile computing devices and applications are developed, deployed and used today does not meet the expectations of the user community and falls far short of the potential for pervasive computing. This paper challenges the mobile computing community by questioning the roles of devices, applications, and a user's environment. A vision of pervasive computing is described, along with attributes of a new application model that supports this vision, and a set of challenges that must be met in order to bring the vision to reality.

The publish/subscribe (or pub/sub) paradigm is an increasingly popular model for interconnecting applications in a distributed environment. Many existing pub/sub systems are based on pre-defined subjects, and hence are able to exploit multicast technologies to provide scalability and availability. An emerging alternative to subject-based systems, known as content-based systems, allow information consumers to request events based on the content of published events. This model is considerably more flexible than subject-based pub/sub. However, it was previously not known how to efficiently multicast published events to interested content-based subscribers within a large and geographically distributed network of broker (or router) machines. We develop and evaluate a novel and efficient distributed algorithm for this purpose, called -link matching". Link matching performs just enough computation at each node to determine the subset of links to which an event should be forwarded. We show via simulations that: link matching yields higher throughput than flooding when subscriptions are selective; and the overall CPU utilization of link matching is comparable to that of centralized matching.

Msting GUI btider technology supports btiding user interfaces for interactive applications via direct manip ulation.However, it is notoriously ~ctit to btid the underlying data sharing and application logic for rmdti-user synchronous co~aborative applications.This paper describes a co~ection of very high-levd software components, bfit using the JavaBeans component standard, that enables domain experts and application dsigners to rapi~y bfid entire co~aborative apphcatiorts via Visual progr arnming -drag-and~op, customization and wiring.Our component suite supports conference setup, awareness, data sharing, media streaming, acc~s synchronization, and tempordy coordinated media and event streams.TVe ~nstrate that the task of btiding non-trivia mdti-user applications using this approach is si@-tly s"np~ed. Ke~ordsRapid Application Devdopment, Visud"Rogramming, Software Components, Java Beans, ~en&Server Synchronous CoUaboration ~TRODUCTIONAs the use of distributed applications is becoming more widespread in today's networked world, the relevance of synchronous collaboration is sharply increasing.Users in a number of application domains are seeking syn-&onous co~aboration ~pabiities within their appfi-cation~.The requirements of this broad range of a~ p~cations me diverse enough that a 'one size fits d" approach to b@ding applications is no longer satisfactory.Our qerience suggests that rapid turnaround of customized co~aborative applications is critid to meet this incressed demand for synchronous co~aboration.Permission to make di~tal or hard copies of d] or part ofthis \\-orkfor personal or cl~aom use is granted without fee protided that copies are not made or dis~%uted for profit or commercial adv-antageand that copies bar this notice and tie fill citation on tie fmt paga To copy orhmlisa to Tepubtish.topost on swera or to rdlsmiute to ~sts, rquires prior ~etific permission and!or a f= CS~V 98 Sattle Ii'zshington GSA Cop~fight AChI 199S 1-5S1134094/9S/1 1...S5.00 . .

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This paper describes algorithms for implementing a high-level programming model for synchronous distributed groupware applications. In this model, several application data objects may be atomically updated, and these objects automatically maintain consistency with their replicas using an optimistic algorithm. Changes to these objects may be optimistically or pessimistically observed by view objects by taking consistent snapshots. The algorithms for both update propagation and view notification are based upon optimistic guess propagation principles adapted for fast commit by using primary copy replication techniques. The main contribution of the paper is the synthesis of these two algorithmic techniques-guess propagation and primary copy replication-for implementing a framework that is easy to program to and is well suited for the needs of groupware applications.

This paper describes algorithms for implementing a high-level programming model for synchronous distributed groupware applications. In this model, several application data objects may be atomically updated, and these objects automatically maintain consistency with their replicas using an optimistic algorithm. Changes to these objects may be optimistically or pessimistically observed by view objects by taking consistent snapshots. The algorithms for both update propagation and view notification are based upon optimistic guess propagation principles, adapted for fast commit by using primary copy replication techniques. The main contribution of the paper is the synthesis of these two algorithmic techniques-guess propagation and primary copy replication-for implementing a framework that is easy to program and is well suited for the needs of groupware applications.