A generic model for software architectures

In other industries, the idea of build corporate culture by establishing a common level of “best practice” is widely known and used. The architecture concept directly supports this goal for our industry and can help us improve problem areas dominated by organizational and social issues, such as health care organizations, educational systems, and so on. Our proposed reference model for architecture specification and development is organized around a set of aspects that structure concepts and rules; these, in turn, specify a conceptual architecture. We have added principles and guidelines to the concepts and rules to give a more complete picture of the architecture and to provide a place to store and communicate successfully applied design patterns and other knowledge related to the architecture. Adding architectural elements is a step toward a more constructive type of architecture representation. Our current research is focused on further refining these concepts and developing a formal specification of the architecture reference model. We are continuing to test our ideas in case studies, such as applying our model to the OSCA architecture and the application machine concept. We are also developing a prototype architecture editor, and we are testing different tools to learn more about integrating them into a real infrastructure and to learn what typical services an infrastructure must provide     

Long-Range and Local Instabilities in Sliding Charge Density Waves

The charge density wave (CDW) can be strained by applied voltage or by charge transfer at junctions, or by an electric field which can also put the CDW into sliding. Strains can give rise to local or long-range modulational instabilities. Their recent identification in K_0.3MoO₃ (Le Bolloc’h et al. in Phys. Rev. Lett. 100:096403, 2008) was provided by a new method of coherent micro diffraction, accessible at the modern synchrotron irradiation sources. We present the plausible scenario of the observed phenomena, related to formation of solitonic lattices, perform the numerical modeling, and compare the results with the experimental data.     

Radiotherapy and skin tumors

Radiotherapy plays an important role in the treatment of skin tumours. For skin carcinomas, external irradiation (kilovoltage X-rays or electrons according to clinical characteristics) is more valuable than interstitial brachytherapy, which is recommended for tumours of the lip and of the nasal vestibule. In mycosis fungoides, total cutaneous electron beam radiation therapy is efficient for patients with limited superficial plaques. In the classical form of Kaposi's sarcoma, radiotherapy can achieve local control whereas it obtains good palliative results in the epidemic form.     

Understanding excitons in optically active polymers

We review the solid‐state physics approach to electronic and optical properties of conducting polymers, and bring together the languages of solid‐state theory for polymers and the quantum chemistry of oligomers. We consider polymers as generic one‐dimensional semiconductors with specific features of strongly correlated electronic systems. Our model combines the large distance electron–hole motion within an exciton, governed by long‐range Coulomb attraction with strong intramonomer electronic correlations, which results in effective intramonomer electron–hole repulsion. We exploit the dielectric screening to go beyond the single chain picture and to compare excitons for polymers in solutions and in films. Our approach allows the connecting, explaining, exploiting and organizing of such different experimental and numerical findings as shallow singlet and deep triplet excitons in phenylenes, anomaly in singlet–triplet exciton formation ratio, A_g–B_u crossing in polyenes and common 1/N energy dependencies in oligomers. Copyright © 2007 Society of Chemical Industry     

Meat-like Maillard concentrates as flavouring agents of sausages

MAILLARD type flavourings have been applied in a Bulgarian sausage in concentrations between 0.25 and 1%. In the range of 0.5% the best improving effect on total flavour quality was registered caused by increasing several sensory attributes. No influence of the additive was found on the enzymatic digestability and most of the tested chemical parameters. Thiol groups decrease something while the content in carbonyl compounds is increased significantly and can be used as an index for the presence of the flavouring.     

Suppression of the magneto resistance in high electric fields of polyacetylene nanofibers

We present results of non-linear magneto resistance (MR) of polyacetylene nanofibers in high magnetic field up to H = 30 T at low temperature T = 1.5 K. The MR was proven to be of the spin origin; it reaches 16% at highest H. Unexpectedly, the MR was suppressed by increasing electric field E, vanishing at E ? 5 × 10⁴ V/cm. It is understood that the doping induced spinless charged soliton pairs, which are initially confined to a certain distance because of the interchain phase correlations, and are deconfined in high electric fields, resulting in a vanishing magneto resistance (VMR). The role of the specific, degenerate ground state of the polyacetylene is confirmed by parallel studies of the different magneto resistances of polyaniline nanofibers which contrarily is not affected by the electric field.     

Risk Management for Collaborative Software Development

Collaborative software development involving multiple organizational units, often spanning national, language, and cultural boundaries, raises new challenges and risks that can derail software development projects even when traditional risk factors are being controlled. This article presents a framework that can be used to manage collaborative software development projects, based on an extended set of risk management principles. Three risk factors — trust, culture, and collaborative communication — are discussed in depth.