Architecture reviews: practice and experience

Architecture reviews have evolved over the past decade to become a critical part of our continuing efforts to improve the state of affairs. We use them to identify project problems before they become costly to fix and to provide timely information to upper management so that they can make better-informed decisions. It provides the foundation for reuse, using commercially available software, and getting to the marketplace fast. The reviews also help identify best practices to projects and socialize such practices across the organization, thereby improving the organization's quality and operations.     

Design of gas diffusion electrodes using nanocarbon

Two types of gas diffusion electrodes (GDE) with nanocarbon as structural component have been prepared and characterised by TEM, SEM, Raman, conductivity studies and fuel cell testing.     

Hybrid polymer/silica vertical coupler switch with <-32 dBpolarisation-independent crosstalk

A modified hybrid polymer/silica 1×2 vertical coupler switch (VCS) with a polymer gap layer and a refractive index contrast of 0.008 has been designed, fabricated and characterised. The VCS exhibits low loss, low crosstalk, low switching power, and polarisation insensitivity. Using the 1×2 VCS as a building block, a 1×8 VCS matrix has been implemented     

Ceres-net: A low-cost computer network

This paper describes a local-area network, its hardware and software structure, and its protocol. The principal objective was to minimize the complexity of hardware and software, yet to offer an adequate functionality and performance for a system of up to 30 workstations with local file stores. The primary benefit of the achieved simple structure and low-overhead protocol is the system's reliability.     

Phase decomposition upon alteration of radiation-damaged monazite-(ce) from moss, Østfold, norway

The internal textures of crystals of moderately radiation-damaged monazite-(Ce) from Moss, Norway, indicate heavy, secondary chemical alteration. In fact, the cm-sized specimens are no longer mono-mineral monazite but rather a composite consisting of monazite-(Ce) and apatite pervaded by several generations of fractures filled with sulphides and a phase rich in Th, Y, and Si. This composite is virtually a 'pseudomorph' after primary euhedral monazite crystals whose faces are still well preserved. The chemical alteration has resulted in major reworking and decomposition of the primary crystals, with potentially uncontrolled elemental changes, including extensive release of Th from the primary monazite and local redeposition of radionuclides in fracture fillings. This seems to question the general alteration-resistance of orthophosphate phases in a low-temperature, 'wet' environment, and hence their suitability as potential host ceramics for the long-term immobilisation of radioactive waste.     

Satellite-based snow identification and its impact on monitoring photovoltaic systems

Earth observation allows the separation of snow cover and cloudiness using multispectral measurements. Several satellite-based snow monitoring services are available, ranging from regional to world-wide scales. Using these data enables photovoltaic (PV) plant management to differentiate between failures due to snow coverage on a PV system and other error sources. Additionally, yield estimates for solar siting are improved. This paper presents a validation study from January to April 2006 comparing satellite-based datasets with ground measurements from German and Swiss meteorological stations. A false alarm rate, an error due to irradiance underestimation, the availability of daily data, and the classification accuracy are introduced as quality metrics. Compared to Switzerland, generally a higher accuracy is found in all datasets for Southern Germany. The most significant difference among the datasets is found in the error pattern shifting from too much snow (which results in an error due to underestimation of irradiance) to too little snow detection, causing a false alarm in PV monitoring.Overall, the data records of the Land Surface Analysis Satellite Application Facility (LSA SAF), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System (IMS) are found to be most suitable for solar energy purposes. The IMS dataset has a low false alarm rate (4%) and a good data availability (100%) making it a good choice for power plant monitoring, but the error due to underestimation relevant in site auditing is large with 59%. If a cumulative snow cover algorithm is applied to achieve information every day as needed both for power plant monitoring and site auditing, both the DLR and the LSA SAF datasets are comparable with classification accuracies of 70%, false alarm rates of 37% and 34%, respectively, and errors due to irradiance underestimation in 26% and 27% of all coincidences.     

Perthes disease--results of a containment-oriented therapy concept

INTRODUCTION: In a retrospective study a treatment concept for Perthes' disease dependent on the containment was applied. PATIENTS/METHODS: 49 hips of 41 children (9 female, 32 male) were treated between 01. 01. 1990 and 31. 12. 1995. In our concept of treatment a varus femoral osteotomy was performed in 28 cases with not contained hips or less than 4/5 coverage of the femoral head (X-ray/MRI). The other 21 well contained hips with 4/5 coverage or more were treated conservatively with physiotherapy and in case of joint effusion and pain additionally with the use of crutches (partial weight bearing) and anti-inflammatory medication. The average age in the non-operative group at the time of first investigation was 4 years and 9 months (3 y./1 m. to 7 y./1 m.) and 6 years and 3 months (4 y/2 m. to 10 y/0 m.) at our last examination (mean follow up 17.7 months, range of 6 to 72 months). At the time of indication for a varus femoral osteotomy the patients had an average age 6 years and 1 month (3 y./6 m. to 10 y./2 m.), the mean age at the last postoperative examination was 7 years and 11 months (4 y./8 m. to 12 y./5 m.) with an average follow up of 21.5 months (6 to 77 months). RESULTS: For the conservatively treated children we achieved good results (still well contained hips with 4/5 coverage, no decrease of function, no increase of pain) in 85.7% (18 of 21 cases). In 85.7% (24 of 28 cases) we found good results (well contained hips, increase of coverage, no decrease of function, no increase of pain) in the operation group. CONCLUSIONS: The presented concept of therapy in Perthes' disease was practicable for all patients and included the possibility of decision for operative or non-operative treatment. In both groups we achieved good results in 85.7% of the cases.     

Improved approaches to the exact solution of the machine covering problem

For the basic problem of scheduling a set of n independent jobs on a set of m identical parallel machines with the objective of maximizing the minimum machine completion time—also referred to as machine covering—we propose a new exact branch-and-bound algorithm. Its most distinctive components are a different symmetry-breaking solution representation, enhanced lower and upper bounds, and effective novel dominance criteria derived from structural patterns of optimal schedules. Results of a comprehensive computational study conducted on benchmark instances attest to the effectiveness of our approach, particularly for small ratios of n to m.