Data-driven and tool-supported elicitation of quality requirements in agile companies

Software Quality Journal - Quality requirements (QRs) are a key artifact needed to ensure the quality and success of a software system. Despite their importance, QRs rarely get the same degree of...     

Software engineering practices and Simulink: bridging the gap

International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer - Although widely used in embedded systems design, Matlab/Simulink is not considered a state-of-the-art design environment by the...     

Citizens’ adoption of an electronic government system: towards a unified view

Sluggish adoption of emerging electronic government (eGov) applications continues to be a problem across developed and developing countries. This research tested the nine alternative theoretical models of technology adoption in the context of an eGov system using data collected from citizens of four selected districts in the state of Bihar in India. Analysis of the models indicates that their performance is not up to the expected level in terms of path coefficients, variance in behavioural intention, or the fit indices of the models. In response to the underperformance of the alternative theoretical models to explain the adoption of an eGov system, this research develops a unified model of electronic government adoption and tests it using the same data. The results indicate that the proposed research model outperforms all alternative models of technology adoption by explaining 77 % of variance in behavioural intention, with acceptable values of fit indices and significant relationships between each pair of hypothesised factors.     

Efficient Cryptosystems From $$\mathbf{2}^{{\varvec{k}}}$$-th Power Residue Symbols

Goldwasser and Micali (J Comput Syst Sci 28(2):270–299, 1984) highlighted the importance of randomizing the plaintext for public-key encryption and introduced the notion of semantic security. They also realized a cryptosystem meeting this security notion under the standard complexity assumption of deciding quadratic residuosity modulo a composite number. The Goldwasser–Micali cryptosystem is simple and elegant but is quite wasteful in bandwidth when encrypting large messages. A number of works followed to address this issue and proposed various modifications. This paper revisits the original Goldwasser–Micali cryptosystem using \(2^k\)-th power residue symbols. The so-obtained cryptosystems appear as a very natural generalization for \(k \ge 2\) (the case \(k=1\) corresponds exactly to the Goldwasser–Micali cryptosystem). Advantageously, they are efficient in both bandwidth and speed; in particular, they allow for fast decryption. Further, the cryptosystems described in this paper inherit the useful features of the original cryptosystem (like its homomorphic property) and are shown to be secure under a similar complexity assumption. As a prominent application, this paper describes an efficient lossy trapdoor function-based thereon.     

Première analyse des mesures de propagation oblique effectuées à Gometz-La-Ville sur le signal du satellite SIRIO 1

This paper discusses the results of measurements on the emissions of the Italian satellitesirio 1, carried out at the Gometz-la-Ville earth station during a one year period in order to assess the quality of future Earth-satellite links at frequencies above 10 GHz. The contributions of rain and snow to the measured attenuation are determined. The results are compared with those obtained by theccir prediction method. The attenuation due to a wet plane radome is evaluated. The variations of polarization decoupling as a function of attenuation are compared with those predicted by theoretical models and a method for determining the quality of the liaison when the same frequency is used on two orthogonal polarizations is proposed.     

Functionalization of crosslinked polystyrene resins: 2. Preparation of nucleophilic resins containing hydroxyl or thiol functionalities

Crosslinked polystyrene resins containing thiol or hydroxyl functionalities on a fraction of their aromatic rings were prepared by reaction of crosslinked polystyryllithium with elemental sulphur or oxygen followed by reduction of the resulting polymer. Similarly, resins containing hydroxymethyl or thiomethyl functional groups were prepared from chloromethylated polystyrene by displacement of chloride in procedures involving three phase systems and the use of a phase transfer catalyst. The degree of functionalization could be controlled easily and the sulphur containing polymers were free of disulphide bonds.     

Discovering relevant task spaces using inverse feedback control

Learning complex skills by repeating and generalizing expert behavior is a fundamental problem in robotics. However, the usual approaches do not answer the question of what are appropriate representations to generate motion for a specific task. Since it is time-consuming for a human expert to manually design the motion control representation for a task, we propose to uncover such structure from data-observed motion trajectories. Inspired by Inverse Optimal Control, we present a novel method to learn a latent value function, imitate and generalize demonstrated behavior, and discover a task relevant motion representation. We test our method, called Task Space Retrieval Using Inverse Feedback Control (TRIC), on several challenging high-dimensional tasks. TRIC learns the important control dimensions for the tasks from a few example movements and is able to robustly generalize to new situations.     

Quality- and cost-driven assembly technique selection and geometrical tolerance allocation for mechanical structure assembly

The assembly process planning has been the subject of extensive scientific work, mainly due to the multiple aspects involved from geometrical matters to operational research concerns. However, very few issues about assembly technique selection are addressed. The aim of this paper is to propose a method to select an assembly technique for each joint of a product and to allocate geometrical tolerances accordingly. This is achieved by solving a multi-objective optimization problem to minimize the cost and the non-conformity associated with the assembly plan. The potential benefits of the method are illustrated on a case study representing the assembly of a simple mechanical structure.     

La modélisation de la turbulence dans une enceinte avec ouvertures et sources chaudes localisées

The air circulation inside an enclosure with multiple openings and local heat sources was studied by means of a mathematical model. After a number of comparisons to studies in an experimental apparatus, it was concluded that a turbulence model should be introduced in order to improve the mathematical simulation. Two turbulence models, one based on the algebraic and the other on the differential (K-?-G) model of the turbulent viscosity, were investigated. The differential model provided only small improvements in the results and increased the running costs substantially when compared to the algebraic model. Hence the utilisation of the differential model was not justified in these simulations. The combined effect of the forced convection through the enclosure and the natural convection from the heat sources was simulated in an attempt to study the air circulation and the air temperature inside the building of an aluminum reduction plant.