Introducing "2.0" functionalities in an ERP

Companies and ERP editors show an increasing interest for the Web 2.0 technologies, aiming at involving the user of a web site in the creation of content. We summarize in this communication what these tools are and give an overview of recent examples of their use in companies. We show on the example of the most recent ERP of SAP, Business By Design, that if "2.0 tools" are now available in some ERPs, their integration in the business processes is not yet fully done. We suggest in that purpose the first draft of a methodology aiming at developing "2.0 business processes" using an ERP 2.0

Development of nanowire devices with quantum functionalities

Silicon has dominated the microelectronics industry for the last 50 years. With its zero nuclear spin isotope (28Si) and low spin orbit coupling, it is believed that silicon can become an excellent host material for an entirely new generation of devices that operate under the laws of quantum mechanics [1}. Semiconductor nanowires however, offer huge potential as the next building blocks of nano-devices due to their one-dimensional structure and properties [2]. We describe a fabrication process to prepare doped vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) grown silicon nanowire samples in a 2- and 4-terminal measurement setup for electrical characterisation.Comment: 2 pages Optoelectronic and Microelectronic Materials & Devices (COMMAD), 2014 Conferenc

Multimedia Teleservices Modelled with the OSI Application Layer Structure

This paper looks into the communications capabilities that are required by distributed multimedia applications to achieve relation preserving information exchange. These capabilities are derived by analyzing the notion of information exchange and are embodied in communications functionalities. To emphasize the importance of the users' view, a top-down approach is applied. The (revised) OSI Application Layer Structure (OSI-ALS) is used to model the communications functionalities and to develop an architecture for composition of multimedia services with these functionalities. This work may therefore be considered an exercise to evaluate the suitability of OSI-ALS for composition of multimedia teleservices

A Taxonomy of Self-configuring Service Discovery Systems

We analyze the fundamental concepts and issues in service discovery. This analysis places service discovery in the context of distributed systems by describing service discovery as a third generation naming system. We also describe the essential architectures and the functionalities in service discovery. We then proceed to show how service discovery fits into a system, by characterizing operational aspects. Subsequently, we describe how existing state of the art performs service discovery, in relation to the operational aspects and functionalities, and identify areas for improvement

A survey of QoS-aware web service composition techniques

Web service composition can be briefly described as the process of aggregating services with disparate functionalities into a new composite service in order to meet increasingly complex needs of users. Service composition process has been accurate on dealing with services having disparate functionalities, however, over the years the number of web services in particular that exhibit similar functionalities and varying Quality of Service (QoS) has significantly increased. As such, the problem becomes how to select appropriate web services such that the QoS of the resulting composite service is maximized or, in some cases, minimized. This constitutes an NP-hard problem as it is complicated and difficult to solve. In this paper, a discussion of concepts of web service composition and a holistic review of current service composition techniques proposed in literature is presented. Our review spans several publications in the field that can serve as a road map for future research

Functional poly(2-oxazoline)s by direct amidation of methyl ester side chains

Poly(2-alkyl/aryl-2-oxazoline)s (PAOx) are biocompatible pseudopolypeptides that have received significant interest for biomedical applications in recent years. The growing popularity of PAOx in recent years is driven by its much higher chemical versatility compared with the gold standard in this field, poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), while having similar beneficial properties, such as stealth behavior and biocompatibility. We further expand the PAOx chemical toolbox by demonstrating a novel straightforward and highly versatile postpolymerization modification platform for the introduction of side-chain functionalities. PAOx having side chain methyl ester functionalities is demonstrated to undergo facile uncatalyzed amidation reactions with a wide range of amines, yielding the corresponding PAOx with side-chain secondary amide groups containing short aliphatic linkers as well as a range of side-chain functionalities including acid, amine, alcohol, hydrazide, and propargyl groups. The PAOx with side-chain methyl ester groups can be prepared by either partial hydrolysis of a PAOx followed by the introduction of the methyl ester via modification of the secondary amine groups with methyl succinyl chloride or by the direct copolymerization of a nonfunctional 2-oxazoline monomer with a 2-methoxycarbonylethyl-2-oxazoline. Thus, this novel synthetic platform enables direct access to a wide range of side-chain functionalities from the same methyl-ester-functionalized poly(2-oxazoline) scaffold