Vol. 48, No. 6, February 11, 1998

•No, We Ain\u27t Got No Computers •Six Faculty Offers Extended •A Dated Look at the Winter Graduation Ceremonies •Is William Cook Spinning in his Grave? •Bruce Manning v. Responsibility •Spice Girls v. Dignity •Larry v. Ronald McDonald •Rick v. Discretion •Campus Response to Affirmative Action Lawsui

Vol. 48, No. 6, February 11, 1998

•No, We Ain\u27t Got No Computers •Six Faculty Offers Extended •A Dated Look at the Winter Graduation Ceremonies •Is William Cook Spinning in his Grave? •Bruce Manning v. Responsibility •Spice Girls v. Dignity •Larry v. Ronald McDonald •Rick v. Discretion •Campus Response to Affirmative Action Lawsui

Participation : young spice

A brilliant companion to the critically acclaimed 'Spice it Up'. Fun participation activities for the under 11's

State-variable modelling of CLL resonant converters

The paper presents the derivation and application of state-variable models to high-order topologies of resonant converters. In particular, a 3rd order CLL resonant circuit is considered with bridge rectification and both a capacitive output filter (voltage output), and an LC output filter (current output). The state-variable model accuracy is verified against component-based simulation packages (Spice) and practical measurements, and it is shown that the resulting models facilitate rapid analysis compared to their integration-based counterparts (Spice, Saber), without the loss of accuracy normally associated with fundamental mode approximation (FMA) techniques. Moreover, unlike FMA, the models correctly predict the resonant peaks associated with harmonic excitation of the tank resonance. Subsequently, it is shown that excitation of the resonant tank by odd harmonics of the input voltage can be utilised to provide overcurrent protection in the event of an output short-circuit. Further, through judicious control of operating frequency, it is shown that 'inductive' zero voltage switching (ZVS) can still be obtained, facilitating reductions in gate-drive switching losses, thereby improving efficiency and thermal management of the supply under fault conditions. Although the results are ultimately generic to other converter counterparts, measured results from two prototype 36 V input, 11-14.4V output, 3rd - order CLL converters are included to practically demonstrate the attributes of the proposed analysis and control schemes

VICS — Celebrating 45 Years

At Work in South Sudan, Arie and Maragaretha SmitsA Social Justice Educator in Nicaragua, Juan Carlos Jimenez MarroquinVICS in Action: at Home and Overseas, Dan MilneDiscerning My Calling, Carolle DomenA VICS Experience in Canada, Wally and Beatrice DoepkerReturn to The Gambia, Del and Agnes RiederGrenada - The Isle of Spice - 22 Years Later, Kay Weersoriy

Stability of character sums for positive-depth, supercuspidal representations

We re-write the character formul{\ae} of Adler and the second-named author in a form amenable to explicit computations in $p$-adic harmonic analysis, and use them to prove the stability of character sums for a modification of Reeder's conjectural positive-depth, unramified, toral supercuspidal L-packets

Process capability assessments in small development firms

[Abstract}: Assessment-based Software Process Improvement (SPI) programs such as the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), Bootstrap, and SPICE (ISO/IEC 15504) are based on formal frameworks and promote the use of systematic processes and management practices for software development. These approaches identify best practices for the management of software development and when applied, enable organizations to understand, control and improve development processes. The purpose of a SPI assessment is to compare the current processes used in an organization with a list of recommended or ‘best’ practices. This research investigates the adoption of SPI initiatives by four small software development firms. These four firms participated in a process improvement program which was sponsored by Software Engineering Australia (SEA) (Queensland). The assessment method was based on SPICE (ISO/IEC 15504) and included an initial assessment, recommendations, and a follow-up meeting. For each firm, before and after snapshots are provided of the capability as assessed on eight processes. The discussion which follows summarizes the improvements realized and considers the critical success factors relating to SPI adoption for small firms