SIMPLE ENTRAPMENT OF ALCALASE IN DIFFERENT SILICA XEROGELS USING THE TWO STEPS SOL-GEL METHOD

The present study has focused on the entrapment of Alcalase in different xerogels obtained by using various molar ratios of methyltriethoxysilane, dimethyldietoxisilane and tetraethoxysilane. Silica and their derivatives were characterized with regard to specific surface area (nitrogen adsorbtion), chemical composition (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR)), weight loss upon heating (thermogravimetric analysis (TGA)) and catalytic activity

Support for collaborative component-based software engineering

Collaborative system composition during design has been poorly supported by traditional CASE tools (which have usually concentrated on supporting individual projects) and almost exclusively focused on static composition. Little support for maintaining large distributed collections of heterogeneous software components across a number of projects has been developed. The CoDEEDS project addresses the collaborative determination, elaboration, and evolution of design spaces that describe both static and dynamic compositions of software components from sources such as component libraries, software service directories, and reuse repositories. The GENESIS project has focussed, in the development of OSCAR, on the creation and maintenance of large software artefact repositories. The most recent extensions are explicitly addressing the provision of cross-project global views of large software collections and historical views of individual artefacts within a collection. The long-term benefits of such support can only be realised if OSCAR and CoDEEDS are widely adopted and steps to facilitate this are described. This book continues to provide a forum, which a recent book, Software Evolution with UML and XML, started, where expert insights are presented on the subject. In that book, initial efforts were made to link together three current phenomena: software evolution, UML, and XML. In this book, focus will be on the practical side of linking them, that is, how UML and XML and their related methods/tools can assist software evolution in practice. Considering that nowadays software starts evolving before it is delivered, an apparent feature for software evolution is that it happens over all stages and over all aspects. Therefore, all possible techniques should be explored. This book explores techniques based on UML/XML and a combination of them with other techniques (i.e., over all techniques from theory to tools). Software evolution happens at all stages. Chapters in this book describe that software evolution issues present at stages of software architecturing, modeling/specifying, assessing, coding, validating, design recovering, program understanding, and reusing. Software evolution happens in all aspects. Chapters in this book illustrate that software evolution issues are involved in Web application, embedded system, software repository, component-based development, object model, development environment, software metrics, UML use case diagram, system model, Legacy system, safety critical system, user interface, software reuse, evolution management, and variability modeling. Software evolution needs to be facilitated with all possible techniques. Chapters in this book demonstrate techniques, such as formal methods, program transformation, empirical study, tool development, standardisation, visualisation, to control system changes to meet organisational and business objectives in a cost-effective way. On the journey of the grand challenge posed by software evolution, the journey that we have to make, the contributory authors of this book have already made further advances

Towards collaborative learning via shared artefacts over the Grid

The Web is the most pervasive collaborative technology in widespread use today; and its use to support eLearning has been highly successful. There are many web-based Virtual Learning Environments such as WebCT, FirstClass, and BlackBoard as well as associated web-based Managed Learning Environments. In the future, the Grid promises to provide an extremely powerful infrastructure allowing both learners and teachers to collaborate in various learning contexts and to share learning materials, learning processes, learning systems, and experiences. This position paper addresses the role of support for sharing artefacts in distributed systems such as the Grid. An analogy is made between collaborative software development and collaborative learning with the goal of gaining insights into the requisite support for artefact sharing within the eLearning community

Web-based support for managing large collections of software artefacts

There has been a long history of CASE tool development, with an underlying software repository at the heart of most systems. Usually such tools, even the more recently web-based systems, are focused on supporting individual projects within an enterprise or across a number of distributed sites. Little support for maintaining large heterogeneous collections of software artefacts across a number of projects has been developed. Within the GENESIS project, this has been a key consideration in the development of the Open Source Component Artefact Repository (OSCAR). Its most recent extensions are explicitly addressing the provision of cross project global views of large software collections as well as historical views of individual artefacts within a collection. The long-term benefits of such support can only be realised if OSCAR is widely adopted and various steps to facilitate this are described

Reusability Studies for Ares I and Ares V Propulsion

With a mission to continue to support the goals of the International Space Station (ISS) and explore beyond Earth orbit, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is in the process of launching an entirely new space exploration initiative, the Constellation Program. Even as the Space Shuttle moves toward its final voyage, Constellation is building from nearly half a century of NASA spaceflight experience, and technological advances, including the legacy of Shuttle and earlier programs such as Apollo and the Saturn V rocket. Out of Constellation will come two new launch vehicles: the Ares I crew launch vehicle and the Ares V cargo launch vehicle. With the initial goal to seamlessly continue where the Space Shuttle leaves off, Ares will firstly service the Space Station. Ultimately, however, the intent is to push further: to establish an outpost on the Moon, and then to explore other destinations. With significant experience and a strong foundation in aerospace, NASA is now progressing toward the final design of the First Stage propulsion system for the Ares I. The new launch vehicle design will considerably increase safety and reliability, reduce the cost of accessing space, and provide a viable growth path for human space exploration. To achieve these goals, NASA is taking advantage of Space Shuttle hardware, safety, reliability, and experience. With efforts to minimize technical risk and life-cycle costs, the First Stage office is again pulling from NASA s strong legacy in aerospace exploration and development, most specifically the Space Shuttle Program. Trade studies have been conducted to evaluate life-cycle costs, expendability, and risk reduction. While many first stage features have already been determined, these trade studies are helping to resolve the operational requisites and configuration of the first stage element. This paper first presents an overview of the Ares missions and the genesis of the Ares vehicle design. It then looks at one of the most important trade studies to date, the "Ares I First Stage Expendability Trade Study." The purpose of this study was to determine the utility of flying the first stage as an expendable booster rather than making it reusable. To lower the study complexity, four operational scenarios (or cases) were defined. This assessment then included an evaluation of the development, reliability, performance, and transition impacts associated with an expendable solution. This paper looks at these scenarios from the perspectives of cost, reliability, and performance

The Rise and Fall of The Thin Concrete Shell

Concrete was a popular material choice that stretched the imagination of building designers over past decades. This material that imbued notions of plasticity and flow, sets innovative ideals soaring with hope in the postwar landscape, seen as the material of the future. This paper seeks to perspectivise the phenomenonal rise of the material in the application of shell construction using key case studies of built examples from Nervi, Candela and Isler. It also aims to chart the subsequent demise of its application in thin shell design. By understanding the reasons to what led to its demise, designers will be able to erect concrete shells more sustainably, by modifications to the design process, construction stages and thoughtful consideration to formwork implementation to meet the demands of the 21st century and beyond. This paper discusses the possibilities of concrete as a material of choice and by asking the question to what constituted its popularity and what led to its demise in this age of new technological advances, construction processes and environmental concerns. This paper will present a cultural perspective of the material and the important relationship between concrete with its formwork to bring about a new renaissance to the reappearance of such structures in our built environment once again

Continuous Deployment of Trustworthy Smart IoT Systems.

While the next generation of IoT systems need to perform distributed processing and coordinated behaviour across IoT, Edge and Cloud infrastructures, their development and operation are still challenging. A major challenge is the high heterogeneity of their infrastructure, which broadens the surface for security attacks and increases the complexity of maintaining and evolving such complex systems. In this paper, we present our approach for Generation and Deployment of Smart IoT Systems (GeneSIS) to tame this complexity. GeneSIS leverages model-driven engineering to support the DevSecOps of Smart IoT Systems (SIS). More precisely, GeneSIS includes: (i) a domain specific modelling language to specify the deployment of SIS over IoT, Edge and Cloud infrastructure with the necessary concepts for security and privacy; and (ii) a [email protected] engine to enact the orchestration, deployment, and adaptation of these SIS. The results from our smart building case study have shown that GeneSIS can support security by design from the development (via deployment) to the operation of IoT systems and back again in a DevSecOps loop. In other words, GeneSIS enables IoT systems to keep up security and adapt to evolving conditions and threats while maintaining their trustworthiness.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission’s H2020 Programme under grant agreement numbers 780351 (ENACT)

A Federated Design for a Neurobiological Simulation Engine: The CBI Federated Software Architecture

Simulator interoperability and extensibility has become a growing requirement in computational biology. To address this, we have developed a federated software architecture. It is federated by its union of independent disparate systems under a single cohesive view, provides interoperability through its capability to communicate, execute programs, or transfer data among different independent applications, and supports extensibility by enabling simulator expansion or enhancement without the need for major changes to system infrastructure. Historically, simulator interoperability has relied on development of declarative markup languages such as the neuron modeling language NeuroML, while simulator extension typically occurred through modification of existing functionality. The software architecture we describe here allows for both these approaches. However, it is designed to support alternative paradigms of interoperability and extensibility through the provision of logical relationships and defined application programming interfaces. They allow any appropriately configured component or software application to be incorporated into a simulator. The architecture defines independent functional modules that run stand-alone. They are arranged in logical layers that naturally correspond to the occurrence of high-level data (biological concepts) versus low-level data (numerical values) and distinguish data from control functions. The modular nature of the architecture and its independence from a given technology facilitates communication about similar concepts and functions for both users and developers. It provides several advantages for multiple independent contributions to software development. Importantly, these include: (1) Reduction in complexity of individual simulator components when compared to the complexity of a complete simulator, (2) Documentation of individual components in terms of their inputs and outputs, (3) Easy removal or replacement of unnecessary or obsoleted components, (4) Stand-alone testing of components, and (5) Clear delineation of the development scope of new components

Reuse Alternatives based on the Sources of Software Assets

    Abstract— Since the idea of software reuse appeared in 1968, software reuse has become a software engineering discipline. Software reuse is one of the main techniques used to enhance the productivity of software development, which it helps reducing the time, effort, and cost of developing software systems, and enhances the quality of software products. However, software reuse requires understanding, modifying, adapting and testing processes in order to be performed correctly and efficiently. This study aims to analyze and discuss the process of software reuse, identify its elements, sources and usages. The alternatives of acquiring and using software assets either normal or reusable assets are discussed. As a result of this study, four main methods are proposed in order to use the concept of reuse in the software development process. These methods are proposed based on the source of software assets regardless the types of software assets and their usages