949 research outputs found
The GOODSTEP project: General Object-Oriented Database for Software Engineering Processes
The goal of the GOODSTEP project is to enhance and improve the functionality of a fully object-oriented database management system to yield a platform suited for applications such as software development environments (SDEs). The baseline of the project is the O2 database management system (DBMS). The O2 DBMS already includes many of the features regulated by SDEs. The project has identified enhancements to O2 in order to make it a real software engineering DBMS. These enhancements are essentially upgrades of the existing O2 functionality, and hence require relatively easy extensions to the O2 system. They have been developed in the early stages of the project and are now exploited and validated by a number of software engineering tools built on top of the enhanced O2 DBMS. To ease tool construction, the GOODSTEP platform encompasses tool generation capabilities which allow for generation of integrated graphical and textual tools from high-level specifications. In addition, the GOODSTEP platform provides a software process toolset which enables modeling, analysis and enaction of software processes and is also built on top of the extended O2 database. The GOODSTEP platform is to be validated using two CASE studies carried out to develop an airline application and a business application
Atomic Diffusion and Mixing in Old Stars I. VLT/FLAMES-UVES Observations of Stars in NGC 6397
We present a homogeneous photometric and spectroscopic analysis of 18 stars
along the evolutionary sequence of the metal-poor globular cluster NGC 6397
([Fe/H] = -2), from the main-sequence turnoff point to red giants below the
bump. The spectroscopic stellar parameters, in particular stellar-parameter
differences between groups of stars, are in good agreement with broad-band and
Stroemgren photometry calibrated on the infrared-flux method. The spectroscopic
abundance analysis reveals, for the first time, systematic trends of iron
abundance with evolutionary stage. Iron is found to be 31% less abundant in the
turnoff-point stars than in the red giants. An abundance difference in lithium
is seen between the turnoff-point and warm subgiant stars. The impact of
potential systematic errors on these abundance trends (stellar parameters, the
hydrostatic and LTE approximations) is quantitatively evaluated and found not
to alter our conclusions significantly. Trends for various elements (Li, Mg,
Ca, Ti and Fe) are compared with stellar-structure models including the effects
of atomic diffusion and radiative acceleration. Such models are found to
describe the observed element-specific trends well, if extra (turbulent) mixing
just below the convection zone is introduced. It is concluded that atomic
diffusion and turbulent mixing are largely responsible for the sub-primordial
stellar lithium abundances of warm halo stars. Other consequences of atomic
diffusion in old metal-poor stars are also discussed.Comment: 20 pages (emulateapj), 11 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
A possible mechanism for cold denaturation of proteins at high pressure
We study cold denaturation of proteins at high pressures. Using
multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations of a model protein in a water bath, we
investigate the effect of water density fluctuations on protein stability. We
find that above the pressure where water freezes to the dense ice phase
( kbar), the mechanism for cold denaturation with decreasing
temperature is the loss of local low-density water structure. We find our
results in agreement with data of bovine pancreatic ribonuclease A.Comment: 4 pages for double column and single space. 3 figures Added
references Changed conten
Nonextensivity and multifractality in low-dimensional dissipative systems
Power-law sensitivity to initial conditions at the edge of chaos provides a
natural relation between the scaling properties of the dynamics attractor and
its degree of nonextensivity as prescribed in the generalized statistics
recently introduced by one of us (C.T.) and characterized by the entropic index
. We show that general scaling arguments imply that , where and are the
extremes of the multifractal singularity spectrum of the attractor.
This relation is numerically checked to hold in standard one-dimensional
dissipative maps. The above result sheds light on a long-standing puzzle
concerning the relation between the entropic index and the underlying
microscopic dynamics.Comment: 12 pages, TeX, 4 ps figure
Anomalous Diffusion in Aperiodic Environments
We study the Brownian motion of a classical particle in one-dimensional
inhomogeneous environments where the transition probabilities follow
quasiperiodic or aperiodic distributions. Exploiting an exact correspondence
with the transverse-field Ising model with inhomogeneous couplings we obtain
many new analytical results for the random walk problem. In the absence of
global bias the qualitative behavior of the diffusive motion of the particle
and the corresponding persistence probability strongly depend on the
fluctuation properties of the environment. In environments with bounded
fluctuations the particle shows normal diffusive motion and the diffusion
constant is simply related to the persistence probability. On the other hand in
a medium with unbounded fluctuations the diffusion is ultra-slow, the
displacement of the particle grows on logarithmic time scales. For the
borderline situation with marginal fluctuations both the diffusion exponent and
the persistence exponent are continuously varying functions of the
aperiodicity. Extensions of the results to disordered media and to higher
dimensions are also discussed.Comment: 11 pages, RevTe
Influence of fractional flow reserve on grafts patency: Systematic review and patient-level meta-analysis.
To investigate the impact of invasive functional guidance for coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) on graft failure.
Data on the impact of fractional flow reserve (FFR) in guiding CABG are still limited.
Systematic review and individual patient data meta-analysis were performed. Primary objective was the risk of graft failure, stratified by FFR. Risk estimates are reported as odds ratios (ORs) derived from the aggregated data using random-effects models. Individual patient data were analyzed using mixed effect model to assess relationship between FFR and graft failure. This meta-analysis is registered in PROSPERO (CRD42020180444).
Four prospective studies comprising 503 patients referred for CABG, with 1471 coronaries, assessed by FFR were included. Graft status was available for 1039 conduits at median of 12.0 [IQR 6.6; 12.0] months. Risk of graft failure was higher in vessels with preserved FFR (OR 5.74, 95% CI 1.71-19.29). Every 0.10 FFR units decrease in the coronaries was associated with 56% risk reduction of graft failure (OR 0.44, 95% CI 0.34 to 0.59). FFR cut-off to predict graft failure was 0.79.
Surgical grafting of coronaries with functionally nonsignificant stenoses was associated with higher risk of graft failure
Common trends in the critical behavior of the Ising and directed walk models
We consider layered two-dimensional Ising and directed walk models and show
that the two problems are inherently related. The information about the
zero-field thermodynamical properties of the Ising model is contained into the
transfer matrix of the directed walk. For several hierarchical and aperiodic
distributions of the couplings, critical exponents for the two problems are
obtained exactly through renormalization.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX file + 1 figure, epsf needed. To be published in PR
Proximity Induced Superconductivity and Multiple Andreev Reflections in Few-Layer-Graphene
We have investigated electronic transport of few-layer-graphene (FLG)
connected to superconducting electrodes. The device is prepared by mechanical
exfoliation of graphite. A small mesa of FLG is placed on the surface of an
insulating Alumina layer over silicon substrate, and is connected with two
tungsten electrodes, separated by 2.5 microns, grown by focused ion beam. While
tungsten electrodes are superconducting below 4 K, proximity induced
superconductivity in FLG is observed below 1K with a large differential
resistance drop at low bias. Signatures of multiple Andreev reflections are
observed as peaks located at voltages corresponding to sub-multiple values of
the superconducting gap of the electrodes
Cat States and Single Runs for the Damped Harmonic Oscillator
We discuss the fate of initial states of the cat type for the damped harmonic
oscillator, mostly employing a linear version of the stochastic Schr\"odinger
equation. We also comment on how such cat states might be prepared and on the
relation of single realizations of the noise to single runs of experiments.Comment: 18, Revte
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