A Reflection on the Interrelations Between Business Process Management and Requirements Engineering with an Agility Perspective

The paper points out some aspects of the interrelations between business process management, agility, flexibility, and requirements engineering. It shows some possibilities for agile development of business processes and for the development of flexible processes for changing requirements

Carbon buffer layers for smoothing substrates of EUV and X-ray multilayer mirrors

Smoothing of surfaces by thin film deposition is facilitated by methods which release hyperthermal particles on the substrate. One of these techniques is pulsed laser deposition (PLD), with high kinetic particle energies of up to several 100 eV. The concrete energy distribution of the particles can be widely influenced by the laser power density. We investigated the deposition of carbon layers by PLD on numerous substrates with rms-roughnesses between 0.15 and 0.75 nm using different laser power densities and film thicknesses. It turns out that a better smoothing can be obtained with higher laser power densities, whereby diamond-like carbon films are created. With typical thicknesses of dC = 100 nm, the rms-roughness is reduced from 0.75 nm to 0.55 nm and from 0.32 nm to 0.18 nm. Accordingly by applying smoothing carbon buffer layers, the EUV reflectance of Mo/Si multilayers on rough substrates is increased from typically 60 % to > 65 % on substrates with initial roughnesses of 0.75 nm

Energy Intensities, EROIs (Energy Returned on Invested), and Energy Payback Times of Electricity Generating Power Plants”. Energy 52

The energy returned on invested, EROI, has been evaluated for typical power plants representing wind energy, photovoltaics, solar thermal, hydro, natural gas, biogas, coal and nuclear power. The strict exergy concept with no "primary energy weighting", updated material databases, and updated technical procedures make it possible to directly compare the overall efficiency of those power plants on a uniform mathematical and physical basis. Pump storage systems, needed for solar and wind energy, have been included in the EROI so that the efficiency can be compared with an "unbuffered" scenario. The results show that nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas power systems (in this order) are one order of magnitude more effective than photovoltaics and wind power