How reliable are systematic reviews in empirical software engineering?

BACKGROUND – the systematic review is becoming a more commonly employed research instrument in empirical software engineering. Before undue reliance is placed on the outcomes of such reviews it would seem useful to consider the robustness of the approach in this particular research context. OBJECTIVE – the aim of this study is to assess the reliability of systematic reviews as a research instrument. In particular we wish to investigate the consistency of process and the stability of outcomes. METHOD – we compare the results of two independent reviews under taken with a common research question. RESULTS – the two reviews find similar answers to the research question, although the means of arriving at those answers vary. CONCLUSIONS – in addressing a well-bounded research question, groups of researchers with similar domain experience can arrive at the same review outcomes, even though they may do so in different ways. This provides evidence that, in this context at least, the systematic review is a robust research method

Failure of Unrestrained Lightly Reinforced Concrete Slabs under Fire, Part II: Verification and Application

Accepted versio

Dynamics of subpicosecond dispersion-managed soliton in a fibre: A perturbative analysis

A model is studied which describes a propagation of a subpicosecond optical pulse in dispersion-managed fibre links. In the limit of weak chromatic dispersion management, the model equation is reduced to a perturbed modified NLS equation having a nonlinearity dispersion term. By means of the Riemann--Hilbert problem, a perturbation theory for the soliton of the modified NLS equation is developed. It is shown in the adiabatic approximation that there exists a unique possibility to suppress the perturbation-induced shift of the soliton centre at the cost of proper matching of the soliton width and nonlinearity dispersion parameter. In the next-order approximation, the spectral density of the radiation power emitted by a soliton is calculated.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, to appear in J. Mod. Optic

Global Charges in Chern-Simons theory and the 2+1 black hole

We use the Regge-Teitelboim method to treat surface integrals in gauge theories to find global charges in Chern-Simons theory. We derive the affine and Virasoro generators as global charges associated with symmetries of the boundary. The role of boundary conditions is clarified. We prove that for diffeomorphisms that do not preserve the boundary there is a classical contribution to the central charge in the Virasoro algebra. The example of anti-de Sitter 2+1 gravity is considered in detail.Comment: Revtex, no figures, 26 pages. Important changes introduced. One section added

Monte Carlo Simulation of the Three-dimensional Ising Spin Glass

We study the 3D Edwards-Anderson model with binary interactions by Monte Carlo simulations. Direct evidence of finite-size scaling is provided, and the universal finite-size scaling functions are determined. Using an iterative extrapolation procedure, Monte Carlo data are extrapolated to infinite volume up to correlation length \xi = 140. The infinite volume data are consistent with both a continuous phase transition at finite temperature and an essential singularity at finite temperature. An essential singularity at zero temperature is excluded.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures. Proceedings of the Workshop "Computer Simulation Studies in Condensed Matter Physics XII", Eds. D.P. Landau, S.P. Lewis, and H.B. Schuettler, (Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, Berlin, 1999

Failure of Unrestrained Lightly Reinforced Concrete Slabs under Fire, Part I: Analytical Models

Accepted versio

Incumbent user active area detection for Licensed Shared Access

© 2015 IEEE. Licensed Shared Access is a European standardisation effort which promotes repository based quasi-static hierarchical spectrum sharing. In this scheme the sharing time base is in the order of months if not years. For widespread use of Licensed Shared Access, shrinking the sharing time base is crucial. In this paper we propose a scheme to reduce the sharing time base to seconds or minutes scale. We present a new technique named lightweight Radio Environment Map based on a Kalman Filter derived from geo-location aware spectrum measurements, which can be run at the shared access licensee end. Our objective is to determine the active area of a static or slowly moving incumbent. We consider a challenging scenario where a large fraction of measurements is missing and the available measurements are highly distorted. Performance of our incumbent active area detection approach is evaluated by simulating a low power incumbent in an urban cellular environment. Simulation results show a substantial improvement of missed detection area in comparison to the counterpart that does not use our lightweight Radio Environment Map

Electrodialytic processes in solid matrices. New insights into batteries recycling. A review.

Electrodialytic Remediation has been widely applied to the recovery of different contaminants from numerous solid matrices solving emerging issues of environmental concern. Results and conclusions reported in studies about real contaminated matrices are summarizes in this work. The influence of the pH value on the treatment effectiveness has been widely proved highlighting the phenomenon “water splitting” in the membrane surface. This dissociation of water molecules is related to the “limiting current” which is desirable to be exceed at the Anion Exchange Membrane in order to produce the entering of protons toward solid matrix. Other important parameters for the optimization of the technique, such as the current density and the liquid to solid ratio, are also discussed through the revision of studies using real solid matrices. This work also focusses on the pioneer proposal of electrokinetic technologies for the recycling of lithium ion batteries considering the relevance of waste properties in the design and optimization of the technique. From a thorough literature revision, it could be concluded that further experimental results are needed to allow an optimal application of the technique to the rising problem of residues from batteries. The main aim of this work is to take the first steps in the recovery of valuable metals from spent batteries, such as Li and Co, incorporating principles of green chemistry.The authors acknowledge the financial support from the “Plan Propio de Investigación de la Universidad de Málaga with Project numbers: PPIT.UMA.B1.2017/20 and PPIT.UMA.B5.2018/17 and the European project THROUGH H2020-MSCA-RISE- 2017-778045. The first author also acknowledge the postdoctoral contract obtained from University of Malaga