Photoelectron emission microscopy and its application to the study of polymer surfaces

The X-ray Photoelectron Emission Microscopy (X-PEEM) at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) has a spatial resolution of 0.2 microns at an accelerating voltage of 12kV. The tunability of the photon energy is used to provide chemical state information using near edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy on the sub-micrometer scale. The homogeneity of thin films of polymer blends was studied for various film thicknesses. The polystyrene/polyvinylmethylether film of 194 {angstrom} showed protrusions of 2-3{mu}m diameter with an enriched polystyrene content while the polystyrene/polystyreneacrylonitrile 504 {angstrom} thick films showed 5-6 {mu}m segregated regions without any topological structure

A Framework for Natural Enterprise Modelling

International audienceWithin enterprise modelling, models are typically needed for a range of different purposes, ranging from vision and strategy development to computer-aided analyses. It is well known that model's content and form need to be adapted to its purpose. This typically concerns the tuning in terms of granularity, visualisation, precision and formality of the model, as well as in terms of the concepts/language in which the model is expressed. However, typical modelling tools lack such support. A number of empirical observations points at a lack in flexibility of tools and underlying modelling languages to aptly fit the needs of specific modelling situations. For instance, it is observed that fixed metamodels make it difficult to align the language with e.g. organisation-specific domains/concerns. This often leads to the different levels of discipline in which a fixed modelling language is obeyed to, or even the use of home-grown notations instead of fixed standard ones. Likewise, to compensate the lack of flexibility in dedicated modelling tools, classical drawing tools or paper are used as modelling support. Once models created this way transition to the more formal tasks, a lot of redundant work and increased effort is needed to ensure consistency and coherence among different enterprise models. As a result of an ongoing research, this paper discusses the need to adapt the models and modelling environments to specific modelling situations. In particular, we explore the concept of natural enterprise modelling, as a strategy for enabling the flexibility while also ensuring the coherence in modelling. We also sketch potential high level design of a flexible modelling infrastructure supporting natural enterprise modelling, and indicate some promising future research directions

Instantaneous soundness checking of industrial business process models

We report on a case study on control-flow analysis of business process models. We checked 735 industrial business process models from financial services, telecommunications and other domains. We investigated these models for soundness (absence of deadlock and lack of synchronization) using three different approaches: the business process verification tool Woflan, the Petri net model checker LoLA, and a recently developed technique based on SESE decomposition. We evaluate the various techniques used by these approaches in terms of their ability of accelerating the check. Our results show that industrial business process models can be checked in a few milliseconds, which enables tight integration of modeling with control-flow analysis. We also briefly compare the diagnostic information delivered by the different approaches