A Case Study on Artefact-based RE Improvement in Practice

Most requirements engineering (RE) process improvement approaches are solution-driven and activity-based. They focus on the assessment of the RE of a company against an external norm of best practices. A consequence is that practitioners often have to rely on an improvement approach that skips a profound problem analysis and that results in an RE approach that might be alien to the organisational needs. In recent years, we have developed an RE improvement approach (called \emph{ArtREPI}) that guides a holistic RE improvement against individual goals of a company putting primary attention to the quality of the artefacts. In this paper, we aim at exploring ArtREPI's benefits and limitations. We contribute an industrial evaluation of ArtREPI by relying on a case study research. Our results suggest that ArtREPI is well-suited for the establishment of an RE that reflects a specific organisational culture but to some extent at the cost of efficiency resulting from intensive discussions on a terminology that suits all involved stakeholders. Our results reveal first benefits and limitations, but we can also conclude the need of longitudinal and independent investigations for which we herewith lay the foundation

Tests of Power Corrections to Event Shape Distributions from e+e- Annihilation

A study of differential event shape distributions using e+e- data at centre-of-mass energies of 35 to 183 GeV is presented. We investigated non-perturbative power corrections for the thrust, C-parameter, total and wide jet broadening observables. We observe a good description of the distributions by the combined resummed QCD calculations plus power corrections from the dispersive approach. The single non-perturbative parameter \alpha_0 is measured to be \alpha_0 (2 GeV) = 0.502 +- 0.013 (stat.) ^{+0.046)_{-0.032} (exp. syst.) ^{+0.074}_{-0.053} (theo. syst.) and is found to be universal for the observables studied within the given systematic uncertainties. Using revised calculations of the power corrections for the jet broadening variables, improved consistency of the individual fit results is obtained. Agreement is also found with results extracted from the mean values of event shape distributions.Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX2e, 8 .eps-files included, paper contributed to the EPS-HEP99 conference in Tampere, Finlan

A Study of Event Shapes and Determinations of alpha_s using data of e^+e^- Annihilations at sqrt{s} = 22 to 44 GeV

Data recorded by the JADE experiment at the PETRA e^+e^- collider were used to measure the event shape observables thrust, heavy jet mass, wide and total jet broadening and the differential 2-jet rate in the Durham scheme. For the latter three observables, no experimental results have previously been presented at these energies. The distributions were compared with resummed QCD calulations (O(alpha_s^2)+NLLA), and the strong coupling constant alpha_s(Q) was determined at different energy scales Q=sqrt{s}. The results, \alpha_s(22 GeV) = 0.161 ^{+0.016}_{-0.011}, \alpha_s(35 GeV) = 0.143 ^{+0.011}_{-0.007}, \alpha_s(44 GeV) = 0.137 ^{+0.010}_{-0.007}, are in agreement with previous combined results of PETRA albeit with smaller uncertainties. Together with corresponding data from LEP, the energy dependence of alpha_s is significantly tested and is found to be in good agreement with the QCD expectation. Similarly, mean values of the observables were compared to analytic QCD predictions where hadronisation effects are absorbed in calculable power corrections.Comment: 36 pages, LaTeX2e, 34 .eps-files included, submitted to Z. Phys. C, revised version, with comments of referee included and some typos corrected, accepted for publicatio

The Geography of Non-formal Manifolds

We show that there exist non-formal compact oriented manifolds of dimension $n$ and with first Betti number $b_1=b\geq 0$ if and only if $n\geq 3$ and $b\geq 2$, or $n\geq (7-2b)$ and $0\leq b\leq 2$. Moreover, we present explicit examples for each one of these cases.Comment: 8 pages, one reference update

Towards Guidelines for Preventing Critical Requirements Engineering Problems

Context] Problems in Requirements Engineering (RE) can lead to serious consequences during the software development lifecycle. [Goal] The goal of this paper is to propose empirically-based guidelines that can be used by different types of organisations according to their size (small, medium or large) and process model (agile or plan-driven) to help them in preventing such problems. [Method] We analysed data from a survey on RE problems answered by 228 organisations in 10 different countries. [Results] We identified the most critical RE problems, their causes and mitigation actions, organizing this information by clusters of size and process model. Finally, we analysed the causes and mitigation actions of the critical problems of each cluster to get further insights into how to prevent them. [Conclusions] Based on our results, we suggest preliminary guidelines for preventing critical RE problems in response to context characteristics of the companies.Comment: Proceedings of the 42th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications, 201

C-Parameter and Jet Broadening at PETRA Energies

e^+e^- annihilation data recorded by the JADE detector at PETRA were used to measure the C-parameter for the first time at \sqrt{s}= 35 and 44 GeV. The distributions were compared to a resummed QCD calculation. In addition, we applied extended resummed calculations to the total and wide jet broadening variables, B_T and B_W. We combined the results on \alpha_s with those of our previous study of differential 2-jet rate, thrust, and heavy jet mass, obtaining \alpha_s(35 GeV) = 0.1448 +0.0117 -0.0070 and \alpha_s(44 GeV) = 0.1392 +0.0105 -0.0074. Moreover power corrections to the mean values of the observables mentioned above were investigated considering the Milan factor and the improved prediction for the jet broadening observables. Our study, which considered e^+e^- data of five event shape observables between \sqrt{s}= 14 and 183 GeV, yielded \alpha_s(M_{Z^0})=0.1177 +0.0035 -0.0034.Comment: 14 pages, LaTeX2e, 9 .eps-files included, abbreviated version of the paper contributed to the ICHEP'98 conference in Vancouver, submitted to Phys. Lett.

Giant magnetic anisotropy at nanoscale: overcoming the superparamagnetic limit

It has been recently observed for palladium and gold nanoparticles, that the magnetic moment at constant applied field does not change with temperature over the range comprised between 5 and 300 K. These samples with size smaller than 2.5 nm exhibit remanence up to room temperature. The permanent magnetism for so small samples up to so high temperatures has been explained as due to blocking of local magnetic moment by giant magnetic anisotropies. In this report we show, by analysing the anisotropy of thiol capped gold films, that the orbital momentum induced at the surface conduction electrons is crucial to understand the observed giant anisotropy. The orbital motion is driven by localised charge and/or spin through spin orbit interaction, that reaches extremely high values at the surfaces. The induced orbital moment gives rise to an effective field of the order of 103 T that is responsible of the giant anisotropy.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, submitted to PR

Roper Excitation in Alpha-Proton Scattering

We study the Roper excitation in the $(\alpha,\alpha')$ reaction. We consider all processes which may be relevant in the Roper excitation region, namely, Roper excitation in the target, Roper excitation in the projectile, and double $\Delta$ excitation processes. The theoretical investigation shows that the Roper excitation in the proton target mediated by an isoscalar exchange is the dominant mechanism in the process. We determine an effective isoscalar interaction by means of which the experimental cross section is well reproduced. This should be useful to make predictions in related reactions and is a first step to construct eventually a microscopic $NN \rightarrow NN^*$ transition potential, for which the present reaction does not offer enough information.Comment: Latex 17 pages; figures available by request; Phys. Rev. C in prin

Ricci flow, quantum mechanics and gravity

It has been argued that, underlying any given quantum-mechanical model, there exists at least one deterministic system that reproduces, after prequantisation, the given quantum dynamics. For a quantum mechanics with a complex d-dimensional Hilbert space, the Lie group SU(d) represents classical canonical transformations on the projective space CP^{d-1} of quantum states. Let R stand for the Ricci flow of the manifold SU(d-1) down to one point, and let P denote the projection from the Hopf bundle onto its base CP^{d-1}. Then the underlying deterministic model we propose here is the Lie group SU(d), acted on by the operation PR. Finally we comment on some possible consequences that our model may have on a quantum theory of gravity.Comment: 8 page