Natural Intrinsic Geometrical Symmetries

A proposal is made for what could well be the most natural symmetrical Riemannian spaces which are homogeneous but not isotropic, i.e. of what could well be the most natural class of symmetrical spaces beyond the spaces of constant Riemannian curvature, that is, beyond the spaces which are homogeneous and isotropic, or, still, the spaces which satisfy the axiom of free mobility.Comment: Theorem 20 is corrected and References [13, 14] are adde

Evaluation of the applicability of investment appraisal techniques for assessing the business value of IS services.

There is a consensus among academics and practitioners that ICT investments should be carefully justified, measured and controlled. This is not different for the development of a service architecture or the development of particular services as such. In practice, the traditional capital investment appraisal techniques (CIAT’s) such as payback period or net present value are by far the most used techniques for assessing the feasibility of ICT investments. Nevertheless, serious doubts about the fitness of these techniques in a service based value net environment arise. Value nets have special characteristics such as high flexibility and agility, re-use of services,… that makes the use of these techniques very difficult and the reliability of the outcome most uncertain. Efforts are made to find more appropriate techniques. In the past, CIAT’s have been adjusted so that these techniques become more reliable in an ICT environment and new justification methods and techniques have been developed. However neither these adjusted techniques nor the new techniques are frequently used. This might be explained by the fact that the outcome of these techniques is difficult to interpret and to use and the fact that some significant problems (like the estimation of hidden costs) remain unsolved. Moreover, most of the new techniques are still in the conceptual phase. In this paper we evaluate these adjusted and new techniques in the light of service oriented architectures. We will argue that non of the techniques offers a good solution for assessing the business value of IS services. Despite the existence of a wealth of literature, the IS community appears to be no nearer to a solution to many problems associated with ICT appraisal. This is potentially problematic when dealing with investments in emerging technology such as IS services or service architectures. Since all techniques presented in the article have their drawbacks, it is safe to say that reliance on a sole technique may lead to sub-optimalisation or even failure. Therefore it makes sense to use a mixture of techniques, eliminating or diminishing the weaknesses of each of the techniques used. We strongly recommend a multi-layer evaluation process, or an evaluation process derived from the balanced scorecard, for the appraisal of investments in services or service architectures.

Efficacy of non-synthetic seed treatments against anthracnose (Colletotrichum lupini) in white lupin

Efficacy of non-synthetic seed treatments against anthracnose (Colletotrichum lupini) in white lupin. Poster about master thesis

A Spider\u27s Approach To STEAM

In this paper we present an overview of different approaches towards STEAM education, including the choices in methodology and pedagogy. From these various viewpoints we build up a framework for STEAM education and relate it to a real-world problem, namely, how a small spider can catch a prey

Efficacy of non-synthetic seed treatments against anthracnose (Colletotrichum lupini) in white lupin

White lupin (Lupinus albus) is an interesting crop for use as food, feed, forage or cover crop. However, its cultivation is currently limited because of its high susceptibility to the seed-borne pathogen Colletotrichum lupini, causal agent of lupin anthracnose. Twenty-eight seed treatments were studied here for their efficacy against lupin anthracnose, consisting of 4 hot water, 5 steam, 4 dry heat, 5 electron, 2 plant-based and 2 microbial treatments, as well as 6 controls. Experiments were divided into a germination assay and a pot-based disease assessment experiment. Treatment effects were studied by visual assessments of plants, culture-based incubation of plant tissue and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)-based detection of Colletotrichum spp. in plants. Only the sodium hypochlorite control significantly impaired germination rate, normal germination rate and early vigour of seedlings. Culture-based incubation of epicotyl samples from 1.5-week old seedlings revealed significant treatment effects on the overall seed microbiome. No significant treatment effects were observed for plant vitality scores, percentage of diseased leaves and plant biomass at harvest. Colletotrichum spp. was detected in epicotyl samples of 1.5-week old seedlings and in shoot samples of 7.5-week old plants, but no significant treatment effects were observed. Absence of treatment effects could be due to insufficient power of the tested treatments, or to insufficient pathogen levels in the plants. No characteristic anthracnose symptoms were observed, and it is possible that the initial seed inoculum level was too low to lead to sufficient disease pressure in the plants. Nevertheless, the steam treatments significantly reduced the overall seed microbiome, and no Colletotrichum spp. was detected in seedlings or grown shoots, indicating a potential efficacy of the steam treatments against lupin anthracnose. The treatments dry heat 75°C/5h, electron at penetration depth 3 and intensity 3, and thyme oil also showed slight indications of efficacy against lupin anthracnose

Existence dependency-based domain modeling for improving stateless process enactment.

In a process-enabled service oriented architecture, a process engine typically stores the state of the process instances during enactment. As an alternative, stateless process enactment entails that process state is derived from the state of business objects, which are organized in a domain model. The business objects are referred to in pre- and post-conditions of activities, which determine when the activity is enabled and completed, respectively. Despite the fact that the latter approach has multiple benefits compared with the former, the repeated state (re)calculations deteriorate performance and the formulation of clear conditions is not self-evident if typical domain modeling techniques (e.g. UML or ER) are adopted. In this paper we show that by adopting a specific domain modeling technique, which is based on the notion of existence dependency between the business objects, the performance and comprehensibility issues can proficiently be dealt with. We illustrate the technique using a real-world case from the insurance domain and analyze the emerging duality between process modeling and domain modeling.