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Implementation issues in product line scoping
Often product line engineering is treated similar to the waterfall model in traditional software engineering, i.e., the different phases (scoping, analysis, architecting, implementation) are treated as if they could be clearly separated and would follow each other in an ordered fashion. However, in practice strong interactions between the individual phases become apparent. In particular, how implementation is done has a strong impact on economic aspects of the project and thus how to adequately plan it. Hence, assessing these relationships adequately in the beginning has a strong impact on performing a product line project right. In this paper we present a framework that helps in exactly this task. It captures on an abstract level the relationships between scoping information and implementation aspects and thus allows to provide rough guidance on implementation aspects of the project. We will also discuss the application of our framework to a specific industrial project
Ablation Lesion Assessment with MRI
Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) MRI is capable of detecting not only native cardiac fibrosis, but also ablation-induced scarring. Thus, it offers the unique opportunity to assess ablation lesions non-invasively. In the atrium, LGE-MRI has been shown to accurately detect and localise gaps in ablation lines. With a negative predictive value close to 100% it can reliably rule out pulmonary vein reconnection non-invasively and thus may avoid unnecessary invasive repeat procedures where a pulmonary vein isolation only approach is pursued. Even LGE-MRI-guided repeat pulmonary vein isolation has been demonstrated to be feasible as a standalone approach. LGE-MRI-based lesion assessment may also be of value to evaluate the efficacy of ventricular ablation. In this respect, the elimination of LGE-MRI-detected arrhythmogenic substrate may serve as a potential endpoint, but validation in clinical studies is lacking. Despite holding great promise, the widespread use of LGE-MRI is still limited by the absence of standardised protocols for image acquisition and post-processing. In particular, reproducibility across different centres is impeded by inconsistent thresholds and internal references to define fibrosis. Thus, uniform methodological and analytical standards are warranted to foster a broader implementation in clinical practice
Risk-aware motion planning for automated vehicle among human-driven cars
We consider the maneuver planning problem for automated vehicles when they share the road with human-driven cars and interact with each other using a finite set of maneuvers. Each maneuver is calculated considering input constraints, actuator disturbances and sensor noise, so that we can use a maneuver automaton to perform higher-level planning that is robust against lower-level effects. In order to model the behavior of human-driven cars in response to the intent of the automated vehicle, we use control improvisation to build a probabilistic model. To accommodate for potential mismatches between the learned human model and human driving behaviors, we use a conditional value-at-risk objective function to obtain the optimal policy for the automated vehicle. We demonstrate through simulations that our motion planning framework consisting of an interactive human driving model and risk-aware motion planning strategy makes it possible to adapt to different traffic conditions and confidence levels
Photon Structure and Quantum Fluctuation
Photon structure derives from quantum fluctuation in quantum field theory to
fermion and anti-fermion, and has been an experimentally established feature of
electrodynamics since the discovery of the positron. In hadronic physics, the
observation of factorisable photon structure is similarly a fundamental test of
the quantum field theory Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). An overview of
measurements of hadronic photon structure in e+e- and ep interactions is
presented, and comparison made with theoretical expectation, drawing on the
essential features of photon fluctuation into quark and anti-quark in QCD.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figures, to appear in Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society of London (Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering
Sciences
A New 5 Flavour NLO Analysis and Parametrizations of Parton Distributions of the Real Photon
New, radiatively generated, NLO quark (u,d,s,c,b) and gluon densities in a
real, unpolarized photon are presented. We perform three global fits, based on
the NLO DGLAP evolution equations for Q^2>1 GeV^2, to all the available
structure function F_2^gamma(x,Q^2) data. As in our previous LO analysis we
utilize two theoretical approaches. Two models, denoted as FFNS_{CJK}1 & 2 NLO,
adopt the so-called Fixed Flavour-Number Scheme for calculation of the
heavy-quark contributions to F_2^gamma(x,Q^2), the CJK NLO model applies the
ACOT(chi) scheme. We examine the results of our fits by a comparison with the
LEP data for the Q^2 dependence of the F_2^gamma, averaged over various
x-regions, and the F_2,c^gamma. Grid parametrizations of the parton densities
for all fits are provided.Comment: 49 pages, 27 postscript figures; FORTRAN programs available at
http://www.fuw.edu.pl/~pjank/param.htm
Parton Content of Real and Virtual Photons
Parameter-free and perturbatively stable leading order (LO) and
next-to-leading order (NLO) parton densities for real and virtual photons are
presented.Comment: Talk given at the International Conference on the Structure and
Interactions of the Photon, PHOTON99, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, May 23 -
27, 1999. To appear in the Proceedings, 5 page
Pion photoproduction on the nucleon in the quark model
We present a detailed quark-model study of pion photoproduction within the
effective Lagrangian approach. Cross sections and single-polarization
observables are investigated for the four charge channels, , , , and .
Leaving the coupling strength to be a free parameter, we obtain a
reasonably consistent description of these four channels from threshold to the
first resonance region. Within this effective Lagrangian approach, strongly
constrainted by the quark model, we consider the issue of double-counting which
may occur if additional {\it t}-channel contributions are included.Comment: Revtex, 35 pages, 16 eps figures; version to appear on PR
Sensitivity analysis of uncertain dynamic systems using set-valued integration
We present an extension of set-valued integration to enable efficient sensitivity analysis of parameter-dependent ordinary differential equation (ODE) systems, using both the forward and adjoint methods. The focus is on continuous-time set-valued integration, whereby auxiliary ODE systems are derived whose solutions describe high-order inclusions of the parametric trajectories in the form of polynomial models. The forward and adjoint auxiliary ODE systems treat the parameterization error of the original differential variables as a time-varying uncertainty, and propagate the sensitivity bounds forward and backward in time, respectively. This construction enables building on the sensitivity analysis capabilities of state-of-the-art solvers, such as CVODES in the SUNDIALS suite. Several numerical case studies are presented to assess the performance and accuracy of these set-valued sensitivity integrators
Anesthesia and cognitive performance in children: No evidence for a causal relationship
* Both authors contributed evenly to the manuscript Recent findings of an association between anesthesia administration in the first three years of life and later learning disabilities have created concerns that anesthesia has neurotoxic effects on synaptogenesis, causing later learning problems. An alternative hypothesis is that those children who are likely to undergo surgery early in life have significant medical problems that are associated with a vulnerability to learning disabilities. These two hypotheses were evaluated in a monozygotic concordantâdiscordant twin design. Data on anesthesia administration and learning abilities and disabilities were available for 1,143 monozygotic twin pairs (56 % female) from the Netherlands Twin Registry. Parents of the twins reported on anesthesia use before age 3 and again between ages 3 and 12 years. Near age 12, educational achievement and cognitive problems were assessed with standardized tests and teacher ratings. Results showed that twins who were exposed to anesthesia before age 3 had significantly lower educational achievement scores and significantly more cognitive problems than twins not exposed to anesthesia. However, there was one important exception: the unexposed co-twin from discordant pairs did not differ from their exposed cotwin. Thus, there is no evidence for a causal relationship between anesthesia administration and later learning-related outcomes in this sample. Rather, there is evidence for early anesthesia being a marker of an individualâs vulnerability for later learning problems, regardless of their exposure to anesthesia
Transverse momentum spectra of identified particles in high energy collisions with statistical hadronisation model
A detailed analysis is performed of transverse momentum spectra of several
identified hadrons in high energy collisions within the framework of the
statistical model of hadronisation. The effect of the decay chain following
hadron generation is accurately taken into account. The considered
centre-of-mass energies range from ~ 10 to 30 GeV in hadronic collisions (pi+
p, pp and Kp) and from ~ 15 to 45 GeV in e+e- collisions. A clear consistency
is found between the temperature parameter extracted from the present analysis
and that obtained from fits to average hadron multiplicities in the same
collision systems. This finding indicates that in the hadronisation, the
production of different particle species and their momentum spectra are two
closely related phenomenons governed by one parameter.Comment: Talk given by F. Becattini in "Correlations and Fluctuations 2000",
12 pp., 11 figure
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