Business process modelling and visualisation to support e-government decision making: Business/IS alignment

© 2017 Springer-Verlag. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57487-5_4.Alignment between business and information systems plays a vital role in the formation of dependent relationships between different departments in a government organization and the process of alignment can be improved by developing an information system (IS) according to the stakeholders’ expectations. However, establishing strong alignment in the context of the eGovernment environment can be difficult. It is widely accepted that business processes in the government environment plays a pivotal role in capturing the details of IS requirements. This paper presents a method of business process modelling through UML which can help to visualise and capture the IS requirements for the system development. A series of UML models have been developed and discussed. A case study on patient visits to a healthcare clinic in the context of eGovernment has been used to validate the models

EFFECT OF REDUCING SPERM NUMBERS PER INSEMINATION DOSE ON FERTILITY OF CRYOPRESERVED BUFFALO BULL SEMEN

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of reducing sperm numbers per insemination dose on fertility of cryopreserved buffalo bull semen. For this purpose, semen was collected at weekly intervals from a Nili-Ravi buffalo bull (Bubalus bubalis) using an artificial vagina in two batches. The ejaculates were split-sampled and diluted at 37°C with tris-citric acid extender having 15x106 or 30x106 motile spermatozoa/0.5 ml. After dilution, the semen was cooled to 4C, equilibrated for 4 hours, packaged in 0.5 ml straws and frozen in programmable cell freezer. Fertility test based on 75-days first service pregnancy rate was determined under field conditions. A total of 500 buffaloes were inseminated with frozen semen and out of these 431 could be followed, 209 for semen straws packaged with 15x106 spermatozoa/straw and 222 for doses filled with 30x106 spermatozoa/straw. The inseminations were performed in two batches and each batch was spread over a period of three months. The fertility rate for sperm concentration of 15x106 spermatozoa/0.5 ml vs. 30x106 spermatozoa/0.5 ml (49.28 vs. 56.75%) was similar (P>0.05). The fertility rates were also similar (P>0.05) in the first and second batch of inseminations performed with 15x106 or 30x106 spermatozoa/0.5 ml straw of cryopreserved semen. In conclusion, reduction of sperm number from 30x106 to 15x106 spermatozoa/0.5 ml dose of insemination did not affect fertility of cryopreserved buffalo bull semen

Vortex dynamics in layered superconductors with correlated defects: influence of interlayer coupling

We report a detailed study of the vortex dynamics and vortex phase diagrams of two amorphous Ta_0.3Ge_0.7/Ge multilayered films with intrinsic coplanar defects, but different interlayer coupling. A pinned Bose-glass phase in the more weakly coupled sample exists only below a cross-over field H* in striking contrast to the strongly coupled film. Above H* the flux lines are thought to break up into pancake vortices and the cross-over field is significantly increased when the field is aligned along the extended defects. The two films show different vortex creep excitations in the Bose-glass phase.Comment: zip file: 1 RevTex, 5 figures (png

Magnetic field induced finite size effect in type-II superconductors

We explore the occurrence of a magnetic field induced finite size effect on the specific heat and correlation lengths of anisotropic type-II superconductors near the zero field transition temperature Tc. Since near the zero field transition thermal fluctuations are expected to dominate and with increasing field strength these fluctuations become one dimensional, whereupon the effect of fluctuations increases, it appears unavoidable to account for thermal fluctuations. Invoking the scaling theory of critical phenomena it is shown that the specific heat data of nearly optimally doped YBa2Cu3O7-x are inconsistent with the traditional mean-field and lowest Landau level predictions of a continuous superconductor to normal state transition along an upper critical field Hc2(T). On the contrary, we observe agreement with a magnetic field induced finite size effect, whereupon even the correlation length longitudinal to the applied field H cannot grow beyond the limiting magnetic length L(H). It arises because with increasing magnetic field the density of vortex lines becomes greater, but this cannot continue indefinitely. L(H) is then roughly set on the proximity of vortex lines by the overlapping of their cores. Thus, the shift and the rounding of the specific heat peak in an applied field is traced back to a magnetic field induced finite size effect in the correlation length longitudinal to the applied field.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Are Directed Waves Multifractal?

Wave propagation is studied in a sufficiently anisotropic random medium that backscattering along one direction can be neglected. A Fokker-Planck equation is derived the solution to which would provide a complete statistical description of such directed waves. The Fokker-Planck equation is mapped onto an su(1,1) ferromagnet and its symmetries are identified. Using the symmetries asymptotic wave function distributions are computed and used to show that directed wave functions fill space uniformly and do not have multifractal character.Comment: 5 pages. Submitted to Phys Rev Let

Random-Matrix Theory of Quantum Size Effects on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in Metal Particles

The distribution function of the local density of states is computed exactly for the Wigner-Dyson ensemble of random Hamiltonians. In the absence of time-reversal symmetry, precise agreement is obtained with the "supersymmetry" theory by Efetov and Prigodin of the NMR lineshape in disordered metal particles. Upon breaking time-reversal symmetry, the variance of the Knight shift in the smallest particles is reduced by a universal factor of 2/3. ***To be published in Physical Review B.****Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX-3.0, 1 postscript figure, INLO-PUB-940819; [2017: figure included in text

Absence of Dipole Transitions in Vortices of Type II Superconductors

The response of a single vortex to a time dependent field is examined microscopically and an equation of motion for vortex motion at non-zero frequencies is derived. Of interest are frequencies near $\Delta^{2}/E_{F}$, where $\Delta$ is the bulk energy gap and $E_{F}$ is the fermi energy. The low temperature, clean, extreme type II limit and maintaining of equilibrium with the lattice are assumed. A simplification occurs for large planar mass anisotropy. Thus the results may be pertinent to materials such as $NbSe_2$ and high temperature superconductors. The expected dipole transition between core states is hidden because of the self consistent nature of the vortex potential. Instead the vortex itself moves and has a resonance at the frequency of the transition.Comment: 12 pages, no figure

Effects of proximity to an electronic topological transition on normal state transport properties of the high-Tc superconductors

Within the time dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory, the effects of the superconducting fluctuations on the transport properties above the critical temperature are characterized by a non-zero imaginary part of the relaxation rate gamma of the order parameter. Here, we evaluate Im gamma for an anisotropic dispersion relation typical of the high-Tc cuprate superconductors (HTS), characterized by a proximity to an electronic topological transition (ETT). We find that Im gamma abruptly changes sign at the ETT as a function of doping, in agreement with the universal behavior of the HTS. We also find that an increase of the in-plane anisotropy, as is given by a non-zero value of the next-nearest to nearest hopping ratio r=t'/t, increases the value of | Im gamma | close to the ETT, as well as its singular behavior at low temperature, therefore enhancing the effect of superconducting fluctuations. Such a result is in qualitative agreement with the available data for the excess Hall conductivity for several cuprates and cuprate superlattices.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev.