Standards Setting Processes in ICT: The Negotiations Approach

ICT, negotiation, standards

Inter-firm Alliances during Pre-standardization in ICT

alliances, ICT, standardization

The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

We extend the worldline measure for pocket formation in eternal inflation to allow for time-ordered bubble formation. Such a time-ordering is equivalent to imposing a preferred time-slicing on the "parent" de Sitter space. Using this measure, we describe a covariant version of the youngness paradox and show that the youngness paradox is a gauge artifact if the parent spacetime is an unbroken de Sitter space, due to the lack of an explicit time-ordering for the bubble nucleation events. We then show that one can add a "clock" to the de Sitter space, in the form of a vector field with a spontaneously broken symmetry that defines a unique timelike direction accessible to all observers. Once this is done, the existence of a preferred slicing means that the youngness paradox cannot be easily resolved. We use this to elucidate the apparent "persistence of memory" discussed recently by Garriga, Guth and Vilenkin, for inflationary universes produced by bubble nucleation.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Self-scaled barriers for irreducible symmetric cones

Self-scaled barrier functions are fundamental objects in the theory of interior-point methods for linear optimization over symmetric cones, of which linear and semidefinite programming are special cases. We are classifying all self-scaled barriers over irreducible symmetric cones and show that these functions are merely homothetic transformations of the universal barrier function. Together with a decomposition theorem for self-scaled barriers this concludes the algebraic classification theory of these functions. After introducing the reader to the concepts relevant to the problem and tracing the history of the subject, we start by deriving our result from first principles in the important special case of semidefinite programming. We then generalise these arguments to irreducible symmetric cones by invoking results from the theory of Euclidean Jordan algebras.Comment: 12 page

StakeNet: using social networks to analyse the stakeholders of large-scale software projects

Many software projects fail because they overlook stakeholders or involve the wrong representatives of significant groups. Unfortunately, existing methods in stakeholder analysis are likely to omit stakeholders, and consider all stakeholders as equally influential. To identify and prioritise stakeholders, we have developed StakeNet, which consists of three main steps: identify stakeholders and ask them to recommend other stakeholders and stakeholder roles, build a social network whose nodes are stakeholders and links are recommendations, and prioritise stakeholders using a variety of social network measures. To evaluate StakeNet, we conducted one of the first empirical studies of requirements stakeholders on a software project for a 30,000-user system. Using the data collected from surveying and interviewing 68 stakeholders, we show that StakeNet identifies stakeholders and their roles with high recall, and accurately prioritises them. StakeNet uncovers a critical stakeholder role overlooked in the project, whose omission significantly impacted project success

Rumpel-Leede phenomenon in a hypertensive patient due to mechanical trauma: a case report.

In this report, we present an interesting case of a patient with Rumpel-Leede phenomenon, a rare occurrence that can result in significant delays in medical treatment. This phenomenon is characterized by the presence of a petechial rash that results from acute dermal capillary rupture. In our patient, it occurred secondary to raised pressure in the dermal vessels caused by repeated inflation of a sphygmomanometer cuff. Contributory factors in Rumpel-Leede phenomenon include prevalent conditions such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, thrombocytopenia, chronic steroid use, antiplatelets, and anticoagulants.A 58-year-old Russian woman with diabetes and hypertension presented to our hospital with a non-ST elevation myocardial infarction, and she subsequently developed a petechial rash on her distal upper limbs. A vasculitic screen was performed, with normal results.Given the timing and distribution of the rash, it was felt that this was an example of Rumpel-Leede phenomenon in a susceptible individual. This is an important diagnosis to be aware of in patients with vascular risk factors presenting for acute medical care who subsequently develop a petechial rash

Haloes of k-Essence

We study gravitationally bound static and spherically symmetric configurations of k-essence fields. In particular, we investigate whether these configurations can reproduce the properties of dark matter haloes. The classes of Lagrangians we consider lead to non-isotropic fluids with barotropic and polytropic equations of state. The latter include microscopic realizations of the often-considered Chaplygin gases, which we find can cluster into dark matter halo-like objects with flat rotation curves, while exhibiting a dark energy-like negative pressure on cosmological scales. We complement our studies with a series of formal general results about the stability and initial value formulation of non-canonical scalar field theories, and we also discuss a new class of de Sitter solutions with spacelike field gradients.Comment: 34pages, single column double spacing, 7 figures, 3 Tables, RevTex4. Additional references and minor clarifications. To be submitted to JCA