Monopole and Dyon Spectra in N=2 SYM with Higher Rank Gauge Groups

We derive parts of the monopole and dyon spectra for N=2 super-Yang--Mills theories in four dimensions with gauge groups G of rank r>1 and matter multiplets. Special emphasis is put on G=SU(3) and those matter contents that yield perturbatively finite theories. There is no direct interpretation of the soliton spectra in terms of naive selfduality under strong--weak coupling and exchange of electric and magnetic charges. We argue that, in general, the standard procedure of finding the dyon spectrum will not give results that support a conventional selfduality hypothesis --- the SU(2) theory with four fundamental hypermultiplets seems to be an exception. Possible interpretations of the results are discussed.Comment: 24 pages, plain tex, 6 figures. uuencoded compressed tar file. Three references adde

A Profession in Transformation: The paradox of industrial and design in a post-industrial society

It is argued that we live in a post-industrial society with a transition from the production of goods to services. It is also said we live in a knowledge economy where creation, distribution, use and manipulation of information are significant activities (Dahlbom, 2003). The word industrial has a connotation of mass-production of products and, logically also industrial design has this connotation. There are two issues related to this that guided our research on the design industry. One, was whether the definition and understanding of industrial design had changed in the transition of the post-industrial society. Another was whether the change of the market and the industrial clients had an impact on the organization and development of the industrial design consultancies (IDC). The meaning of the term design is much contested. It can be referred to the actual problemsolving activity and the ability to plan, sketch, and model (Jones, 1981; Lawson, 1998). It can also refer to the outcome of the design process that is the product. The lowest common denominator between design and industrial is then the actual product. The two terms would then together imply the activity to plan, sketch and model products. The terms industrial and design would in the change towards a post-industrial society and knowledge economy be paradoxes and the role of the industrial designer would slowly disperse. As we know that the term industrial design is still going strong, both in education and business there could still be a new definition and content of the concept industrial design. Creativity, by its very nature, creates categories or rearranges established ones (Waymire et al, 1995). The role of designers could in this sense promote strategic thinking or improve the interaction between executives and the future. Industrial designers have always been knowledge workers and consequently would fit perfectly in the knowledge economy. In the industrial paradigm the knowledge was “frozen” in a product and the actual name of the discipline – industrial design – implies a discipline that belongs in the past. At the same time paradoxically the term design has a focus on the future. The competition in the knowledge economy is increasing and boarders between disciplines are getting less distinct. The issue discussed in this paper is the impact the changes of society and industry have had on industrial design consultancies. The discussion is based on a survey of the development of Swedish industrial design consultancies and a parallel study in Finland. The research project investigated how industrial design consultancies in Sweden, Finland and the US view their own development and what opportunity they see to grow their businesses. Our interest is not the change of the industrial design profession as such, but of the development of the industrial design consultancy firm although change of the firm is also influenced by the change of the profession. We will therefore relate our analysis of the firm to the development of the profession. This is a working paper and we have chosen to compress the analysis and summarize our findings

Strategic growth of industrial design consultancy: a study of changes in ID consultancy in a post-industrial society I

Based on a study of Swedish and Finnish industrial design consultancies (IDCs) we discuss how changes in industry have affected id-consultancies cope with growth, organizational and management issues. The traditional industrial designer worked in a small consultancy mainly with clients focusing on mass-produced products. The clients were basically domestic even if they operated worldwide. Investment in technology, for instance CAD and rapid prototyping, required larger investments and many id-consultancies saw a need to expand in order to afford these investments. The growth trend will probably continue, with further demands on management skills and this will also, most likely, affect also the small design firms. The design maturity of the client firms is increasing which will put a higher demand on the professionalization of the design firms. Although design has received more attention and is recognized as a valuable tool for competitiveness, the knowledge about what IDCs do and the value of their work is still mainly restricted to those who have experience working with designers. Many designers still argue that their clients do not see how design and strategies are interconnected. The question is whether the IDCs know how to communicate their competence and contribution to business development and strategy creation. The strategic role of design is not always clear to the client firm, but the question is also if the IDCs are clear about what strategy means in a corporate perspective

Construction and evaluation of a tool for quantifying uncertainty of software cost estimates

Software development effort estimation is a continuous challenge in the software industry. The inherent uncertainty of effort estimates, which is due to factors such as evolving technology and significant elements of creativity in software development, is an important challenge for software project management. The specific management challenge addressed in this thesis is to assess the uncertainty of effort required for a new software release in the context of incremental software development. The evaluated approach combines task-level estimates with historical data on the estimation accuracy of past tasks for this assessment, by creating effort prediction intervals. The approach was implemented in a web-based tool, and evaluated in the context of a large Norwegian software project with estimation data from three contracted software development companies. In the evaluation we compared the approach to a simpler baseline method, and we found that our suggested approach more consistently produced reasonably accurate prediction intervals. Several variants of the basic approach were investigated. Fitting the historical data to a parametric distribution consistently improved the efficiency of the produced prediction intervals, but the accuracy suffered in cases where the parametric distribution could not reflect the historical distribution of estimation accuracy. Clustering tasks based on size had a positive effect on the produced effort intervals, both in terms of accuracy and efficiency. We believe the suggested approach and tool can be useful in software development project planning and estimation processes providing useful information to support planning, budgeting and resource allocation

Molecular interactions of BBX24 and BBX25 with HYH, HY5 HOMOLOG, to modulate Arabidopsis seedling development

BBX24 and BBX25 are two important transcriptional regulators, which regulate seedling photomorphogenesis in Arabidopsis. Very recently, we have shown that BBX24 and BBX25 negatively regulate the expression of BBX22, reducing the function of HY5, by physically interacting with its bZIP domain.1 Furthermore, HY5 HOMOLOG, HYH, has been reported to heterodimerize with HY5 and enhances its photomorphogenic function in seedling de-etiolation by serving as coactivator.8 Here, we further report that BBX24 and BBX25 physically interact with HYH. The physical interactions of BBX24 and BBX25 with HYH could lead to depletion of HYH molecules from the active pool and, thus indirectly, reduce the function of HY5 in promoting photomorphogenesis. Hence, our results suggest another mode of regulation by which BBX24 and BBX25 exert their negative effects on HY5 indirectly through HYH for the fine-tuning of seedling photomorphogenesis.Fil: Gangappa, Sreeramaiah N.. Gothenburg University. Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences; SueciaFil: Holm, Magnus. Gothenburg University. Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences; SueciaFil: Botto, Javier Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura; Argentin

Superembeddings, Non-Linear Supersymmetry and 5-branes

We examine general properties of superembeddings, i.e., embeddings of supermanifolds into supermanifolds. The connection between an embedding procedure and the method of non-linearly realised supersymmetry is clarified, and we demonstrate how the latter arises as a special case of the former. As an illustration, the super-5-brane in 7 dimensions, containing a self-dual 3-form world-volume field strength, is formulated in both languages, and provides an example of a model where the embedding condition does not suffice to put the theory on-shell.Comment: plain tex, 28 p

Adaptive Decision Support for Shop-floor Operators in Automotive Industry

AbstractToday's operators on factory shop-floors are often not stationed, dealing with a single or few tasks but have increasing responsibilities demanding enhanced skills and knowledge in a production environment where any disturbance must be settled with adequate actions without delay to keep optimum output. To be able to respond to these demands, the operators need dynamic, distributed and adaptive decision support in real-time, helping them to distinguish decision options and maximizing productivity despite incoming stochastic events. The minimum of time and option for operators to consider appropriate action both during normal production and when facing unexpected or unscheduled events point out the need of adaptive decision support for operators. When initiating this research project the question from the industry partner was the following: In what ways is it possible to support operators in making decisions for optimal productivity? By targeting this problem this paper introduces a novel framework for an adaptive decision-support system enabled by event-driven function blocks and based on decision logics. The proposed decision support systems’ ability to adapt to the actual conditions on the shop-floor is validated through a case study, and its capability is compared to the voice message system installed on-site