The Karlskrona manifesto for sustainability design

Sustainability is a central concern for our society, and software systems increasingly play a central role in it. As designers of software technology, we cause change and are responsible for the effects of our design choices. We recognize that there is a rapidly increasing awareness of the fundamental need and desire for a more sustainable world, and there is a lot of genuine goodwill. However, this alone will be ineffective unless we come to understand and address our persistent misperceptions. The Karlskrona Manifesto for Sustainability Design aims to initiate a much needed conversation in and beyond the software community by highlighting such perceptions and proposing a set of fundamental principles for sustainability design

On the Mass and Width of the Z-boson and Other Relativistic Quasistable Particles

The ambiguity in the definition for the mass and width of relativistic resonances is discussed, in particular for the case of the Z-boson. This ambiguity can be removed by requiring that a resonance's width $\Gamma$ (defined by a Breit-Wigner lineshape) and lifetime $\tau$ (defined by the exponential law) always and exactly fulfill the relation $\Gamma = \hbar/\tau$. To justify this one needs relativistic Gamow vectors which in turn define the resonance's mass M_R as the real part of the square root $\rm{Re}\sqrt{s_R}$ of the S-matrix pole position s_R. For the Z-boson this means that $M_R \approx M_Z - 26{MeV}$ and $\Gamma_R \approx \Gamma_Z-1.2{MeV}$ where M_Z and $\Gamma_Z$ are the values reported in the particle data tables.Comment: 23 page

Escape and Spreading Properties of Charge-Exchange Resonances in Bi 208

The properties of charge-exchange excitations of ${}^ {208}$Pb with $\Delta L = 0$, i.e., the isobaric analog and Gamow-Teller resonances, are studied within a self-consistent model making use of an effective force of the Skyrme type. The well-known isobaric analog case is used to assess the reliability of the model. The calculated properties of the Gamow-Teller resonance are compared with recent experimental measurements with the aim of better understanding the microscopic structure of this mode.Comment: 26 pages including references, figure captions and tables. Figures are available upon request at [email protected] (decnet 32858::COLO). Preprint code: IPNO/TH 94-2

Projective Hilbert space structures at exceptional points

A non-Hermitian complex symmetric 2x2 matrix toy model is used to study projective Hilbert space structures in the vicinity of exceptional points (EPs). The bi-orthogonal eigenvectors of a diagonalizable matrix are Puiseux-expanded in terms of the root vectors at the EP. It is shown that the apparent contradiction between the two incompatible normalization conditions with finite and singular behavior in the EP-limit can be resolved by projectively extending the original Hilbert space. The complementary normalization conditions correspond then to two different affine charts of this enlarged projective Hilbert space. Geometric phase and phase jump behavior are analyzed and the usefulness of the phase rigidity as measure for the distance to EP configurations is demonstrated. Finally, EP-related aspects of PT-symmetrically extended Quantum Mechanics are discussed and a conjecture concerning the quantum brachistochrone problem is formulated.Comment: 20 pages; discussion extended, refs added; bug correcte

Massively distributed authorship of academic papers

Wiki-like or crowdsourcing models of collaboration can provide a number of benefits to academic work. These techniques may engage expertise from different disciplines, and potentially increase productivity. This paper presents a model of massively distributed collaborative authorship of academic papers. This model, developed by a collective of thirty authors, identifies key tools and techniques that would be necessary or useful to the writing process. The process of collaboratively writing this paper was used to discover, negotiate, and document issues in massively authored scholarship. Our work provides the first extensive discussion of the experiential aspects of large-scale collaborative research.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

ICT4S 2029: What Will Be The Systems Supporting Sustainability in 15 Years

Research is often inspired by visions of the future. These visions can take on various narrative forms, and can fall anywhere along the spectrum from utopian to dystopian. Even though we recognize the importance of such visions to help us shape research questions and inspire rich design spaces to be explored, the opportunity to discuss them is rarely given in a research context. Imagine how civilization will have changed in 15 years. What is your vision for systems that will be supporting sustainability in that time Which transformational changes will have occurred in the mean time that allow for these systems Is ICT even the right tool or does it contradict sustainability by making our world ever more complex How can we make systems and our societies more sustainable and resilient by ICT4S This paper presents a compilation of fictional abstracts for inspiration and discussion, and provides means to stimulate discussion on future research and contributes to ICT4S community building

Neutron-induced nucleosynthesis

Neutron--induced nucleosynthesis plays an important role in astrophysical scenarios like in primordial nucleosynthesis in the early universe, in the s--process occurring in Red Giants, and in the $\alpha$--rich freeze--out and r--process taking place in supernovae of type II. A review of the three important aspects of neutron--induced nucleosynthesis is given: astrophysical background, experimental methods and theoretical models for determining reaction cross sections and reaction rates at thermonuclear energies. Three specific examples of neutron capture at thermal and thermonuclear energies are discussed in some detail.Comment: 40 pages (uses kluwer.sty), 2 postscript figures (uses psfig), accepted for publication in Surveys in Geophysics, uuencoded tex-files and postscript-files available at ftp://is1.kph.tuwien.ac.at/pub/ohu/Geo.u

Software Sustainability: Research and Practice from a Software Architecture Viewpoint

Context: Modern societies are highly dependent on complex, large-scale, software-intensive systems that increasingly operate within an environment of continuous availability, which is challenging to maintain and evolve in response to the inevitable changes in stakeholder goals and requirements of the system. Software architectures are the foundation of any software system and provide a mechanism for reasoning about core software quality requirements. Their sustainability – the capacity to endure in changing environments – is a critical concern for software architecture research and practice. Problem: Accidental software complexity accrues both naturally and gradually over time as part of the overall software design and development process. From a software architecture perspective, this allows several issues to overlap including, but not limited to: the accumulation of technical debt design decisions of individual components and systems leading to coupling and cohesion issues; the application of tacit architectural knowledge resulting in unsystematic and undocumented design decisions; architectural knowledge vaporisation of design choices and the continued ability of the organization to understand the architecture of its systems; sustainability debt and the broader cumulative effects of flawed architectural design choices over time resulting in code smells, architectural brittleness, erosion, and drift, which ultimately lead to decay and software death. Sustainable software architectures are required to evolve over the entire lifecycle of the system from initial design inception to end-of-life to achieve efficient and effective maintenance and evolutionary change. Method: This article outlines general principles and perspectives on sustainability with regards to software systems to provide a context and terminology for framing the discourse on software architectures and sustainability. Focusing on the capacity of software architectures and architectural design choices to endure over time, it highlights some of the recent research trends and approaches with regards to explicitly addressing sustainability in the context of software architectures. Contribution: The principal aim of this article is to provide a foundation and roadmap of emerging research themes in the area of sustainable software architectures highlighting recent trends, and open issues and research challenges

Improvisational Theater for Information Systems: An Agile, Experience-Based, Prototyping Technique (Tutorial)

International audienc