Determination of the position angle of stellar spin axes

Measuring the stellar position angle provides valuable information on binary stellar formation or stellar spin axis evolution. We aim to develop a method for determining the absolute stellar position angle using spectro-astrometric analysis of high resolution long-slit spectra. The method has been designed in particular for slowly rotating stars. We investigate its applicability to existing dispersive long-slit spectrographs, identified here by their plate scale, and the size of the resulting stellar sample. The stellar rotation induces a tilt in the stellar lines whose angle depends on the stellar position angle and the orientation of the slit. We developed a rotation model to calculate and reproduce the effects of stellar rotation on unreduced high resolution stellar spectra. Then we retrieved the tilt amplitude using a spectro-astrometric extraction of the position of the photocentre of the spectrum. Finally we present two methods for analysing the position spectrum using either direct measurement of the tilt or a cross-correlation analysis. For stars with large apparent diameter and using a spectrograph with a small plate scale, we show that it is possible to determine the stellar position angle directly within 10deg with a signal-to-noise ratio of the order of 6. Under less favourable conditions, i.e. larger plate scale or smaller stellar diameter, the cross-correlation method yields comparable results. We show that with the currently existing instruments, it is possible to determine the stellar position angle of at least 50 stars precisely, mostly K-type giants with apparent diameter down to 5 milliarcseconds. If we consider errors of around 10deg still acceptable, we may include stars with apparent diameter down to 2 mas in the sample that then comprises also some main sequence stars.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, A&A (in press

IT Governance Mechanisms for DevOps Teams - How Incumbent Companies Achieve Competitive Advantages

More and more organizations are deciding to move from traditional, plan-driven software development to agile approaches in order to stay competitive. Therefore, the IT functions have been deciding to implement cross-functional DevOps teams. To enable collaboration within DevOps teams, incumbent companies have to implement mechanisms to govern dynamic and agile environments. The present research investigates which IT governance mechanisms are helpful for the implementation of DevOps teams. For this purpose, we conducted a qualitative research study and interviewed team members in six companies that have already implemented DevOps-oriented teams. We describe which IT governance mechanisms-”in the form of structure, processes, and relational mechanisms-”are important for DevOps teams to achieve competitive advantages. Our findings show that agile roles and responsibilities, hybrid or decentralized organizational structures, as well as communications and knowledge-sharing models are conducive to the government of a DevOps team

How to Design an IT Department? A Review and Synthesis of Key Characteristics

The design of an IT department received much attention during the last years. CIOs and IT managers still have a great interest how they can set up their IT department. Previous research discusses various key characteristics or even delivers archetypes of the IT department. However, a synoptic view of the screws CIOs can set, is still missing. Subsequently, the aim of the present paper is to synthesize existing literature in order to gain an overview about the key characteristics of an IT department. To that end, a systematic literature review was conducted. The paper contributes a set of nine characteristics grouped along three dimensions: organizational, technological, and human dimension. The nature of the IT artifacts deployed by the IT department as well as the real net output ratio of the IT function were identified as important characteristics, which were not addressed by existing typologies of IT departments

ARE YOU READY FOR DEVOPS? REQUIRED SKILL SET FOR DEVOPS TEAMS

In order to react quickly to changing environments and build a customer-centric setup, more and more organizations are deciding to work with the agile IT software development approach. But for the fast delivery of new software features in very short time, other parts of the IT department are necessary as well. Hence, the DevOps concept appears and connects development to IT operations activities within service-centric IT teams. To date, there has been very little empir-ical research on the skills required for the successful setup of a DevOps-oriented IT team. This study addresses this gap by conducting a multi-perspective research. We have collected data with the help of a workshop and interviews with IT experts. Seven skill categories—full-stack development, analysis, functional, decision-making, social, testing, and advisory skills—with 36 concrete skills were identified. Our study highlights that a combination of distinct development, operations, and management skills is necessary to successfully work within a DevOps team. This research explains core DevOps skill categories and provides a deeper understanding of the skill set of an ideal DevOps team setting. We describe these skills and skill categories and list their implications for research and practice

Robustly fitting Gaussian graphical models: the R-package robFitConGraph

The paper gives a tutorial-style introduction to the R-package robFitConGraph, which provides a robust goodness-of-fit test for Gaussian graphical models.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, 3 table

Implementing the Planning Process within DevOps Teams to Achieve Continuous Innovation

Integrating business capabilities into software development projects is still a major challenge for organizations. New ways of working are appearing in response to react to novel market places. Hence, there are more and more business managers with good IT knowledge; thus, software developers need to understand business processes. Hence, the relationship between software development, operations, and business strategy needs to be enhanced. For collecting customer perspectives in IT projects, new approaches like DevOps and BizDevOps are being used. The customer view can be integrated within software development teams through the planning processes. Our findings show that continuous innovation mechanisms are connected with the planning of customer requirements. We present planning scalability, security, and quality as rich descriptions of continuous innovation. Furthermore, we present core categories of how the customer perspectives can be integrated within a DevOps team and insights on how planning areas influence the continuous innovation mechanisms

How does music performance anxiety relate to other anxiety disorders?

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank all students and administrative staff of participating music universities. The authors would also like to express their appreciation to Professor Katja Beesdo-Baum and Dr Manfred Nusseck for general support, to Birgit Maicher for programming the basic version of the questionnaires and to Professor Hans-Christian Jabusch for helping to recruit participants as well as for discussions at later stages of the project. Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The role of retrospectively perceived parenting style and adult attachment behaviour in music performance anxiety

Othe