Towards a catalog of usability smells

This paper presents a catalog of smells in the context of interactive applications. These so-called usability smells are indicators of poor design on an application's user interface, with the potential to hinder not only its usability but also its maintenance and evolution. To eliminate such usability smells we discuss a set of program/usability refactorings. In order to validate the presented usability smells catalog, and the associated refactorings, we present a preliminary empirical study with software developers in the context of a real open source hospital management application. Moreover, a tool that computes graphical user interface behavior models, giving the applications' source code, is used to automatically detect usability smells at the model level.This work was partially funded by the ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), within projects reference FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-020484 (J. Saraiva) and FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-020554 (J. C. Campos)

Supply chain disruptions : managing risks vs. managing crises

Thesis (M. Eng. in Logistics)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2007.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-76).This thesis looks at two back-to-back disruptive supply chain events, one due to a sole-supplier's bankruptcy and the other caused by Hurricane Rita, that occurred at a specialty chemical company, and uses these examples to demonstrate how managing crises is more costly than managing risks. In examining the events surrounding the sole-supplier bankruptcy, managing a crisis cost this specialty chemical company 45% more money than managing a risk. Through the findings of these two disruptive events, a framework, the Eye of Providence, is created to manage supply chain risks. First, an organization must determine how developed its risk-management protocol is. Next, by studying past disruptive events and determining the key impact factors, an organization could calculate and learn about the opportunity cost of managing crisis. Then, by continuously evaluating its suppliers and rigorously applying those key impact factors to the analysis of its supply chain practice, an organization could evaluate and identify its current vulnerabilities.(cont.) Finally, by proactively monitoring event-based warning signals, or disruption indicators, an organization could assess its potential supply chain risks, and plan accordingly. Whether a company is low on the risk-maturity level or has already integrated risk management into its corporate culture, the process developed in this thesis serves as a versatile tool that can help businesses structure a more dynamic, resilient supply chain.by Garrett J. Lee [and] Zen-Lee M. Chang.M.Eng.in Logistic

Deformation of Curved BPS Domain Walls and Supersymmetric Flows on 2d K\"ahler-Ricci Soliton

We consider some aspects of the curved BPS domain walls and their supersymmetric Lorentz invariant vacua of the four dimensional N=1 supergravity coupled to a chiral multiplet. In particular, the scalar manifold can be viewed as a two dimensional K\"ahler-Ricci soliton generating a one-parameter family of K\"ahler manifolds evolved with respect to a real parameter, $\tau$. This implies that all quantities describing the walls and their vacua indeed evolve with respect to $\tau$. Then, the analysis on the eigenvalues of the first order expansion of BPS equations shows that in general the vacua related to the field theory on a curved background do not always exist. In order to verify their existence in the ultraviolet or infrared regions one has to perform the renormalization group analysis. Finally, we discuss in detail a simple model with a linear superpotential and the K\"ahler-Ricci soliton considered as the Rosenau solution.Comment: 19 pages, no figures. Typos corrected. Published versio

Near-brane SU(6) origin Higgs in Scherk-Schwarz breaking of five-dimensional SU(6) GUT

The symmetry breaking of five-dimensional SU(6) GUT is realized by Scherk-Schwarz mechanisms through trivial and pseudo nontrivial orbifold S1/Z2 breakings to produce dimensional deconstruction 5D SU(6) \rightarrow4D SU(6). The latter also induces near-brane weakly-coupled SU(6) Baby Higgs to further break the symmetry into SU(3)C \otimes SU(3)H \otimes U(1)C. The model successfully provides a scenario of the origin of (Little) Higgs from GUT scale, produces the (intermediate and light) Higgs boson with the most preferred range and establishes coupling unification and compactification scale correctly.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figure

Desempenho agronômico e rendimento da cultura do milho a partir de sementes tratadas com biorreguladores.

Edição Especial contendo os Anais do XVIII Congresso Brasileiro de Sementes, Florianópolis, set. 2013

Ten strategies for avoiding and overcoming authorship conflicts in academic publishing

For better or for worse, authorship is a currency in scholarly research and advancement. In scholarly writing, authorship is widely acknowledged as a means of conferring credit but is also tied to concepts such as responsibility and accountability. Authorship is one of the most divisive topics both at the level of the research team and more broadly in the academy and beyond. At present, authorship is often the primary way to assert and receive credit in many scholarly pursuits and domains. Debates rage, publicly but mostly privately, regarding authorship. Here we attempt to clarify key concepts related to authorship informed by our collective experiences and anchored in relevant contemporary literature. Rather than dwelling on the problems, we focus on proactive strategies for creating more just, equitable, and transparent avenues for minimizing conflict around authorship and where there is adequate recognition of the entire process of knowledge generation, synthesis, sharing, and application with partners within and beyond the academy. We frame our ideas around 10 strategies that collectively constitute a roadmap for avoiding and overcoming challenges associated with authorship decisions

Toward Accurate Adsorption Energetics on Clay Surfaces

Clay minerals are ubiquitous in nature, and the manner in which they interact with their surroundings has important industrial and environmental implications. Consequently, a molecular-level understanding of the adsorption of molecules on clay surfaces is crucial. In this regard computer simulations play an important role, yet the accuracy of widely used empirical force fields (FF) and density functional theory (DFT) exchange-correlation functionals is often unclear in adsorption systems dominated by weak interactions. Herein we present results from quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) for water and methanol adsorption on the prototypical clay kaolinite. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time QMC has been used to investigate adsorption at a complex, natural surface such as a clay. As well as being valuable in their own right, the QMC benchmarks obtained provide reference data against which the performance of cheaper DFT methods can be tested. Indeed using various DFT exchange-correlation functionals yields a very broad range of adsorption energies, and it is unclear a priori which evaluation is better. QMC reveals that in the systems considered here it is essential to account for van der Waals (vdW) dispersion forces since this alters both the absolute and relative adsorption energies of water and methanol. We show, via FF simulations, that incorrect relative energies can lead to significant changes in the interfacial densities of water and methanol solutions at the kaolinite interface. Despite the clear improvements offered by the vdW-corrected and the vdW-inclusive functionals, absolute adsorption energies are often overestimated, suggesting that the treatment of vdW forces in DFT is not yet a solved problem

Unified N=2 Maxwell-Einstein and Yang-Mills-Einstein Supergravity Theories in Four Dimensions

We study unified N=2 Maxwell-Einstein supergravity theories (MESGTs) and unified Yang-Mills Einstein supergravity theories (YMESGTs) in four dimensions. As their defining property, these theories admit the action of a global or local symmetry group that is (i) simple, and (ii) acts irreducibly on all the vector fields of the theory, including the ``graviphoton''. Restricting ourselves to the theories that originate from five dimensions via dimensional reduction, we find that the generic Jordan family of MESGTs with the scalar manifolds [SU(1,1)/U(1)] X [SO(2,n)/SO(2)X SO(n)] are all unified in four dimensions with the unifying global symmetry group SO(2,n). Of these theories only one can be gauged so as to obtain a unified YMESGT with the gauge group SO(2,1). Three of the four magical supergravity theories defined by simple Euclidean Jordan algebras of degree 3 are unified MESGTs in four dimensions. Two of these can furthermore be gauged so as to obtain 4D unified YMESGTs with gauge groups SO(3,2) and SO(6,2), respectively. The generic non-Jordan family and the theories whose scalar manifolds are homogeneous but not symmetric do not lead to unified MESGTs in four dimensions. The three infinite families of unified five-dimensional MESGTs defined by simple Lorentzian Jordan algebras, whose scalar manifolds are non-homogeneous, do not lead directly to unified MESGTs in four dimensions under dimensional reduction. However, since their manifolds are non-homogeneous we are not able to completely rule out the existence of symplectic sections in which these theories become unified in four dimensions.Comment: 47 pages; latex fil

Numerical study of multilayer adsorption on fractal surfaces

We report a numerical study of van der Waals adsoprtion and capillary condensation effects on self-similar fractal surfaces. An assembly of uncoupled spherical pores with a power-law distributin of radii is used to model fractal surfaces with adjustable dimensions. We find that the commonly used fractal Frankel-Halsey-Hill equation systematically fails to give the correct dimension due to crossover effects, consistent with the findings of recent experiments. The effects of pore coupling and curvature dependent surface tension were also studied.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure