Expanding the concept of requirements traceability The role of electronic records management in gathering evidence of crucial communications and negotiations

Purpose – Despite its tremendous success and achievements, the information science (IS) industry has been plagued by shadows of failure and inefficiency since its early days. This paper takes the stance that poor communication with target organizations and users is one of the major causes of these problems. If this communication is not properly recorded and managed, many of the agreed decisions may never be assumed by target organizations, therefore leaving project managers entirely responsible for failures or deviation from initial requirements. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Software (SW) development companies have very weak provision for Electronic Records Management (ERM). This is evident from the persistent use of ISO 9001 and ISO 90003 in their Quality Assurance (QA) and the consistent neglecting of the ISO 15489 standard for records management. This paper aims to examine this issue Design/methodology/approach – Since there are no studies in this area, this research employed an inductive qualitative research approach that consisted of a combination of critical literature review, an exploratory case study and thematic analysis. Findings – This paper reports on the study of an SW company that implemented ERM policies and an in-house system that not only supports the recording of documentation and evidence for every phase of the development, but also the very difficult processes of organizational learning. Practical implications – This paper is of interest to both IS academics and practitioners, namely those interested in QA and ERM. Originality/value – There is very little research in this area that can inform both academics and practitioners on how to use ERM within SW project management practices. This paper aims at providing early insights into ways of addressing this gap and at generating discussion in this area

Understanding of ERP systems in Chinese SOEs: A case study

Enterprises resource planning (ERP) systems are becoming more commonly applied by modern companies to manage and support the enterprise-wide business processes. This paper aimed to investigate the understanding of managers and staff on ERP systems in Chinese SOEs. The study took a case study approach and used chi-square tests to analyze the data derived from questionnaires. The analysis results show although the majority of respondents acknowledged the presence of ERP in the organization, they did not seem to be able to recognize the functional areas of the system that are used in practice. This apparent contradiction suggests that understanding of ERP systems by both managers and staff may not be fully developed. This lack of understanding may present risks for Chinese organizations and SOEs in general linked with both the maximization of ERP features and inadequate use of these features. © 2012 IEEE

Probing the sp^2 dependence of elastic moduli in ultrahard diamond films

The structural and elastic properties of diamond nanocomposites and ultrananocrystalline diamond films (UNCD) are investigated using both empirical potentials and tight binding schemes. We find that both materials are extremely hard, but their superb diamondlike properties are limited by their sp^2 component. In diamond composites, the sp^2 atoms are found in the matrix and far from the interface with the inclusion, and they are responsible for the softening of the material. In UNCD, the sp^2 atoms are located in the grain boundaries. They offer relaxation mechanisms which relieve the strain but, on the other hand, impose deformations that lead to softening. The higher the sp^2 component the less rigid these materials are.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. to appear in Diamond and Relarted Material

Interference-induced gain in Autler-Townes doublet of a V-type atom in a cavity

We study the Autler-Townes spectrum of a V-type atom coupled to a single-mode, frequency-tunable cavity field at finite termperature, with a pre-selected polarization in the bad cavity limit, and show that, when the mean number of thermal photons $N\gg 1$ and the excited sublevel splitting is very large (the same order as the cavity linewidth), the probe gain may occur at either sideband of the doublet, depending on the cavity frequency, due to the cavity-induced interference.Comment: Minor changes are mad

Equivalent classes of closed three-level systems

Published versio

Inhibiting decoherence via ancilla processes

General conditions are derived for preventing the decoherence of a single two-state quantum system (qubit) in a thermal bath. The employed auxiliary systems required for this purpose are merely assumed to be weak for the general condition while various examples such as extra qubits and extra classical fields are studied for applications in quantum information processing. The general condition is confirmed with well known approaches towards inhibiting decoherence. A novel approach for decoherence-free quantum memories and quantum operations is presented by placing the qubit into the center of a sphere with extra qubits on its surface.Comment: pages 8, Revtex

Region graph partition function expansion and approximate free energy landscapes: Theory and some numerical results

Graphical models for finite-dimensional spin glasses and real-world combinatorial optimization and satisfaction problems usually have an abundant number of short loops. The cluster variation method and its extension, the region graph method, are theoretical approaches for treating the complicated short-loop-induced local correlations. For graphical models represented by non-redundant or redundant region graphs, approximate free energy landscapes are constructed in this paper through the mathematical framework of region graph partition function expansion. Several free energy functionals are obtained, each of which use a set of probability distribution functions or functionals as order parameters. These probability distribution function/functionals are required to satisfy the region graph belief-propagation equation or the region graph survey-propagation equation to ensure vanishing correction contributions of region subgraphs with dangling edges. As a simple application of the general theory, we perform region graph belief-propagation simulations on the square-lattice ferromagnetic Ising model and the Edwards-Anderson model. Considerable improvements over the conventional Bethe-Peierls approximation are achieved. Collective domains of different sizes in the disordered and frustrated square lattice are identified by the message-passing procedure. Such collective domains and the frustrations among them are responsible for the low-temperature glass-like dynamical behaviors of the system.Comment: 30 pages, 11 figures. More discussion on redundant region graphs. To be published by Journal of Statistical Physic

Infrared Behaviour of The Gluon Propagator in Non-Equilibrium Situations

The infrared behaviour of the medium modified gluon propagator in non-equilibrium situations is studied in the covariant gauge using the Schwinger-Keldysh closed-time path formalism. It is shown that the magnetic screening mass is non-zero at the one loop level whenever the initial gluon distribution function is non isotropic with the assumption that the distribution function of the gluon is not divergent at zero transverse momentum. For isotropic gluon distribution functions, such as those describing local equilibrium, the magnetic mass at one loop level is zero which is consistent with finite temperature field theory results. Assuming that a reasonable initial gluon distribution function can be obtained from a perturbative QCD calculation of minijets, we determine these out of equilibrium values for the initial magnetic and Debye screening masses at energy densities appropriate to RHIC and LHC. We also compare the magnetic masses obtained here with those obtained using finite temperature lattice QCD methods at similar temperatures at RHIC and LHC.Comment: 21 pages latex, 4 figures, final version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Quantum jumps induced by the center-of-mass motion of a trapped atom

We theoretically study the occurrence of quantum jumps in the resonance fluorescence of a trapped atom. Here, the atom is laser cooled in a configuration of level such that the occurrence of a quantum jump is associated to a change of the vibrational center-of-mass motion by one phonon. The statistics of the occurrence of the dark fluorescence period is studied as a function of the physical parameters and the corresponding features in the spectrum of resonance fluorescence are identified. We discuss the information which can be extracted on the atomic motion from the observation of a quantum jump in the considered setup