Towards Guidelines for Preventing Critical Requirements Engineering Problems

Context] Problems in Requirements Engineering (RE) can lead to serious consequences during the software development lifecycle. [Goal] The goal of this paper is to propose empirically-based guidelines that can be used by different types of organisations according to their size (small, medium or large) and process model (agile or plan-driven) to help them in preventing such problems. [Method] We analysed data from a survey on RE problems answered by 228 organisations in 10 different countries. [Results] We identified the most critical RE problems, their causes and mitigation actions, organizing this information by clusters of size and process model. Finally, we analysed the causes and mitigation actions of the critical problems of each cluster to get further insights into how to prevent them. [Conclusions] Based on our results, we suggest preliminary guidelines for preventing critical RE problems in response to context characteristics of the companies.Comment: Proceedings of the 42th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications, 201

High P_T Leptons and W Production at HERA

Details are given of the observation by H1 of events containing high P_T leptons in addition to large missing P_T. A closely related ZEUS analysis, including a preliminary measurement of the W production cross section, is discussed and the two experiments are compared. Some possible non-Standard Model sources for the events are considered.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, LaTeX, uses iop style files and axodraw.sty. To appear in the proceedings of the 3rd UK Phenomenology Workshop on HERA Physics, September 1998, Durham (J.Phys.G: Nucl.Part.Phys.

Bose Condensation and the BTZ Black Hole

Although all popular approaches to quantum gravity are able to recover the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy-area law in the thermodynamic limit, there are significant differences in their descriptions of the microstates and in the application of statistics. Therefore they can have significantly different phenomenological implications. For example, requiring indistinguishability of the elementary degrees of freedom should lead to changes in the black hole's radiative porperties away from the thermodynamic limit and at low temperatures. We demonstrate this for the Ba\~nados-Teitelboim-Zanelli (BTZ) black hole. The energy eigenstates and statistical entropy in the thermodynamic limit of the BTZ black hole were obtained earlier by us via symmetry reduced canonical quantum gravity. In that model the BTZ black hole behaves as a system of Bosonic mass shells moving in a one dimensional harmonic trap. Bose condensation does not occur in the thermodynamic limit but this system possesses a finite critical temperature, $T_c$, and exhibits a large condensate fraction below $T_c$ when the number of shells is finite.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. Published versio

On Evidence-based Risk Management in Requirements Engineering

Background: The sensitivity of Requirements Engineering (RE) to the context makes it difficult to efficiently control problems therein, thus, hampering an effective risk management devoted to allow for early corrective or even preventive measures. Problem: There is still little empirical knowledge about context-specific RE phenomena which would be necessary for an effective context- sensitive risk management in RE. Goal: We propose and validate an evidence-based approach to assess risks in RE using cross-company data about problems, causes and effects. Research Method: We use survey data from 228 companies and build a probabilistic network that supports the forecast of context-specific RE phenomena. We implement this approach using spreadsheets to support a light-weight risk assessment. Results: Our results from an initial validation in 6 companies strengthen our confidence that the approach increases the awareness for individual risk factors in RE, and the feedback further allows for disseminating our approach into practice.Comment: 20 pages, submitted to 10th Software Quality Days conference, 201

HERA Physics Beyond the Standard Model

The prospects of physics beyond the standard model in deep inelastic scattering are reviewed, emphasizing some scenarios which attained attention after the observation of an excess of events with large momentum transfer at HERA.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, uses iop style files and axodraw.sty, Talk presented at the 3rd UK Phenomenology Workshop on HERA Physics, September 1998, Durha

\mu to e in R-symmetric Supersymmetry

We demonstrate that mu/e slepton mixing is significantly more restricted than previously thought within the already remarkably flavor-safe R-symmetric supersymmetric standard model. We calculate bounds from mu to e gamma, mu to 3e and, most importantly, mu to e conversion. The process mu to e conversion is significantly more restrictive in R-symmetric models since this process can occur through operators that do not require a chirality-flip. We delineate the allowed parameter space, demonstrating that maximal mixing is rarely possible with weak scale superpartners, while O(0.1) mixing is permitted within most of the space. The best approach to find or rule out mu/e mixing in R-symmetric supersymmetric models is a multi-pronged attack looking at both mu to e conversion as well as mu to e gamma. The redundancy eliminates much of the parameter space where one process, but not both processes, contain amplitudes that accidentally destructively interfere. We briefly discuss implications for searches of slepton flavor violation at the LHC.Comment: 31 pages, 16 figures; Typos fixed, minor corrections to fig. 13, version published in PR

Propagators on the two-dimensional light-cone

Light-cone quantization procedure recently presented is applied to the two-dimensional light-cone theories. By introducing the two distinct null planes it is shown that the modification term in the two-dimensional massless light-cone propagators suggested about twenty years ago vanishs.Comment: LATEX, 9page

R-parity violation and uses of the rare decay sneutrino-->gamma+gamma in hadron and photon colliders

We consider implications of the loop process sneutrino -> gamma gamma in the MSSM with R-parity violation for future experiments, where the sneutrino is produced as the only supersymmetric particle. We present a scenario for the R-parity violating couplings, where this clean decay, although rare with Br(sneutrino -> gamma gamma) ~ 10^{-6}, may be useful for sneutrino detection over a range of sneutrino masses at the LHC. Furthermore, the new sneutrino-gamma-gamma effective coupling may induce detectable sneutrino resonant production in gamma gamma collisions, over a considerably wide mass range. We compare sneutrino -> gamma gamma, gg throughout the paper with the analogous yet quantitatively very different, Higgs -> gamma gamma, gg decays and comment on the loop processes sneutrino -> WW, ZZ.Comment: 19 pages using REVTEX, 3 figures embadded in the text using epsfi

Broken R Parity Contributions to Flavor Changing Rates and CP Asymmetries in Fermion Pair Production at Leptonic Colliders

We examine the effects of the R parity odd renormalizable interactions on flavor changing rates and CP violation asymmetries in the production of fermion-antifermion pairs at $e^-- e^+$ leptonic colliders. The produced fermions may be leptons, down-quarks or up-quarks, and the center of mass energies may range from the Z-boson pole up to $1000$ GeV. Off the Z-boson pole, the flavor changing rates are controlled by tree level amplitudes and the CP asymmetries by interference terms between tree and loop level amplitudes. At the Z-boson pole, both observables involve loop amplitudes. The lepton number violating interactions, associated with the coupling constants, \l_{ijk}, \l'_{ijk}, are only taken into account. The consideration of loop amplitudes is restricted to the photon and Z-boson vertex corrections. We briefly review flavor violation physics at colliders. We present numerical results using a single, species and family independent, mass parameter, $\tilde m$, for all the scalar superpartners and considering simple assumptions for the family dependence of the R parity odd coupling constants.Comment: Latex File. 23 pages. 4 postscript figures. 1 table. Revised version with new results and several corrections in numerical result

R-parity violation and CP-violating and CP-conserving spin asymmetries in l^+ l^- -> sneutrino -> tau^+ tau^-: probing sneutrino mixing at LEP2, NLC and mu^+mu^- colliders

We consider the sneutrino resonance reaction l^+ l^- -> sneutrino -> tau^+ tau^- in the MSSM without R-parity. We introduce new CP-violating and CP-conserving tau-spin asymmetries which are generated already at the tree-level if there is sneutrino - sneutrino-bar mixing and that are forbidden in the SM. It is remarkable that these spin asymmetries can reach ~75% around resonance for a sneutrino mass splitting of \Delta m ~ \Gamma and ~10% for a splitting as low as \Delta m ~ 0.1\Gamma, where \Gamma is the sneutrino width. We show that they are easily detectable already at LEP2 so long as the beam energy is within ~10 GeV range around the muon-sneutrino masses and may therefore serve as extremely powerful probes of sneutrino mixing phenomena.Comment: 12 pages, plain latex, 3 figures embadded in the text using epsfi