Designing a consulting services architecture model

textDuring my years of experience in the technology industry, it has become obvious that standard processes and methodologies within the engineering discipline are at a mature state. The realization though is that software engineering specifically lags behind. Most software engineering methodologies that I have studied focus on the mission of software development. It is this realization and the need for structure that led me to review existing methodologies used within my company's software services organization. The definition of what a successful software services methodology entails is rather limited. This report will provide a history of existing software engineering methodologies that I have studied, describe an initial services method that was being developed within my organization, develop a new model that addresses previous shortcomings and identify additional components required to further define a strong software services-oriented delivery methodology.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Roller bearing geometry design

A theory of kinematic stabilization of rolling cylinders is extended and applied to the design of cylindrical roller bearings. The kinematic stabilization mechanism puts a reverse skew into the rolling elements by changing the roller taper. Twelve basic bearing modification designs are identified amd modeled. Four have single transverse convex curvature in their rollers while eight have rollers which have compound transverse curvature made up of a central cylindrical band surrounded by symmetric bands with slope and transverse curvature. The bearing designs are modeled for restoring torque per unit axial displacement, contact stress capacity, and contact area including dynamic loading, misalignment sensitivity and roller proportion. Design programs are available which size the single transverse curvature roller designs for a series of roller slopes and load separations and which design the compound roller bearings for a series of slopes and transverse radii of curvature. The compound rollers are proportioned to have equal contact stresses and minimum size. Design examples are also given

Structure of giant nuclear molecules

Strong indirect evidence exists for the existence of attractive forces between nuclei making surface contact. Experimentally, the recent observations of spontaneous positron production in heavy-ion collisions can only be understood if nuclei stick together for times long compared to the collision time. We show that any such tendency for nuclei to attract implies the existence of nuclear molecules with entirely new kinds of collective modes. We present a simple model for these modes and apply it to 238U-238U

Documenting the British East India Company and their Involvement in the East Indian Slave Trade

The histories of the British East India Company, possessions, political influence, and economic ventures have shaped the dynamics of modern history. The enormity of the British East India Company (EIC) and other European trade companies’ impact on globalized world trade has been the subject of numerous studies. Yet, as many scholars have pointed out the topic has lacked proper attention regarding the Indian Ocean slave trade, particularly when it involved the transportation of people from nations other than from the continent of Africa. As Jayasuriya (2005, 2006) stated, “Africans were not the only people to be enslaved within the boundaries of the Indian Ocean.” The purpose of this paper is to investigate the documentation of the British East India Company and slave labor, specifically East Indian enslavement and relocation via slaving ships to other regions including the Americas

Dynamics of Coulomb fission

A general formalism is described for the treatment of Coulomb fission, within the framework of the semiquantal theory. We develop a model for the fission probabilities of levels excited in Coulomb excitation. This model contains penetration of the double-humped fission barrier, competition from gamma and neutron emission, and the spreading of the collective states into noncollective compound states. For 74184W + 92238U, the fission probability at θc.m.=180° is increased by a factor of 3.9, 3.3, and 2.0 at E/ECoul=0.77, 0.85, and 0.935, respectively, compared to the simplified sharp cutoff model used in earlier model calculations. The enhancement comes from barrier penetration. The damping of the fission probability due to spreading into noncollective compound states is small. Prompt Coulomb fission (near the distance of closest approach) is studied in a one-dimensional model. The results clearly imply that prompt fission is negligible. We have also studied the sudden approximation for collective rotational levels in connection with Coulomb fission. At high spins (I≈20), it leads to significant errors. Contrary to the basic assumption of the sudden approximation that the nuclear symmetry axis remains fixed during the collision, it is shown that Coulomb excitation results in a strong alignment of the nuclear symmetry axis perpendicular to the beam axis at small internuclear distances. NUCLEAR REACTIONS, FISSION Semiquantal theory of prompt and asymptotic Coulomb fission, study of double-humped barrier penetration, damping effects, neutron and γ emission. Calculated σ(Ep, θc.m.=180°)

Flow Cytometry and Biochemical Analysis of Apoptotic Mouse HT-2 T - Lymphocytes

Apoptosis is a highly organized intracellular death program in multicellular animals. In the vertebrate immune system, apoptosis plays a central role in preventing the emergence of autoreactive lymphocytes. In this study, we used multiple stimuli (staurosporine, camptothecin, and cytokine deprivation - interleukin-2 or IL-2) to initiate apoptosis in IL-2 dependent, mouse HT-2 T-lymphocytes. All three inducers triggered DNA laddering and phosphatidylserine externalization. Propidium iodide staining and flow cytometry were also used to determine whether apoptotic cells accumulated in a specific stage of the cell cycle, and whether the mode of induction affected cell cycle distribution. Our findings indicate that IL-2 deprivation induces HT-2 cells to accumulate in G1, while cells treated with staurosporine and camptothecin accumulated in G2/M and S phase, respectively. We also used immunopblotting detection to investigate P27Kip1 protein expression for each condition. P27Kip1 is a member of the Cip/Kip family of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors whose function is to enforce the G1 restriction point. We found that P27Kip1 levels were significantly increased within 12 hrs and 6 hrs following both IL-2 deprivation and campthotecin exposure, respectively. Across all time points in the staurosporine experiments, P27Kip1 steady state levels were decreased. These results suggest that the mode by which apoptosis is induced differentially affects cell cycle distribution

Human and Technical Factors in the Adoption of Quantum Cryptographic Algorithms

The purpose of this research is to understand what factors would cause users to choose quantum key distribution (QKD) over other methods of cryptography. An Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) key can be exchanged through communication using the Rivest, Shamir, Adleman (RSA) cryptographic algorithm, QKD, or post-quantum cryptography (PQC). QKD relies on quantum physics where RSA and PQC use complex mathematics to encrypt data. The BB84 quantum cryptographic protocol involves communication over a quantum channel and a public channel. The quantum channel can be technically attacked by beamsplitting or intercept/resend. QKD, like other forms of cryptography, is vulnerable to social attacks such as industrial espionage. QKD products can transmit over maximum distances ranging from 40 km up to 150 km with key rates as low as 1.4 kb/s up to at least 300 kb/s. A survey and focus group discussion with a defense contracting company revealed that while nobody fully trusts current security systems, they are more concerned about social engineering attacks before attacks on cryptography. The company is not interested in implementing QKD unless the range capabilities are improved or there is regulation requiring them to use it

Negotiating communicative imaginaries: Definitional debates and language ideologies in a critical race theory hearing

Between January and March 2022, the South Carolina Education and Public Works Committee held a series of hearings to consider five bills that were introduced in the State House, all of which were seeking to restrict how race could be taught and discussed in schools. As similar “anti-CRT” bills were introduced in a majority of U.S. states, many ensuing political debates focused on disagreements over the meaning and usage of the term “critical race theory.” Proponents and opponents of the bills oriented to starkly different understandings of the definition of CRT, and they relied on different language ideologies to defend those understandings. In examining the relationship between language ideologies and political strategies in over 21 hours of public debates about anti-CRT bills, this project analyzes instances when interlocutors used the same term to invoke different meanings; both Republicans and Democrats treated CRT as a semiotic abbreviation (Slotta 2019), yet the speech chains invoked by this abbreviation were vastly different. For Republicans, CRT invoked an educational praxis aimed at accusing White students of racism; for Democrats, CRT referred to an advanced legal theory that had never been present in K-12 schools. This paper focuses on language ideologies used in instances of explicit definition, ultimately finding that these ideologies depended both on the political stance of the speaker (for or against the bills) and their political role (legislator or public testifier)