Modeling Coordination in Offshore Software Development

Controlling and minimizing coordination costs has been shown to be an important factor to reduce overall project performance in distributed software development. In this research-in-progress paper we investigate the effects of software complexity, software integration, distributed labor division policies, learning effects on software coordination costs. Drawing from data collected on 130 software construction cycles in 34 large projects of a leading offshore development firm, we first present our analysis on how coordination costs relate to team organization factors and complexity of evolving software. We base our analytic model of coordination costs in offshore software development on these empirical relationships, and give an overview of our modeling approach. We apply our model of software coordination costs to develop resource allocation policies in the projects we studied. We consider both waterfall and iterative software development methodologies and also tandem and parallel integration schemes. Our modeling approach helps managers to develop a dynamic coordination policy to aid iterative software development in distributed development environments

In vitro Multiplication of Important Medicinal Plant Solanum nigrum L.

AbstractMedicinal plants are the most important source of life saving drugs for the majority of the world’s population. The biotechnological methods are important to select, multiply and conserve the critical genotypes of medicinal plants. In vitro regeneration holds tremendous potential for the production of high quality plant-based medicine. During the present investigations, direct multiple shoot formation Solanum nigrum L. in vitro was recorded with BAP 6 mg/lit and IAA 0.5 mg/lit. Maximum shoot emergence was achieved using nodal segment as explant with BAP 6 mg/lit. and IAA 0.5 mg/lit. The well developed shoots were sub cultured on a rooting medium containing IBA. Plants were multiplied in vitro and hardened successfully.Keywords: Solanum nigrum L. Multiplication, Micropropagatio

In vitro Propagation of a Rare Medicinal Plant Abrus laevigatus E. May

AbstractAn efficient protocol was developed for in vitro propagation of Abrus laevigatus E. May. through induction of Plantlets by indirect organogenesis in nodal segment derived callus tissues. Yellowish green, fragile, nodular callus was induced at the cut surface of the nodal segments cultured on MS fortified with 5.0 mg/1 BAP, 0.2 mg/l KIN and 0.1 mg/1 IBA. The callus differentiated into adventitious shoots when it was sub-cultured on to MS supplemented with 3.0 mg/l BAP + 0.5 mg/1 Kin + 0.5 mg/1 NAA. On an average 6.87 ± 0.26 shoots developed. These micro-shoots were rooted in half-strength MS containing 1.0 mg/1 IBA and the rooted plantlets were transferred to soil after acclimatization. Keywords: Abrus laevigatus E. May, In vitro propagation, Callu

Unconventional Metallicity and Giant Thermopower in a Strongly Interacting Two Dimensional Electron System

We present thermal and electrical transport measurements of low-density (10$^{14}$ m$^{-2}$), mesoscopic two-dimensional electron systems (2DESs) in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures at sub-Kelvin temperatures. We find that even in the supposedly strongly localised regime, where the electrical resistivity of the system is two orders of magnitude greater than the quantum of resistance $h/e^2$, the thermopower decreases linearly with temperature indicating metallicity. Remarkably, the magnitude of the thermopower exceeds the predicted value in non-interacting metallic 2DESs at similar carrier densities by over two orders of magnitude. Our results indicate a new quantum state and possibly a novel class of itinerant quasiparticles in dilute 2DESs at low temperatures where the Coulomb interaction plays a pivotal role.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures (version to appear in Phys. Rev. B

Thickness dependence of electron-electron interactions in topological p-n junctions

Electron-electron interactions in topological p-n junctions consisting of vertically stacked topological insulators are investigated. n-type Bi2Te3 and p-type Sb2Te3 of varying relative thicknesses are deposited using molecular beam epitaxy and their electronic properties measured using low-temperature transport. The screening factor is observed to decrease with increasing sample thickness, a finding which is corroborated by semi-classical Boltzmann theory. The number of two-dimensional states determined from electron-electron interactions is larger compared to the number obtained from weak-antilocalization, in line with earlier experiments using single layers.Comment: 38 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl