Tailoring the software maintenance process to better support complex systems evolution projects

In this paper , a user-friendly Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program was developed to manipulate the property listing for sale geographically, to display the property listing in relation to other social and environmental features including topography, ways, types of unit ,ways, gardens and/or shopping centers, and to provide tools for the houses buyers to search and inspect properties and make choices without the need of getting into the houses or without their need to travel to place of houses. This study combines four luminous areas Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Electronic business System, Management Information System (MIS) and Internet and applies the combined technology in the business of real state to make system this system called (GEMI).The first section explains the methodology and prototypes development for Sherouk Beach Resort Planning and Management (SBRPM) with GIS and how the GIS software program was developed. Secondly various application scenarios were provided to test the program developed. It proves that the GIS program developed in this paper provides a good and convenient option in the search of properties based on different selection criteria as concluded in the final sections. Keywords - Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Electronic business, MIS, Real state, GEMI, SBRPM. I. Introduction The following section will address issues that are raised in each of these three stages in the program development. The GIS program was developed in three stages. The first stage is in system planning that is, to identify what functions will be required by the program and how they are to be incorporated into the software program. To do this, first is to become more familiar with the existing functions and tools in MapInfo 7(1) and then to identify what other functions are needed in this System. The second, stage is to design the interface of the software program and to write codes using PHP to integrate the functions required into the MapInfo software program (2). The software program can be applicable to other regions if similar datasets can be used for those regions. In the third stage, the software program developed in this paper is applied to assist in the search of buying units in Sherouk Beach Resort Region (SBRR). By using different search criteria for the search, the software program is tested which demonstrates that the program is capable of assisting in buying in the real estate industry. Through this testing process, limitations of the software program and possible improvement solutions are also explored.

A major cause of many complications in the field of software architectures is the lack of appropriate abstractions for separating, combining and encapsulating concerns of various kinds in architectural descriptions. Architectures of most complex software-intensive systems involve concerns that inherently crosscut the natural boundaries of the elements composing the architecture descriptions. Crosscutting concerns intersect the common modularity of systems as prescribed by their architecture descriptions, by traversing both the components and connectors, i.e., the relationships among the components. Crosscutting concerns are critical aspects of many architectural problems. However, architectural descriptions written in special-purpose languages (ADLs) like Wright, Darwin, Rapide and Acme should support descriptions of multiple structures, which include diagrams, models and views, that intentionally address different kinds of concerns. ADLs should show how various concerns affect each other in architectural designs; they should also allow one to identify, analyze and elaborate architectural concerns that cut across several software components, such as transactions, security, load balancing, synchronization, reuse, customization, scalability, etc.; they should, but they do not. This dissertation presents a new approach to software architecture that is suitable for supporting concern-oriented development and documentation of architectures for software-intensive systems. This approach allows for creating and documenting a multidimensional software structure that is referred to as concern-oriented software architecture; it provides new mechanisms for encapsulating individual concerns into independent architectural constructs. The ultimate goal of this new approach is to provide support for achieving design by concerns all through the development and description of software architectures. Moving towards this goal, we present a particular concern-oriented architectural framework called Perspectival Concern-Spaces (PCS). The PCS Framework offers a flexible and extensible means a) for supporting advanced separation of concerns in architectural design, and in the construction and evolution of software-intensive systems; and b) for filling the gap between architectural descriptions and modern software development artifacts. To show the feasibility of the proposed approach, we provide new modeling techniques that are used to describe and apply an aspect-oriented architectural pattern, called the On-demand Remodularization pattern. We give several examples of how the PCS Framework can be used to integrate concern-oriented architectural documentations with mainstream software development artifacts.

In the design phase of the construction project, BIM technology only plays a supporting role. Using BIM technology for forward design is a bottleneck in development. This paper studies BIM forward design for bridge engineering focusing on professional design process based on practical project. Relying on BIM software CATIA, some key points in design process are studied, such as alignment creation, component positioning, type selection, and parameter assignment. Then some programs are developed. This study combines BIM software and design process, which deepens the application of BIM technology in the design stage of bridge engineering.

Three Essays on Corporate Policies Olga Kuzmina Different fields of economics have historically tended to focus on firms’ strategies in isolation. In contrast, a lot of the recent work explores how various aspects of firm behavior interact with each other. This dissertation contributes to this growing literature by studying the interdependences of organizational and financial policies within firms in different contexts. The first essay studies the interactions between acquisition decisions of multinationals and innovation decisions in the subsidiaries they buy. My coauthors Maria Guadalupe and Catherine Thomas, and I use a rich panel dataset of Spanish manufacturing firms and a propensity score reweighting estimator to show that multinational firms acquire the most productive domestic firms, which, on acquisition, conduct more product and process innovation (simultaneously adopting new machines and organizational practices) and adopt foreign technologies, leading to higher productivity. The proposed model of endogenous selection and innovation in heterogeneous firms can explain both the observed selection patterns and the innovation decisions. The innovation upon acquisition is further shown in the data to be associated with the increased market scale provided by the parent firm, thereby highlighting the role of foreign ownership in increasing the benefits from innovation. This work has potentially important implications for the evolution of within-industry productivity distributions. Under the mechanism described in the paper, foreign entry may lead to divergence of productivity and contribute to the stylized fact of large and persistent productivity differences even within narrowly defined industries. I further use this rich dataset in my second essay to establish a causal relationship between the use of flexible contractual arrangements with labor and capital structure of the firm. Using the exogenous inter-temporal variation from government subsidies, I find that hiring more temporary workers leads firms to have more debt. Since temporary workers, unlike permanent ones, can be fired at a much lower cost during their contract duration, or their contracts may be not extended upon expiration, a firm can more easily meet its interest payments and avoid bankruptcy when faced with a negative shock. I interpret this result as evidence of flexible workforce decreasing operating leverage which, in turn, promotes financial leverage. This study therefore contributes to the literature exploring the interactions between firm employment decisions and corporate policies by providing evidence for a new channel – the one of flexible employment contracts. Given the overwhelming extent of labor reforms in continental Europe in recent years that are aimed at offering more job security to workers, it is important to understand how such policies would affect firms, and for that it is necessary to model the interdependences of firms’ strategies. Finally, my third essay looks at a different type of firms – hedge funds. Although, they do not produce goods in a strict sense of the word, they provide valuable services to investors by smartly investing into large selections of assets. Hedge funds are a very interesting type of financial firms to study due to their lower regulation and reporting standards that enable them to use some know-how trading strategies and potentially outperform other investors. A part of such outperformance can be explained by higher risks born by certain hedge funds, which outlines the broad question we explore in this paper with my coauthor Sergiy Gorovyy. We use a proprietary dataset obtained from a fund of funds to study the risk premia associated with hedge fund transparency, liquidity, complexity, and concentration over the period from April 2006 to March 2009. We are able to directly measure these qualitative characteristics by using the internal grades that the fund of funds attached to all the funds it invested in, and that represent the unique information that cannot be obtained from quantitative data alone. Consistent with factor models of risk premium, we find that during the normal times low-transparency, lowliquidity, low-complexity, and high-concentration funds delivered a return premium, with economic magnitudes of 5% to 10% per year, while during bad states of the economy, these funds experienced significantly lower returns. We also offer a novel explanation for why highly concentrated funds command a risk premium by revealing that it is mostly prevalent among the non-transparent funds where investors are unaware about the exact risks they are facing and hence cannot diversify them away. The large an significant return premium associated with more secretive, less transparent hedge funds has an important policy implication with respect to whether hedge funds should be required to disclose the information regarding their trades and positions, especially in the light of the recent regulatory changes, including the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act passed in July 2010, the consequences of which are yet to be evaluated.

BIM tools also allow to conduct various impact analysis and, with regard to the growing concern about environmental issues, they embody a valuable mean to analyse buildings process consequences thus guiding designers towards better and more aware choices.The capacity of BIM applications to evaluate environmental issues would be enhanced if integrated with Life- Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools considered among the most suitable methods for evaluating such impacts. However, a typical barrier in performing LCA during the early design stages, i.e. the moment that influence the most the project outputs, is the lack of project information. Usually, this implies LCA to be performed after the design phase, when all the significant decisions are already taken.The implementation of LCA within the early stages of the design process, possibly through an automated method, can enhance the control of environmental variables hence, the integration of BIM and LCA, appears to be a suitable opportunity.The parametric approach allows BIM-based software to collect data and connect them with model elements. In order to avoid manual compilation of complex records, Visual Programming tools can cooperate with the authoring BIM software and interrelate the model with external sources such as materials environmental impact databases. Moreover, they can be configured to perform complex LCA calculation and automatically update the outcomes when something in the model changes. The goal of this paper is to propose a sample workflow applied to a case study, in order to provide AEC stakeholders with a simplified BIM-based method for easily detecting the potential consequence of undertaking certain design choices at initial project stages or, at least, at those phases when definitive materials and products selection occurs.

In recent years, due to the shortage in energy supply, the development of alternative energy has caught great attention. Moreover, since solar energy is huge energy supply source and produces very low environmental contamination, it is thus very good alternative energy, and it thus has caught attention and is under wide research. The multi-junction Ⅲ-Ⅴ solar cell studied in this experiment has pretty high energy conversion efficiency, which is a pretty good research direction. Since multi-junction solar cell is serially connected by semiconductor materials of different energy gaps, the current of the entire device is thus limited by the smallest current in each part of the cell. Therefore, the enhancement of smallest current value and the reach of current match is a very important topic for the enhancement of conversion efficiency. In the experiment, PC1D and APSYS simulation software is used first for the simulation of GaAs and InGaP single junction solar cell structure and GaAs / InGaP double junction solar cell structure. Through the simulation process, the results of the influence of the material type, thin film thickness and doping concentration on conversion efficiency were obtained, and the structure optimization objectives were then obtained. Then Metal organic chemical vapor deposition ( MOCVD ) method is used to grow Ⅲ-Ⅴ solar cell structure, which includes GaAs and InGaP single junction solar cell structure and GaAs / InGaP double junction solar cell structure. Here, we found that the quality of the thin film material formed is mainly due to the internal flow field stability in the reactor chamber, temperature control, temperature uniformity, and the reaction situation of the reaction gas, etc. Therefore, the controllable crystal growth parameters are the key points to be investigated regarding the thin film quality, and the parameter are, for example, temperature, crystal growth rate, reactor pressure, Ⅴ-Ⅲ ratio, lattice constant, and substrate selection, etc. In the first chapter of this thesis, an overview will first be done on the development history of the solar cell, then the development advantages of Ⅲ-Ⅴ solar cell and the research direction of this experiment will be described. In chapter 2, we are going to introduce the work principle, equivalent circuit and basic parameters of solar cell, then it will be introduction of the basic structure of compound semiconductor solar cell. Chapter 3 will be introduction of the simulation result of GaAs, InGaP single junction solar cell and GaAs/InGaP double junction solar cell as performed by PC1D and APSYS simulation software. Wherein it includes the physical parameter setup as needed in the simulation and the planning of solar cell structure. Chapter 4 will be introduction of the principle and system of MOCVD, which includes MOCVD reactant characteristics, epitaxial parameter consideration and setup, and the introduction and description of the measurement equipment for epitaxial thin film. Finally, in chapter 5, it will be an extension of the study in chapter 3 and 4. It will use MOCVD to grow GaAs、 InGaP single junction solar cell and GaAs/InGaP double junction solar cell. Moreover, analysis and discussion will be performed on the measurement result, and finally, a complete conclusion and the future work will be presented for chapter 6.

The internet is seen as a challenging workspace for Corporate Communication and Information Management purposes. It enables a growing number of people to publish, share and relay information on any subject. The recent emergence of user-friendly content creation tools and networking facilities has increased that phenomenon and brought new settings to the informational landscape of organizations. We argue that the evolution of internet has created new needs in practices and theoretical understanding of information quality assessment and source selection. Based on a survey of corporate information specialists in the private sector in Belgium, the study examines the perceived shift of information quality assessment criteria when dealing with online sources. This paper aims to present a conciliation of usual information evaluation criteria to five formats of information sources, considered as specific to what people call Web 2.0: weblogs, wikis, podcasts, file sharing platforms and social networks sites. 53 phone interviews were conducted in 2008. Results confirms the existence of a perceived shift in the information quality assessment process. They suggests that it remains globally the same, but that it mostly needs to be adapted to better cope with the new reality of sources formats. Nuances to this observation are discussed in this paper.

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Recruitment and selection is one of the planning process within a company. The family company is no exception to prepare recruitment and selection to obtain the appropriate employee with the needs by promoting competence and professionalism. The purpose of research to find out how the process of recruitment and selection of family companies, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the city of Palembang. Research methodology used with qualitative approach, where the research process is done based on the understanding of the methodology that investigate a social phenomenon and human problems. The results showed that the recruitment and selection process still uses the centralization technique, where the family still plays an important role in determining the employees. Employee selection is only short-lived and employee status more work as part-time employee. Suggested suggestions, family companies should keep professionalism and competence priority by providing an open space for everyone in the recruitment and selection process.

Working Paper

The present study aims to model systematic risk using financial and accounting variables. Accordingly, the data for 174 companies in Tehran Stock Exchange are extracted for the period of 2006 to 2016. First, the systematic risk index is estimated using the ARFIMA-FIGARCH model. Then, based on the research background, 35 affective financial and accounting variables are simultaneously used with the help of the backward elimination and forward selection method for modeling. After analyzing and evaluating the variables in Eviews software, the four variables of debt ratio (CL. E), size (SIZE), net profit to sales ratio (NETP. S), and interest rate coverage ratio (ICR) are selected in the backward elimination method. In the forward selection method, in addition to the above variables, operating profit margin (OPM) is also chosen. The estimated model of these variables in both methods shows a low ratio of R2 coefficient that is approximately 7%. In the test case, the model of forward selection method has less error in all four criteria of root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and Tile coefficient (TIC) compared to the backward elimination method.

Pengembangan perangkat lunak adalah tugas kompleks dan membutuhkan adaptasi untuk mengakomodasi kebutuhan pengguna. Untuk membuat konsep dan perubahan perangkat lunak, dalam pemeliharaan, sekarang telah dikembangkan lebih mudah dalam pengembangan perangkat lunak, pola model-view-controller, yang merupakan arsitektur yang dapat membantu memfasilitasi dalam pengembangan dan pemeliharaan perangkat luna. Hal ini, karena dalam arsitektur model tiga-lapis, yaitu: tampilan dan pengontrolan dalam pembangunan dilakukan secara independen, sehingga dapat memberikan dahan dalam pengembangan dan pemeliharaan. Selain itu, arsitektur ini juga dapat melihat hal-hal yang sederhana dan menarik bagi pengguna. Software sistem on-line test adalah perangkat lunak yang memerlukan interaksi dengan pengguna, dan pemeliharaan perangkat adaptif. Karena sistem ujian on-line memerlukan pengembangan perangkat lunak untuk mengakomodasi kebutuhan ini berkembang dengan cepat. Makalah ini untuk menganalisis Model-View-Controller dan mencoba pembangunan, untuk menerapkannya dalam pengembangan perangkat lunak sistem pengujian on-line.

In this thesis we address the problem of data-driven coarse-graining, i.e. the process of inferring simplified models, which describe the evolution of the essential characteristics of a complex system, from available data (e.g. experimental observation or simulation data). Specifically, we consider the case where the coarse-grained model can be formulated as a stochastic differential equation. The main part of this work is concerned with data-driven coarse-graining when the underlying complex system is characterised by processes occurring across two widely separated time scales. It is known that in this setting commonly used statistical techniques fail to obtain reasonable estimators for parameters in the coarse-grained model, due to the multiscale structure of the data. To enable reliable data-driven coarse-graining techniques for diffusion processes with multiple time scales, we develop a novel estimation procedure which decisively relies on combining techniques from mathematical statistics and numerical analysis. We demonstrate, both rigorously and by means of extensive simulations, that this methodology yields accurate approximations of coarse-grained SDE models. In the final part of this work, we then discuss a systematic framework to analyse and predict complex systems using observations. Specifically, we use data-driven techniques to identify simple, yet adequate, coarse-grained models, which in turn allow to study statistical properties that cannot be investigated directly from the time series. The value of this generic framework is exemplified through two seemingly unrelated data sets of real world phenomena.

Energy production in eukaryotic cells is mediated by oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS), which requires tight co-ordination between genes that span mitochondrial and nuclear genomes. Given the importance of OXPHOS to organismal function, it was traditionally assumed that strong selection would prevent non-neutral genetic variation from accumulating in the mitochondrial genome. Over the past decade, numerous studies have challenged this assumption by showing an abundance of mitochondrial genetic variation underpinning life-history trait expression. Currently, however, it is unclear how this variation is primarily shaped - by adaptive (natural selection) or non-adaptive (drift) processes. Furthermore, because of the maternal inheritance of the mitochondria, natural selection can only directly shape the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence through females, thus facilitating the accumulation of mutations with male-biased effects (the <i>Mother’s Curse</i> hypothesis).<br> <br> The aim of my thesis is to explore the modes of coevolution between mitochondrial and nuclear (<i>mito-nuclear</i>) genomes. My first aim was to test the effect of different mtDNA haplotypes on male reproductive success, and investigate the hypothesis that flies with coevolved mito-nuclear genotypes will have higher fertility than flies with evolutionary novel mito-nuclear genotypes. Mitochondrial haplotypes affected male fertility. Furthermore, coevolved combinations of mito-nuclear genotype were associated with higher fertility than evolutionary novel counterparts. This suggests coevolved nuclear backgrounds harbour compensatory adaptations that offset the costs to males associated with the accumulation of male-harming mtDNA mutations.<br> <br> I then hypothesized that the Y chromosome would be enriched for adaptations involved in compensatory mito-nuclear coevolution. This is because the Y chromosome is only present in males, and should thus evolve to maximise male fitness. Furthermore, placement of nuclear counter-adaptations on the Y chromosome offers a potential resolution to the inherent inter-sexual conflict brought about by the Mother’s Curse hypothesis, since these compensatory adaptations would only be expressed in males and not interfere with female fitness. We found that interactions between the mtDNA haplotypes and Y chromosomes affected male mating outcomes, but these interactions were complex and contingent on the day of the mating assay. Overall, our results did not support the hypothesis that the Y chromosome harboured compensatory adaptations involved in male-mediated modes of mito-nuclear coevolution.<br> <br> Finally, I harnessed an experimental evolution approach to test the emerging <i>‘mitochondrial climatic adaptation’</i> hypothesis, which posits that the pool of standing genetic variation in the mitochondrial genome has been shaped under thermal adaptation. Following long-term selection of replicate populations to temperatures of 18 or 25°C, we report divergence of a solitary SNP in the mtDNA sequence, located in the mitochondrial large ribosomal RNA gene, across the selection treatment. While this indicates this SNP was a target of thermal selection, we were however unable to map this SNP to the capacity of flies to tolerate thermal stress.<br> <br> My PhD research indicates both non-adaptive and adaptive processes are likely to shape the mitochondrial genome, but further work is required to determine the relative contributions of each. I conclude the thesis by outlining worthy avenues for further research.

An overview on the origin and evolutionary trends in the Mediterranean weedy vegetation is presented, with reference to the phytosociological units to which they are ascribed: Stellarietea mediae, Papaveretea rhoeadis, Oryzetea sativae. It is postulated that the &amp;ldquo;Neolithic revolution&amp;rdquo; was more likely a &amp;ldquo;Neolithic evolution&amp;rdquo;, i.e. the result of a process of selection and demographic growth that lasted for at least 10000 yrs, before leading to the domestication of plants and animals. During this very long time, wild crop relatives were simply growing together with the wild weed relatives, in their original milieu. At the beginning of agriculture, fields were obtained to the detriment of oak-woods and maquis-vegetation; the deforestation had probably a patchy pattern, resulting from the burn-beating practice, and the annual plants from the vegetation around the fields were probably quite abundant also within the fields, at least those having the most prolific seed set, the most durable seeds and the most effective dispersal strategies, together with a diachronic, life-long, flowering and seed-dispersal. These features, apparently in contrast with the achievement of a within-population- organizational hierarchy, are in reality an extreme expression of the attitude of weedy plant species in &amp;ldquo;amplifying adaptation&amp;rdquo;, or, in other words, of its &amp;ldquo;adaptation to adapt&amp;rdquo;, which is the cornerstone of the opportunistic life strategy. The Mediterranean weedy vegetation is therefore a flexible system, able to cope with changes and disturbances: species frequency and composition may undergo great variations, but the functional role of any weedy community keeps.