There is growing interest in the notion of software development through the planned integration of COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) products. The potential advantages of this integrationcentric approach are shorter development time and reduced cost. Often a COTS based development process consists of an evaluation, selection, adaptation, integration, and evolution of components obtained from exte...

Shipment consolidation has been advocated by researchers and politicians as a means to reduce cost and improve environmental performance of logistics activities. This paper investigates consolidated transport solutions with a common shipment frequency. When a service provider designs such a solution for its customers, she faces a trade-o : to have the most time-sensitive customers join the cons...

The main advantage of inverse iteration over the QR algorithm and Divide & Conquer for the symmetric tridiagonal eigenproblem is that subsets of eigenpairs can be computed at reduced cost. The MRRR algorithm (MRRR = Multiple Relatively Robust Representations) is a clever variant of inverse iteration without the need for reorthogonalization. stegr, the current version of MRRR in LAPACK 3.0, does...

Entanglement which originates from a pair of non-interacting qubits by means of entanglement swapping is discussed when dephasing mechanisms are present. Then, the exact reduced dynamics can be evaluated for two pairs of independent qubits which each are coupled to their own bosonic environment. Each of two pairs of qubits is initially maximally entangled. The conditions for the entanglement su...

Xylitol is a naturally occuring sugar alcohol, which is currently produced chemically on a large scale. In recent years the bioconversion of D-xylose from lignocellulosic residues into xylitol, gained an increased attention as an alternative procedure , due to its high efficiency and reduced cost of such technology. The biotechnological method of producing xylitol involves microorganisms that a...

Bifibrations, in symplectic geometry called also dual pairs, play a relevant role in the theory of superintegrable Hamiltonian systems. We prove the existence of an analogous bifibrated geometry in dynamical systems with a symmetry group such that the reduced dynamics is periodic. The integrability of such systems has been proven by M. Field and J. Hermans with a reconstruction technique. We ap...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is useful. AI can deliver more functionality for reduced cost. AI should be used more widely but won’t be unless developers can trust adaptive, nondeterministic, or complex AI systems. Verification and validation is one method used by software analysts to gain that trust. AI systems have features that make them hard to check using conventional V&Vmethods. Neverthele...

value chain. The increasing emphasis on reduced cost and improved quality, on faster product development through cross-functional teams, and on closer buyersupplier relationship, are changing their perception of purchasing. Purchasing has a role in corporate strategy and together with suppliers; it can play a strategic role in achieving sustainable competitive advantage in rapidly changing mark...

We consider two independent bosonic oscillators immersed in a common bath, evolving in time with a completely positive, markovian, quasifree (Gaussian) reduced dynamics. We show that an initially separated Gaussian state can become entangled as a result of a purely noisy mechanism. In certain cases, the dissipative dynamics allows the persistence of these bath induced quantum correlations even ...

A number of companies have employed Global Software Development (GSD) methodology as a useful tool for their software development practices. GSD is a contractual relationship between client and vendor organizations in which a client outsources all or some part of its software development activities to a vendor. The vendor in return provides the agreed services in lieu of certain amount of remun...