Abstract
An unidirectional single-phase three-wire rectifier is proposed in this paper. Such topology is composed of a noncontrolled leg, two controlled legs, and a capacitor bank. A suitable model, pulse-width modulation, and control strategies of the system are proposed as well. The control strategy includes the synchronization method, in which it imposes the grid currents with the same phase angle of the voltages generated by the rectifier. This method ensures sinusoidal grid currents and mitigates the zero-crossover distortions normally caused by the use of diodes. A comprehensive comparison with two conventional configurations is also presented in this paper. Simulation and experimental results are also presented for validation purposes.

Abstract
A Fabry-Perot air bubble microcavity fabricated between a section of single mode fiber and a multimode fiber is proposed. The study of the microcavities growth with the number of applied arcs is performed. The sensors are tested for lateral load and strain, where sensitivities of 0.32 nm/N and 2.11 nm/N and of 4.49 pm/mu epsilon and 9.12 pm/mu epsilon are obtained for the 47 mu m and 161 mu m long cavities, respectively. The way of manufacturing using a standard fusion splicer and given that no oils or etching solutions are involved, emerges as an alternative to the previously developed air bubble based sensors.

Abstract
In this paper we show how Isolated Execution Environments (IEE) offered by novel commodity hardware such as Intel’s SGX provide a new path to constructing general secure multiparty computation (MPC) protocols. Our protocol is intuitive and elegant: it uses code within an IEE to play the role of a trusted third party (TTP), and the attestation guarantees of SGX to bootstrap secure communications between participants and the TTP. The load of communications and computations on participants only depends on the size of each party’s inputs and outputs and is thus small and independent from the intricacies of the functionality to be computed. The remaining computational load– essentially that of computing the functionality – is moved to an untrusted party running an IEE-enabled machine, an attractive feature for Cloud-based scenarios. Our rigorous modular security analysis relies on the novel notion of labeled attested computation which we put forth in this paper. This notion is a convenient abstraction of the kind of attestation guarantees one can obtain from trusted hardware in multi-user scenarios. Finally, we present an extensive experimental evaluation of our solution on SGX-enabled hardware. Our implementation is open-source and it is functionality agnostic: it can be used to securely outsource to the Cloud arbitrary off-the-shelf collaborative software, such as the one employed on financial data applications, enabling secure collaborative execution over private inputs provided by multiple parties.

Abstract
Context: Software process improvement (SPI) aims to increase the effectiveness of a software organization. Many studies indicate that the strategic alignment is a critical factor for the SPI success. However, little is known about practical approaches to achieving and maintaining such alignment. Objective: The goal of this study is to evaluate the validation evidence of the existing approaches to the strategic alignment of SPI. Method: We develop a search protocol that combines database search and snowballing to perform the systematic literature review and evaluate empirical studies by applying rigor and relevance criteria. To evaluate the efficiency of our protocol, we use a “quasi-gold standard” to compute the sensitivity and precision of the search. Result: We identified 30 studies (18 empirical) and 19 approaches to strategic alignment of SPI from 495 retrieved studies. Only three out of the 18 empirical studies were rated as high in the categories rigor and relevance, suggesting the need for a stronger validation of the approaches. Conclusion: We conclude that the lack of empirical validation indicates that the results of the existing approaches have not been adequately transferred to practitioners yet, calling for more rigorous studies on the subject.

Abstract

Abstract
Computational models of complex systems are usually elaborate and sensitive to implementation details, characteristics which often affect their verification and validation. Model replication is a possible solution to this issue. It avoids biases associated with the language or toolkit used to develop the original model, not only promoting its verification and validation, but also fostering the credibility of the underlying conceptual model. However, different model implementations must be compared to assess their equivalence. The problem is, given two or more implementations of a stochastic model, how to prove that they display similar behavior? In this paper, we present a model comparison technique, which uses principal component analysis to convert simulation output into a set of linearly uncorrelated statistical measures, analyzable in a consistent, model-independent fashion. It is appropriate for ascertaining distributional equivalence of a model replication with its original implementation. Besides model-independence, this technique has three other desirable properties: a) it automatically selects output features that best explain implementation differences; b) it does not depend on the distributional properties of simulation output; and, c) it simplifies the modelers' work, as it can be used directly on simulation outputs. The proposed technique is shown to produce similar results to the manual or empirical selection of output features when applied to a well-studied reference model.