In the middle of the third century BCE – some 2250 years ago – the Mauryan emperor Aśoka is thought to have directed the creation of the Brahmi script. Brahmi was used in all parts of India to write Prakrit and Sanskrit (except for the north-western regions where Kharoshthi was used to write Prakrit and Gandhari, and occasionally Sanskrit). Brahmi shows all the features found in the scripts des...

This is an annotated bibliography of papers, reports and books pertaining to ANSI/IEEE Std 1471 (now also published as international standard ISO/IEC 42010). It was originally prepared for ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7 WG 42, the Architecture working group of the Systems and Software Engineering Subcommittee of ISO. WG 42 is the body performing the joint ISO and IEEE revision of IEEE 1471 as ISO/IEC 42010...

Modern software development companies focus on their primary business objectives, delivering customer value and customer satisfaction which often leads to prioritization of core business areas over such areas as measurement. Although the companies recognize the need and importance of software measurement, they often do not have the competence and/or time to focus on software measurement. In thi...

The pharmacology of G protein-coupled receptors can be influenced by factors such as constitutive receptor activation and Na(+) ions. In this study, we examined the coupling of natively and heterologously expressed nociceptin/orphanin FQ (N/OFQ) peptide (NOP) receptors with voltage-dependent Ca(2+) channels after exposure to four high-affinity NOP receptor blockers [[Nphe(1)Arg(14)Lys(15)]N/OFQ...

JPEG 2000, the new ISO/ITU-T standard for still image coding, is about to be finished. Other new standards have been recently introduced, namely JPEG-LS and MPEG-4 VTC. This paper compares the set of features offered by JPEG 2000, and how well they are fulfilled, versus JPEG-LS and MPEG-4 VTC, as well as the older but widely used JPEG and more recent PNG. The study concentrates on the set of su...

To address the systems lifecycle needs of Very small entities, a set of standards and guides have been recently developed using the systems engineering lifecycle standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 as the main framework. The systems engineering handbook, developed by the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), is used as the reference for the development of a set of systems engineering d...

In recent years we have conducted about 25 assessments using IEC 61508 or IEC 61511, working mainly to Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 2, but on some occasions to SIL 3. In this paper we present some of the lessons we have learned and offer advice to those seeking certification for components, systems or generic process capability. We cover the three main parts of the IEC 61508 standard: Functiona...

The aim of this model is to analyse quality management systems from the standpoint of the organization of complex systems introduced by Robert Rosen. The concept that an organized system, under certain conditions, can be modelled as a living system introduces unsuspected tools to analyse its behaviour. The model is oriented towards the understanding of the implications of modifications introduc...

Minima in geomagnetic activity (MGA) at Earth at the ends of SC23 and SC22 have been identified. The two MGAs (called MGA23 and MGA22, respectively) were present in 2009 and 1997, delayed from the sunspot number minima in 2008 and 1996 by ∼1/2–1 years. Part of the solar and interplanetary causes of the MGAs were exceptionally low solar (and thus low interplanetary) magnetic fields. Another impo...