An experiment definition system that digitally represents an experiment design. The damping apparatus comprises a motion transformation device operative to rotate the positioning stage about a rotary axis that is substantially perpendicular to the motion axis, in response to forces generated to the positioning stage during acceleration or deceleration thereof. The face sheet and noise attenuation layer include acoustically transparent joints. In embodiments, the crystalized GeSn serves to seed InGaP andor InGaAs layers that may serve together with the GeSn as layers of a tandem photovoltaic cell. In the invention, a license manager operating directly or via a plurality of agents interfaces with software clients andor process-data collectors to correlate the process-related information with the software product use information.