Flammenpyrolytische Silikatbeschichtung bei Normaldruck als Alternative zu Vakuumverfahren. Combustion CVD of silica as an alternative method to vakuum treatment

In advancement of Pyrosil®‐technology a new kind of precursor delivery was developed, build and tested on real substrates. A Lab‐demonstrator was build to demonstrate the resources of the technology.     

Kommunikationsoberfläche Membran‐ Vorbild für moderne Nanoanalytik

A central event in the life of a cellular system is the interaction between the exterior and the interior compartments. Biochemical signals arrive at the cellular surface, bind to their membrane bound receptor followed by a conformational change triggering the release of an internal chemical or electrical signal.This basic principle is followed by all our perceptive abilities like sense of smell or taste, but also by different signal transduction pathways involved in nerve conductivity, vision, sense of touch or hearing. To follow and mimic this principle of parallel registration is one of the aims of modern nanobiotechnology. If we are able to specifically biofunctionalize small arrays of a solid surface, which could be an electrode or a semiconductor, this approach will enable us to build up devices called “biochips” or “biosensors” that allow the determination of bioactive molecules with high specificity at lowest concentrations. Potential pharmacological active substrates might be screened as well as new receptors may be determined. Applications in genomics as well as proteomics are realistic. The major prerequisite for such a broad spectrum of applications is the fabrication of receptive surfaces. Biomolecules have to be surface‐adsorbed in a highly reproducible, oriented and well organised fashion, a task which in biology is taken by the cellular membranes as external or internal receptive surfaces. The physical principles like hydrogen bonds, electrostatic or hydrophobic interactions that lead to such an organized surface are well known. To synthesize molecular building blocks and to position them onto an otherwise unspecific surface is one of the challenges of nanobiotechnology combining biological knowledge and chemical skills with biophysical techniques that allow to handle or analyze even single molecules.     

Synchronous Full-Scan for Asynchronous Handshake Circuits

Handshake circuits form a special class of asynchronous circuits that has enabled the industrial exploitation of the asynchronous potential such as low power, low electromagnetic emission, and increased cryptographic security. In this paper we present a test solution for handshake circuits that brings synchronous test-quality to asynchronous circuits. We add a synchronous mode of operation to handshake circuits that allows full controllability and observability during test. This technique is demonstrated on some industrial examples and gives over 99% stuck-at fault coverage, using test-pattern generators developed for synchronous circuits. The paper describes how such a full-scan mode can be achieved, including an approach to minimize the number of dummy latches in case latches are used in the data path of the handshake circuit.     

EEG spectral abnormalities and psychosis as predictors of cognitive and functional decline in probable Alzheimer's disease

We examined whether either psychotic features (e.g., delusions and hallucinations) or EEG abnormalities are associated with more rapid progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). AD patients with psychosis have exhibited more EEG abnormalities than those without psychosis, and both abnormal EEG and psychosis have been noted to be predictors of functional and cognitive decline in AD. Ninety-five probable AD patients participating in a longitudinal study of dementia had an EEG and a semistructured psychiatric interview at baseline. Using EEG spectral analysis, we classified records as normal/abnormal based on the parasagittal mean frequency. Patients with abnormal EEGs were more functionally (e.g., Blessed Rating Scale for activities of daily living) and cognitively (e.g., Mini-Mental State) impaired than patients with normal EEG. AD patients with psychosis were only more functionally impaired than patients without psychosis. A two-factor analysis showed no interaction between abnormal EEG and psychosis. In addition, using a Cox proportional hazard model adjusted for age and education, the presence of an abnormal EEG or psychotic symptom at study entry was associated with higher risk of reaching severe cognitive and functional impairment during follow-up. Neither abnormal EEG nor the presence of psychosis predicted death. These results indicate that both abnormal EEG and psychosis are independent predictors of disease progression but not of physical survival.     

Mixed Mode VLSI Implementation of a Neural Associative Memory

A mixed mode digital/analog special purpose VLSI hardware implementation of an associative memory with neural architecture is presented. The memory concept is based on a matrix architecture with binary storage elements holding the connection weights. To enhance the processing speed analog circuit techniques are applied to implement the algorithm for the association. To keep the memory density as high as possible two design strategies are considered. First, the number of transistors per storage element is kept to a minimum. In this paper a circuit technique that uses a single 6-transistor cell for weight storage and analog signal processing is proposed. Second, the device precision has been chosen to a moderate level to save area as much as possible. Since device mismatch limits the performance of analog circuits, the impact of device precision on the circuit performance is explicitly discussed. It is shown that the device precision limits the number of rows activated in parallel. Since the input vector as well as the output vector are considered to be sparsely coded it is concluded, that even for large matrices the proposed circuit technique is appropriate and ultra large scale integration with a large number of connection weights is feasible.     

Intramolecular crosslinking of poly(vinyl alcohol)

Poly(vinyl alcohol) is crosslinked in dilute solution (c=0.1 wt%) with glutaraldehyde. The reaction product is characterized by viscometry and gel permeation chromatography (g.p.c.). The intrinsic viscosity decreases with increasing degree of crosslinking and does not depend on temperature. G.p.c. reveals that the reaction product is not homogeneous, but consists of a mixture of particles with different sizes, possibly both intra- and intermolecularly crosslinked molecules. The intramolecularly crosslinked molecules are smaller in size than the initial polymer molecules and their size depends on the degree of crosslinking. They possess a narrow particle size distribution even if the initial polymer sample had a broad molecular weight distribution.     

On the Energy Landscape at the Glass Transition

A recent hypothesis claims that the glass transition itself, though it is a very pronounced relaxation peak, is no separate relaxation process at all, but is just the breakdown of the shear modulus due to the weak elastic dipole interaction between all the quasi-independent relaxation centers of the glass. Two derivations are considered, one of them in terms of a breakdown of the shear modulus and the second in terms of a divergence of the shear compliance. Mechanical relaxation data from the literature for vitreous silica, glycerol, polymethylmethacrylate and polystyrene are found to be consistent with the first hypothesis. PACS numbers: 64.70.Pf     

A probabilistic model for cleavage fracture with a length scale--parameter estimation and predictions of stationary crack experiments

This study presents a large experimental investigation in the transition temperature region on a modified A508 steel. Tests were carried out on single-edge-notch-bend specimens with three different crack depth over specimen width ratios to capture the strong constraint effect on fracture toughness. Three test temperatures were considered, covering a range of 85 °C. All specimens failed by cleavage fracture prior to ductile tearing. A recently proposed probabilistic model for the cumulative failure by cleavage was applied to the comprehensive sets of experimental data. This modified weakest link model incorporates a length scale, which together with a threshold stress reduce the scatter in predicted toughness distributions as well as introduces a fracture toughness threshold value. Model parameters were estimated by a robust procedure, which is crucial in applications of probabilistic models to real structures. The conformity between predicted and experimental toughness distributions, respectively, were notable at all the test temperatures.