The Twitterization of News Making: Transparency and Journalistic Professionalism

Twitter makes visible some of the most fundamental divides in professional journalism today. It reveals tensions about what constitutes news, the norms guiding journalists providing it, professional identity, and public service. This article argues that these tensions result from a clash between the institutional logic of professional control (Lewis, 2012)) and an ethic of transparency. Drawing from extensive research on a political press corps, involving observation, interviews, and analysis of tweets, this study witnesses the adoption of Twitter in the everyday working practices of reporters. It thereby also provides reasons why Twitter has been so successful in journalism. Tensions between professional control and transparency in journalism may, furthermore, be emblematic for divides in other professions today.     

Characterization of Micro-Powders for the Fabrication of Compression Molded THz Lenses

We investigate different micro-powders that can be used as base materials for THz lenses fabricated by compression molding. For this application materials with a very weak THz absorbance and low dispersion are required. By measuring the THz absorption coefficient and refractive index of pellets pressed from the different micro-powders, we identify several materials that are well suited for the fabrication of compression molded THz lenses (CMLs). In addition, a considerable range of the refractive index is covered by the samples, which will allow for the fabrication of CMLs with different focal lengths for one and the same lens design.     

Investigation of physical and chemical property changes of ultra low-κ SiOCH in aspect of cleaning and chemical repair processes

The physical and chemical property changes of chemical vapor deposited ultra low-κ (ULK) SiOCH dielectric films due to different post ash treatments were studied by Auger electron spectroscopy, ellipsometric porosimetry and surface free energy evaluation. Structural changes in the ULK layer with respect to the carbon content were analyzed. Using a downstream and a reactive ion etch process for photo resist removal a reduction of carbon was observed. For different plasma gas chemistries the pore size reduction depends first on the process condition (downstream or reactive ion etch) and then on the gas. Differences in the pore size then also influence the amount of carbon depletion besides the influence of the gases used for photo resist processes. The damage at the surfaces was characterized by contact angle measurements providing both the polar and dispersive part of the surface free energy. The wettability of different solvents and repair chemicals was classified calculating their surface free energies and comparing those energies with the surface free energies of modified ULK surface. It is shown that especially reducing gases provide a surface free energy with a higher dispersive part compared to oxidative plasma treatments. Furthermore it was found that the wettability of repair chemicals and solvents strongly changes for reductive based strip processes with plasma exposure time, since a high variation of the surface free energy occur.     

Putting Queens in Carry Chains,N<Superscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">o</Emphasis>̱</Superscript>27

The N-Queens Puzzle is a fascinating combinatorial problem. Up to now, the number of distinct valid placements of N non-attacking queens on a generalized N × N chessboard cannot be computed by a formula. The computation of these numbers is instead based on an exhaustive search whose complexity grows dramatically with the problem size N. Solutions counts are currently known for all N up to 26. The parallelization of the search for solutions is embarrassingly simple. It is achieved by pre-placing the queens within a certain board region. These pre-placements partition the search space. The chosen extent of the pre-placement allows for a wide range of the partitioning granularity. This ease of partitioning makes the N-Queens Puzzle a great show-off case for tremendously parallel computation approaches and a flexible benchmark for parallel compute resources. This article presents the Q27 Project, an open-source effort targeting the computation of the solution count of the 27-Queens Puzzle. It is the first undertaking pushing the frontier of the N-Queens Puzzle that exploits the complete symmetry group D ₄ of the square. This reduces the overall computational complexity already to an eighth in comparison to a naive exploration of the whole search space. This article details the coronal pre-placement that enables the partitioning of the overall search under this approach. With respect to the physical implementation of the computation, it describes the hardware structure that explores the resulting subproblems efficiently by exploiting bit-level operations and their mapping to FPGA devices as well as the infrastructure that organizes the contributing devices in a distributed computation. The performance of several FPGA platforms is evaluated using the Q27 computation as a benchmark, and some intriguing observations obtained from the available partial solutions are presented. Finally, an estimate on the remaining run time and on the expected magnitude of the final result is dared.     

Efficient implementation of a frame aggregation unit for optical frame-based switching

Aggregating Ethernet frame or IP packet in large fixed-size frames allows for building scalable core network architectures. Classifying the arriving traffic based on destination core node information and quality of service parameters alleviates the need of performing table look-ups on packet basis. These advantages come at the cost of extra logic at the network egress, as regards implementation, and additional jitter due to the frame assembly process. This paper describes the efficient implementation of a frame aggregation unit that gathers Ethernet packets in G.709 containers, handles 10 Gb/s links, performs classification based on 24-byte headers, and includes a highly pipelined Queue Manager to cope with the considered rates while a specific scheduler controls the quality of service per core network flow. Based on the developed demonstrator, we provide results both as regards area and performance for an FPGA (field programmable gate array) Virtex-4 implementation as well as regarding the introduced jitter.     

Compact Modules for Wireless Communication Systems in the E-Band (71–76 GHz)

The millimeter-wave spectrum above 70 GHz provides a cost-effective solution to increase the wireless communications data rates by increasing the carrier wave frequencies. We report on the development of two key components of a wireless transmission system, a high-speed photodiode (HS-PD) and a Schottky Barrier Diode (SBD). Both components operate uncooled, a key issue in the development of compact modules. On the transmitter side, an improved design of the HS-PD allows it to deliver an output RF power exceeding 0 dBm (1 mW). On the receiver side, we present the design process and achieved results on the development of a compact direct envelope detection receiver based on a quasi-optical SDB module. Different resonant (meander dipole) and broadband (Log-Spiral and Log-Periodic) planar antenna solutions are designed, matching the antenna and Schottky diode impedances at high frequency. Impedance matching at baseband is also provided by means of an impedance transition to a 50 Ohm output. From this comparison, we demonstrate the excellent performance of the broadband antennas over the entire E-band by setting up a short-range wireless link transmitting a 1 Gbps data signal.     

Low overhead assignment of symbolic coordinates in sensor networks

Approximate information on the location of nodes in a sensor network is essential to many types of sensor network applications and algorithms. In many cases, using symbolic coordinates is an attractive alternative to the use of geographic coordinates due to lower costs and lower requirements on the available location information during coordinate assignment. In this paper, we investigate different possible methods of assigning symbolic coordinates to sensor nodes. We present a method based on broadcasting coordinate messages and filtering using sensor events. We show in the evaluation that this method allows a reliable assignment of symbolic coordinates while only generating a low overhead.     

The Impact of Shadowing and the Severity of Fading on the First and Second Order Statistics of the Capacity of OSTBC MIMO Nakagami-Lognormal Channels

This article presents a thorough statistical analysis of the capacity of orthogonal space-time block coded (OSTBC) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Nakagami- lognormal (NLN) channels. The NLN channel model allows to study the joint effects of fast fading and shadowing on the statistical properties of the channel capacity. We have derived exact analytical expressions for the probability density function (PDF), cumulative distribution function (CDF), level-crossing rate (LCR), and average duration of fades (ADF) of the capacity of MIMO NLN channels. It is observed that an increase in the MIMO dimension or a decrease in the severity of fading results in an increase in the mean channel capacity, while the variance of the channel capacity decreases. On the other hand, an increase in the shadowing standard deviation increases the spread of the channel capacity, however the shadowing effect has no influence on the mean channel capacity. We have also presented approximation results for the statistical properties of the channel capacity, obtained using the Gauss-Hermite integration method. It is observed that approximation results not only reduce the complexity, but also have a very good fitting with the exact results. The presented results are very useful and general because they provide the flexibility to study the impact of shadowing on the channel capacity under different fading conditions. Moreover, the effects of severity of fading on the channel capacity can also be studied. The correctness of theoretical results is confirmed by simulations.     

Numerical models of sunspot formation and fine structure

Sunspots are central to our understanding of solar (and stellar) magnetism in many respects. On the large scale, they link the magnetic field observable in the photosphere to the dynamo processes operating in the solar interior. Properly interpreting the constraints that sunspots impose on the dynamo process requires a detailed understanding of the processes involved in their formation, dynamical evolution and decay. On the small scale, they give an insight into how convective energy transport interacts with the magnetic field over a wide range of field strengths and inclination angles, leading to sunspot fine structure observed in the form of umbral dots and penumbral filaments. Over the past decade, substantial progress has been made on both observational and theoretical sides. Advanced ground- and space-based observations have resolved, for the first time, the details of umbral dots and penumbral filaments and discovered similarities in their substructures. Numerical models have advanced to the degree that simulations of entire sunspots with sufficient resolution to resolve sunspot fine structure are feasible. A combination of improved helioseismic inversion techniques with seismic forward modelling provides new views on the subsurface structure of sunspots. In this review, we summarize recent progress, with particular focus on numerical modelling.