An overview of today’s high-level synthesis tools

High-level synthesis (HLS) is an increasingly popular approach in electronic design automation (EDA) that raises the abstraction level for designing digital circuits. With the increasing complexity of embedded systems, these tools are particularly relevant in embedded systems design. In this paper, we present our evaluation of a broad selection of recent HLS tools in terms of capabilities, usability and quality of results. Even though HLS tools are still lacking some maturity, they are constantly improving and the industry is now starting to adopt them into their design flows.     

Improving customer attrition prediction by integrating emotions from client/company interaction emails and evaluating multiple classifiers

Predicting customer churn with the purpose of retaining customers is a hot topic in academy as well as in today’s business environment. Targeting the right customers for a specific retention campaign carries a high priority. This study focuses on two aspects in which churn prediction models could be improved by (i) relying on customer information type diversity and (ii) choosing the best performing classification technique. (i) With the upcoming interest in new media (e.g. blogs, emails, ...), client/company interactions are facilitated. Consequently, new types of information are available which generate new opportunities to increase the prediction power of a churn model. This study contributes to the literature by finding evidence that adding emotions expressed in client/company emails increases the predictive performance of an extended RFM churn model. As a substantive contribution, an in-depth study of the impact of the emotionality indicators on churn behavior is done. (ii) This study compares three classification techniques – i.e. Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines and Random Forests – to distinguish churners from non-churners. This paper shows that Random Forests is a viable opportunity to improve predictive performance compared to Support Vector Machines and Logistic Regression which both exhibit an equal performance.     

Importance of crosslinking and disulfide bridge reduction for the mechanical properties of rigid wheat gluten bioplastics compression molded with thiol and/or disulfide functionalized additives

Thiol (SH) containing additives improve the mechanical properties of rigid, glassy gluten materials. However, the underlying molecular mechanism is still unclear. In particular, the importance of the preceding gluten‐additive mixing conditions remains to be investigated. Here, different additives containing either only SH, only disulfide or both SH and disulfide functionalities were synthesized and their impact on the gluten network using different mixing conditions prior to subsequent molding were assessed. All SH containing additives decreased the gluten molecular weight (MW) during mixing to a degree depending on the conditions. Additives with only disulfide functionality did not significantly affect protein size during mixing irrespective of the conditions used. Only when mixing induced sufficient MW reduction did the strength and failure strain of rigid gluten materials increase. This shows that factors other than the degree of cross‐linking affect the strength of rigid gluten materials. These results support our hypothesis that altered molecular conformations and improved molecular entanglements contribute to material strength. The extent to which such conformational changes occur may depend on the additive and the way of mixing. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014 , 131, 41160.     

In vivo investigation of the distribution and the local speciation of selenium in Allium cepa L. by means of microscopic X-ray absorption near-edge structure spectroscopy and confocal microscopic X-ray fluorescence analysis

In this work, microscopic X-ray absorption near-edge structure spectroscopy (mu-XANES) and confocal microscopic X-ray fluorescence analysis (mu-XRF) were used for the in vivo determination of the distribution of total selenium and for the local speciation of selenium in roots and leaves of onion. Selected Allium cepa L. plants were grown hydroponically in a standard medium containing inorganic selenium compounds (selenite or selenate). The measurements were performed in vivo, that is, on living plants without the need for any form of sampling or sample pretreatment and without the necessity for cutting plant tissues into pieces. Distinct energy differences of the XANES spectra of various selenium reference compounds having different oxidation states allow adjusting the excitation energies used for mu-XRF mapping in such a manner that the distribution of selenium in various oxidation states is obtained with a spatial resolution of a few tens of micrometers within the virtual cross section of the onion tissues. We find that the ratio of inorganic to amino acid selenium compounds differs in various subparts of the plant. Detailed in vivo investigation of the distribution of various selenium species in virtual cross sections of root tips and green leaf shows that the selenium transport takes place via different mechanisms, depending on the nature of the selenium compounds originally taken up.     

Kinetic study of the initiation reaction by a dilithium initiator used for the preparation of ABA triblock copolymers in non-polar medium

The kinetics of the reaction of the bifunctional lithium initiator, Li-DIB-Li, with DPE was studied. It was shown that the kinetic order of this reaction with respect to the reactive ends of the dilithium initiator is close to zero, indicating a rather high degree of aggregation of the dilithium initiator. Possible structures of these highly aggregated species are illustrated by DFT quantum-chemical calculations and their relative stabilities are analyzed. It is concluded that the solubilization through breaking up of long intermolecular aggregates of dilithium initiator chains into small soluble ones by complexation with durene is certainly as important or more than the dissociation of the active centers of the dilithium initiator, as originally thought.     

Collaborative recommendations with content-based filters for cultural activities via a scalable event distribution platform

Nowadays, most people have limited leisure time and the offer of (cultural) activities to spend this time is enormous. Consequently, picking the most appropriate events becomes increasingly difficult for end-users. This complexity of choice reinforces the necessity of filtering systems that assist users in finding and selecting relevant events. Whereas traditional filtering tools enable e.g. the use of keyword-based or filtered searches, innovative recommender systems draw on user ratings, preferences, and metadata describing the events. Existing collaborative recommendation techniques, developed for suggesting web-shop products or audio-visual content, have difficulties with sparse rating data and can not cope at all with event-specific restrictions like availability, time, and location. Moreover, aggregating, enriching, and distributing these events are additional requisites for an optimal communication channel. In this paper, we propose a highly-scalable event recommendation platform which considers event-specific characteristics. Personal suggestions are generated by an advanced collaborative filtering algorithm, which is more robust on sparse data by extending user profiles with presumable future consumptions. The events, which are described using an RDF/OWL representation of the EventsML-G2 standard, are categorized and enriched via smart indexing and open linked data sets. This metadata model enables additional content-based filters, which consider event-specific characteristics, on the recommendation list. The integration of these different functionalities is realized by a scalable and extendable bus architecture. Finally, focus group conversations were organized with external experts, cultural mediators, and potential end-users to evaluate the event distribution platform and investigate the possible added value of recommendations for cultural participation.     

万灯喜月:数字化设计遇上传统技艺

通过介绍香港中秋节展厅“万灯喜月”的设计建造将传统建筑技艺“搭竹棚”合理纳入数字化设计及其实施的过程,说明当代设计手段一旦通过合适的融合策略,可以辅助传统技艺更新,高效而低价地实现复杂几何结构,适应时代和需求的变化.