Run-to-run failure detection and diagnosis using neural networks and Dempster-Shafer theory: an application to excimer laser ablation

The formation of microvias in multilayer substrates is a critical factor in microelectronic packaging manufacturing. Such microstructures can be produced efficiently by excimer laser ablation. Thus, laser ablation systems are evolving to a level where the need to offset high capital equipment investment and lower equipment downtime are imminent. This paper presents a methodology for inline failure detection and diagnosis of the excimer laser ablation process. The methodology employs response data originating directly from the equipment and characterization of microvias formed by the ablation process. Neural network (NN) models are trained and validated based on this data to generate evidential belief for potential sources of deviations in the responses. Dempster-Shafer (D-S) theory is adopted for evidential reasoning. Successful failure detection is achieved in 100% of 19 possible failure scenarios. Moreover, successful failure diagnosis is also achieved with only a single false alarm occurring in the 19 failure scenarios.     

The intervalley X6→Γ6, L6 scattering time in GaAs measured by ultrafast pump-probe infrared absorption spectroscopy

A direct measurement of the dynamics of electrons in the X₆ valley for a GaAs crystal by time-resolved absorption spectroscopy is reported for the first time. IR picosecond probe pulses were used to monitor the growth and decay of the population in the X₆ valley subsequent to excitation by a 527 nm pump pulse. The intervalley X₆→Γ₆, L₆ scattering time t_x of 0.70 ± 0.50 ps is determined and the crossection for the X₆→X₇ transition is estimated to be 1.8 × 10⁻¹⁶ cm².     

The influence of advanced age on the outcome of assisted reproduction

This study investigates within-subject variations and associations of salivary viscosities and flow rates in a test panel of healthy adults. After several practice sessions, unstimulated and stimulated whole saliva samples were collected 5 times daily (at 0800, 1100, 1400, 1700, and 2000 h) from 30 university students. There was a significant within-subject variation in viscosity and flow rate of unstimulated saliva (P<0.001). Intra-item correlations were significantly different for salivary flow rates (r= 0.82 for unstimulated, r= 0.88 for stimulated, P< 0.001) and viscosity of unstimulated saliva (r= 0.54, P< 0.05), but viscosity of stimulated saliva was different in this respect. Our results indicate that there is a significant within-subject variation in viscosity of unstimulated saliva.     

Network politics in an educational organization

The electronic mail (EM) network in a large, multi-campus community college district was used by some employees to gain support for positions contrary to those of the leadership. The case study offered an opportunity to look at technology within an organizational setting. It raised questions about the loose coupling of the educational organization's technical and authority systems, about the strength of coupling among employee groups during the incident, about the boundaries of the EM political activists, and about the power manifested within educational organization's technical and authority systems. A variety of research methods (stages of event progression, fantasy types associated with consciousness-building, and evidence of user technical and rhetorical skills) were used to answer questions about the organization's loosely coupled systems during the EM political incident. Notes were taken of conversations and more formal interviews. From this the technical and authority systems of the institution were described and compared. Results indicated that (1) the loose coupling of the technical and the authority systems made the EM political incident possible; (2) employees were more tightly coupled on organizational goals and more loosely coupled on organizational means; (3) political activists did not make full use of the EM's political medium potential; and (4) when the college district's administration refused to limit anyone's use of the EM network, they reinforced the integrity of both the authority and the technical systems.

Implications included: (1) the potential of some of the research methods for EM study, especially fantasy theme analysis; (2) a political interpretation of EM language, especially flaming; (3) the importance of technical and rhetorical skills for mature EM users; and (4) the role of the authority and technical systems in the debate about appropriate EM network use within an organization.     

EUC BECOMES ENTERPRISE COMPUTING

Client/server, open systems, joint application development, and legacy systems—what happens when the silver bullet meets the glass house? And what does all of this have to do with end-user computing, anyway? Read this column and find out.     

Reward only is not enough: Evaluating and improving the fairness policy of the P2P file sharing network eMule/eDonkey

Limiting the threat of free-riding behavior is an important design issue for peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks. However, the fairness policy that rewards contributors with credit in one of the most popular P2P file sharing networks, eMule/eDonkey, hasn’t been thoroughly studied. In this paper, motivated by our experiments with the eMule/eDonkey network, we firstly theoretically analyze the content exchange process with credit in eMule/eDonkey and then verify the mathematical model by an agent-based simulation. Both the numerical and simulation-based results confirm our discovery in the experiments that eMule/eDonkey’s local credit strategy can not provide enough fairness as it doesn’t explicitly punish free-riders. To overcome this drawback, we propose a new free-riding control scheme, which can simply maintain the current credit local structure and take advantage of the credit policy. Extensive numerical evaluation and simulation indicate that this scheme significantly improves system fairness.     

Handling Transitive Relations in First-Order Automated Reasoning

We present a number of alternative ways of handling transitive binary relations that commonly occur in first-order problems, in particular equivalence relations, total orders, and transitive relations in general. We show how such relations can be discovered syntactically in an input theory, and how they can be expressed in alternative ways. We experimentally evaluate different such ways on problems from the TPTP, using resolution-based reasoning tools as well as instance-based tools. Our conclusions are that (1) it is beneficial to consider different treatments of binary relations as a user, and that (2) reasoning tools could benefit from using a preprocessor or even built-in support for certain types of binary relations.

     

A quantitative comparison of the effects of modeling approaches on system verification using a controlled challenge problem

Requirements Engineering - To reduce program risks, engineering methods capitalizing on modeling and machine assistance have been extensively investigated within systems engineering (and more...     

A filtered simulated annealing strategy for discrete optimization of 3D steel frameworks

A new strategy is presented for discrete optimization problems. This strategy is called the filtered simulated annealing strategy. It includes a filter size which may be adjusted by the user. A coarse filter size results in an unfiltered simulated annealing strategy which is quite robust in obtaining the global optimum provided enough cycles are executed. A fine filter size blocks many candidate designs which are viewed as having little potential, and produces good designs quickly. The strategy is applied to a realistic 3D steel frame test problem. Extensive results are presented and the performance of the strategy is analysed for parameter sensitivity. The performance is also compared to that of the well-known branch and bound strategy.