A visual digital library approach for time-oriented scientific primary data

Digital Library support for textual and certain types of non-textual documents has significantly advanced over the last years. While Digital Library support implies many aspects along the whole library workflow model, interactive and visual retrieval allowing effective query formulation and result presentation are important functions. Recently, new kinds of non-textual documents which merit Digital Library support, but yet cannot be fully accommodated by existing Digital Library technology, have come into focus. Scientific data, as produced for example, by scientific experimentation, simulation or observation, is such a document type. In this article we report on a concept and first implementation of Digital Library functionality for supporting visual retrieval and exploration in a specific important class of scientific primary data, namely, time-oriented research data. The approach is developed in an interdisciplinary effort by experts from the library, natural sciences, and visual analytics communities. In addition to presenting the concept and to discussing relevant challenges, we present results from a first implementation of our approach as applied on a real-world scientific primary data set. We also report from initial user feedback obtained during discussions with domain experts from the earth observation sciences, indicating the usefulness of our approach.     

Kritische Erfolgsfaktoren f��r die Gestaltung serviceorientierter Informationssysteme

Service orientation has been a major buzz-word in recent years. While the buzz is on a decline, organizations are slowly, but steadily moving towards service oriented designs. However, service orientation turns out to be as much of a managerial challenge as of a technical one. The most important complexity drivers in the service oriented design of information systems seem to be (a) inconsistent design goals of stakeholders and (b) the pursuit of exhaustive service orientation coverage. This research focuses on the following two questions: (1) What are the characteristics of successful implementations of service oriented information systems, and (2) what are the critical success factors influencing, driving and/or determining these characteristics? Data of an empirical analysis is used to test a set of cause-effect relationship hypotheses based on nine latent variables. In the core of this model we differentiate the variables ??overall service orientation infrastructure success?? and ??service orientation project success??. The hypothesized interrelationships between the nine variables lead to a causal model which is proven to hold.     

Die Rolle der Informatik im gesellschaftlichen Diskurs: Eine Neupositionierung der Informatik

Zusammenfassung  Entwicklungen im Bereich der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie führen derzeit zu fundamentalen Umw?lzungen der Gesellschaft. Eine Beschleunigung des Lebens und das Verschwimmen von Beruf und Privatleben sind nur zwei Beispiele hierfür. Ein Abweichen von dem gesellschaftlichen Ideal des mobilen, jungen und dynamischen Mitarbeiters erweist sich h?ufig als Weg in das Einsiedlerdasein eines Exoten. Ein Widerstreben gegen die wachsenden Begehrlichkeiten von Wirtschaft und Staat l?sst das Individuum verd?chtig erscheinen und kann zu einer weiteren Entkopplung aus der Gesellschaft führen. Eine entscheidende Aufgabe bei gesellschaftlichen Umw?lzungen ist die der Reflexion und Kritik. Diese Rolle scheint mehr und mehr den Juristen zuzukommen. Insbesondere beim Thema Datenschutz erfolgt h?ufig eine Reduktion auf die Verfassungskonformit?t einzelner staatlicher Ma?nahmen. Kritik sollte jedoch bereits weit früher geübt werden. Medien sollten diese zentrale Funktion unterstützen und der politische Diskurs sollte zu einer optimalen L?sung führen. Eine Gruppe, die in der Debatte viel beitragen k?nnte und müsste, wird h?ufig, wenn überhaupt, aufgrund ihres technischen Sachverstandes herangezogen – die Informatiker. Dies ist insbesondere verwunderlich, da Informatiker ma?geblich an der Ver?nderung der Gesellschaft beteiligt sind. Sie schaffen die technischen Grundlagen für neue Formen der Interaktion. Doch das daraus resultierende Bild der Informatik als Computerwissenschaft beraubt Informatiker ihrer gesellschaftskritischen Funktion, da sie auf die Rolle von Technikern reduziert werden. Eine Positionierung und Darstellung der Informatik als Struktur- und Koordinationswissenschaft sowie der Informatiker als interdisziplin?re Systementwickler und -analytiker würde es Informatikern erm?glichen die bedeutende Rolle der Gesellschaftskritiker einzunehmen und geh?rt zu werden.     

Koordination in Service Value Networks

The fundamental paradigm shift from traditional value chains to agile service value networks implies new economic and organizational challenges. As coordination mechanisms, auctions have proven to perform quite well in situations where intangible and heterogeneous goods are traded. Nevertheless, traditional approaches in the area of multidimensional combinatorial auctions are not quite suitable to enable the trade of composite services. A flawless service execution and therefore the requester’s valuation highly depends on the accurate sequence of the functional parts of the composition, meaning that in contrary to service bundles, composite services only generate value through a valid order of their components. The authors present an abstract model as a formalization of service value networks. The model comprehends a graph-based mechanism implementation to allocate multidimensional service offers within the network, to impose penalties for non-performance and to determine prices for complex services. The mechanism and the bidding language support various types of QoS attributes and their (semantic) aggregation. It is analytically shown that this variant is incentive compatible with respect to all dimensions of the service offer (quality and price). Based on these results, the authors numerically analyze strategic behavior of participating service providers regarding possible collusion strategies.     

Study on TSV isolation liners for a Via Last approach with the use in 3D-WLP for MEMS

This paper discusses approaches for the isolation of deep high aspect ratio through silicon vias (TSV) with respect to a Via Last approach for micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Selected TSV samples have depths in the range of 170…270 µm and a diameter of 50 µm. The investigations comprise the deposition of different layer stacks by means of subatmospheric and plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) of tetraethyl orthosilicate; Si(OC₂H₅)₄ (TEOS). Moreover, an etch-back approach and the selective deposition on SiN were also included in the investigations. With respect to the Via Last approach, the contact opening at the TSV bottom by means of a specific spacer-etching method have been addressed within this paper. Step coverage values of up to 74 % were achieved for the best of those approaches. As an alternative to the SiO₂-isolation liners a polymer coating based on the CVD of Parylene F was investigated, which yields even higher step coverage in the range of 80 % at the lower TSV sidewall for a surface film thickness of about 1000 nm. Leakage current measurements were performed and values below 0.1 nA/cm² at 10 kV/cm were determined for the Parylene F films which represents a promising result for the aspired application to Via Last MEMS-TSV.     

Fully automatic multi-language translation with a catalogue of phrases: successful employment for the Swiss avalanche bulletin

The Swiss avalanche bulletin is produced twice a day in four languages. Due to the lack of time available for manual translation, a fully automated translation system is employed, based on a catalogue of predefined phrases and predetermined rules of how these phrases can be combined to produce sentences. Because this catalogue of phrases is limited to a small sublanguage, the system is able to automatically translate such sentences from German into the target languages French, Italian and English without subsequent proofreading or correction. Having been operational for two winter seasons, we assess here the quality of the produced texts based on two different surveys where participants rated texts from real avalanche bulletins from both origins, the catalogue of phrases versus manually written and translated texts. With a mean recognition rate of 55 %, users can hardly distinguish between the two types of texts, and give very similar ratings with respect to their language quality. Overall, the output from the catalogue system can be considered virtually equivalent to a text written by avalanche forecasters and then manually translated by professional translators. Furthermore, forecasters declared that all relevant situations were captured by the system with sufficient accuracy. Forecaster’s working load did not change with the introduction of the catalogue: the extra time to find matching sentences is compensated by the fact that they no longer need to double-check manually translated texts. The reduction of daily translation costs is expected to offset the initial development costs within a few years.     

Monoid-labeled transition systems

Given a -complete (semi)lattice , we consider -labeled transition systems as coalgebras of a functor ⁽⁻⁾, associating with a set X the set ^X of all -fuzzy subsets. We describe simulations and bisimulations of -coalgebras to show that L⁽⁻⁾ weakly preserves nonempty kernel pairs iff it weakly preserves nonempty pullbacks iff L is join infinitely distributive (JID).Exchanging for a commutative monoid , we consider the functor ⁽⁻⁾_ω which associates with a set X all finite multisets containing elements of X with multiplicities m M. The corresponding functor weakly preserves nonempty pullbacks along injectives iff 0 is the only invertible element of , and it preserves nonempty kernel pairs iff is refinable, in the sense that two sum representations of the same value, r₁ + … + r_m = c₁ + … + c_n, have a common refinement matrix (m_{(i, j)}) whose k-th row sums to r_k and whose l-th column sums to c_l for any 1≤ k ≤ m and 1 ≤ l ≤ n.     

Coatings of indium tin oxide nanoparticles on various flexible polymer substrates: Influence of surface topography and oscillatory bending on electrical properties

Abstract— Coatings of indium tin oxide (ITO) nanoparticles on different flexible polymer substrates were investigated with respect to the achievable sheet resistance and their electrical behavior under oscillatory bending. As substrate materials, polyethyleneterephthalate (PET), polyethylenenaphthalate (PEN), polyetheretherketone (PEEK), and polyimide (PI) were chosen, the surface resistances on the different polymer substrates were compared as a function of annealing temperature and surface topography. The surface topography, which has a strong influence on the surface resistance, was characterized by means of a white‐light confocal (WL‐CF) microscope. On the PET substrate, which exhibits the smoothest surface, the coating of ITO nanoparticles shows the lowest sheet resistance of 2 kΩ/□ for a layer thickness of 3 μm and an annealing temperature of 200°C. Furthermore, the electrical behavior of coatings of ITO nanoparticles under oscillatory bending was investigated using a special device. These coatings show a cyclic change of the conductivity which can be explained by an alternating compression and extension of crack flanks under the applied stress. Due to the growing number of cracks with increasing number of cycles, a decrease of the conductivity is observed in the bent state as well as in the balanced state. For a small bending radii, the decrease of the conductivity is stronger due to more cracks caused by the higher tensile stresses in the layer. The electrical behavior of the coatings of the annealed ITO nanoparticles on PET films under oscillatory bending was compared with commercially available sputtered ITO coatings. The annealed coatings of ITO nanoparticles demonstrate better electrical properties under oscillatory bending than coatings of sputtered ITO. The different electrical behavior under oscillatory bending can be related to differences in crack formation.     

PIN OLEDs — Improved structures and materials to enhance device lifetime

Abstract— Currently, three issues are identified that decide upon the commercial success of organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs), both in display and lighting applications: power efficiency, lifetime, and price competitiveness. PIN OLEDs are widely seen as the preferred way to maximize power efficiency. Here, it is reported that this concept also delivers the world longest lifetimes. For a highly efficient deep‐red PIN OLED, a half‐lifetime of 25,000 hours for a starting brightness of 10,000 cd/m² and a minimal voltage increase over lifetime is reported. This value corresponds to more than 1 × 10⁶ hours at 1000 cd/m² using an exponent of n = 1.7, which was measured by driving the OLEDs at different starting luminances. Because there is no initial luminance drop, these PIN OLEDs also exhibit a very high 80% lifetime (>300,000 hours at 1000 cd/m²). New record lifetime values for blue and green will be reported as well. Additionally, further topics that have impact on the production yield and cost such as the newly developed air‐stable organic n‐doping material NDN‐26 and top‐emitting structures will be discussed.     

On the impact of objective function transformations on evolutionary and black-box algorithms

Different objective functions characterize different problems. However, certain fitness transformations can lead to easier problems although they are still a model of the considered problem. In this article, the class of not worsening transformations for a simple population-based evolutionary algorithm (EA) is described completely. That is the class of functions that transfers easy problems in easy ones and difficult problems in difficult ones. Surprisingly, this class for the rank-based EA equals that for all black-box algorithms. The importance of the black-box algorithms' knowledge of the transformation is also pointed out. Hence, a comparison with the class of not worsening transformations for a similar EA which applies fitness-proportional selection, shows that is a proper superset of . Moreover, is a proper subset of the corresponding class for random search. Finally, the minimal and maximal classes of not worsening transformations are described completely, too.