Energy Level Engineering in Organic Thin Films by Tailored Halogenation

In modern electronics, it is essential to adapt band structures by adjusting energy levels and band gaps. At first sight, this “band structure engineering” seems impossible in organic semiconductors, which usually exhibit localized electronic states instead of Bloch bands. However, the strong Coulomb interaction in organic semiconductors allows for a continuous shift of the ionization energy (IE) over a wide range by mixing molecules with halogenated derivatives that exhibit different quadrupole moments. Here, this effect of energy level engineering on blends of pentacene and two fluorinated derivatives, in which the position but not the number of fluorine atoms differ, is studied. Structural investigations confirm that pentacene forms intermixed phases in blends with the fluorinated species. The investigation of electronic properties and simulations reveals a much larger shift of the ionization energy (1.5 eV) than in previous studies, allowing to test this model in a range not investigated so far, and emphasizing the role of the position of the halogen atoms. The tuning effect is preserved in electronic devices such as field‐effect transistors and significantly influences device characteristics.     

Examination of the Transferability of Technological key Features of Paperboard Deep Drawing Towards the Application in Fast‐Running Packaging Machines

The deep‐drawing process of paperboard has experienced essential improvement in the recent past; however, the technological advancements have not been transferred to packaging machines yet. Two of the most important issues with regard to the reliable production of high quality 3D shapes are the use of elevated moisture and defined blank holder force profiles. This paper examines a roll preparation method for applying additional water to the paperboard and analyses a spring‐loaded blank holder solution with regard to its achieved accuracy and reliability of the force characteristics. A two‐sided roll application of water on the paperboard using a sponge rubber cover on one of the rolls produces a water intake of up to 12%. The effect of moisture applied by roll preparation is higher compared to conditioning under controlled climate conditions, and the preparation time is reduced to a few seconds. The spring‐loaded blank holder introduced in the paper completely works in position control and avoids the switch over to force control as well as the problem of small position steps, which were necessary during force control. A harmonic oscillation of the blank holder while the material is drawn out of it could not be observed up to an output of 150 cycles per minute. An application of a roll‐based moisturization unit and a spring‐loaded blank holder force in modern packaging machines appears feasible and favourable according to the results of this paper and maintains the capabilities of this 3D forming technology to a large part. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Large-scale systems resilience: A survey and unifying framework

A unifying framework in defining and measuring resilience has been an intense research topic. In this paper, resilience is measured as a function of intrinsic capacities of a system, the effectiveness of recovery, and the extrinsic random shock process. Some existing resilience measures are analyzed as special cases of the proposed unifying measure. Then, we develop a framework in which the key constituents in achieving resilience are identified. Resilience is represented by four key dimensions: reliability, robustness, recovery, and reconfigurability. Finally, some practical and specific strategies are proposed to enhance the resilience of critical infrastructure systems under the proposed framework.     

Controller Placement in Software Defined Internet of Things Using Optimization Algorithm

The current and future status of the internet is represented by the upcoming Internet of Things (IoT). The internet can connect the huge amount of data, which contains lot of processing operations and efforts to transfer the pieces of information. The emerging IoT technology in which the smart ecosystem is enabled by the physical object fixed with software electronics, sensors and network connectivity. Nowadays, there are two trending technologies that take the platform i.e., Software Defined Network (SDN) and IoT (SD-IoT). The main aim of the IoT network is to connect and organize different objects with the internet, which is managed with the control panel and data panel in the SD network. The main issue and the challenging factors in this network are the increase in the delay and latency problem between the controllers. It is more significant for wide area networks, because of the large packet propagation latency and the controller placement problem is more important in every network. In the proposed work, IoT is implementing with adaptive fuzzy controller placement using the enhanced sunflower optimization (ESFO) algorithm and Pareto Optimal Controller placement tool (POCO) for the placement problem of the controller. In order to prove the efficiency of the proposed system, it is compared with other existing methods like PASIN, hybrid SD and PSO in terms of load balance, reduced number of controllers and average latency and delay. With 2 controllers, the proposed method obtains 400 miles as average latency, which is 22.2% smaller than PSO, 76.9% lesser than hybrid SD and 91.89% lesser than PASIN.     

Data workflow to incorporate thermodynamic energies from Calphad databases into grand-potential-based phase-field models

Journal of Materials Science - In order to approximate Gibbs energy functions, a semi-automated framework is introduced for binary and ternary material systems, using Calphad databases. To generate...     

Random walks with statistical shape prior for cochlea and inner ear segmentation in micro-CT images

A cochlear implant is an electronic device which can restore sound to completely or partially deaf patients. For surgical planning, a patient-specific model of the inner ear must be built using high-resolution images accurately segmented. We propose a new framework for segmentation of micro-CT cochlear images using random walks, where a region term estimated by a Gaussian mixture model is combined with a shape prior initially obtained by a statistical shape model (SSM). The region term can then take advantage of the high contrast between the background and foreground, while the shape prior guides the segmentation to the exterior of the cochlea and to less contrasted regions inside the cochlea. The prior is obtained via a non-rigid registration regularized by a statistical shape model. The SSM constrains the inner parts of the cochlea and ensures valid output shapes of the inner ear.     

Computational representation and analysis of emotion dynamics

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Human emotions are dynamic in nature. The intensity with which they are felt changes over time, and they have a natural timescale of expression, from onset to...     

A GPU‐Adapted Structure for Unstructured Grids

A key advantage of working with structured grids (e.g., images) is the ability to directly tap into the powerful machinery of linear algebra. This is not much so for unstructured grids where intermediate bookkeeping data structures stand in the way. On modern high performance computing hardware, the conventional wisdom behind these intermediate structures is further challenged by costly memory access, and more importantly by prohibitive memory resources on environments such as graphics hardware. In this paper, we bypass this problem by introducing a sparse matrix representation for unstructured grids which not only reduces the memory storage requirements but also cuts down on the bulk of data movement from global storage to the compute units. In order to take full advantage of the proposed representation, we augment ordinary matrix multiplication by means of action maps, local maps which encode the desired interaction between grid vertices. In this way, geometric computations and topological modifications translate into concise linear algebra operations. In our algorithmic formulation, we capitalize on the nature of sparse matrix‐vector multiplication which allows avoiding explicit transpose computation and storage. Furthermore, we develop an efficient vectorization to the demanding assembly process of standard graph and finite element matrices.     

Ethics of responsibilities distributions in a technological culture

In this paper, I develop and differentiate some problems of the interaction between corporations, individuals and the general public as well as institutions like the state or international non-governmental organizations as well as super-national organizations. Firms or corporations are nowadays much more international than they used to be; they are typically multinational enterprises giving rise to special transnational problems of transactions, interchanges and—indeed also—responsibilities ranging over national borders and restricted areas. In our culture, we have to deal with rather ramified types of individual and collective as well as specific corporate responsibilities tending to reach out beyond national borders, specific state law restrictions and even business systems and economies. The traditional personal and individual responsibility and their different forms will not do to cope with all the respective international, intercultural and inter-sectoral problems of modern corporations and their international interactions. In the paper, I have also discussed the question: Do multinational organizations and corporations have a sort of specific corporate responsibility, and if so, against whom and for what—except for their share- and stakeholders?     

10 Years of research on debugging concurrent and multicore software: a systematic mapping study

Debugging—the process of identifying, localizing and fixing bugs—is a key activity in software development. Due to issues such as non-determinism and difficulties of reproducing failures, debugging concurrent software is significantly more challenging than debugging sequential software. A number of methods, models and tools for debugging concurrent and multicore software have been proposed, but the body of work partially lacks a common terminology and a more recent view of the problems to solve. This suggests the need for a classification, and an up-to-date comprehensive overview of the area. This paper presents the results of a systematic mapping study in the field of debugging of concurrent and multicore software in the last decade (2005–2014). The study is guided by two objectives: (1) to summarize the recent publication trends and (2) to clarify current research gaps in the field. Through a multi-stage selection process, we identified 145 relevant papers. Based on these, we summarize the publication trend in the field by showing distribution of publications with respect to year, publication venues, representation of academia and industry, and active research institutes. We also identify research gaps in the field based on attributes such as types of concurrency bugs, types of debugging processes, types of research and research contributions. The main observations from the study are that during the years 2005–2014: (1) there is no focal conference or venue to publish papers in this area; hence, a large variety of conferences and journal venues (90) are used to publish relevant papers in this area; (2) in terms of publication contribution, academia was more active in this area than industry; (3) most publications in the field address the data race bug; (4) bug identification is the most common stage of debugging addressed by articles in the period; (5) there are six types of research approaches found, with solution proposals being the most common one; and (6) the published papers essentially focus on four different types of contributions, with “methods” being the most common type. We can further conclude that there are still quite a number of aspects that are not sufficiently covered in the field, most notably including (1) exploring correction and fixing bugs in terms of debugging process; (2) order violation, suspension and starvation in terms of concurrency bugs; (3) validation and evaluation research in the matter of research type; (4) metric in terms of research contribution. It is clear that the concurrent, parallel and multicore software community needs broader studies in debugging. This systematic mapping study can help direct such efforts.