The 2007 IEEE CEC simulated car racing competition

This paper describes the simulated car racing competition that was arranged as part of the 2007 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Both the game that was used as the domain for the competition, the controllers submitted as entries to the competition and its results are presented. With this paper, we hope to provide some insight into the efficacy of various computational intelligence methods on a well-defined game task, as well as an example of one way of running a competition. In the process, we provide a set of reference results for those who wish to use the simplerace game to benchmark their own algorithms. The paper is co-authored by the organizers and participants of the competition.

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Solubilisation of dyes by surfactant micelles. Part 5: Durability of dye fixatives

A number of direct and indirect techniques have been used to explore the durability of dye fixatives on laundering with anionic detergent formulations. The most useful technique for quantifying fixative loss was found to be UV spectroscopy but this is not applicable in every case. Overall, it was found that the fixatives examined were durable to six washes in a typical colour-care detergent formulation at 40 °C. It is concluded that a major contribution to dye loss from fixed cloth at low temperature is the displacement by anionic surfactant of dye bound to the fixative. In addition to being more substantive, good quality fixatives may compete more effectively for dye and may physically entrap the dye within the fibre.     

Intervening in the cycle of poverty,poor housing and poor health: the role of housing providers in enhancing tenants’ mental wellbeing

Journal of Housing and the Built Environment - Poverty, poor housing and poor health are complexly interconnected in a cycle that has proven resistant to intervention by housing providers or policy...     

The potential distribution of bioenergy crops in the UK under present and future climate

We have predicted the potential distribution of 26 bioenergy crops in the UK, based on the simple model described by Tuck et al. [1]. The model has been applied at a 5 km resolution using the UKCIP02 model for scenarios at Low, Medium-Low, Medium-High and High emissions. In the analysis of the results the limitations for crop growth are assigned to elevation, temperature, high and low rainfall. Most of the crops currently grown are predicted to remain prevalent in the UK. A number of crops are suitable for introduction to the UK under a changing climate, whereas others retreat to northern parts of the UK. The greatest changes are expected in England. The simplicity of the model means that it has a relatively high uncertainty, with minor modifications to the model leading to quite different results. Nevertheless, it is well suited for identifying areas and crops that are most likely to be affected by the greatest changes. It has been noted that Miscanthus and Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) willow and poplar, which are currently regarded as highly suitable for UK conditions, may be less suited to southern areas in the future, where, for example, kenaf could have a greater potential. Further investigations are required to reduce uncertainty associated with the projections based on this simple model and to make conclusions more firmly.     

Wave-pipelined intra-chip signaling for on-FPGA communications

On-FPGA communication is becoming more problematic as the long interconnection performance is deteriorating in technology scaling. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing a novel wave-pipelined signaling scheme to achieve substantial throughput improvement in FPGAs. A new analytical model capturing the electrical characteristics in FPGA interconnects is presented. Based on the model, throughput and power consumption of a wave-pipelined link have been derived analytically and compared to the conventional synchronous links. Two circuit designs are proposed to realize wave-pipelined link using FPGA fabrics. The proposed approaches are also compared with conventional synchronous and asynchronous pipelining techniques. It is shown that the wave-pipelined approach can achieve up to 5.7 times improvement in throughput and 13% improvement in power consumption versus conventional delay-based on-chip communication schemes. Also, trade-offs between power, throughput and area consumption between the proposed and conventional designs are studied. The wave-pipelining approach provides a new alternative for on-FPGA communications and can potentially become a promising solution to mitigate the future interconnect scaling challenge.     

Numerical approaches for collaborative data processing

We present an approach to uncertainty propagation in dynamic systems, exploiting information provided by related experimental results along with their models. The approach relies on a solution mapping technique to approximate mathematical models by polynomial surrogate models. We use these surrogate models to formulate prediction bounds in terms of polynomial optimizations. Recent results on polynomial optimizations are then applied to solve the prediction problem. Two examples which illustrate the key aspects of the proposed algorithm are given. The proposed algorithm offers a framework for collaborative data processing among researchers. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, Information Technology Research Program, Grant No. CTS-0113985.     

Viewpoints: principles, problems and a practical approach to requirements engineering

The paper includes a survey and discussion of viewpoint‐oriented approaches to requirements engineering and a presentation of new work in this area which has been designed with practical application in mind. We describe the benefits of viewpoint‐oriented requirements engineering and describe the strengths and weaknesses of a number of viewpoint‐oriented methods. We discuss the practical problems of introducing viewpoint‐oriented requirements engineering into industrial software engineering practice and why these have prevented the widespread use of existing approaches. We then introduce a new model of viewpoints called Preview. Preview viewpoints are flexible, generic entities which can be used in different ways and in different application domains. We describe the novel characteristics of the Preview viewpoints model and the associated processes of requirements discovery, analysis and negotiation. Finally, we discuss how well this approach addresses some outstanding problems in requirements engineering (RE) and the practical industrial problems of introducing new requirements engineering methods.     

Molybdenum applications in the electronics market

Molybdenum’s role in the electronics market has been an important one since the earliest days of vacuum tubes. Common electronic applications include components used to manufacture electrical devices, including setter tiles for sintering ceramic substrates and multilayer ceramic circuits, as well as physical-vapor deposition masks. Molybdenum is also used for thermal-management applications when paired with copper and is a necessary part of high-power diodes and rectifiers as well as field-emitter components in flat-panel displays. John A. Shields, Jr., is the director of technology at CSM Industries. Pete Lipetzky is chief engineer at PMTI.