Prefix and Projection onto State in Duration Calculus

We study a new operator of projection onto state and the prefix operator in the extension μHDC of DC by quantifiers over state and a polyadic least fixed point operator. We give axioms and rules to enable deduction in the extension of μHDC by the new operators. Our axioms can be used to eliminate the new operators from formulas in a practically significant fragment of μHDC. This entails the decidability of certain subfragments of this fragment is preserved in the presence of the new operators.     

A generalized defuzzification method via bad distributions

Defuzzification in fuzzy logic controllers concerns itself with the issue of selecting an appropriate crisp value from the fuzzy output of the controller. We provide a parametized family of defuzzification operations. We call this family BA sic D efuzzification D istributions (BADD). We show that the commonly used methods. Mean of Maximum and Center of Area are special cases of this family. We suggest the use of these BADD transformations form the basis of a learning scheme to obtain the optimal defuzzification method in a given application. We suggest that the parameter in the BADD family, the distinction between different defuzzification methods, is related to the confidence we have in the rest of the controller.     

An approach to online identification of Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy models.

An approach to the online learning of Takagi-Sugeno (TS) type models is proposed in the paper. It is based on a novel learning algorithm that recursively updates TS model structure and parameters by combining supervised and unsupervised learning. The rule-base and parameters of the TS model continually evolve by adding new rules with more summarization power and by modifying existing rules and parameters. In this way, the rule-base structure is inherited and up-dated when new data become available. By applying this learning concept to the TS model we arrive at a new type adaptive model called the Evolving Takagi-Sugeno model (ETS). The adaptive nature of these evolving TS models in combination with the highly transparent and compact form of fuzzy rules makes them a promising candidate for online modeling and control of complex processes, competitive to neural networks. The approach has been tested on data from an air-conditioning installation serving a real building. The results illustrate the viability and efficiency of the approach. The proposed concept, however, has significantly wider implications in a number of fields, including adaptive nonlinear control, fault detection and diagnostics, performance analysis, forecasting, knowledge extraction, robotics, behavior modeling.     

A New Facile Route to Flexible and Semi‐Transparent Electrodes Based on Water Exfoliated Graphene and their Single‐Electrode Triboelectric Nanogenerator

Wearable technologies are driving current research efforts to self‐powered electronics, for which novel high‐performance materials such as graphene and low‐cost fabrication processes are highly sought.The integration of high‐quality graphene films obtained from scalable water processing approaches in emerging applications for flexible and wearable electronics is demonstrated. A novel method for the assembly of shear exfoliated graphene in water, comprising a direct transfer process assisted by evaporation of isopropyl alcohol is developed. It is shown that graphene films can be easily transferred to any target substrate such as paper, flexible polymeric sheets and fibers, glass, and Si substrates. By combining graphene as the electrode and poly(dimethylsiloxane) as the active layer, a flexible and semi‐transparent triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is demonstrated for harvesting energy. The results constitute a new step toward the realization of energy harvesting devices that could be integrated with a wide range of wearable and flexible technologies, and opens new possibilities for the use of TENGs in many applications such as electronic skin and wearable electronics.     

Test Planning for Core-based Integrated Circuits under Power Constraints

This paper addresses reduction of test cost for core-based non-stacked integrated circuits (ICs) and stacked integrated circuits (SICs) by test planning, under power constraint. Test planning involves co-optimization of cost associated with test time and test hardware. Test architecture is considered compliant with IEEE 1149.1 standard. A cost model is presented for calculating the cost of any test plan for a given non-stacked IC and a SIC. An algorithm is proposed for minimizing the cost. Experiments are performed with several ITC’02 benchmark circuits to compare the efficiency of the proposed power constrained test planning algorithm against near optimal results obtained with Simulated Annealing. Results validate test cost obtained by the proposed algorithm are very close to those obtained with Simulated Annealing, at significantly lower computation time.     

Human versus automatic quality evaluation of NMT and PBSMT

Neural machine translation (NMT) has recently gained substantial popularity not only in academia, but also in industry. For its acceptance in industry it is important to investigate how NMT performs in comparison to the phrase-based statistical MT (PBSMT) model, that until recently was the dominant MT paradigm. In the present work, we compare the quality of the PBSMT and NMT solutions of KantanMT—a commercial platform for custom MT—that are tailored to accommodate large-scale translation production, where there is a limited amount of time to train an end-to-end system (NMT or PBSMT). In order to satisfy the time requirements of our production line, we restrict the NMT training time to 4 days; to train a PBSMT system typically requires no longer than one day with the current training pipeline of KantanMT. To train both NMT and PBSMT engines for each language pair, we strictly use the same parallel corpora and the same pre- and post-processing steps (when applicable). Our results show that, even with time-restricted training of 4 days, NMT quality substantially surpasses that of PBSMT. Furthermore, we challenge the reliability of automatic quality evaluation metrics based on n-gram comparison (in particular F-measure, BLEU and TER) for NMT quality evaluation. We support our hypothesis with both analytical and empirical evidence. We investigate how suitable these metrics are when comparing the two different paradigms.     

Anaerobic biodegradation of fluoranthene under methanogenic conditions in presence of surface-active compounds

Bacillus cereus isolated from municipal wastewater treatment plant was used as a model strain to assess the efficiency of two anionic surfactants, a chemical surfactant and a biosurfactant during fluoranthene biodegradation under anaerobic methanogenic conditions. The surfactants selected for the study were linear alkyl benzene sulphonates (LAS) and rhamnolipid-biosurfactant complex from Pseudomonas sp. PS-17. Biodegradation of fluoranthene was monitored by GC/MS for a period up to 12th day. No change in the fluoranthene concentration was registered after 7th day. The presence of LAS enhanced the cell growth as well as the fluoranthene biodegradation. The rhamnolipid-biosurfactant at both used concentrations inhibited the cell growth and had no effect on the biodegradation rate. It was shown that LAS did not affect the microbial cell permeability and its positive effect on fluoranthene biodegradation was most likely as a result of the increased fluoranthene solubility. The results indicate that LAS can be considered as a promising agent for facilitation of the process of anaerobic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) biodegradation under methanogenic conditions.     

Umsetzung von 1-(2-Benzoxazolon-3-yl)-2-propanonen mit Hydrazinhydrat

Reaction of 1-(2-Benzoxazolon-3-yl)-2-propanones with Hydrazinhydrate . The reaction of 1-(2-benzoxazolon-3-yl)-2-propanones 1a–g with hydrazinhydrate is studied. It is shown that according to the reactional conditions are obtained hydrazones 2a–b , azines 4a–b and 6-Methyl-4-(2-hydroxyphenyl)-2,3,4,5-tetrahydro-1,2,4-triazine-3-ones 6a–g . The structure of the products is discussed on the base of i.r. and n.m.r.-spectras.     

Influence of alloying and microstructure on the electrochemical hydriding of TiNi-based ternary alloys

Nanostructured ternary TiNi-type alloys, namely Ti_0.8M_0.2Ni (M = Zr, V), TiNi_0.8N_0.2 (N = Cu, Mn) and TiNi_1−x Mn _x (x = 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 1.0), were synthesized by mechanical alloying. Depending on the intensity and time of milling alloys with different microstructure were obtained. The as-milled TiNi_1−x Mn _x alloys contain substantial amount of amorphous phase, which crystallizes during annealing. Annealing of the as-milled fine nanocrystalline materials at 500 °C results only in slight coarsening of the microstructure, which remains still nanocrystalline. Fully crystalline material (with crystal size larger than 50 nm), consisting of mainly cubic TiNi was obtained by annealing the ball-milled alloys at T ≥ 700 °C. Electrochemical hydrogen charge/discharge cycling of the as-milled as well as of annealed alloys were carried out at galvanostatic conditions. It was found that among the nanocrystalline Ti_0.8M_0.2Ni_0.8N_0.2 (M = Zr, V; N = Cu, Mn) alloys TiNi_0.8Mn_0.2 revealed the highest discharge capacity of 56 mAh g⁻¹ in the as-milled state and 75 mAh g⁻¹ after short-time annealing at 500 °C. Annealing at higher temperature does not increase the capacity further. The as-milled TiNi_1−x Mn _x alloys with x ≤ 0.4 reveal noticeably higher discharge capacity and better cycle life than the Mn-richer alloys. Based on potentiostatic experiments the diffusion coefficients of hydrogen into TiNi alloys in two different microstructural states (fine and coarser nanocrystalline) as well as in as-milled amorphous/nanocrystalline and nanocrystalline TiNi_0.8Mn_0.2 were determined. The hydrogen diffusion coefficients of the TiNi alloys are comparable (1.9–2.7 × 10⁻¹² cm² s⁻¹). The diffusion coefficient in the as-milled amorphous/nanocrystalline TiNi_0.8Mn_0.2 was found to be 3–4 times higher than that of the as-milled nanocrystalline alloy.