Many suspensions,many problems: a review of self-suspending tasks in real-time systems

Real-Time Systems - In general computing systems, a job (process/task) may suspend itself whilst it is waiting for some activity to complete, e.g., an accelerator to return data. In...     

Matrix‐Based Encapsulation of Construction Chemicals Using High‐Shear Agglomeration

Encapsulation of dry superplasticizers in matrix‐based encapsulation systems was investigated. As basic material, commercially available fly ash was granulated by high‐shear agglomeration. Due to a high variability of factors affecting the encapsulation process and later release of admixtures, the design‐of‐experiments method was applied to reduce the quantity of experiments. Statistical evaluation indicates that the particle characteristics of the agglomerates were mostly influenced by the binder viscosity during the investigations. The delayed admixture release was enhanced by high binder viscosity and low energy input during the agglomeration process due to a coating of the bigger superplasticizer particles by the smaller fly ash. These results will help to develop encapsulated construction chemicals with controlled admixture delivery for the future application in a wide range of different building materials.     

Transparent Rectifying Contacts for Visible-Blind Ultraviolet Photodiodes Based on ZnO

The authors report on the fabrication of transparent rectifying contacts by reactive sputtering of silver or platinum on heteroepitaxially grown zinc oxide. The contacts exhibit Schottky-like current–voltage behavior; the effective barrier height is 0.73 eV0.73\,\hbox{eV} for both materials. In photovoltaic mode, the transparent rectifying contacts reach external quantum efficiencies as high as 32% and responsivities as high as 0.1 A/W0.1\,\hbox{A/W}.     

Messen und Beeinflussen des Glanzes von Schokolade

Taste and smell are important quality criteria for chocolate. Beyond this the gloss and texture are relevant. Different process parameters influence the gloss as well as other criteria such as shelf life and fat bloom resistance. In this work a measurement method is introduced and adapted to small chocolate articles. With this, the gloss can be measured reproducible. Then the different process parameters are varied and the gloss of the chocolate is measured. Different methods to improve the gloss are suggested and observed.     

Technical note: Mining data from on-farm electronic equipment to identify the time dairy cows spend away from the pen

The electronic equipment used on farms can be creatively co-opted to collect data for which it was not originally designed. In the current study, we describe 2 novel algorithms that harvest data from electronic feeding equipment and data loggers used to record standing and lying behavior, to estimate the time that dairy cows spend away from their pen to be milked. Our 2 objectives were to (1) measure the ability of the first algorithm to estimate the time cows spend away from the pen as a group and (2) determine the capability of a second algorithm to estimate the time it takes for individual cows to return to their pen after being milked. To achieve these objectives, we conducted 2 separate experiments: first, to estimate group time away, the feeding behavior of 1 pen of 20 Holstein cows was monitored electronically for 1 mo; second, to measure individual latency to return to the pen, feeding and lying behavior of 12 healthy Holstein cows was monitored electronically from parturition to 21 d in milk. For both experiments, we monitored the time each individual cow exited the pen before each milking and when she returned to the pen after milking using video recordings. Estimates generated by our algorithms were then compared with the times captured from the video recordings. Our first algorithm provided reliable pen-based estimates for the minimum time cows spent away from the pen to be milked in the morning [coefficient of determination (R²) = 0.92] and afternoon (R² = 0.96). The second algorithm was able to estimate of the time it took for individual cows to return to the pen after being milked in the morning (R² = 0.98), but less so in the afternoon (R² = 0.67). This study illustrates how data from electronic systems used to assess feeding and lying behavior can be mined to estimate novel measures. New work is now required to improve the estimates of our algorithm for individuals, for example by adding data from other electronic monitoring systems on the farm.     

Das Dilemma der „angewandten Ethik” zwischen Prinzip, Ermessen und Konsens am Beispiel von „Bioethik-Konvention” und kirchlichen Stellungnahmen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Efficient parallelization of a dynamic global vegetation model with river routing

The LPJ dynamic global vegetation and hydrology model with river routing is implemented on a compute cluster in order to reduce the overall computation time. In order to achieve this, a parallel algorithm had to be developed for the river routing part of the LPJ code. It can be shown that the run time of the parallel LPJ model scales well with the number of parallel tasks, even getting a super-linear speedup for 8–128 tasks. The sequential part of the model code can be estimated to be only 0.16%. This offers the opportunity, for example, to apply the model to find optimal climate change mitigation/adaptation paths requiring a multitude of subsequent simulation runs. The algorithm can also be used for networks with a different topology than river routing networks.