Fast algorithms for material specific process chain design and analysis in metal forming - final report DFG Priority Programme SPP 1204

The book summarises the results of the DFG-funded coordinated priority programme \"Fast Algorithms for Material Specific Process Chain Design and Analysis in Metal Forming\". In the first part it includes articles which provide a general introduction and overview on the field of process modeling in metal forming. The second part collates the reports from all projects included in the priority programme

Quality control and beam test of GEM detectors for future upgrades of the CMS muon high rate region at the LHC

Gas Electron Multipliers (GEM) are a proven position sensitive gas detector technology which nowadays is becoming more widely used in High Energy Physics. GEMs offer an excellent spatial resolution and a high particle rate capability, with a close to 100% detection efficiency. In view of the high luminosity phase of the CERN Large Hadron Collider, these aforementioned features make GEMs suitable candidates for the future upgrades of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector. In particular, the CMS GEM Collaboration proposes to cover the high-eta region of the muon system with large-area triple-GEM detectors, which have the ability to provide robust and redundant tracking and triggering functions. In this contribution, after a general introduction and overview of the project, the construction of full-size trapezoidal triple-GEM prototypes will be described in more detail. The procedures for the quality control of the GEM foils, including gain uniformity measurements with an x-ray source will be presented. In the past few years, several CMS triple-GEM prototype detectors were operated with test beams at the CERN SPS. The results of these test beam campaigns will be summarised

Quality control and beam test of GEM detectors for future upgrades of the CMS muon high rate region at the LHC

Gas Electron Multipliers (GEM) are a proven position sensitive gas detector technology which nowadays is becoming more widely used in High Energy Physics. GEMs offer an excellent spatial resolution and a high particle rate capability, with a close to 100% detection efficiency. In view of the high luminosity phase of the CERN Large Hadron Collider, these aforementioned features make GEMs suitable candidates for the future upgrades of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector. In particular, the CMS GEM Collaboration proposes to cover the high-eta region of the muon system with large-area triple-GEM detectors, which have the ability to provide robust and redundant tracking and triggering functions. In this contribution, after a general introduction and overview of the project, the construction of full-size trapezoidal triple-GEM prototypes will be described in more detail. The procedures for the quality control of the GEM foils, including gain uniformity measurements with an x-ray source will be presented. In the past few years, several CMS triple-GEM prototype detectors were operated with test beams at the CERN SPS. The results of these test beam campaigns will be summarised

Inhibition of Angiogenesis using RNAi technology

Ocular infection of Herpes Simplex Virus-1 (HSV-1) causes Herpetic Stromal Keratitis (HSK), which is a leading cause of infectious blindness. Although complex interactions of molecular and cellular events involve in the department of HSK, it has been known that angiogenesis is a key step for the HSK pathogenesis. Treatment of neutralizing antibody against vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) to inhibit VEGF activity reduced angiogenesis and HSK severity caused by infection of HSV-1 in mouse eyes. In addition, inactivation of cytokine which induces VEGF production and angiogenesis also reduced angiogenesis and HSK severity. Therefore, it has been proposed that VEGF or molecules which induce VEGF production or angiogenesis can be good target molecules for treating HSK. In this study, we investigated whether targeting VEGF or IL-1 receptor type I (IL-1RI) using RNAi technology could reduce angiogenesis in mouse eyes. A general introduction and overview of RNAi were provided in Part I. Results in Part II demonstrated that intrastromal injection of VEGF short hairpin RNA (shRNA) could reduce VEGF production and angiogenesis caused by CpG motif in mouse eyes. Implantation of pellets containing bio-active CpG motifs following intrastromal injection with a plasmid expressing shRNA against VEGF reduced angiogenesis and VEGF production. Results in Part III showed that intrastromal injection of IL-1RI shRNA could reduce angiogenesis caused by IL-1O through reduction of VEGF production. The results in this dissertation indicate that targeting VEGF or IL-1RI using RNAi technology can reduce angiogenesis in mouse eyes. Additionally, these results imply that an eye is a suitable organ to apply RNAi technology. Thus, this technology may help to understand corneal biology as well as to treat corneal diseases in the near future

Isospin dependence of collective flow in heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies

Within the framework of an isospin-dependent Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (BUU) model using initial proton and neutron densities calculated from the nonlinear relativistic mean-field (RMF) theory, we compare the strength of transverse collective flow in reactions $^{48}Ca+^{58}Fe$ and $^{48}Cr+^{58}Ni$, which have the same mass number but different neutron/proton ratios. The neutron-rich system ($^{48}Ca+^{58}Fe$) is found to show significantly stronger negative deflection and consequently has a higher balance energy, especially in peripheral collisions. NOTE ADDED IN PROOF: The new phenomenon predicted in this work has just been confirmed by an experiment done by G.D. Westfall et al. using the NSCL/MSU radioactive beam facility and a spartan soccer. A paper by R. Pak et al. is submitted to PRL to report the experimental result.Comment: Latex file, 9 pages, 4 figures availabe upon request; Phys. Rev. Lett. (June 3, 1996) in pres

The use of situational judgment tests in admission to higher education: validity and coaching effects

Medical and dental education in Europe face enormous challenges. Admission is one of them. The number of candidates in both these educations often exceeds the available places. This dissertation provides a first look at the use of a fairly new selection tool in admission procedures for medical and dental education: a situational judgment test. First, a general introduction and overview of the literature on SJTs is given. Next, the setting of the dissertation is described: the admission exam for medical and dental studies in Flanders. Obviously, the selection of medical and dental students in Flanders is different from the admission in other countries. First, the Flemish Admission Exam is exactly the same for both medical and dental students. However, the first study shows that students with a lower score on the cognitive tests, tend to choose dental education. This finding raises questions about using the same admission exam for two different majors. Second, the Flemish admission exam uses an SJT as non-cognitive predictor. SJTs have proven their value in the context of job selection. Studies in both medical and dental education show that SJTs can be valid predictors of both academic and job performance. Over time (from year 1 through year 5/7) the validities of the SJT for predicting academic performance (GPA) slightly increased and there was evidence of incremental validity of the SJT over cognitive ability. The SJT was a predictor of supervisory-rated job performance nine years later. In the last study, the technique of propensity scoring is used to study the coaching effects of both cognitive and non-cognitive tests. By using this technique, treatment-control comparisons can be made among individuals with approximately equal probabilities of having received the treatment. Results show that people who seek coaching were those with the lowest scores on the pretest. Coaching effects were largest for the SJT (d=.50), followed by the knowledge tests (d=.45) and general mental ability test (d=.34). SJTs can be valuable additions to cognitive tests in an admission procedure for higher education. However, the coaching effects found, raise questions about using the same SJT on a long-term basis

Semantic spaces

Any natural language can be considered as a tool for producing large databases (consisting of texts, written, or discursive). This tool for its description in turn requires other large databases (dictionaries, grammars etc.). Nowadays, the notion of database is associated with computer processing and computer memory. However, a natural language resides also in human brains and functions in human communication, from interpersonal to intergenerational one. We discuss in this survey/research paper mathematical, in particular geometric, constructions, which help to bridge these two worlds. In particular, in this paper we consider the Vector Space Model of semantics based on frequency matrices, as used in Natural Language Processing. We investigate underlying geometries, formulated in terms of Grassmannians, projective spaces, and flag varieties. We formulate the relation between vector space models and semantic spaces based on semic axes in terms of projectability of subvarieties in Grassmannians and projective spaces. We interpret Latent Semantics as a geometric flow on Grassmannians. We also discuss how to formulate G\"ardenfors' notion of "meeting of minds" in our geometric setting.Comment: 32 pages, TeX, 1 eps figur

The Complexity of Kings

A king in a directed graph is a node from which each node in the graph can be reached via paths of length at most two. There is a broad literature on tournaments (completely oriented digraphs), and it has been known for more than half a century that all tournaments have at least one king [Lan53]. Recently, kings have proven useful in theoretical computer science, in particular in the study of the complexity of the semifeasible sets [HNP98,HT05] and in the study of the complexity of reachability problems [Tan01,NT02]. In this paper, we study the complexity of recognizing kings. For each succinctly specified family of tournaments, the king problem is known to belong to $\Pi_2^p$ [HOZZ]. We prove that this bound is optimal: We construct a succinctly specified tournament family whose king problem is $\Pi_2^p$-complete. It follows easily from our proof approach that the problem of testing kingship in succinctly specified graphs (which need not be tournaments) is $\Pi_2^p$-complete. We also obtain $\Pi_2^p$-completeness results for k-kings in succinctly specified j-partite tournaments, $k,j \geq 2$, and we generalize our main construction to show that $\Pi_2^p$-completeness holds for testing k-kingship in succinctly specified families of tournaments for all $k \geq 2$