Routing for analog chip designs at NXP Semiconductors

During the study week 2011 we worked on the question of how to automate certain aspects of the design of analog chips. Here we focused on the task of connecting different blocks with electrical wiring, which is particularly tedious to do by hand. For digital chips there is a wealth of research available for this, as in this situation the amount of blocks makes it hopeless to do the design by hand. Hence, we set our task to finding solutions that are based on the previous research, as well as being tailored to the specific setting given by NXP. This resulted in an heuristic approach, which we presented at the end of the week in the form of a protoype tool. In this report we give a detailed account of the ideas we used, and describe possibilities to extend the approach

Tanino condensando das espécies jurema preta (Mimosa hostilis), sabiá (Mimosa caesalpinifolia) e mororó (Bauhinia cheilantha), em três fases do ciclo fenológico.

Resumo: O objetivo do presente trabalho foi caracterizar os taninos condensados das espécies Jurema Preta (Mimosa hostilis), Sabiá (Mimosa caesalpinifolia) e Mororó (Bauhinia cheilantha) nas fases de vegetação(Mimosa hostilis), Sabiá (Mimosa caesalpinifolia) e Mororó (Bauhinia cheilantha) nas fases de vegetação plena, floração plena e frutificação. A concentração em tanino solúvel, tanino ligado ao resíduo e tanino total (TT) foi determinada pelo método butanol-HCL e a adstringência pelo método de difusão radial. Foram observadas diferenças entre as espécies quanto a concentração (P<0,05) e adstringência (P<0,05) dos taninos. A Jurema Preta apresentou os maiores valores (30,98% TT e 22% de adstringência na vegetação plena) e Mororó as menores (10,38% TT e 14% de adstringência na frutificação). A concentração e adstringência dos taninos condensados, assim como a adstringência variaram entre as espécies e, em alguns casos, entre as fases do ciclo fenológico. Os valores observados foram sempre superiores aos considerados benéficos (5%) para a digestão ruminal e aproveitamento geral da dieta. Abstract: This study was conducted aiming at characterizing the condensed tannins present in the legumes species Jurema Preta (Mimosa hostilis), Sabiá (Mimosa caesalpinifolia) and Mororó (Bauhinia cheilantha) at three stages of their phenological cycle. The concentration of soluble tannin, bound tannin and total tannin (TT) was determined using the butanol-HCL method and astringency was determined using the radial diffusion method. Jurema Preta presented the highest values (30.98% TT and 22 % astringency at full growth stage), and Mororó the lowest (10.38% TT and 14 % astringency during fructification). Concentration and astringency of condensed tannins, as well as their monomeric composition varied between species, and in some cases among phenological cycles. The values observed were always above the limits considered beneficial for ruminal digestion (i.e. 5%)

Warmte-koude opslag en duurzaam gebruik van de ondergrond

Warmte koude opslag (WKO) is een energie en kostenbesparende methode voor het verwarmen en koelen van gebouwen. Open WKO systemen pompen het grondwater heen en weer om het gebouw te koelen of te verwarmen. Gesloten WKO systemen gebruiken alleen de warmte van het grondwater om huizen te verwarmen of te koelen. In Nederland is er de laatste jaren een sterke en door de overheid gestimuleerde groei van het aantal WKO systemen. Gesloten WKO systemen zouden een risico kunnen vormen voor de kwaliteit van het grondwater door het groot aantal perforaties van de ondergrond en door het mogelijke lekken van koelvloeistof. Bij open WKO systemen moet voorkomen worden dat verschillende grondwaterlagen gemengd worden waardoor ongewenste geochemische en microbiologische processen optreden. In principe kan een open WKO systeem wel op een vervuilde locatie worden toegepast, maar er is specifiek maatwerk nodig om de verspreiding van de vervuiling te beperken. De bescheiden temperatuursveranderingen die door WKO systemen worden opgewekt in het grondwater vormen slechts een gering risico voor geochemische processen. Deze temperatuursveranderingen zouden in principe wel aanleiding kunnen geven tot een toename van het aantal ziektekiemen in het grondwater. Daarom is het belangrijk dat er voldoende afstand is tussen een drinkwaterwinning en de omringende WKO installaties. Verder onderzoek is nodig om vast te stellen welke invloed WKO installaties hebben op de bacteriën in het grondwater. Het opslaan van heet (90 °C) grondwater heeft een groot aantal milieubezwaren. De Europese kaderrichtlijn water ziet ook de inbreng van warmte in het grondwater als een mogelijke verontreiniging wanneer daar nadelige gevolgen voor mensen of ecosystemen aan verbonden zijn. Het toezicht van de provincies op het groeiende aantal WKO systemen in de praktijk verdient nadere aandacht

Neural Language Models for Nineteenth-Century English

We present four types of neural language models trained on a large historical dataset of books in English, published between 1760 and 1900, and comprised of ≈5.1 billion tokens. The language model architectures include word type embeddings (word2vec and fastText) and contextualized models (BERT and Flair). For each architecture, we trained a model instance using the whole dataset. Additionally, we trained separate instances on text published before 1850 for the type embeddings, and four instances considering different time slices for BERT. Our models have already been used in various downstream tasks where they consistently improved performance. In this paper, we describe how the models have been created and outline their reuse potential

Initial conditions and robust Newton-Raphson for harmonic balance analysis of free-running oscillators

Poor initial conditions for Harmonic Balance (HB) analysis of freerunning oscillators may lead to divergence of the direct Newton-Raphson method or may prevent to find the solution within an optimization approach. We exploit time integration to obtain estimates for the oscillation frequency and for the oscillator solution. It also provides an initialization of the probe voltage. Next we describe new techniques from borderedmatrices and eigenvaluemethods to improve Newton methods for Finite Difference techniques in the time domain as well as for Harmonic Balance. The method gauges the phase shift automatically. No assumption about the range of values of the Periodic Steady State solution is needed

Probing the jet base of the blazar PKS1830-211 from the chromatic variability of its lensed images. Serendipitous ALMA observations of a strong gamma-ray flare

The launching mechanism of the jets of active galactic nuclei is observationally poorly constrained, due to the large distances to these objects and the very small scales (sub-parsec) involved. In order to better constrain theoretical models, it is especially important to get information from the region close to the physical base of the jet, where the plasma acceleration takes place. In this paper, we report multi-epoch and multi-frequency continuum observations of the z=2.5 blazar PKS1830-211 with ALMA, serendipitously coincident with a strong $\gamma$-ray flare reported by Fermi-LAT. The blazar is lensed by a foreground z=0.89 galaxy, with two bright images of the compact core separated by 1". Our ALMA observations individually resolve these two images (although not any of their substructures), and we study the change of their relative flux ratio with time (four epochs spread over nearly three times the time delay between the two lensed images) and frequency (between 350 and 1050 GHz, rest-frame of the blazar), during the $\gamma$-ray flare. In particular, we detect a remarkable frequency-dependent behaviour of the flux ratio, which implies the presence of a chromatic structure in the blazar (i.e., a core-shift effect). We rule out the possiblity of micro- and milli-lensing effects and propose instead a simple model of plasmon ejection in the blazar's jet to explain the time and frequency variability of the flux ratio. We suggest that PKS1830-211 is likely one of the best sources to probe the activity at the base of a blazar's jet at submillimeter wavelengths, thanks to the peculiar geometry of the system. The implications of the core-shift in absorption studies of the foreground z=0.89 galaxy (e.g., constraints on the cosmological variations of fundamental constants) are discussed.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&