Using internal domain-specific languages to inherit tool support and modularity for model transformations

Software and Systems Modeling - Model-driven engineering (MDE) has proved to be a useful approach to cope with today’s ever-growing complexity in the development of software systems;...     

Use of the gold markers method to predict the mechanisms of iron atmospheric corrosion

Iron corrosion under atmospheric conditions has been investigated by using the gold markers method. The corrosion experiments were performed in a climatic chamber with an accelerated treatment. The gold markers localization, carried out by scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, revealed that the rust layer growth was essentially due to an internal development. Moreover, microRaman mappings allowed prediction of the mechanism of rust layer evolution during the ageing treatment. Finally these results were compared to samples corroded for several 100 years in order to extrapolate our observations to long term corrosion.     

Neuregelungen in Vorarlberg zu Spielräumen

Ein Ma?nahmenpaket, bestehend aus dem Spielraumgesetz, dem Beschluss von entsprechenden F?rderungsrichtlinien sowie Novellierungen des Baugesetzes und der Kinderspielplatzverordnung und einer überarbeitung der Wohnbaufondsrichtlinie, soll dazu beitragen, dass sich das Bundesland Vorarlberg als besonders kinder- und jugendfreundliche Region etabliert. Hiefür gilt es, ?ffentliche und private Spielpl?tze und Freir?ume bedarfsgerecht zu erhalten, zu sanieren, neu zu errichten und untereinander zu vernetzen.     

Fullerene Single Crystals: Structure and Electronic Properties

Abstract

This work covers an advanced investigation of the single crystal growth process for fullerenic materials and the contribution of Raman and IR spectroscopy to the understanding of the fcc high temperature rotor phase and the low temperature sc ratchet phase of pristine C₆₀. In addition substantial research contributions to the understanding of alkali metal doped fullerenes are presented.

Alkali metal doped crystals are studied with particular attention to the line broadening in the superconducting A ₃C₆₀ phase and to the phases with stoichiometry A₁C₆₀. For the former electron-phonon coupling constants could be determined for all fivefold degenerated gerade modes and a total coupling strenght of λ = 0.90 was found. For the latter the different experimental conditions for obtaining the phase separated intermediate state or alternatively the orthorhombic polymeric state are analysed. Vibrational spectra for the polymeric state obtained from phototransformation and from mono alkali metal doping are found to be characteristically different, mainly with respect to the intensity of the Raman or IR response. Finally, research results obtained from the single crystals by various other techniques like thermal expansion or low frequency elastic deformation are summarized.     

Rotationally controlled magneto-hydrodynamic particle handling for bead-based microfluidic assays

This work presents a novel magnetic actuation scheme for advanced particle handling on our previously introduced, centrifugal microfluidic platform for array-based analysis of individual cells and beads. The conceptually simple actuation is based on the reciprocating motion of an elastomeric membrane featuring an integrated permanent magnet and a stationary magnet aligned along the orbit of a disc-based chamber. This compression chamber is placed at the downstream end of the particle capture chamber to induce centripetally directed, hydrodynamic lift forces on particles trapped in V-shaped geometrical barriers. Towards high frequencies of rotation, the on-disc magnet ceases to follow the rapidly oscillating magnetic field, so that the magnetic actuator is disabled during the initial, sedimentation-based filling of the trap array. At reduced spin speeds, the residence time of the magnetic actuator is sufficient to displace the magnetic actuator, resulting in a flow through the V-cup array that re-distributes, and eventually fully depletes, the previously trapped beads from the array. The same magnetic deflection scheme is also demonstrated to accelerate mixing, e.g. for upstream sample preparation.     

Primal and Dual Bregman Methods with Application to Optical Nanoscopy

Measurements in nanoscopic imaging suffer from blurring effects modeled with different point spread functions (PSF). Some apparatus even have PSFs that are locally dependent on phase shifts. Additionally, raw data are affected by Poisson noise resulting from laser sampling and “photon counts” in fluorescence microscopy. In these applications standard reconstruction methods (EM, filtered backprojection) deliver unsatisfactory and noisy results. Starting from a statistical modeling in terms of a MAP likelihood estimation we combine the iterative EM algorithm with total variation (TV) regularization techniques to make an efficient use of a-priori information. Typically, TV-based methods deliver reconstructed cartoon images suffering from contrast reduction. We propose extensions to EM-TV, based on Bregman iterations and primal and dual inverse scale space methods, in order to obtain improved imaging results by simultaneous contrast enhancement. Besides further generalizations of the primal and dual scale space methods in terms of general, convex variational regularization methods, we provide error estimates and convergence rates for exact and noisy data. We illustrate the performance of our techniques on synthetic and experimental biological data.