Disco (Germany)

This work addresses the issue of the convergence of an $N$-player game towards a limit model involving a continuum of players, as the number of agents $N$ goes to infinity. More precisely, we investigate the convergence of Nash equilibria to a Cournot--Nash equilibrium of the limit model. When the cost function of the players is the first variation of some potential function, equilibria can be characterized by a stationarity condition, satisfied in particular by the minimizers of the potential. We demonstrate such a characterization under low regularity assumptions. Then we focus on the case where the players interact in a pairwise fashion; in this case we show that the original sequence of $N$-player games also admit a potential structure and prove that their corresponding potential functions converge in the sense of $Γ$-convergence to the potential function of the limit game.

Abstract In the dynamic landscape of semiconductor manufacturing, the demand for innovative and efficient techniques is ever-growing. Dicing is a singulation process where a machine known as a dicing saw or dicer uses a diamond blade or laser to separate dies from a wafer through a manual, semi-automated, or fully automated process. In diamond blade or mechanical dicing, the dicing saw utilizes a thin blade to cut through a wafer. This paper presents the design and implementation of an alignment teaching-assisted fully automated dicing process for the singulation of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices. A pseudo-MEMS device with potential alignment targets was designed and manufactured by conventional microfabrication techniques. Alignment teaching operation was optimized for the dicing saw by finding the most appropriate alignment targets, as alignment teaching is as a pre-requisite for realizing both auto-alignment and automated dicing processes. A systematic trial-and-error approach was employed to discover the most suitable alignment targets from a pool of twenty-three potential target patterns. A circle was identified as an excellent macro target, while the addition symbol, hash symbol, and rectangle-pair were determined to be the most appropriate micro targets. The developed versatile singulation process is capable of executing an alignment teaching assisted fully automated (i.e. a total of one-click to initiate and finalize) dicing for singulating MEMS device chips, irrespective of alignment target color, die size, or wafer material. Furthermore, we developed, and experimentally validated, a mathematical model to estimate the total process time for the automated dicing.

Este estudo tem como objetiva apresentar discussões sobre as contribuições da plataforma Discord, no desenvolvimento da habilidade escrita em espanhol, de alunos do ensino médio integral. Neste artigo, a plataforma Discord é apresentada como uma ferramenta educacional facilitadora da interação e a construção da aprendizagem significativa da escrita em espanhol, desafiando os alunos à construção de textos que vão além de sentenças e fragmentos descontextualizados. O embasamento teórico fundamenta-se nos estudos voltados a aprendizagem significativa, tecnologia e o ensino de línguas. O estudo, de cunho qualitativo, ocorreu no decorrer da disciplina eletiva de língua espanhola de uma escola de Ensino Médio Integral do interior do Rio Grande do Norte e teve como participantes 36 alunos da segunda série. Os resultados demostraram que houve avanço significativo nas produções dos estudantes. Mesmo com algumas dificuldades, conseguiram produzir a partir dos temas selecionados. Palavras-chave: Ensino de línguas; Tecnologia educacional; Aprendizagem significativa; Produção escrita.

Uma exposição didática sobre a física quântica abre o artigo, salientando-se a diferença entre a parte objetiva da teoria e sua parte interpretativa. Adota-se uma “interpretação ondulatória realista com colapsos” para expor cinco princípios básicos da teoria. Aborda-se então a questão de qual é o impacto da física quântica sobre a sociedade. Discorre-se sobre seu grande impacto científico e tecnológico, e em seguida examina-se com mais atenção o seu impacto teórico, em termos ontológico e epistemológico. Argumenta-se que impacto ontológico em nossa vida cotidiana se limita às aplicações tecnológicas, e que possíveis consequências filosóficas do princípio de incerteza e do indeterminismo não são importantes, e muito menos as consequências imaginadas pelo Misticismo Quântico com relação ao emaranhamento. Dentre as lições epistemológicas está que conhecemos a interpretação que mais se aproxima da verdade, mas não sabemos qual é ela, dentre as dezenas de interpretações propostas. Por fim, discutimos a tese de Forman, que envolve a questão de se a ciência é objetiva ou se é uma construção sócio-culturalmente negociada, como defende o relativismo. Concluímos por um “relativismo relativo”: as interpretações podem ser fortemente influenciadas pela cultura, mas em uma ciência saudável a sua parte objetiva consegue se isolar das vicissitudes sociais e das intenções emotivas dos cientistas. Por fim, são dados alguns exemplos de influência da cultura, e de outros fatores, sobre as interpretações da Teoria Quântica.

PMUT (Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers) can be used in a wide number of medical and industrial applications, from high-end ultrasound scanning which requires a large array of membranes and interconnects to the ASIC driver/receiver, to therapeutic ultrasound and energy delivery which require a small number of membranes/interconnects. Different packaging needs have been required during the development program for the characterisation of the PMUT devices and the requirements of the different prospective product niches. In this paper, the different packages designed, assembled, and used during the development of the PMUT from the first characterisation packages to the 1st prototype packages that will be used for high resolution ultrasound imaging customer samples are described.

The hallmarks of cancer conceptualization is a heuristic tool for distilling the vast complexity of cancer phenotypes and genotypes into a provisional set of underlying principles. As knowledge of cancer mechanisms has progressed, other facets of the disease have emerged as potential refinements. Herein, the prospect is raised that phenotypic plasticity and disrupted differentiation is a discrete hallmark capability, and that nonmutational epigenetic reprogramming and polymorphic microbiomes both constitute distinctive enabling characteristics that facilitate the acquisition of hallmark capabilities. Additionally, senescent cells, of varying origins, may be added to the roster of functionally important cell types in the tumor microenvironment. SIGNIFICANCE: Cancer is daunting in the breadth and scope of its diversity, spanning genetics, cell and tissue biology, pathology, and response to therapy. Ever more powerful experimental and computational tools and technologies are providing an avalanche of "big data" about the myriad manifestations of the diseases that cancer encompasses. The integrative concept embodied in the hallmarks of cancer is helping to distill this complexity into an increasingly logical science, and the provisional new dimensions presented in this perspective may add value to that endeavor, to more fully understand mechanisms of cancer development and malignant progression, and apply that knowledge to cancer medicine.

High-throughput reliable data generation has become a substantial requirement in many "omics" investigations. In proteomics the sample preparation workflow consists of multiple steps adding more bias to the sample with each additional manual step. Especially for label-free quantification experiments, this drastically impedes reproducible quantification of proteins in replicates. Here, a positive pressure workstation was evaluated to increase automation of sample preparation and reduce workload as well as consumables. Digested peptide samples were purified utilizing a new semi-automated sample preparation device, the Resolvex A200, followed by nanospray liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization (nLC/ESI) Orbitrap tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) measurements. In addition, the sorbents Maestro and WWP2 (available in conventional cartridge and dual-chamber narrow-bore extraction columns) were compared with Sep-Pak C18 cartridges. Raw data was analyzed by MaxQuant and Perseus software. The semi-automated workflow with the Resolvex A200 workstation and both new sorbents produced highly reproducible results within 10-300 μg of peptide starting material. The new workflow performed equally as well as the routinely conducted manual workflow with similar technical variability in MS/MS-based identifications of peptides and proteins. A first application of the system to a biological question contributed to highly reliable results, where time-resolved proteomic data was separated by principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering. The new workstation was successfully established for proteolytic peptide purification in our proteomic workflow without any drawbacks. Highly reproducible results were obtained in decreased time per sample, which will facilitate further large-scale proteomic investigations.