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Modern high reliability EEPROM technologies use advanced screening methods to screen out weak bit cells. In combination with standard ECC (Error Correction Code) methods EEPROMs can be produced to withstand more than 50k endurance cycles at 150°C and have a data retention of 10 years at 150°C. Both the number of endurance cycles and the data retention define the lifetime of an EEPROM memory. After successfully passing the standard EEPROM screening tests only randomly distributed intrinsic failures will be activated during the EEPROM's lifetime. This work will present a highly advanced screening procedure in combination with an area efficient byte replacement strategy that enables an increase in the number of endurance cycles by a factor of 2.5 while the increase in area of the EEPROM memory plane is only 5%.

During the design phase of a chemical plant, information is created by various software tools and stored in heterogeneous formats, such as technical documents, CAE databases, or simulation files. Eventually, these scattered information items need to be merged and consolidated. However, there is no efficient computer support for this task available today. While existing technologies like XML are capable of handling the structural and syntactic differences between the heterogeneous formats, these technologies cannot resolve any semantic incompatibilities. For this reason, information integration is still largely performed manually – a task which is both tedious and error-prone. Semantic technologies based on ontologies have been identified as an appropriate means to establish semantic interoperability. This contribution presents an ontology-based approach for information integration in chemical process engineering. The underlying knowledge base, which is based on the formal ontology OntoCAPE, is presented, and the design and implementation of a prototypical integration software are described. Further, the application of the software prototype in a large industrial use case is reported.

This article gives an overview on OntoCAPE, a formal ontology for the domain of computer-aided process engineering. An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization (Gruber, 1993), typically involving classes, their relations, and axioms for clarifying the intended semantics. A formal ontology, in particular, captures the consensual knowledge of an application domain in such a way that it can be reused and shared across software applications (Gomez-Perez et al., 2004). OntoCAPE formally represents domain knowledge about CAPE, with the intention of supporting the construction of software tools for different tasks such as knowledge management, mathematical modeling, or plant design. We argue that a useful ontology must simultaneously strive for usability and reusability and explain how these goals are achieved by OntoCAPE.

Online information systems on different devices are being increasingly used in learning processes and as part of continuing education within a wide range of disciplines. However, this increase has often not been matched in and of itself by user acceptance. Emphasizing the needs of human actors (users) is a vital part of ensuring their motivation so that the use of information systems will become generally accepted in application scenarios. To achieve this, the TEDS framework, which builds on Taylor's concept of "Value-Added Processes", is integrated into our Moodle learning platform. In this paper we explain the background, requirements, and some preliminary results of our flexible TEDS*MOODLE integration, which is usable on different devices and which is to date the only one of its kind worldwide. It might also prove to be an innovative solution for e-government platforms, engaging citizens in policy- and decision-making processes.

Facing global competition in the chemical industry particular companies from high-wage countries have to cut development costs and time to market to be still profitable. Therefore, methods like concurrent and collaborative engineering are increasingly applied. However, these complex workflows require adequate software support to be efficient in face of heterogeneous software environments as typically encountered in most companies. Such software support does virtually not exist in industrial practice to date. In this paper, we propose a novel software prototype built on semantic technologies which is capable of providing such software support and thus helping to improve efficiency in process and plant engineering.

Having established the scientific background of ontology engineering, we now present version 2.0 of the ontology OntoCAPE. Compliant with the terminology introduced in the previous chapter, OntoCAPE can be characterized as a formal, heavyweight ontology, which is represented in the OWL modeling language. It consists of several sub-ontologies, which perform different functions: According to the classification framework introduced in Sect. 2.6, the individual sub-ontologies serve the functions of a meta ontology (at the logical metalevel), a top-level ontology, a domain ontology, as well as some application ontologies.

Chemical_process_system is the key partial model in the ontology which addresses the body of knowledge of the chemical engineering discipline. However, it is not intended to function as a textbook or handbook for this discipline. Primarily, this partial model is aimed to present an organization of chemical engineering knowledge, by means of positioning, grouping, and linking chemical engineering concepts within a number of ontology modules. The descriptions or definitions of individual concepts presented in this partial model are all serving this purpose; more rigorous and comprehensive explanations of these concepts should not be sought in this section or in this ontology, but rather in the specialized textbooks or handbooks.

This chapter gives an overview on the information models and ontologies that are thematically related to OntoCAPE. It is structured into two major parts: Section 11.1 reviews the previous work in the research group of the authors; that is, the information models preceding OntoCAPE are described, and the progress made over time is discussed. In Sect. 11.2, the work of other research groups is analyzed and compared against OntoCAPE.

In this chapter, some prototypical software applications are presented, which have been created by the authors’ colleagues within the research projects COGents and IMPROVE. What all prototypes have in common is that their respective implementations are based on OntoCAPE. While these prototypes are of interest in themselves, they are presented here primarily for other reasons: that is, (a) to demonstrate the practical usability and reusability of OntoCAPE, and (b) to highlight the gradual improvement of the different versions of OntoCAPE, which have been triggered by implementations in different application contexts. Therefore, the descriptions of the different prototypes are intentionally kept short; detailed accounts of these have been published elsewhere, as will be indicated by appropriate references.

Concluding the description of OntoCAPE, we will subsequently present the major principles according to which the ontology has been designed. Basically, design principles are objective criteria for guiding and evaluating the design decisions made during ontology development (Gruber 1995). A number of design principles for information modeling in general, and ontology engineering in particular, have been suggested in the literature (e.g., Gruber 1995; Fox and Gruninger 1998; Arpirez et al. 1998; Chandrasekaran et al. 1999; Gomez-Perez et al. 2004; Rector et al. 2004; Smith 2006; and others). Compliance with these acknowledged principles is a credible indicator for the quality of an ontology.

This article presents substantial results from two projects that deal with teaching and learning with digital media in basic and higher education and offers a new perspective on the active role of technology in learning processes. The first case draws on the project “Roberta—girls conquer robotics,” which was launched by the Fraunhofer Institute (AIS) with the aim to help promote girls’ interest in sciences, mathematics and technology. It suggests a new pedagogical approach towards the use of robotics in education and discusses how didactics and technology (LegoMindstorms) interact and how the character of robotics itself plays an important role here, such as it already comes along as gendered material. The second case focuses on distance education teaching methods in childcare management. The space left for practitioners in Higher Education is either to embrace the new media or to watch its inevitable unfolding. We take a critical stance towards that perspective and suggest that the shape and learning effect of new media in higher education is contested and evolves in communities of practice. No technologies are neutral and it is more appropriate to speak of technological and societal features as interactively fostering e-learning processes through distributed actions (Rammert, 2002).

Information integration during the design process of chemical plants is a long-standing and not sufficiently solved problem in industrial practice to date. The major challenge identified is the capturing of the information's semantics. Within an ongoing research project an ontology-based approach for information integration in process engineering design projects is developed. This contribution sketches the semantic information model applied in the integration software, which is based on the formal ontology OntoCAPE.

The existing embedded nonvolatile memory technologies have failed to deliver a cost effective solution for SoC applications. The major reason has been that most of these technologies were not designed specifically for the embedded applications. There have been two approaches for the embedded nonvolatile memories. One is to take the high density stand alone memory technology and use it for embedded applications and the other is to use the basic logic technology and make a nonvolatile element on it without adding additional masks. Both these approaches have their pros and cons. The first approach gives a very small cell size, but it has high cost, low yield, and compatibility with base CMOS process problems, while the other approach gives a very large cell which can not satisfy the density requirements. The embedded nonvolatile memory technology and modules described in this paper are designed from ground up by keeping the embedded applications and their requirements. Two (4K times 16) synchronous and asynchronous embedded nonvolatile memory modules have been developed using a simple p-channel E2PROM cell and technology. The module size is 1.22 mm times 1.12 mm and the cell size is 2.925 mum times 1.95 mum. The E2PROM cell is designed for very high reliability with more than 80% coupling ratio. High sort yields, high data retention, high endurance and simple process were the goals for this work. This technology is capable of delivering both the flash as well as the E2PROM memory architectures. The module functionality has been verified from -55degC up to 180degC. Consistent yields of more than 97% have been seen on several lots