@phdthesis{41971, abstract = {{Ultraschall-Drahtbonden ist eine Standardtechnologie im Bereich der Aufbau- und Verbindungstechnik von Leistungshalbleitermodulen. Um Prozessschritte und damit wertvolle Zeit zu sparen, sollen die Kupferdickdrähte für die Leistungshalbleiter auch für die Kontaktierung von eingespritzten Anschlusssteckern im Modulrahmen verwendet werden. Das Kontaktierungsverfahren mit diesen Drähten auf Steckern in dünnwandigen Kunststoffrahmen führt häufig zu unzureichender Bondqualität. In dieser Arbeit wird das Bonden von Anschlusssteckern experimentell und anhand von Simulationen untersucht, um die Prozessstabilität zu steigern. Zunächst wurden Experimente auf Untergründen mit hoher Steifigkeit durchgeführt, um Störgrößen von Untergrundeigenschaften zu verringern. Die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse erlaubten die Entwicklung eines Simulationsmodells für die Vorhersage der Bondqualität. Dieses basiert auf einer flächenaufgelösten Reibarbeitsbestimmung im Fügebereich unter Berücksichtigung des Ultraschallerweichungseffektes und der hierdurch entstehenden hohen Drahtverformung. Experimente an den Anschlusssteckern im Modulrahmen zeigten eine verringerte Relativverschiebung zwischen Draht und Stecker, was zu einer deutlichen Verringerung der Reibarbeit führt. Außerdem wurden verminderte Schwingamplituden des Bondwerkzeugs nachgewiesen. Dies führt zu einer weiteren Reduktion der Reibarbeit. Beide Effekte wurden mithilfe eines Mehrmassenschwingers modelliert. Die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse und die erstellten Simulationsmodelle ermöglichen die Entwicklung von Klemmvorrichtungen, welche die identifizierten Störgrößen gezielt kompensieren und so ein verlässliches Bonden der Anschlussstecker im gleichen Prozessschritt ermöglichen, in dem auch die Leistungshalbleiter kontaktiert werden.}}, author = {{Althoff, Simon}}, isbn = {{978-3-8440-8903-5}}, keywords = {{heavy copper bonding, wire bonding, quality prediction, friction model, point-contact-element}}, pages = {{192}}, publisher = {{Shaker}}, title = {{{Predicting the Bond Quality of Heavy Copper Wire Bonds using a Friction Model Approach}}}, volume = {{15}}, year = {{2023}}, } @article{44092, abstract = {{We study how competition between physicians affects the provision of medical care. In our theoretical model, physicians are faced with a heterogeneous patient population, in which patients systematically vary with regard to both their responsiveness to the provided quality of care and their state of health. We test the behavioral predictions derived from this model in a controlled laboratory experiment. In line with the model, we observe that competition significantly improves patient benefits as long as patients are able to respond to the quality provided. For those patients, who are not able to choose a physician, competition even decreases the patient benefit compared to a situation without competition. This decrease is in contrast to our theoretical prediction implying no change in benefits for passive patients. Deviations from patient-optimal treatment are highest for passive patients in need of a low quantity of medical services. With repetition, both, the positive effects of competition for active patients as well as the negative effects of competition for passive patients become more pronounced. Our results imply that competition can not only improve but also worsen patient outcome and that patients’ responsiveness to quality is decisive.}}, author = {{Brosig-Koch, Jeannette and Hehenkamp, Burkhard and Kokot, Johanna}}, journal = {{Health Economics}}, keywords = {{physician competition, patient characteristics, heterogeneity in quality responses, fee-for-service, laboratory experiment}}, title = {{{Who benefits from quality competition in health care? A theory and a laboratory experiment on the relevance of patient characteristics}}}, doi = {{10.1002/hec.4689}}, year = {{2023}}, } @techreport{44093, abstract = {{We consider a model where for-profit providers compete in quality in a price-regulated market that has been opened to competition, and where the incumbent is located at the center of the market, facing high costs of relocation. The model is relevant in markets such as public health care, education and schooling, or postal services. We find that, when the regulated price is low or intermediate, the entrant strategically locates towards the corner of the market to keep the incumbent at the low monopoly quality level. For a high price, the entrant locates at the corner of the market and both providers implement higher quality compared to a monopoly. In any case, the entrant implements higher quality than the incumbent provider. Social welfare is always higher in a duopoly if the cost of quality is low. For higher cost levels welfare is non-monotonic in the price and it can be optimal to the regulator not to use its entire budget. Therefore, the welfare effect of entry depends on the price and the size of the entry cost, and the regulator should condition the decision to allow entry on an assessment of the entry cost.}}, author = {{Hehenkamp, Burkhard and Kaarbøe, Oddvar M.}}, keywords = {{Quality competition, Price regulation, Location choice, Product differentiation}}, title = {{{Price Regulation, Quality Competition and Location Choice with Costly Relocation}}}, year = {{2023}}, } @article{48063, abstract = {{Brainwaves have demonstrated to be unique enough across individuals to be useful as biometrics. They also provide promising advantages over traditional means of authentication, such as resistance to external observability, revocability, and intrinsic liveness detection. However, most of the research so far has been conducted with expensive, bulky, medical-grade helmets, which offer limited applicability for everyday usage. With the aim to bring brainwave authentication and its benefits closer to real world deployment, we investigate brain biometrics with consumer devices. We conduct a comprehensive measurement experiment and user study that compare five authentication tasks on a user sample up to 10 times larger than those from previous studies, introducing three novel techniques based on cognitive semantic processing. Furthermore, we apply our analysis on high-quality open brainwave data obtained with a medical-grade headset, to assess the differences. We investigate both the performance, security, and usability of the different options and use this evidence to elicit design and research recommendations. Our results show that it is possible to achieve Equal Error Rates as low as 7.2% (a reduction between 68–72% with respect to existing approaches) based on brain responses to images with current inexpensive technology. We show that the common practice of testing authentication systems only with known attacker data is unrealistic and may lead to overly optimistic evaluations. With regard to adoption, users call for simpler devices, faster authentication, and better privacy. }}, author = {{Arias-Cabarcos, Patricia and Fallahi, Matin and Habrich, Thilo and Schulze, Karen and Becker, Christian and Strufe, Thorsten}}, issn = {{2471-2566}}, journal = {{ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security}}, keywords = {{Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality, General Computer Science}}, number = {{3}}, pages = {{1--36}}, publisher = {{Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)}}, title = {{{Performance and Usability Evaluation of Brainwave Authentication Techniques with Consumer Devices}}}, doi = {{10.1145/3579356}}, volume = {{26}}, year = {{2023}}, } @article{48058, author = {{Winkel, Fabian and Deuse-Kleinsteuber, Johannes and Böcker, Joachim}}, issn = {{0018-9529}}, journal = {{IEEE Transactions on Reliability}}, keywords = {{Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality}}, pages = {{1--14}}, publisher = {{Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)}}, title = {{{Run-to-Failure Relay Dataset for Predictive Maintenance Research With Machine Learning}}}, doi = {{10.1109/tr.2023.3255786}}, year = {{2023}}, } @inproceedings{48872, abstract = {{Quality diversity (QD) is a branch of evolutionary computation that gained increasing interest in recent years. The Map-Elites QD approach defines a feature space, i.e., a partition of the search space, and stores the best solution for each cell of this space. We study a simple QD algorithm in the context of pseudo-Boolean optimisation on the "number of ones" feature space, where the ith cell stores the best solution amongst those with a number of ones in [(i - 1)k, ik - 1]. Here k is a granularity parameter 1 {$\leq$} k {$\leq$} n+1. We give a tight bound on the expected time until all cells are covered for arbitrary fitness functions and for all k and analyse the expected optimisation time of QD on OneMax and other problems whose structure aligns favourably with the feature space. On combinatorial problems we show that QD finds a (1 - 1/e)-approximation when maximising any monotone sub-modular function with a single uniform cardinality constraint efficiently. Defining the feature space as the number of connected components of a connected graph, we show that QD finds a minimum spanning tree in expected polynomial time.}}, author = {{Bossek, Jakob and Sudholt, Dirk}}, booktitle = {{Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference}}, isbn = {{9798400701191}}, keywords = {{quality diversity, runtime analysis}}, pages = {{1546–1554}}, publisher = {{Association for Computing Machinery}}, title = {{{Runtime Analysis of Quality Diversity Algorithms}}}, doi = {{10.1145/3583131.3590383}}, year = {{2023}}, } @inproceedings{52816, abstract = {{Manufacturing companies face the challenge of reaching required quality standards. Using optical sensors and deep learning might help. However, training deep learning algorithms require large amounts of visual training data. Using domain randomization to generate synthetic image data can alleviate this bottleneck. This paper presents the application of synthetic image training data for optical quality inspections using visual sensor technology. The results show synthetically generated training data are appropriate for visual quality inspections.}}, author = {{Gräßler, Iris and Hieb, Michael}}, booktitle = {{Lectures}}, keywords = {{synthetic training data, machine vision quality gates, deep learning, automated inspection and quality control, production control}}, location = {{Nuremberg}}, pages = {{253--524}}, publisher = {{AMA Service GmbH, Von-Münchhausen-Str. 49, 31515 Wunstorf, Germany}}, title = {{{Creating Synthetic Training Datasets for Inspection in Machine Vision Quality Gates in Manufacturing}}}, doi = {{10.5162/smsi2023/d7.4}}, year = {{2023}}, } @article{31844, abstract = {{Encrypting data before sending it to the cloud ensures data confidentiality but requires the cloud to compute on encrypted data. Trusted execution environments, such as Intel SGX enclaves, promise to provide a secure environment in which data can be decrypted and then processed. However, vulnerabilities in the executed program give attackers ample opportunities to execute arbitrary code inside the enclave. This code can modify the dataflow of the program and leak secrets via SGX side channels. Fully homomorphic encryption would be an alternative to compute on encrypted data without data leaks. However, due to its high computational complexity, its applicability to general-purpose computing remains limited. Researchers have made several proposals for transforming programs to perform encrypted computations on less powerful encryption schemes. Yet current approaches do not support programs making control-flow decisions based on encrypted data. We introduce the concept of dataflow authentication (DFAuth) to enable such programs. DFAuth prevents an adversary from arbitrarily deviating from the dataflow of a program. Our technique hence offers protections against the side-channel attacks described previously. We implemented two flavors of DFAuth, a Java bytecode-to-bytecode compiler, and an SGX enclave running a small and program-independent trusted code base. We applied DFAuth to a neural network performing machine learning on sensitive medical data and a smart charging scheduler for electric vehicles. Our transformation yields a neural network with encrypted weights, which can be evaluated on encrypted inputs in \( 12.55 \,\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s} \) . Our protected scheduler is capable of updating the encrypted charging plan in approximately 1.06 seconds. }}, author = {{Fischer, Andreas and Fuhry, Benny and Kußmaul, Jörn and Janneck, Jonas and Kerschbaum, Florian and Bodden, Eric}}, issn = {{2471-2566}}, journal = {{ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security}}, keywords = {{Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality, General Computer Science}}, number = {{3}}, pages = {{1--36}}, publisher = {{Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)}}, title = {{{Computation on Encrypted Data Using Dataflow Authentication}}}, doi = {{10.1145/3513005}}, volume = {{25}}, year = {{2022}}, } @inproceedings{48861, abstract = {{Generating instances of different properties is key to algorithm selection methods that differentiate between the performance of different solvers for a given combinatorial optimization problem. A wide range of methods using evolutionary computation techniques has been introduced in recent years. With this paper, we contribute to this area of research by providing a new approach based on quality diversity (QD) that is able to explore the whole feature space. QD algorithms allow to create solutions of high quality within a given feature space by splitting it up into boxes and improving solution quality within each box. We use our QD approach for the generation of TSP instances to visualize and analyze the variety of instances differentiating various TSP solvers and compare it to instances generated by established approaches from the literature.}}, author = {{Bossek, Jakob and Neumann, Frank}}, booktitle = {{Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference}}, isbn = {{978-1-4503-9237-2}}, keywords = {{instance features, instance generation, quality diversity, TSP}}, pages = {{186–194}}, publisher = {{Association for Computing Machinery}}, title = {{{Exploring the Feature Space of TSP Instances Using Quality Diversity}}}, doi = {{10.1145/3512290.3528851}}, year = {{2022}}, } @inproceedings{48894, abstract = {{Recently different evolutionary computation approaches have been developed that generate sets of high quality diverse solutions for a given optimisation problem. Many studies have considered diversity 1) as a mean to explore niches in behavioural space (quality diversity) or 2) to increase the structural differences of solutions (evolutionary diversity optimisation). In this study, we introduce a co-evolutionary algorithm to simultaneously explore the two spaces for the multi-component traveling thief problem. The results show the capability of the co-evolutionary algorithm to achieve significantly higher diversity compared to the baseline evolutionary diversity algorithms from the literature.}}, author = {{Nikfarjam, Adel and Neumann, Aneta and Bossek, Jakob and Neumann, Frank}}, booktitle = {{Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN XVII)}}, editor = {{Rudolph, Günter and Kononova, Anna V. and Aguirre, Hernán and Kerschke, Pascal and Ochoa, Gabriela and Tu\v sar, Tea}}, isbn = {{978-3-031-14714-2}}, keywords = {{Co-evolutionary algorithms, Evolutionary diversity optimisation, Quality diversity, Traveling thief problem}}, pages = {{237–249}}, publisher = {{Springer International Publishing}}, title = {{{Co-Evolutionary Diversity Optimisation for the Traveling Thief Problem}}}, doi = {{10.1007/978-3-031-14714-2_17}}, year = {{2022}}, } @article{32561, abstract = {{This investigation concentrates on the association of intergenerational value similarity and adult children’s and parents’subjective well-being, on the linkage between relationship quality and subjective well-being. Mediation effects of the relationship quality on the associations between value similarity and subjective well-being were focused. The sample consisted of 600 adult German children (53.8% women) and their parents. Dyadic correlations were constructed to determine the value similarity. In this study, the general value orientation and the family values were objects of research. We measured the subjective well-being with the Satisfaction with Life Scale and we used the Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI) to measure the relationship quality. Associations between subjective well-being and value similarity, and between subjective well-being and relationship quality, as well as mediation effects, were found. All effects depend on gender and perspective.}}, author = {{Hoellger, Christian and Sommer, Sabrina and Buhl, Heike M.}}, issn = {{0192-513X}}, journal = {{Journal of Family Issues}}, keywords = {{adult child–parent dyads, relationship quality, life satisfaction, parent–child relationship, intergenerational stake hypothesis, mediation analyses}}, publisher = {{SAGE Publications}}, title = {{{Intergenerational Value Similarity and Subjective Well-Being}}}, doi = {{10.1177/0192513x211054470}}, year = {{2021}}, } @inproceedings{27111, abstract = {{In the industry 4.0 era, there is a growing need to transform unstructured data acquired by a multitude of sources into information and subsequently into knowledge to improve the quality of manufactured products, to boost production, for predictive maintenance, etc. Data-driven approaches, such as machine learning techniques, are typically employed to model the underlying relationship from data. However, an increase in model accuracy with state-of-the-art methods, such as deep convolutional neural networks, results in less interpretability and transparency. Due to the ease of implementation, interpretation and transparency to both domain experts and non-experts, a rule-based method is proposed in this paper, for prognostics and health management (PHM) and specifically for diagnostics. The proposed method utilizes the most relevant sensor signals acquired via feature extraction and selection techniques and expert knowledge. As a case study, the presented method is evaluated on data from a real-world quality control set-up provided by the European prognostics and health management society (PHME) at the conference’s 2021 data challenge. With the proposed method, our team took the third place, capable of successfully diagnosing different fault modes, irrespective of varying conditions.}}, author = {{Aimiyekagbon, Osarenren Kennedy and Muth, Lars and Wohlleben, Meike Claudia and Bender, Amelie and Sextro, Walter}}, booktitle = {{Proceedings of the European Conference of the PHM Society 2021}}, editor = {{Do, Phuc and King, Steve and Fink, Olga}}, keywords = {{PHME 2021, Feature Selection Classification, Feature Selection Clustering, Interpretable Model, Transparent Model, Industry 4.0, Real-World Diagnostics, Quality Control, Predictive Maintenance}}, number = {{1}}, pages = {{527--536}}, title = {{{Rule-based Diagnostics of a Production Line}}}, doi = {{10.36001/phme.2021.v6i1.3042}}, volume = {{6}}, year = {{2021}}, } @article{27117, abstract = {{Through co-occurrence analysis of 1139 documents (1964-2018) we identified trends in the discussions about the implementation of student teaching evaluation (SET). We found that: (1) Attention to SET originated in the US in the 1970s, spreading to German-speaking countries in the mid-1990s and continuing in China and Latin America in the early 2000s. (2) SET is commonly viewed as a control tool deserving methodological improvement, while bias is debated in the US. We also found local trajectories: (3) Whereas in the US and Latin America SET is primarily seen as a management tool, German-speaking and Chinese authors reflect more on improving teaching. Chinese scholars consider SET a valid instrument for state control associated with artificial intelligence. Also, (4) SET is commonly used in medical education in the US and the German-speaking region and in physical education in China. We conclude that SET is discussed cross-nationally but affected by national path dependencies.}}, author = {{Pineda, Pedro and Steinhardt, Isabel}}, issn = {{1356-2517}}, journal = {{Teaching in Higher Education}}, keywords = {{academic discourse, bibliometric review, quality assurance, student evaluation of teaching, teaching evaluation}}, pages = {{1--21}}, title = {{{The Debate on student evaluations of teaching: global convergence confronts higher education traditions}}}, doi = {{10.1080/13562517.2020.1863351}}, year = {{2020}}, } @article{32559, abstract = {{This investigation concentrates on value similarity between parents and their children during adulthood. The interplay between gender, age, relationship quality, and frequency of contact on value similarity was analyzed. A total of 600 adult German children (53.8% women) and their parents took part in a questionnaire study. Value orientation was measured with a short version of Schwartz’s Portrait Values Questionnaire, and relationship quality with the Network of Relationships Inventory (Furman & Buhrmeister, 1992).Value similarity was higher in mother–daughter dyads compared to mother–son dyads, but in the other dyads, no significant differences were found. Regarding relationship quality, verbal intimacy was not related to value similarity. Parental satisfaction was associated with value similarity in the father–child dyads. Satisfaction, as perceived by adult children, was linked to value similarity in mother–child and father–son dyads. Furthermore, the frequency of contact related to value similarity between mothers and sons.}}, author = {{Hoellger, Christian and Sommer, Sabrina and Albert, Isabelle and Buhl, Heike M.}}, issn = {{0192-513X}}, journal = {{Journal of Family Issues}}, keywords = {{Adult child–parent dyads, value similarity, relationship quality, frequency of contact, parent-child-relationship}}, number = {{6}}, pages = {{1234--1257}}, publisher = {{SAGE Publications}}, title = {{{Intergenerational Value Similarity in Adulthood}}}, doi = {{10.1177/0192513x20943914}}, volume = {{42}}, year = {{2020}}, } @inproceedings{15368, abstract = {{Service Level Agreements are essential tools enabling clients and telco operators to specify required quality of service. The 5GTANGO NFV platform enables SLAs through policies and custom service lifecycle management components. This allows the operator to trigger certain lifecycle management events for a service, and the network service developer to define how to execute such events (e.g., how to scale). In this demo we will demonstrate this unique 5GTANGO concept using an elastic proxy service supported by a high availability SLA enforced through a range of traffic regimes.}}, author = {{Soenen, Thomas and Vicens, Felipe and Bonnet, José and Parada, Carlos and Kapassa, Evgenia and Touloupou, Marious and Fotopulou, Eleni and Zafeiropoulos, Anastasios and Pol, Ana and Kolometsos, Stavros and Xilouris, George and Alemany, Pol and Vilalta, Ricard and Trakadas, Panos and Karkazis, Panos and Peuster, Manuel and Tavernier, Wouter}}, booktitle = {{2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management (IM)}}, issn = {{1573-0077}}, keywords = {{5G mobile communication, contracts, quality of service, telecommunication traffic, virtualisation, custom service lifecycle management components, lifecycle management events, network service developer, elastic proxy service, SLA-controlled proxy service, customisable MANO, operator policies, Service Level Agreements, unique 5G TANGO concept, 5G TANGO NFV platform, quality of service, traffic regimes, high availability SLA, Monitoring, Probes, Portals, Quality of service, Tools, Servers, Graphical user interfaces}}, location = {{Arlington, VA, USA, USA}}, pages = {{707--708}}, title = {{{SLA-controlled Proxy Service Through Customisable MANO Supporting Operator Policies}}}, year = {{2019}}, } @article{3542, abstract = {{We study the historical development of Slovenian Accounting Standards (SAS) and their association with accounting quality (AQ). We focus on private firms where the financial reporting process is characterised by low demand for high-quality reporting. We investigate three distinct editions of SAS since 1994 and test how their development towards international standards is related to AQ. Aggregate earnings management measures indicate that the use of accounting discretion decreases with less earnings smoothing over time. The main features of AQ have been consistent throughout historical development. Asymmetric timeliness of earnings, the ability of earnings to predict future cash flows, and the ability of accruals to mitigate mismatching are all present throughout. We also document typical departures from properties of high AQ. For example, accruals do not (always) facilitate timely recognition of losses. However, these can be attributed to the overwhelming influence of reporting incentives (e.g. taxation, debt, size) rather than to the (lower) quality of accounting standards.  Full Article  Figures & data References  Citations Metrics  Reprints & Permissions  PDF Abstract We study the historical development of Slovenian Accounting Standards (SAS) and their association with accounting quality (AQ). We focus on private firms where the financial reporting process is characterised by low demand for high-quality reporting. We investigate three distinct editions of SAS since 1994 and test how their development towards international standards is related to AQ. Aggregate earnings management measures indicate that the use of accounting discretion decreases with less earnings smoothing over time. The main features of AQ have been consistent throughout historical development. Asymmetric timeliness of earnings, the ability of earnings to predict future cash flows, and the ability of accruals to mitigate mismatching are all present throughout. We also document typical departures from properties of high AQ. For example, accruals do not (always) facilitate timely recognition of losses. However, these can be attributed to the overwhelming influence of reporting incentives (e.g. taxation, debt, size) rather than to the (lower) quality of accounting standards.}}, author = {{Valentincic, Aljosa and Novak, Ales and Kosi, Urska}}, journal = {{Accounting in Europe}}, keywords = {{private firms, accounting quality, development of accounting standards, IFRS-like standards, Slovenia}}, number = {{3}}, pages = {{358--387}}, title = {{{Accounting quality in private firms during the transition towards international standards}}}, doi = {{10.1080/17449480.2017.1378821}}, volume = {{14}}, year = {{2017}}, } @techreport{2570, abstract = {{On an intermediate goods market we consider vertical and horizontal product differentiation and analyze the impact of simultaneous competition for resources and the demand of customers on the market outcome. Asymmetries between intermediaries may arise due to distinct product qualities as well as by reasons of different production technologies. The intermediaries compete on the output market by choosing production quantities sequentially and for the supplies of a monopolistic input supplier on the input market. It turns out that there exist differences in product quality and productivities such that an intermediary being the Stackelberg leader has no incentive to procure inputs, whereas in the role of the Stackelberg follower will participate in the market. Moreover, we find that given an intermediary is more competitive, his equilibrium output quantity is higher when being the leader than when being the follower. Interestingly, if the intermediary is less competitive and goods are complements, there may exist asymmetries such that an intermediary being in the position of the Stackelberg follower offers higher output quantities in equilibrium than when being in the position of the Stackelberg leader.}}, author = {{Manegold, Jochen}}, keywords = {{Input Market, Product Quality, Quantity Competition, Stackelberg Competition, Product Innovation}}, publisher = {{CIE Working Paper Series, Paderborn University}}, title = {{{Stackelberg Competition among Intermediaries in a Differentiated Duopoly with Product Innovation}}}, volume = {{98}}, year = {{2016}}, } @article{4035, abstract = {{We examine whether the mandated introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is associated with the propensity to access the public rather than private debt market and the cost of debt. We use a global sample of public bonds and private loans and find that mandatory IFRS adopters are more likely, post-IFRS, to issue bonds than to borrow privately. We also find that mandatory IFRS adopters pay lower bond yield spreads, but not lower loan spreads, after the mandate. These findings are consistent with debt providers responding positively to financial reporting of higher quality and comparability, but only when there is a greater reliance on publicly available financial statements than private communication. Lastly, we document that the observed debt market benefits are concentrated in countries with larger differences between domestic GAAP and IFRS and are present even for EU countries that did not experience concurrent financial reporting enforcement or other institutional reforms. Overall, our study documents positive economic consequences around the mandated IFRS adoption for corporate debt financing and, in particular, for bond financing.}}, author = {{Florou, Annita and Kosi, Urska}}, issn = {{1573-7136}}, journal = {{Review of Accounting Studies}}, keywords = {{Accounting regulation, IFRS, Accounting quality, Public and private debt markets, Cost of debt}}, number = {{4}}, pages = {{1407--1456}}, title = {{{Does mandatory IFRS adoption facilitate debt financing?}}}, doi = {{10.1007/s11142}}, volume = {{20}}, year = {{2015}}, } @inproceedings{9868, abstract = {{In order to increase mechanical strength, heat dissipation and ampacity and to decrease failure through fatigue fracture, wedge copper wire bonding is being introduced as a standard interconnection method for mass production. To achieve the same process stability when using copper wire instead of aluminum wire a profound understanding of the bonding process is needed. Due to the higher hardness of copper compared to aluminum wire it is more difficult to approach the surfaces of wire and substrate to a level where van der Waals forces are able to arise between atoms. Also, enough friction energy referred to the total contact area has to be generated to activate the surfaces. Therefore, a friction model is used to simulate the joining process. This model calculates the resulting energy of partial areas in the contact surface and provides information about the adhesion process of each area. The focus here is on the arising of micro joints in the contact area depending on the location in the contact and time. To validate the model, different touchdown forces are used to vary the initial contact areas of wire and substrate. Additionally, a piezoelectric tri-axial force sensor is built up to identify the known phases of pre-deforming, cleaning, adhering and diffusing for the real bonding process to map with the model. Test substrates as DBC and copper plate are used to show the different formations of a wedge bond connection due to hardness and reaction propensity. The experiments were done by using 500 $\mu$m copper wire and a standard V-groove tool.}}, author = {{Althoff, Simon and Neuhaus, Jan and Hemsel, Tobias and Sextro, Walter}}, booktitle = {{Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), 2014 IEEE 64th}}, keywords = {{adhesion, circuit reliability, deformation, diffusion, fatigue cracks, friction, interconnections, lead bonding, van der Waals forces, Cu, adhering process, adhesion process, ampacity improvement, bond quality improvement, cleaning process, diffusing process, fatigue fracture failure, friction energy, friction model, heat dissipation, mechanical strength, piezoelectric triaxial force sensor, predeforming process, size 500 mum, total contact area, van der Waals forces, wedge copper wire bonding, Bonding, Copper, Finite element analysis, Force, Friction, Substrates, Wires}}, pages = {{1549--1555}}, title = {{{Improving the bond quality of copper wire bonds using a friction model approach}}}, doi = {{10.1109/ECTC.2014.6897500}}, year = {{2014}}, } @article{9878, abstract = {{(K,Na)NbO3 ceramics have attracted much attention as lead-free piezoelectric materials with high piezoelectric properties. High-quality (K,Na)NbO3 ceramics can be sintered using KNbO3 and NaNbO3 powders synthesized by a hydrothermal method. In this study, to enhance the quality factor of the ceramics, high-power ultrasonic irradiation was employed during the hydrothermal method, which led to a reduction in the particle size of the resultant powders.}}, author = {{Isobe, G. and Maeda, Takafumi and Bornmann, Peter and Hemsel, Tobias and Morita, Takeshi}}, issn = {{0885-3010}}, journal = {{Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, IEEE Transactions on}}, keywords = {{Q-factor, ceramics, crystal growth from solution, particle size, piezoelectric materials, potassium compounds, powders, sintering, sodium compounds, ultrasonic effects, (K0.48Na0.52)NbO3, KNbO3 powders, NaNbO3 powders, high-power ultrasonic irradiation, lead-free piezoelectric materials, lead-free piezoelectric powders, particle size reduction, piezoelectric properties, quality factor, sintered (K0.48Na0.52)NbO3 ceramics, sintering, ultrasonic-assisted hydrothermal method, Acoustics, Ceramics, Lead, Piezoelectric materials, Powders, Radiation effects, Transducers}}, number = {{2}}, pages = {{225--230}}, title = {{{Synthesis of lead-free piezoelectric powders by ultrasonic-assisted hydrothermal method and properties of sintered (K0.48Na0.52)NBO3 ceramics}}}, doi = {{10.1109/TUFFC.2014.6722608}}, volume = {{61}}, year = {{2014}}, }