The most important precondition for top-down chip planning is a good area estimation. However, each estimation has tolerances which result in differences of the estimated shapes in thejloorplan and the final layouts. This paper introduces an improved top-down chip planning method that reduces the effects of these deviations. In a fully recursive approach, each cell is planned several times with...

In this paper we present and analyze functional programs for a number of priority queue operations. These programs are based upon the top-down skew heaps|a truly elegant data structure|designed by D.D. Sleator and R.E. Tarjan. We show how their potential technique can be used to determine the time complexity of functional programs. This functional approach enables us to derive a potential funct...

Despite the recent advances in Molecular Biology, the function of a large amount of proteins is still unknown. An approach that can be used in the prediction of a protein function consists of searching against secondary databases, also known as signature databases. Different strategies can be applied to use protein signatures in the prediction of function of proteins. A sophisticated approach c...

In this article, we propose a new ontology evolution approach that combines a top-down and a bottom-up approach. This means that the manual request for changes (top-down) by the ontology engineer is complemented with an automatic change detection mechanism (bottom-up). The approach is based on keeping track of the different versions of ontology concepts throughout their lifetime (called virtual...

This report describes the ‘top-down’ approach to the evaluation of measurement uncertainty in the context of clinical chemistry. The ‘top-down’ approach makes use of information on the performance of whole measurement procedures, such as data obtained from routine internal quality control and external quality assessment. The strengths and weaknesses of the data commonly available to laboratorie...