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Sport, diplomacy, and regionalism in Southeast Asia : the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games and ASEAN
No full textThe biennial Southeast Asian or SEA Games, a regional sport mega-event modeled on the Olympic and Asian Games, were established by Thailand in 1959, and since then have been conducted 32 times across 10 of the region’s 11 countries. This article examines how this understudied event has operated as a forum for diplomatic representation, negotiation and communication in Southeast Asia. We make three key arguments: (1) the SEA Games have provided member countries with a means to signal national progress and membership of the regional community, as well as to define and delineate this region; (2) the SEA Games have evolved parallel to the region’s political grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but with important differences as well as similarities; and (3) the regional perspective of the SEA Games offers insights that blur the distinction in recent scholarship between traditional ‘sports diplomacy’ (foregrounding the state) and ‘international-sport-as-diplomacy’ (foregrounding non-state actors)
Computing the binomial part of a polynomial ideal
No full textGiven an ideal I in a polynomial ring K[x1,...,xn] over a field K, we present a complete algorithm to compute the binomial part of I, i.e., the subideal Bin(I) of I generated by all monomials and binomials in I. This is achieved step-by-step. First we collect and extend several algorithms for computing exponent lattices in different kinds of fields. Then we generalize them to compute exponent lattices of units in 0-dimensional K-algebras, where we have to generalize the computation of the separable part of an algebra to non-perfect fields in characteristic p. Next we examine the computation of unit lattices in finitely generated K-algebras, as well as their associated characters and lattice ideals. This allows us to calculate Bin(I) when I is saturated with respect to the indeterminates by reducing the task to the 0-dimensional case. Finally, we treat the computation of Bin(I) for general ideals by computing their cellular decomposition and dealing with finitely many special ideals called (s,t)-binomial parts. All algorithms have been implemented in SageMath
Transitionalists, traditionalists or pioneers? How German municipal energy companies are responding to the national energy transition
No full textThe Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) in Germany aims to transition the country to a sustainable energy system. This has led to a decentralization of the energy market and a shift toward community-focused energy supply systems. Municipal energy companies (MECs), deeply rooted in their communities, are crucial in facilitating this transition and promoting innovative technologies. Websites serve as important communication tools, facilitating interaction between companies and consumers. In our study, we conducted a quantitative content analysis to examine how MECs communicate issues related to the energy transition on their web pages (N = 300). In general, our results show that the energy transition was rarely mentioned on landing pages, and while companies are improving their sustainable electricity products, renewable gas and heating tariffs have received little attention. Additionally, we identified three communication types of MECs: The transitionalists (45 %), the traditionalists (35 %), and the pioneers (20 %), with the latter being the most innovative that emphasizes issues related to the energy transition. Overall, it can be said that the MECs have not yet fully exploited their potential to position themselves as pioneers of the energy transition in their website communications
Crossover can guarantee exponential speed-ups in evolutionary multi-objective optimisation
No full textEvolutionary algorithms are popular algorithms for multi-objective optimisation (also called Pareto optimisation) as they use a population to store trade-offs between different objectives. Despite their popularity, the theoretical foundation of multi-objective evolutionary optimisation (EMO) is still in its early development. Fundamental questions such as the benefits of the crossover operator are still not fully understood. We provide a theoretical analysis of the well-known EMO algorithms GSEMO and NSGA-II to showcase the possible advantages of crossover: we propose classes of “royal road” functions on which these algorithms cover the whole Pareto front in expected polynomial time if crossover is being used. But when disabling crossover, they require exponential time in expectation to cover the Pareto front. The latter even holds for a large class of black-box algorithms using any elitist selection and any unbiased mutation operator. Moreover, even the expected time to create a single Pareto-optimal search point is exponential. We provide two different function classes, one tailored for one-point crossover and another one tailored for uniform crossover, and we show that some immune-inspired hypermutations cannot avoid exponential optimisation times. Our work shows the first example of an exponential performance gap through the use of crossover for the widely used NSGA-II algorithm and contributes to a deeper understanding of its limitations and capabilities
Supporting small firms in a fragile context : comparing matching and cash grants in Burkina Faso
No full textWe used a randomized controlled trial to compare matching grants earmarked for technical training and consulting services with more flexible cash grants and with a control group. The experiment was implemented in a semi-urban and rural fragile setting where subsidizing innovative activities might be particularly important. Firms were selected on the basis of a business plan competition. After two years, beneficiaries of cash grants showed higher survival rates, improved business practices, a higher degree of formalization, and more activities for innovation relative to recipients of matching grants and the control group, but we saw no effects on profits, sales, and employment. Across all outcomes, beneficiaries of cash grants performed better than beneficiaries of matching grants, for them the treatment effects are smaller and often insignificant, though implementation costs were higher. Recipients of cash grants also increased their capital stock more and were more resilient to the COVID-19 crisis
Chasing lightspeed consensus
No full textBlockchain technology sparked renewed interest in planetary-scale Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) state machine replication (SMR). While recent works predominantly focused on improving the scalability and throughput of these protocols, few of them addressed latency. We present Mercury, a novel transformation to autonomously optimize the latency of quorum-based BFT consensus. Mercury employs a dual resilience threshold that enables faster transaction ordering when the system contains few faulty replicas. Mercury allows forming compact quorums that substantially accelerate consensus using a smaller resilience threshold. Nevertheless, Mercury upholds standard SMR safety and liveness guarantees with optimal resilience, thanks to its judicious use of a dual operation mode and BFT forensics techniques. Our experiments spread tens of replicas across continents and reveal that Mercury can order transactions with finality in less than 0.4s, half the time of a PBFT-like protocol (optimal in terms of number of communication steps and resilience) in the same network. Furthermore, Mercury matches the latency of running its base protocol on theoretically optimal internet links (transmitting at 67% of the speed of light)
Migrationsfilme als ‚kritische Heimatfilme‘?
No full textSeit dem Zusammenbruch des Kommunismus ist die Anzahl im Ausland arbeitender Rumän*innen stark angestiegen. Inzwischen leben fast 20 % der Bevölkerung jenseits der Landesgrenzen. Transnationale Familienstrukturen mit in Rumänien zurückgelassenen Kindern oder Eltern und pluri-lokale Lebensweisen der Migrant*innen sind in kürzester Zeit zu einem alltäglichen Phänomen der rumänischen Gesellschaft geworden. Die Auswirkungen dieser Migration sind von gesamtgesellschaftlicher Relevanz und finden daher immer wieder Eingang in Literatur, Musik und Film. Diese Medien werden dabei von realen Ereignissen inspiriert, greifen aktuelle Diskurse auf und konstruieren eigene fiktionale Wirklichkeiten. Dabei vermitteln sie bestimmte Weltbilder und bieten verschiedene Sichtweisen auf die von ihnen verhandelten Themen an.
Zwischen dem Ende der kommunistischen Diktatur 1989 und 2022 entstanden 52 rumänische fiktionale Kurz- und Spielfilme, die explizit Migration ins Zentrum ihrer erzählten Geschichten stellen. Der vorliegende Band untersucht, auf welche Weise die rumänische Arbeitsmigration im postkommunistischen Film verarbeitet wird, welches Bild der rumänischen Heimat und des ‚Westens‘ vermittelt wird, wie diese Räume durch filmische Mittel ästhetisch konstruiert werden und ob es sich bei diesen Werken um eine neue Form des ‚kritischen Heimatfilms‘ handelt
Conduits of the Kremlin’s Informational Influence Abroad? How German-Language Alternative Media Outlets Are Connected to Russia’s Ruling Elites
No full textExtant research on alternative media in Western democracies has focused on scrutinizing their content, organization, production, and audiences. However, the extent to which alternative outlets are linked to powerful foreign actors has not yet been analyzed, despite the fact that a plethora of outlets have openly sided with Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, spreading the Kremlin’s propagandistic narratives. To fill this gap, this study adopts a case study approach. It selects Germany as a revelatory case of a key target country of Russia’s foreign influence efforts, raising the question of how and to what extent German-language alternative media outlets are connected to Russia’s ruling elites. Grounded in qualitative analysis of a wide range of documents, this study proposes a categorization that divides the connections into three different types: organizational, media, and personal connections. Subsequently, it is demonstrated that half of the analyzed German-language alternative media outlets maintain at least one of these three types of connections to the Kremlin. These findings contribute to our knowledge of alternative media, as well as Russia’s overt and covert foreign influence operations, the so-called “active measures.” They also highlight the need for more transparency in alternative media landscapes in democratic contexts across the globe
Vision based process monitoring in wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM)
No full textA stable welding process is crucial to obtain high quality parts in wire arc additive manufacturing. The complexity of the process makes it inherently unstable, which can cause various defects, resulting in poor geometric accuracy and material properties. This demands for in-process monitoring and control mechanisms to industrialize the technology. In this work, process monitoring algorithms based on welding camera image analysis are presented. A neural network for semantic segmentation of the welding wire is used to monitor the working distance as well as the horizontal position of the wire during welding and classic image processing techniques are applied to capture spatter formation. Using these algorithms, the process stability is evaluated in real time and the analysis results enable the direction independent closed-loop-control of the manufacturing process. This significantly improves geometric fidelity as well as mechanical properties of the fabricated part and allows the automated production of parts with complex deposition paths including weld bead crossings, curvatures and overhang structures
Energizing the inter-regional cooperation and energy governance : an exploration of the Africa-EU energy partnership
No full textThe emergence of change in the global energy governance structure is precipitated by the shift in global energy technology. The shift from carbon-intense energy to cleaner sources surpasses technological discontinuation. The inter-regional, regional, and sub-regional grouping emerged in global energy governance to support governance capabilities across countries. This research seeks to investigate the inter-regional partnership between Africa and the European Union initiated to facilitate energy decision-making. This study adopts thematic analysis to explore literature and reports on the Africa-EU partnership to understand its impact on the future of the African energy sector. This research argues using a neo-liberal lens that the limited state capacity in energy governance may necessitate inter-regional partnerships to aid energy sector development in Africa. The study concludes that considering Africa's potential in renewable energy sources such as solar irradiation and the limited energy access in the Sub-Saharan region, intervention of external capabilities through technological and financial aids may stimulate the utilization of such potential