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The polit-economic situation in germany : chances for changes in resource and energy economics
(2002)
Contents: Regional Management, Land Use and Energy Production -Biophysical View -First Hypothesis -International and Interregional Cooperation -Second Hypothesis -Partnership with Nature Sustainability and the Agricultural Sector -Traditional Farming -Mono-cultural Bio-industry -Liquid Manure Problems -Clean Drinking Water -Integrated Agro-industrial System -Ecological Farming -Ecotones and Bio-manipulation Regional Economic and Agricultural Policy -New Roles for the Agricultural Sector
This master’s thesis examined the internet content regulation in Germany from a perspective of Public-Private Partnerships. In the European Union, there has been a latest trend of initiatives aiming for combating illegal content online under the self-regulatory regime. Yet, concerns of this trend were that transparency cannot be ensured properly to safeguard the freedom of expression, and that the private intermediaries are not able to carry out effective regulation under the non-binding regulatory process. Due to these issues, Germany has legislated the Network Enforcement Act in 2017. This thesis used Mixed Methods within a Case Study Research, in order to identify the PPP type of the NetzDG, and to understand its link on transparency and effectiveness, as well as the relationship of these two dimensions. By taking an Exploratory Sequential Design, the German internet content regulation under the NetzDG was explored to understand its co-regulatory regime and to develop an instrument to measure the aspects of transparency and effectiveness. Then, the three big social media platforms, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, were examined according to the developed indicators. This thesis concluded as follow: First, the enactment of the NetzDG brought the shift of the regulatory paradigm from the self-regulatory to the co-regulatory. Yet, the actor-inclusive institutional arrangement of the NetzDG did not successfully result in the actual inclusion of actors in decision-making, but only improved the result transparency in the disclosure of take-down actions. Second, the level of effective regulation was not consistent across the three social media platforms under this regime. Despite these limitations, this study showed that the transparency and the effectiveness of the social media platforms’ implementation gradually improved together, instead of having a negative correlation to one another.
Of Rawls's two principles of justice only the second has received attention from economists. The second principle is concerned with the social and economic conditions in a just society. The first principle, however, has largely been neglected. It claims, that all people in society should have equal basic liberties. In this paper Rawls's first principle is characterised in a freedom of choice framework. The analysis reveals conceptual problems of the Rawlsian approach to justice.
Between 2002 and 2006 the Colombian government of Álvaro Uribe counted with great international support to hand a demobilization process of right-wing paramilitary groups, along with the implementation of transitional justice policies such as penal prosecutions and the creation of a National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (NCRR) to address justice, truth and reparation for victims of paramilitary violence. The demobilization process began when in 2002 the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC) agreed to participate in a government-sponsored demobilization process. Paramilitary groups were responsible for the vast majority of human rights violations for a period of over 30 years. The government designed a special legal framework that envisaged great leniency for paramilitaries who committed serious crimes and reparations for victims of paramilitary violence. More than 30,000 paramilitaries have demobilized under this process between January 2003 and August 2006. Law 975, also known as the “Justice and Peace Law”, and Decree 128 have served as the legal framework for the demobilization and prosecutions of paramilitaries. It has offered the prospect of reduced sentences to demobilized paramilitaries who committed crimes against humanity in exchange for full confessions of crimes, restitution for illegally obtained assets, the release of child soldiers, the release of kidnapped victims and has also provided reparations for victims of paramilitary violence. The Colombian demobilization process presents an atypical case of transitional justice. Many observers have even questioned whether Colombia can be considered a case of transitional justice. Transitional justice measures are often taken up after the change of an authoritarian regime or at a post-conflict stage. However, the particularity of the Colombian case is that transitional justice policies were introduced while the conflict still raged. In this sense, the Colombian case expresses one of the key elements to be addressed which is the tension between offering incentives to perpetrators to disarm and demobilize to prevent future crimes and providing an adequate response to the human rights violations perpetrated throughout the course of an internal conflict. In particular, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes require a fine balance between the immunity guarantees offered to ex-combatants and the sought of accountability for their crimes. International law provides the legal framework defining the rights to justice, truth and reparations for victims and the corresponding obligations of the State, but the peace negotiations and conflicted political structures do not always allow for the fulfillment of those rights. Thus, the aim of this article is to analyze what kind of transition may be occurring in Colombia by focusing on the role that transitional justice mechanisms may play in political negotiations between the Colombian government and paramilitary groups. In particular, it seeks to address to what extent such processes contribute to or hinder the achievement of the balance between peacebuilding and accountability, and thus facilitate a real transitional process.
Like in all countries in transition, the tax as well as the transfer system have been under serious reform pressures. The socialistic systems were not able to fulfill the necessary functions in providing a certain degree of redistribution and social security, which are inevitable for social oriented market economies. Increasing income and wage differentiation is one of the most important prerequisites for a market oriented ability to pay tax system. But in the transformation period, numerous quasi-legal or even illegal property transactions have taken place, thus leading to wealth concentrations on the one hand while as consequence of the bankruptcy of socialism, enormous poverty problems have arisen on the other. For the political acceptance of the transformation process it is of utmost importance that an efficient and fair tax system is implemented and social security is organised by the state on a level which secures at least the physical minimum of subsistence or – if economically possible – even a social-cultural minimum. Whether the state should go further in providing compulsory social insurance systems has been a hotly debated topic for decades even in the welfare and social states of the Western type. Whereas the basic security systems have to be financed by general tax revenue, for a compulsory social insurance system – due to the insurance character – special earmarked social security contribution are held necessary. Both public goods and services as well as at least basic security have to be financed by total tax revenue. For the acceptance and fairness of the whole system the total redistributive effect of both sides of the budget – the tax system as well as the expenditure system – are decisive. In this paper we will concentrate on the revenue side, e.g. on the taxes as well as on the social security contributions. Adam Smith had already formulated some very simple tax norms which have been transformed in modern tax theory. The equivalence as well as the ability-topay principle are basic yardsticks for every tax system in a democratic oriented market system, not to forget tax fairness. In the historical development process equity-oriented measures have often produced an enormous complexity of the single taxes as well as of the whole tax system. Therefore, reconsidering the Smithian principles of simplicity and of minimum compliance costs for the tax payer would even press many Western European tax systems to undergo serious reform processes which often are delayed because of intense interest group influence. Hence, a modern tax system is a simple one which consists only of a few single taxes which are easy to administer. Such a system consists of two main taxes, the income and the value added tax. Consequently in all countries of transition both taxes have been implemented, while the implementation was fostered by the fact that both also constitute the typical components of the EU member states systems. Therefore such a harmonising tax reform is the most important prerequisite to become a membership candidate. Bulgaria also tried to follow this general pattern in reforming the income tax system starting in 1992 and replacing the old socialistic turnover tax and excise duty system by the value added tax (VAT) in 1994. Especially with regard to the income tax system the demand for simplicity has not been met yet. Complex rules to define the tax base as well as a steeply progressive tax schedule have led to behavioral adaptations which are even strengthened by the effects of a high social contribution burden which is predominantly laid on the employers. In the following some concise descriptions of the tax and social contribution system are given; the paper closes with a summary, in which the impacts of the system are evaluated and some political recommendations for further reforms are presented.
Contents: Artem Polyvanny, Sergey Smirnow, and Mathias Weske The Triconnected Abstraction of Process Models 1 Introduction 2 Business Process Model Abstraction 3 Preliminaries 4 Triconnected Decomposition 4.1 Basic Approach for Process Component Discovery 4.2 SPQR-Tree Decomposition 4.3 SPQR-Tree Fragments in the Context of Process Models 5 Triconnected Abstraction 5.1 Abstraction Rules 5.2 Abstraction Algorithm 6 Related Work and Conclusions
“The UN Peacebuilding Commission – Lessons from Sierra Leone” by political scientist Andrea Iro is an assessment of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) and the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) by analysing their performance over the last two years in Sierra Leone, one of the first PBC focus countries. The paper explores the key question of how the PBC/PBF’s mandate has been translated into operational practice in the field. It concludes that though the overall impact has been mainly positive and welcomed by the country, translating the general mandate into concrete activities remains a real challenge at the country level.
This volume offers new arguments and perspectives in the ongoing debate about the optimal analysis of verb movement, mainly, but not exclusively, in German. Fanselow and Meinunger deal with verb second (V2) movement in German main clauses. Fanselow argues that head movement of the substitution type follows the standard minimalist conceptions of Merge and Move and is therefore not subject to the same objections as head movement as head adjunction which violates Chomsky's minimalist extension condition, operates countercyclically, and fails to let the moved head c-command its trace. Fanselow argues for V2 movement as head movement of the substitution type. Meinunger discusses a restriction on V2 movement imposed by phrases like "mehr als" ('more than'), as in "Der Wert hat sich weit mehr als verdreifacht" ('the value has far more than tripled') where V2 movement is ruled out (cf. *"Der Wert verdreifachte sich mehr als"). Meinunger claims that this restriction is best analysed in phonological terms: the preposition/complementiser "als" acts as a prefixal clitic to its host, the finite verb, which therefore may not move without it. With respect to the V2 debate, Meinunger argues for an interface perspective. He shows that V2 is restricted from both the conceptual and the phonological interface. Vogel, finally, discusses the syntax of clause-final verbal complexes and their dialectal variation in German. He compares three different syntactic analyses, a minimalist head movement analysis, a minimalist XP movement analysis, and an Optimality theoretic PF movement analysis. The three accounts are evaluated relative to the additional assumptions they have to make, the complications they face and how they fit the observations. Vogel argues in favour of the phonologically oriented OT analysis because of its ability to create a direct link between the coming about of a particular word order pattern and its basically phonological trigger. Each of the three papers recognises the relevance of surface forms in the analysis of German verb movement. They differ, however in the extent to which phonological aspects take part in the explanations they offer.
Time series analysis
(2004)
This paper studies the persistence of daily returns of 21 German stocks from 1960 to 2008. We apply a widely used test based upon the modified R/S-Method by Lo [1991]. As an extension to Lux [1996] and Carbone et al. [2004] and in analogy to moving average or moving volatility, the statistics is calculated for moving windows of length 4, 8, and 16 years for every time series. Periods of persistence or long memory in returns can be found in some but not all time series. Robustness of results is verified by investigating stationarity and short memory effects.
In this study we examine the tonal organization of a series of recordings of liturgical chants, sung in 1966 by the Georgian master singer Artem Erkomaishvili. This dataset is the oldest corpus of Georgian chants from which the time synchronous F0-trajectories for all three voices have been reliably determined (Müller et al. 2017). It is therefore of outstanding importance for the understanding of the tuning principles of traditional Georgian vocal music.
The aim of the present study is to use various computational methods to analyze what these recordings can contribute to the ongoing scientific dispute about traditional Georgian tuning systems. Starting point for the present analysis is the re-release of the original audio data together with estimated fundamental frequency (F0) trajectories for each of the three voices, beat annotations, and digital scores (Rosenzweig et al. 2020). We present synoptic models for the pitch and the harmonic interval distributions, which are the first of such models for which the complete Erkomaishvili dataset was used. We show that these distributions can be very compactly be expressed as Gaussian mixture models, anchored on discrete sets of pitch or interval values for the pitch and interval distributions, respectively. As part of our study we demonstrate that these pitch values, which we refer to as scale pitches, and which are determined as the mean values of the Gaussian mixture elements, define the scale degrees of the melodic sound scales which build the skeleton of Artem Erkomaishvili’s intonation. The observation of consistent pitch bending of notes in melodic phrases, which appear in identical form in a group of chants, as well as the observation of harmonically driven intonation adjustments, which are clearly documented for all pure harmonic intervals, demonstrate that Artem Erkomaishvili intentionally deviates from the scale pitch skeleton quite freely. As a central result of our study, we proof that this melodic freedom is always constrained by the attracting influence of the scale pitches. Deviations of the F0-values of individual note events from the scale pitches at one instance of time are compensated for in the subsequent melodic steps. This suggests a deviation-compensation mechanism at the core of Artem Erkomaishvili’s melody generation, which clearly honors the scales but still allows for a large degree of melodic flexibility. This model, which summarizes all partial aspects of our analysis, is consistent with the melodic scale models derived from the observed pitch distributions, as well as with the melodic and harmonic interval distributions. In addition to the tangible results of our work, we believe that our work has general implications for the determination of tuning models from audio data, in particular for non-tempered music.
Scrollytellings are an innovative form of web content. Combining the benefits of books, images, movies, and video games, they are a tool to tell compelling stories and provide excellent learning opportunities. Due to their multi-modality, creating high-quality scrollytellings is not an easy task. Different professions, such as content designers, graphics designers, and developers, need to collaborate to get the best out of the possibilities the scrollytelling format provides. Collaboration unlocks great potential. However, content designers cannot create scrollytellings directly and always need to consult with developers to implement their vision. This can result in misunderstandings. Often, the resulting scrollytelling will not match the designer’s vision sufficiently, causing unnecessary iterations. Our project partner Typeshift specializes in the creation of individualized scrollytellings for their clients. Examined existing solutions for authoring interactive content are not optimally suited for creating highly customized scrollytellings while still being able to manipulate all their elements programmatically. Based on their experience and expertise, we developed an editor to author scrollytellings in the lively.next live-programming environment. In this environment, a graphical user interface for content design is combined with powerful possibilities for programming behavior with the morphic system. The editor allows content designers to take on large parts of the creation process of scrollytellings on their own, such as creating the visible elements, animating content, and fine-tuning the scrollytelling. Hence, developers can focus on interactive elements such as simulations and games. Together with Typeshift, we evaluated the tool by recreating an existing scrollytelling and identified possible future enhancements. Our editor streamlines the creation process of scrollytellings. Content designers and developers can now both work on the same scrollytelling. Due to the editor inside of the lively.next environment, they can both work with a set of tools familiar to them and their traits. Thus, we mitigate unnecessary iterations and misunderstandings by enabling content designers to realize large parts of their vision of a scrollytelling on their own. Developers can add advanced and individual behavior. Thus, developers and content designers benefit from a clearer distribution of tasks while keeping the benefits of collaboration.
Touring Katutura!
(2016)
Guided sightseeing tours of the former township of Katutura have been offered in Windhoek since the mid-1990s. City tourism in the Namibian capital had thus become, at quite an early point in time, part of the trend towards utilising poor urban areas for purposes of tourism – a trend that set in at the beginning of the same decade. Frequently referred to as “slum tourism” or “poverty tourism”, the phenomenon of guided tours around places of poverty has not only been causing some media sensation and much public outrage since its emergence; in the past few years, it has developed into a vital field of scientific research, too. “Global Slumming” provides the grounds for a rethinking of the relationship between poverty and tourism in world society.
This book is the outcome of a study project of the Institute of Geography at the School of Cultural Studies and Social Science of the University of Osnabrueck, Germany. It represents the first empirical case study on township tourism in Namibia. It focuses on four aspects:
1. Emergence, development and (market) structure of township tourism in Windhoek
2. Expectations/imaginations, representations as well as perceptions of the township and its inhabitants from the tourist’s perspective
3. Perception and assessment of township tourism from the residents’ perspective
4. Local economic effects and the poverty-alleviating impact of township tourism
The aim is to make an empirical contribution to the discussion around the tourism-poverty nexus and to an understanding of the global phenomenon of urban poverty tourism.
The correctness of model transformations is a crucial element for the model-driven engineering of high quality software. A prerequisite to verify model transformations at the level of the model transformation specification is that an unambiguous formal semantics exists and that the employed implementation of the model transformation language adheres to this semantics. However, for existing relational model transformation approaches it is usually not really clear under which constraints particular implementations are really conform to the formal semantics. In this paper, we will bridge this gap for the formal semantics of triple graph grammars (TGG) and an existing efficient implementation. Whereas the formal semantics assumes backtracking and ignores non-determinism, practical implementations do not support backtracking, require rule sets that ensure determinism, and include further optimizations. Therefore, we capture how the considered TGG implementation realizes the transformation by means of operational rules, define required criteria and show conformance to the formal semantics if these criteria are fulfilled. We further outline how static analysis can be employed to guarantee these criteria.
Version control is a widely used practice among software developers. It reduces the risk of changing their software and allows them to manage different configurations and to collaborate with others more efficiently. This is amplified by code sharing platforms such as GitHub or Bitbucket. Most version control systems track files (e.g., Git, Mercurial, and Subversion do), but some programming environments do not operate on files, but on objects instead (many Smalltalk implementations do). Users of such environments want to use version control for their objects anyway. Specialized version control systems, such as the ones available for Smalltalk systems (e.g., ENVY/Developer and Monticello), focus on a small subset of objects that can be versioned. Most of these systems concentrate on the tracking of methods, classes, and configurations of these. Other user-defined and user-built objects are either not eligible for version control at all, tracking them involves complicated workarounds, or a fixed, domain-unspecific serialization format is used that does not equally suit all kinds of objects. Moreover, these version control systems that are specific to a programming environment require their own code sharing platforms; popular, well-established platforms for file-based version control systems cannot be used or adapter solutions need to be implemented and maintained.
To improve the situation for version control of arbitrary objects, a framework for tracking, converting, and storing of objects is presented in this report. It allows editions of objects to be stored in an exchangeable, existing backend version control system. The platforms of the backend version control system can thus be reused. Users and objects have control over how objects are captured for the purpose of version control. Domain-specific requirements can be implemented. The storage format (i.e. the file format, when file-based backend version control systems are used) can also vary from one object to another. Different editions of objects can be compared and sets of changes can be applied to graphs of objects. A generic way for capturing and restoring that supports most kinds of objects is described. It models each object as a collection of slots. Thus, users can begin to track their objects without first having to implement version control supplements for their own kinds of objects. The proposed architecture is evaluated using a prototype implementation that can be used to track objects in Squeak/Smalltalk with Git. The prototype improves the suboptimal standing of user objects with respect to version control described above and also simplifies some version control tasks for classes and methods as well. It also raises new problems, which are discussed in this report as well.
Since the end of the Apartheid international tourism in South Africa has increasingly gained importance for the national economy. The centre of this PKS issue’s attention is a particular form of tourism: Township tourism, i.e. guided tours to the residential areas of the black population. About 300,000 tourists per year visit the townships of Cape Town. The tours are also called Cultural, Social, or Reality Tours. The different aspects of township tourism in Cape Town were subject of a geographic field study, which was undertaken during a student research project of Potsdam University in 2007. The text at hand presents the empirical results of the field study, and demonstrates how townships are constructed as spaces of tourism.
When realizing a programming language as VM, implementing behavior as part of the VM, as primitive, usually results in reduced execution times. But supporting and developing primitive functions requires more effort than maintaining and using code in the hosted language since debugging is harder, and the turn-around times for VM parts are higher. Furthermore, source artifacts of primitive functions are seldom reused in new implementations of the same language. And if they are reused, the existing API usually is emulated, reducing the performance gains. Because of recent results in tracing dynamic compilation, the trade-off between performance and ease of implementation, reuse, and changeability might now be decided adversely.
In this work, we investigate the trade-offs when creating primitives, and in particular how large a difference remains between primitive and hosted function run times in VMs with tracing just-in-time compiler. To that end, we implemented the algorithmic primitive BitBlt three times for RSqueak/VM. RSqueak/VM is a Smalltalk VM utilizing the PyPy RPython toolchain. We compare primitive implementations in C, RPython, and Smalltalk, showing that due to the tracing just-in-time compiler, the performance gap has lessened by one magnitude to one magnitude.
Transitional Justice
(2022)
This publication deals with the topic of transitional justice. In six case studies, the authors link theoretical and practical implications in order to develop some innovative approaches. Their proposals might help to deal more effectively with the transition of societies, legal orders and political systems.
Young academics from various backgrounds provide fresh insights and demonstrate the relevance of the topic. The chapters analyse transitions and conflicts in Sierra Leone, Argentina, Nicaragua, Nepal, and South Sudan as well as Germany’s colonial genocide in Namibia. Thus, the book provides the reader with new insights and contributes to the ongoing debate about transitional justice.