Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (41)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (41) (remove)
Year of publication
Document Type
- Working Paper (41) (remove)
Language
- English (41) (remove)
Keywords
- Datennetz (4)
- Selbstorganisation (3)
- Staat (3)
- Begrenzte Staatlichkeit (2)
- China (2)
- Crowdsourcing (2)
- Erneuerbare Energien (2)
- European Union (2)
- QoE (2)
- Quality of Experience (2)
Institute
- Institut für Informatik (14)
- Institut für Politikwissenschaft und Soziologie (11)
- Volkswirtschaftliches Institut (6)
- Institut für Kulturwissenschaften Ost- und Südasiens (3)
- Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät (3)
- Betriebswirtschaftliches Institut (2)
- Institut für Evangelische Theologie und Religionspädagogik (2)
- Fakultät für Humanwissenschaften (Philos., Psycho., Erziehungs- u. Gesell.-Wissensch.) (1)
- Graduate School of Law, Economics, and Society (1)
- Institut Mensch - Computer - Medien (1)
Sonstige beteiligte Institutionen
- DFG Forschungsgruppe 2757 / Lokale Selbstregelungen im Kontext schwacher Staatlichkeit in Antike und Moderne (LoSAM) (2)
- Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1)
- Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (1)
- Institut für Evangelische Theologie und Religionspädagogik (1)
- University of Applied Sciences Potsdam (1)
- University of Santa Cruz do Sul, Brazil (1)
- Universität Bayreuth (1)
- Universität Leipzig (1)
We explore a cosmology where the Big Bang singularity is replaced by a condensation event of interacting strings. We study the transition from an uncontrolled, chaotic soup (“before”) to a clearly interacting “real world”. Cosmological inflation scenarios do not fit current observations and are avoided. Instead, long-range interactions inside this crystallization event limit growth and crystal symmetries ensure the same laws of nature and basic symmetries over our domain. Tiny mis-arrangements present nuclei of superclusters and galaxies and crystal structure leads to the arrangement of dark (halo regions) and normal matter (galaxy nuclei) so convenient for galaxy formation. Crystals come and go, allowing an evolutionary cosmology where entropic forces from the quantum soup “outside” of the crystal try to dissolve it. These would correspond to dark energy and leads to a big rip scenario in 70 Gy. Preference of crystals with optimal growth and most condensation nuclei for the next generation of crystals may select for multiple self-organizing processes within the crystal, explaining “fine-tuning” of the local “laws of nature” (the symmetry relations formed within the crystal, its “unit cell”) to be particular favorable for self-organizing processes including life or even conscious observers in our universe.
Independent of cosmology, a crystallization event may explain quantum-decoherence in general: The fact, that in our macroscopic everyday world we only see one reality. This contrasts strongly with the quantum world where you have coherence, a superposition of all quantum states. We suggest that a “real world” (so our everyday macroscopic world) happens only in our domain, i.e. inside a crystal. “Outside” of our domain and our observable universe there is the quantum soup of boiling quantum foam and superposition of all possibilities. In our crystallized world the vacuum no longer boils but is cooled down by the crystallization event and hence is 10**20 smaller, exactly as observed in our everyday world. As we live in a “solid” state, within a crystal, the different quanta which build our world have all their different states nicely separated. This theory postulates there are only n quanta and m states available for them (there is no Everett-like ever splitting multiverse after each decision). In the solid state we live in, there is decoherence, the states are nicely separated. The arrow of entropy for each edge of the crystal forms one fate, one worldline or clear development of a world, while the layers of the crystal are different system states.
Some mathematical leads from loop quantum gravity point to required interactions and potentials. A complete mathematical treatment of this unified theory is far too demanding currently. Interaction potentials for strings or membranes of any dimension allow a solid state of quanta, so allowing decoherence in our observed world are challenging to calculate. However, if we introduce here the heuristic that any type of physical interaction of strings corresponds just to a type of calculation, there is already since 1898 the Hurwitz theorem showing that then only 1D, 2D, 4D and 8D (octonions) allow complex or hypercomplex number calculations. No other hypercomplex numbers and hence dimensions or symmetries are possible to allow calculations without yielding divisions by zero. However, the richest solution allowed by the Hurwitz theorem, octonions, is actually the observed symmetry of our universe, E8.
This document presents a networking latency measurement setup that focuses on affordability and universal applicability, and can provide sub-microsecond accuracy. It explains the prerequisites, hardware choices, and considerations to respect during measurement. In addition, it discusses the necessity for exhaustive latency measurements when dealing with high availability and low latency requirements. Preliminary results show that the accuracy is within ±0.02 μs when used with the Intel I350-T2 network adapter.
This paper examines the potential reinforcement of motivated beliefs when individuals with identical biases communicate. We propose a controlled online experiment that allows to manipulate belief biases and the communication environment. We find that communication, even among like-minded individuals, diminishes motivated beliefs if it takes place in an environment without previously declared external opinions. In the presence of external plural opinions, however, communication does not reduce but rather aggravates motivated beliefs. Our results indicate a potential drawback of the plurality of opinions - it may create communication environments wherein motivated beliefs not only persist but also become contagious within social networks.
For decades autonomy has been utilised as a concept in various social sciences, like sociology, political science, law and philosophy. Certain concepts of autonomy have always reflected the needs of the respective disciplines that made use of the term, but also ever infringed on the interpretation of autonomy in other disciplines. Most notably, conceptualisations of international and constitutional law have found their way into bordering sciences, like political science. The result: a legal positivist view prevailing in the conceptualisations of autonomy within political and administrative sciences. As this working paper points out, this perspective does not do justice to the complex phenomenon autonomy is or may be in social and political reality. Hence, the paper argues for a differentiated concept of autonomy, splitting it into autonomy claims, actors, process, rights and powers, regimes, and their institutions. The empirical world suggests a salience of formally and informally lived types of autonomy, especially in Latin America, due to the region’s indigenous population often living outside of, or within the limited reach of the state. Therefore, the paper aims to incorporate the dimension of informality – lacking in previous legal positivist approaches. Autonomy regimes could be entrenched in international, constitutional, or secondary law, or they could be tolerated by the state or seized by autonomy claimants by force. From a theoretical or conceptual perspective, the dimension of (in)formality facilitates the incorporation of autonomy into the discussion on governance and government, mostly on the local or regional level. Thus, the paper establishes autonomy regimes as a concept located at the verges of (self-)government and (self-)governance.
The emerging serverless computing may meet Edge Cloud in a beneficial manner as the two offer flexibility and dynamicity in optimizing finite hardware resources. However, the lack of proper study of a joint platform leaves a gap in literature about consumption and performance of such integration. To this end, this paper identifies the key questions and proposes a methodology to answer them.
The Vacaciones en Paz programme (VeP) started in 1979 shortly after Morocco illegally occupied Western Sahara, which since 1975 has been a disputed territory pending a referendum for self-determination. The programme consists of Sahrawi children being hosted during summer by Spanish families who try to raise awareness for the Sahrawi cause and temporarily alleviate the children’s living conditions. Meanwhile, approximately 170,000 Sahrawi refugees live in camps near Tindouf (Algeria) heavily dependent on humanitarian aid for their survival.
This study aimed to determine the impact of the VeP programme on the promotion of children’s rights based on the perspective of Sahrawi children. Research has shown that it serves as a temporary platform to implement some of those rights. This qualitative study is based on a literature review of the principles of the VeP programme, alongside a thematic analysis of the field data provided by Sahrawi children and teenagers. Analysis of the VeP programme demonstrated that the Convention of the Rights of the Child is not mentioned in its discourse. Notwithstanding, the results indicate an impact on the promotion of Sahrawi children’s rights. On this basis, it is recommended to implement a children’s rights-based discourse within the principles of the VeP programme, since the theoretical knowledge of their rights may be a key factor for strategic empowerment of Sahrawi children and teenagers in their representation of the Sahrawi cause.
In recent years several community testbeds as well as participatory sensing platforms have successfully established themselves to provide open data to everyone interested. Each of them with a specific goal in mind, ranging from collecting radio coverage data up to environmental and radiation data. Such data can be used by the community in their decision making, whether to subscribe to a specific mobile phone service that provides good coverage in an area or in finding a sunny and warm region for the summer holidays.
However, the existing platforms are usually limiting themselves to directly measurable network QoS. If such a crowdsourced data set provides more in-depth derived measures, this would enable an even better decision making. A community-driven crowdsensing platform that derives spatial application-layer user experience from resource-friendly bandwidth estimates would be such a case, video streaming services come to mind as a prime example. In this paper we present a concept for such a system based on an initial prototype that eases the collection of data necessary to determine mobile-specific QoE at large scale. In addition we reason why the simple quality metric proposed here can hold its own.
Data as the new driver for growth? European and Chinese perspectives on the new factor of production
(2021)
Amidst an emerging international systemic competition between China and the Western world, China’s sustained high economic growth rates, technological innovations and successful control of the corona pandemic have raised doubts over the West’s systemic capabilities. In this context, data resources and regimes play an increasing role.
This research note looks at data as present and future driver of innovation and economic growth in more detail. It compares the Chinese and the European perspective on data as well as their respective (planned) policy measures in order to draw tentative conclusions about their different approaches' implications.
This work proposes a novel approach to disperse dense transmission intervals and reduce bursty traffic patterns without the need for centralized control. Furthermore, by keeping the mechanism as close to the Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) standard as possible the suggested mechanism can be deployed within existing networks and can even be co-deployed with other devices.
Does Gender Matter for the Entrepreneurship Fairy Tale? An Analysis of Chinese Unicorn Start-ups
(2021)
Start-up ecosystems around the world have created a large number of successful and innovative unicorn companies in recent years. Our research note focuses on the case of China and offers a global comparative perspective on the current status of Chinese unicorn start-ups and their founding structure. We identify a predominantly male unicorn founding structure and illustrate a worrying decline of female entrepreneurship in China.
The analysis of the 2014 elections to Lok Sabha in India describes the results and their enormous extent with a differentiate regard to social group voting. Considering the election campaign’s performativity and issues of contestation the landslide victory of BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) will be illuminated. Through a closer examination of party coalitions, the electoral system, and the leadership factor the BJP’s clear victory over Congress Party will be explained. Besides the opportunity for significant economic and political reforms, the author conjectures a potential for dangerous tendencies to Indian democracy owing to such a resourceful government, which are compared with the government constraints, especially by federal arrangements.
The second part of the article argues that civil society in India is composed of several layers that are distinct and overlap at the same time. Five versions of the same are significant: 1) institutions avowing secular nationalism that upholds inclusive citizenship, equality of treatment, and non-discrimination; 2) a phalanx of institutions inspired by the Gandhian idea of swaraj that are deeply vary of the state and its apparatus and envisage a life of freedom constituted around self-determining associations built from below; 3) such orientations and impulses which stress on religiously inspired values and traditions with its archetypal representation in Hindu nationalism; 4) those who highlight difference and diversity as central to Indian society and stress this fact as foundational to Indian nationalism; 5) and those who are in favour of a right-based approach to citizenship and rule of law in India. Alluding to these distinctive domains constitutive of civil society in India the paper argues that the success of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the coalition that it led, in the General elections of 2014 rested on its ability in tapping resources from different layers of civil society while making institutions woven around Hindu identity as its anchor.
India's economic rise since the 1990s has been followed by a more prominent global role for the country. Despite economic setbacks in recent years and huge domestic challenges like poverty, caste issues, and gender inequality, India today is almost universally characterised as an “emerging power”. At the same time, the country continues to show an enormous diversity. Thus, exploring emerging India can surely not be confined to economic analysis only. Instead, it is vital to take current developments in domestic and international politics, society, culture, religion, and political thinking into consideration as well. Following an interdisciplinary approach, contributions from Political Science, International Relations, Indology, Political Theory, and Economics are fundamental in order to grasp the country's diversity. This collection assembles eight essays which, individually, serve as working papers reflecting the authors' various research focuses, while collectively composing a multifaceted and multidis-ciplinary picture of emerging India. It thereby reflects the approach the University of Würz-burg’s Centre for Modern India and the Institute for Political Science and Sociology’s India Forum are committed to: bringing together different academic disciplines in order to generate nuanced insights into India’s manifold diversity.
In this paper the relationship between corporate sustainability performance and corporate financial performance is researched. It is hypothesized that a better sustainability performance of firms leads to financial success in terms of increased EBIT and Market Capitalization. Furthermore 17 environmental activities and their assumed impact on financial benefits are analyzed for ten different industry sectors. The data sample for this research paper has been taken from Thomson Reuters Database ASSET4 and includes 3115 firms. The results show that there is a positive and non-linear link between the sustainability performance and the financial performance of firms, intending that financially more successful firms can gain greater benefits from being sustainable than less successful firms do. Furthermore sustainable environmental activities have been identified for different industry sectors, which indicate to lead to an increase of the financial performance.
We attempt to identify sequences of signaling dialogs, to strengthen our understanding of the signaling behavior of IoT devices by examining a dataset containing over 270.000 distinct IoT devices whose signaling traffic has been observed over a 31-day period in a 2G network [4]. We propose a set of rules that allows the assembly of signaling dialogs into so-called sessions in order to identify common patterns and lay the foundation for future research in the areas of traffic modeling and anomaly detection.
Women are a key to development, and gender is crucial to development policies. However, Western development organisations often promote gender equality as something valued in the West, or even as a new idea altogether, rather than taking the time to research how it was rooted in African societies. The same holds true for many Africans who frequently argue that gender equality is a Western idea. This paper intents to show that gender equality or complementarity is not an altogether new phenomenon to African societies, but that it existed in pre-colonial Africa. Raising awareness on this within African societies can help to put in place strategies for gender equality and facilitate change from within.
We propose that false beliefs about own current economic status are an important factor for explaining populist attitudes. Eliciting subjects’ receptiveness to rightwing populism and their perceived relative income positions in a representative survey of German households, we find that people with pessimistic beliefs about their income position are more attuned to populist statements. Key to understanding the misperception-populism relationship are strong gender differences in the mechanism: men are much more likely to channel their discontent into affection for populist ideas. A simple information provision does neither sustainably reduce misperception nor curb populism.
The nucleus of statehood is situated at the local level: in the village, the neighborhood, the city district. This is where a community, beyond the level of the family, first develops collective rules that are intended to ensure its continued existence. But usually this is not the only level of governance at play. Above it, there are supralocal formations of power, varying in scope from regional networks to empires, which supplement the local orders or compete with them. The premise of this Research Unit is that local forms of self-governance are especially heterogeneous and prominent, wherever supralocal statehood exists in the mode of weak permeation. The central question of our approach is how local forms of self-governance work in this context. We will examine the relations to the state level as well as to other local groups as they develop over time; the scope and spatial contingency of forms of self-governance; their legitimization and the interdependency with the organization and collective identity of those groups which carry them out; finally, we will turn our attention to the significance of self-governance for the configuration of weak statehood. The empirical focus will be at the local level, which has so far been largely neglected in the research on governance beyond the state. In order to achieve this, we will work with case studies that are structured by categories and situated in geographical areas and time periods that lie outside of modern Europe with its particular development of statehood since the Late Middle Ages: in Antiquity, and in the Global South of the present. By incorporating these different time frames, we hope to contribute to overcoming the dichotomy between the modern and pre-modern era, which is often given canonical status. Our goal is to create a comparative analysis of different configurations of order as well as the development of a typology of patterns of local governance. The structure of the empirical comparison itself promises methodological insights, since it will entail recognizing, dealing with, and overcoming disciplinary limitations. Starting with the identification of typical patterns and processes, we hope to gain a better grasp of the mechanisms by which local configurations of order succeed, while at the same time advancing the theoretical debate. This will allow us to make an interdisciplinary contribution to the understanding of fundamental elements of statehood and local governance that are of central importance, especially in the context of weak statehood. The insights we hope to gain by adopting this historical perspective will contribute to understanding a present that is not based exclusively on its own, seemingly completely new preconditions, and will thus significantly sharpen the political analysis of various forms of governance.
Civil society organizations only started to be considered a sector in the 1970s in the United States. Amitai Etzioni pioneered the use of the expression third sector, which became common in academic and political literature. However, in the United States, the non-profit sector concept gradually became more robust and was spread internationally based on the studies conducted by Lester Salomon and associated researchers.
The theory built on the concept of the non-profit sector is strongly related to the North American cultural context, marked by the tradition of philanthropy and volunteerism, but with little importance given to associative and cooperative organizations.
The non-profit sector is implicitly or explicitly conceived as part of the private sphere. In contrast, theoretical currents such as liberal communitarianism, the theories of cooperation, common goods, social capital, European social economy, and the Latin American solidarity economy highlight the primacy of cooperation in solving collective problems. These theories underpin the associative approach of the third sector and link it to the community, not to the market.
This paper argues that the associative approach is more appropriate for international studies on the third sector and the relevance of self-organization. The third sector, i.e., the set of organizations created and maintained by civil society, is the inheritor of the millennial associative tradition, including both entities whose values are compatible with the common good and those with particularistic values, authoritarian and contrary to human rights. The third sector is not entirely virtuous, but it is a vital sector for solving great human problems.
LoRaWAN Network Planning in Smart Environments: Towards Reliability, Scalability, and Cost Reduction
(2022)
The goal in this work is to present a guidance for LoRaWAN planning to improve overall reliability for message transmissions and scalability. At the end, the cost component is discussed. Therefore, a five step approach is presented that helps to plan a LoRaWAN deployment step by step: Based on the device locations, an initial gateway placement is suggested followed by in-depth frequency and channel access planning. After an initial planning phase, updates for channel access and the initial gateway planning is suggested that should also be done periodically during network operation. Since current gateway placement approaches are only studied with random channel access, there is a lot of potential in the cell planning phase. Furthermore, the performance of different channel access approaches is highly related on network load, and thus cell size and sensor density. Last, the influence of different cell planning ideas on expected costs are discussed.
The first step towards aerial planetary exploration has been made. Ingenuity shows extremely promising results, and new missions are already underway. Rotorcraft are capable of flight. This capability could be utilized to support the last stages of Entry, Descent, and Landing. Thus, mass and complexity could be scaled down.
Autorotation is one method of descent. It describes unpowered descent and landing, typically performed by helicopters in case of an engine failure. MAPLE is suggested to test these procedures and understand autorotation on other planets. In this series of experiments, the Ingenuity helicopter is utilized. Ingenuity would autorotate a ”mid-air-landing” before continuing with normal flight. Ultimately, the collected data shall help to understand autorotation on Mars and its utilization for interplanetary exploration.