Culture, Utility or Social Systems?:Explaining the Cross-National Ties of Emigrants from Borsa, Romania

Emigrants from Borşa, Romania, display two quite distinct patterns of ties with their community of origin: migration to Italy is discernibly transnational, with a strong reliance on migrant networks; while migration to the UK is more individualistic, with emigrants shunning interaction with compatriots and retaining only weak ties to Borşa. We argue that prevalent theories of cross-national ties fail adequately to explain this divergence. Instead, we draw on systems theory to explain the discrepancy in terms of divergent conditions for societal inclusion. In Italy, incorporation into parallel, unofficial structures of work, welfare and accommodation encouraged a reliance on cultural criteria for maintaining social ties. In the UK, migrants were obliged to integrate into state-sponsored systems, encouraging the relinquishing of ethnic ties in favour of more strategic networking to facilitate societal inclusion

Error-Bounded and Feature Preserving Surface Remeshing with Minimal Angle Improvement

The typical goal of surface remeshing consists in finding a mesh that is (1) geometrically faithful to the original geometry, (2) as coarse as possible to obtain a low-complexity representation and (3) free of bad elements that would hamper the desired application. In this paper, we design an algorithm to address all three optimization goals simultaneously. The user specifies desired bounds on approximation error {\delta}, minimal interior angle {\theta} and maximum mesh complexity N (number of vertices). Since such a desired mesh might not even exist, our optimization framework treats only the approximation error bound {\delta} as a hard constraint and the other two criteria as optimization goals. More specifically, we iteratively perform carefully prioritized local operators, whenever they do not violate the approximation error bound and improve the mesh otherwise. In this way our optimization framework greedily searches for the coarsest mesh with minimal interior angle above {\theta} and approximation error bounded by {\delta}. Fast runtime is enabled by a local approximation error estimation, while implicit feature preservation is obtained by specifically designed vertex relocation operators. Experiments show that our approach delivers high-quality meshes with implicitly preserved features and better balances between geometric fidelity, mesh complexity and element quality than the state-of-the-art.Comment: 14 pages, 20 figures. Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphic

Применение сервис-ориентированной архитектуры при интеграции систем управления технологическими процессами

Отражен опыт применения сервис-ориентированной архитектуры при создании автоматизированных систем управления технологическими процессами и их интеграции на ОАО "НПК "Уралвагонзавод"

Geodesics in Heat

We introduce the heat method for computing the shortest geodesic distance to a specified subset (e.g., point or curve) of a given domain. The heat method is robust, efficient, and simple to implement since it is based on solving a pair of standard linear elliptic problems. The method represents a significant breakthrough in the practical computation of distance on a wide variety of geometric domains, since the resulting linear systems can be prefactored once and subsequently solved in near-linear time. In practice, distance can be updated via the heat method an order of magnitude faster than with state-of-the-art methods while maintaining a comparable level of accuracy. We provide numerical evidence that the method converges to the exact geodesic distance in the limit of refinement; we also explore smoothed approximations of distance suitable for applications where more regularity is required

Ägyptische, afghanische und serbische Diasporagemeinden in Deutschland und ihre Beiträge zur Entwicklung ihrer Herkunftsländer

n neueren wissenschaftlichen und politischen Diskussionen ist der Beitrag so genannter Diasporagemeinden zur Entwicklung ihrer Herkunftsländer registriert worden. Es besteht jedoch ein erheblicher Wissensbedarf bezüglich (1.) der Typen und Muster ökonomischer, sozialer und kultureller Transferleistungen zwischen Diaspora und Herkunftsländern, (2.) der sozialen, ökonomischen und politischen Bedingungen für das Zustandekommen oder die Blockierung solcher Leistungen sowie (3.) die Anforderungen an eine Politik, die versucht, solche Leistungen in konstruktiver Weise zu unterstützen und für entwicklungspolitische Zielsetzungen zu nutzen. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es das Ziel der hier vorgestellten Pilotstudie, am Beispiel der Diasporagemeinden der Ägypter, Afghanen und Serben in Deutschland explorativ einen Forschungsansatz zu entwickeln und zu erproben, der die relevanten Dimensionen bei der Untersuchung des Beitrags von Migration zur Entwicklung erfassen soll. --

Quad Meshing

Triangle meshes have been nearly ubiquitous in computer graphics, and a large body of data structures and geometry processing algorithms based on them has been developed in the literature. At the same time, quadrilateral meshes, especially semi-regular ones, have advantages for many applications, and significant progress was made in quadrilateral mesh generation and processing during the last several years. In this State of the Art Report, we discuss the advantages and problems of techniques operating on quadrilateral meshes, including surface analysis and mesh quality, simplification, adaptive refinement, alignment with features, parametrization, and remeshing

Transnationalism or Assimilation?

Kein Abstract vorhandenNo Abstract availabl

Volume parametrization quantization for hexahedral meshing

Developments in the field of parametrization-based quad mesh generation on surfaces have been impactful over the past decade. In this context, an important advance has been the replacement of error-prone rounding in the generation of integer-grid maps, by robust quantization methods. In parallel, parametrization-based hex mesh generation for volumes has been advanced. In this volumetric context, however, the state-of-the-art still relies on fragile rounding, not rarely producing defective meshes, especially when targeting a coarse mesh resolution. We present a method to robustly quantize volume parametrizations, i.e., to determine guaranteed valid choices of integers for 3D integer-grid maps. Inspired by the 2D case, we base our construction on a non-conforming cell decomposition of the volume, a 3D analogue of a T-mesh. In particular, we leverage the motorcycle complex, a recent generalization of the motorcycle graph, for this purpose. Integer values are expressed in a differential manner on the edges of this complex, enabling the efficient formulation of the conditions required to strictly prevent forcing the map into degeneration. Applying our method in the context of hexahedral meshing, we demonstrate that hexahedral meshes can be generated with significantly improved flexibility.</jats:p

Migration und Lebenslauf: Aussiedler im nationalen Wohlfahrtsstaat

Seit 1989 ist die Migrationspolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland generell durch Anstrengungen gekennzeichnet, das Recht von neu ankommenden Migranten auf Zugang und Niederlassung einzuschränken. Der Staat versucht auch, die wohlfahrtsstaatlichen Leistungen für diejenigen Migranten zu beschränken, die wie die deutschstämmigen Aussiedler rechtlich Zugang zu einer permanenten Aufenthaltsberechtigung haben. Der Beitrag analysiert diese makrostrukturellen Veränderungen des Wohlfahrtsstaats und die Stellung der Aussiedler darin. Die Lage der Spätaussiedler ist zunehmend durch eine 'defizitäre' Biographie gekennzeichnet, die durch sozialstaatliche Maßnahmen nicht abgefangen werden kann. Es bleibt zu klären, ob und in welcher Weise Migration nach 1989 als Teil einer allgemeinen De-Institutionalisierung des Lebenslaufs verstanden werden muss. (ICA