On the Super-computational Background of the Research Centre Jülich

KFA Jülich is one of the largest big-science research centres in Europe; its scientific and engineering activities are ranging from fundamental research to applied science and technology. KFA's Central Institute for Applied Mathematics (ZAM) is running the large-scale computing facilities and network systems at KFA and is providing communication services, general-purpose and supercomputer capacity also for the HLRZ ("Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum") established in 1987 in order to further enhance and promote computational science in Germany. Thus, at KFA - and in particular enforced by ZAM - supercomputing has received high priority since more than ten years. What particle accelerators mean to experimental physics, supercomputers mean to Computational Science and Engineering: Supercomputers are the accelerators of theory

L'APPLICATION DES NORMES IAS PAR LES BANQUES - L'EXEMPLE DES BANQUES ALLEMANDES

Parmi les publications actuelles concernant les IAS, très peu traitent des spécificités bancaires. Pour remédier (partiellement) à cette situation, cette communication examine la présentation du bilan, du compte de résultat et du tableau des flux de trésorerie, publiés par les banques allemandes utilisant les normes IAS. Ces présentations sont comparées à la réglementation allemande en la matière. Par ailleurs, les questions suivantes sont entre autres étudiées : Quels sont les modèles (du bilan, compte de résultat, tableau des flux) prescrits ? Pour les notions importantes (ex : titres, intérêts), quelles définitions ont été retenues ? De cette façon, les convergences et les divergences entre les deux référentiels apparaissent. Leur connaissance n'est pas seulement pertinente pour les banques, mais aussi pour les utilisateurs des informations financières des banques.harmonisation comptable ; états financiers des banques allemandes ; bilan IAS de banques ; compte de résultat IAS de banques ; tableau des flux de trésorerie IAS de banques

Are NBA Fans Becoming Indifferent to Race? Evidence from the 1990s

Previous studies, using data from the 1980s, found that racial composition of NBA teams is positively correlated with racial composition of the metropolitan markets in which the teams are located. Researchers have interpreted this evidence as consistent with a "customer discrimination" hypothesis. We reconsider this hypothesis by examining evidence from the 1990s and generate three principal findings. First, based on player performance statistics, we find no evidence of discrimination at the league level--that is, the best players appear to be playing in the league regardless of race. Second, players, categorized by race, are not randomly distributed across teams. Instead, the relationship between team racial composition and metropolitan area racial composition, while weaker than in the 1980s, persists in the NBA in the 1990s. Hence, teams located in areas with greater concentration of white population may find it revenue enhancing to cater to customer demand for viewing teams that include white players. Our third finding, based on revenue from home game attendance, is that as the number of white players declined significantly over the decade, the revenue product of a white player increased on the margin. This effect appears to be more pronounced for teams located in cities with larger white populations. We also find evidence that, in recent years, the top-performing white players in the NBA tend to locate in cities with larger white populations, suggesting that teams in these cities place a higher marginal value on such players.Customer Discrimination; Race; Sports; National Basketball Association

Information financière sur le risque de liquidité des banques

Cet article essaie de répondre aux questions suivantes concernant l'information financière sur le risque de liquidité publiée par les banques : • les informations requises par IFRS 7 sont-elles utiles pour les lecteurs des états financiers pour apprécier le risque de liquidité d'une banque ? • les obligations d'IFRS 7 sont-elles cohérentes avec celles du Comité de Bâle au niveau international ?Risque de liquidité ; annexe ; IFRS et Banques ; IFRS 7

Informations financières sur la performance des entreprises allemandes et françaises

Dans leur rapport annuel, les entreprises ne communiquent pas seulement l'indicateur principal de performance : le résultat net mais également et de plus en plus d'autres indicateurs, considérés comme plus " modernes ". L'objectif de ce papier est de vérifier empiriquement comment des entreprises allemandes et françaises utilisent ces nouveaux indicateurs dans leurs états financiersrésultat net; indicateurs " modernes " de performance; états financiers; entreprises allemandes et françaises

A consistent set of multilateral productivity approach-based indicators of price competitiveness

We propose a novel, multilaterally consistent productivity approach-based indicator to assess the international price competitiveness of 57 industrialized and emerging economies. It is designed to be a useful assessment tool for monetary policy authorities and, thereby, differs from previously proposed indicators, which are hardly applicable on a day-to-day basis. Special attention has been paid to an appropriate selection of price and productivity data in levels as opposed to indices, and to the treatment of country fixed effects when interpreting currency misalignments. The discussion of the results focuses on the larger economies of the sample. At the current juncture, and in contrast to the prevailing view, we find US price competitiveness to be above and China’s price competitiveness to be below its derived benchmark

Can Darwinism be 'generalized' and of what use would this be?

It has been suggested that, by generalizing Darwinian principles, a common foundation can be derived for all scientific disciplines dealing with evolutionary processes, especially for evolutionary economics. In this paper we show, however, that the principles of such a Generalized Darwinism are not those that in the development of evolutionary biology have been crucial for distinguishing Darwinian from non-Darwinian approaches and, hence, cannot be considered genuinely Darwinian. Moreover, we wonder how Generalized Darwinism can be made fruitful for evolutionary economics given that its principles are but an abstract hull that does not suffice to explain actual evolutionary processes in the economy. To that end specific hypotheses are required which neither follow from, nor are necessarily compatible with, the suggested abstract principles. Accordingly, we find little evidence in the literature for the claim that Generalized Darwinism can enhance the explanatory power of an evolutionary approach to economics

Fast 3D-Vision System to Classify Metallic Coins by their Embossed Topography

This paper presents a security-related machine-vision solution for real-time classification of moving objects with highly reflective metallic surfaces and complex 3D-structures. As an application example of our so called Three-Color Selective Stereo Gradient Method (Three-Color SSGM) a classification system for three main coin denominations of Euro coins is presented. Such coins are quickly moving in a coin validation system. The objective is to decide only from comparison of specially measured and processed 3D-surface information with characteristic topographical data stored in a database whether a coin belongs to one of the reference classes or has to be rejected as a foreign or counterfeit coin. Under illumination from a three-color light emitting diode equipped ring a single image of the moving coin is captured by a digital color camera. Exploiting the spectral properties of the illumination sources, which correspond to the special spectral characteristics of the camera, three independent subimages can be extracted. Comparison between these subimages leads to a discrimination between a coin with real 3D-surface and a counterfeit coin based on a photographic image of a coin of the same type. After the coin has been located and segmented, grey value based rotation and translation invariant features are extracted from a normalized image. In combination with template matching methods, a coin can be classified. Classification results will be reported for the three main coin denominations of Euro coins

IFRS et PME

L'IASB est en train d'élaborer des normes comptables internationales (IFRS) pour les PME, basées sur les IFRS existantes. Or, les IFRS émises jusqu'à présent ciblent seulement les grandes entreprises (cotées) et leur situation. Par contre, le point de vue des PME en la matière a été très peu exploré. Pour cette raison, nous avons mené une enquête auprès de PME françaises et allemandes pour connaître dans un contexte comparatif entre pays les besoins des utilisateurs d'états financiers de PME, leur appréciation des supposés avantages et inconvénients des IFRS, les domaines dans lesquels les PME rencontrent des difficultés dans l'application des IFRS ainsi que leur opinion sur l'évolution future des normes comptables nationales respectives. Nos résultats montrent une certaine ouverture des PME vis-à-vis des IFRS mais aussi que la proposition actuelle d'IFRS pour les PME ne vise pas encore suffisamment la situation propre aux PME.IFRS et PME ; IFRS en Allemagne ; IFRS en France