German production networks in Central, Eastern Europe: between dependency and globalisation

This paper offers a first assessment of the contribution of international production to the dynamics of regional integration in Europe. After very high expectations, there is increasing scepticism concerning the role of foreign direct investment as an engine of growth in the region. On the basis of often implicit cross regional comparisons, it is argued that the level of foreign direct investment in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is low, that it does not lead to significant technology transfers and backward linkages, and that the prospects for Cross national productions networks to develop continent-wide are at best uncertain. The paper argues that generalisations based on foreign direct investment figures hide more than reveal and looks at the development of Outward Processing Traffic between the European Union (EU) and CEE as an alternative source of evidence to characterise some of the transformations that the European model of integration is undergoing. It finds that EU firms, mainly medium sized German companies, make an important use of non equity forms of international production when expanding eastwards. The resulting patterns of cooperation are fluid, but not necessarily precarious. In fact, they are an ideal vehicle for implementing new flexible methods of production which have greater potentials for spillovers and multiplier effects. Overall, these patterns of cooperation give rise to different market linkages that hardly fit into static categories, a process in which policy makers have only little say. -- Die vorliegende Studie bietet eine erste Bewertung der Auswirkungen internationaler Produktion auf die Dynamik regionaler Integration in Europa. Was die Rolle ausländischer Direktinvestitionen angeht, so sind die anfänglich sehr hohen Erwartungen mittlerweile der Skepsis gewichen. Auf der Grundlage oftmals impliziter regionsübergreifender Vergleiche wird hier festgestellt, daß Direktinvestitionen in Zentral- und Osteuropa niedrig sind, daß sie keine nennenswerten Technologietransfers und backward linkages mit sich bringen, und daß die Aussichten für die europaweite Entwicklung transnationaler Produktionsnetzwerke bestenfalls unsicher sind. Es wird argumentiert, daß Verallgemeinerungen auf der Basis von Direktinvestitionsziffern mehr verschleiern als enthüllen. Daher wird hier die Entwicklung von Outward-Processing-Verkehr zwischen der Europäischen Union und Zentral- und Osteuropa als alternative Quelle herangezogen, um einige der Transformationen zu kennzeichnen, welche das europäische Integrationsmodell im Augenblick durchmacht. Eine Feststellung ist, daß EU-Firmen, insbesondere mittelständische deutsche Unternehmen, bei der Ausdehnung in Richtung Osten starken Gebrauch von internationalen Produktionsnetzen zwischen unabhängigen Firmen (non-equity forms of production) machen. Die daraus resultierenden Kooperationsmuster sind fließend, aber nicht unbedingt unsicher. Sie könnten sich im Gegenteil als ideales Vehikel für die Einführung neuer flexibler Produktionsmethoden erweisen, die größeres Potential für Spillovers und Multiplikationseffekte bieten. Insgesamt führen solche Produktionsnetze zwischen unabhängigen Unternehmen zu neuen Marktverbindungen, die sich kaum in feststehende Kategorien einordnen lassen. Auf diesen Prozeß haben Politiker nur wenig Einfluß.

MAGDA: A Mobile Agent based Grid Architecture

Mobile agents mean both a technology and a programming paradigm. They allow for a flexible approach which can alleviate a number of issues present in distributed and Grid-based systems, by means of features such as migration, cloning, messaging and other provided mechanisms. In this paper we describe an architecture (MAGDA – Mobile Agent based Grid Architecture) we have designed and we are currently developing to support programming and execution of mobile agent based application upon Grid systems

Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model

A Test Bed for Evaluating the Performance of IoT Networks

The use of smaller, personal IoT networks has increased over the past several years. These devices demand a lot of resources but only have limited access. To establish and sustain a flexible network connection, 6LoWPAN with RPL protocol is commonly used. While RPL provides a low-cost solution for connection, it lacks load balancing mechanisms. Improvements in OF load balancing can be implemented to strengthen network stability. This paper proposes a test bed configuration to show the toll of frequent parent switching on 6LoWPAN. Contiki’s RPL 6LoWPAN software runs on STM32 Nucleo microcontrollers with expansion boards for this test bed. The configuration tests frequency of parent changes and packet loss to demonstrate network instability of different RPL OFs. Tests on MRHOF for RPL were executed to confirm the working configuration. Results, with troubleshooting and improvements, show a working bed. The laid-out configuration provides a means for testing network stability in IoT networks

Behavior Profiling of Email

This paper describes the forensic and intelligence analysis capabilities of the Email Mining Toolkit (EMT) under development at the Columbia Intrusion Detection (IDS) Lab. EMT provides the means of loading, parsing and analyzing email logs, including content, in a wide range of formats. Many tools and techniques have been available from the fields of Information Retrieval (IR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) for analyzing documents of various sorts, including emails. EMT, however, extends these kinds of analyses with an entirely new set of analyses that model "user behavior." EMT thus models the behavior of individual user email accounts, or groups of accounts, including the "social cliques" revealed by a user's email behavior