Perspectives of Integrated “Next Industrial Revolution” Clusters in Poland and Siberia

Rozdział z: Functioning of the Local Production Systems in Central and Eastern European Countries and Siberia. Case Studies and Comparative Studies, ed. Mariusz E. Sokołowicz.The paper presents the mapping of potential next industrial revolution clusters in Poland and Siberia. Deindustrialization of the cities and struggles with its consequences are one of the fundamental economic problems in current global economy. Some hope to find an answer to that problem is associated with the idea of next industrial revolution and reindustrialization initiatives. In the paper, projects aimed at developing next industrial revolution clusters are analyzed. The objective of the research was to examine new industrial revolution paradigm as a platform for establishing university-based trans-border industry clusters in Poland and Siberia47 and to raise awareness of next industry revolution initiatives.Monograph financed under a contract of execution of the international scientific project within 7th Framework Programme of the European Union, co-financed by Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (title: “Functioning of the Local Production Systems in the Conditions of Economic Crisis (Comparative Analysis and Benchmarking for the EU and Beyond”)). Monografia sfinansowana w oparciu o umowę o wykonanie projektu między narodowego w ramach 7. Programu Ramowego UE, współfinansowanego ze środków Ministerstwa Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego (tytuł projektu: „Funkcjonowanie lokalnych systemów produkcyjnych w warunkach kryzysu gospodarczego (analiza porównawcza i benchmarking w wybranych krajach UE oraz krajach trzecich”))

Commercial-off-the-shelf simulation package interoperability: Issues and futures

Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Simulation Packages (CSPs) are widely used in industry to simulate discrete-event models. Interoperability of CSPs requires the use of distributed simulation techniques. Literature presents us with many examples of achieving CSP interoperability using bespoke solutions. However, for the wider adoption of CSP-based distributed simulation it is essential that, first and foremost, a standard for CSP interoperability be created, and secondly, these standards are adhered to by the CSP vendors. This advanced tutorial is on an emerging standard relating to CSP interoperability. It gives an overview of this standard and presents case studies that implement some of the proposed standards. Furthermore, interoperability is discussed in relation to large and complex models developed using CSPs that require large amount of computing resources. It is hoped that this tutorial will inform the simulation community of the issues associated with CSP interoperability, the importance of these standards and its future

Returns to Human Capital under the Communist Wage Grid and During the Transition to a Market Economy

Under communism, workers had their wages set according to a centrally-determined wage grid. In this paper we use new micro data on men to estimate returns to human capital under the communist wage grid and during the transition to a market economy. We use data from the Czech Republic because it is a leading transition economy in which the communist grid remained intact until the very end of the communist regime. We demonstrate that for decades the communist wage grid maintained extremely low rate of return on education, but that the return increased dramatically and equally in all ownership categories of firms during the transition. Our estimates also indicate that men's wage-experience profile was concave in both regimes and on average it did not change from the communist to the transition period. However, the de novo private firms display a more concave profile than SOEs and public administration. Contrary to earlier studies, we show that men's inter-industry wage structure changed substantially between 1989 and 1996.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39656/3/wp272.pd

Global impacts of energy demand on the freshwater resources of nations

The growing geographic disconnect between consumption of goods, the extraction and processing of resources, and the environmental impacts associated with production activities makes it crucial to factor global trade into sustainability assessments. Using an empirically validated environmentally extended global trade model, we examine the relationship between two key resources underpinning economies and human well-being—energy and freshwater. A comparison of three energy sectors (petroleum, gas, and electricity) reveals that freshwater consumption associated with gas and electricity production is largely confined within the territorial boundaries where demand originates. This finding contrasts with petroleum, which exhibits a varying ratio of territorial to international freshwater consumption, depending on the origin of demand. For example, although the United States and China have similar demand associated with the petroleum sector, international freshwater consumption is three times higher for the former than the latter. Based on mapping patterns of freshwater consumption associated with energy sectors at subnational scales, our analysis also reveals concordance between pressure on freshwater resources associated with energy production and freshwater scarcity in a number of river basins globally. These energy-driven pressures on freshwater resources in areas distant from the origin of energy demand complicate the design of policy to ensure security of fresh water and energy supply. Although much of the debate around energy is focused on greenhouse gas emissions, our findings highlight the need to consider the full range of consequences of energy production when designing policy

Panel on future challenges in modeling methodology

This panel paper presents the views of six researchers and practitioners of simulation modeling. Collectively we attempt to address a range of key future challenges to modeling methodology. It is hoped that the views of this paper, and the presentations made by the panelists at the 2004 Winter Simulation Conference will raise awareness and stimulate further discussion on the future of modeling methodology in areas such as modeling problems in business applications, human factors and geographically dispersed networks; rapid model development and maintenance; legacy modeling approaches; markup languages; virtual interactive process design and simulation; standards; and Grid computing

A collection of tools for factory eco-efficiency

co-efficiency is generally defined as doing more with less, aiming to decouple environmental impact from economic and social value creation. This paper presents three tools to guide the implementation of eco-efficiency in factories: (1) definition and patterns of good practices for sustainable manufacturing, (2) a self-assessment tool and maturity grid, and (3) a factory modelling framework

Grid-enabling FIRST: Speeding up simulation applications using WinGrid

The vision of grid computing is to make computational power, storage capacity, data and applications available to users as readily as electricity and other utilities. Grid infrastructures and applications have traditionally been geared towards dedicated, centralized, high performance clusters running on UNIX flavour operating systems (commonly referred to as cluster-based grid computing). This can be contrasted with desktop-based grid computing which refers to the aggregation of non-dedicated, de-centralized, commodity PCs connected through a network and running (mostly) the Microsoft Windowstrade operating system. Large scale adoption of such Windowstrade-based grid infrastructure may be facilitated via grid-enabling existing Windows applications. This paper presents the WinGridtrade approach to grid enabling existing Windowstrade based commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) simulation packages (CSPs). Through the use of a case study developed in conjunction with Ford Motor Company, the paper demonstrates how experimentation with the CSP Witnesstrade and FIRST can achieve a linear speedup when WinGridtrade is used to harness idle PC computing resources. This, combined with the lessons learned from the case study, has encouraged us to develop the Web service extensions to WinGridtrade. It is hoped that this would facilitate wider acceptance of WinGridtrade among enterprises having stringent security policies in place

Distributed simulation and the grid: Position statements

The Grid provides a new and unrivaled technology for large scale distributed simulation as it enables collaboration and the use of distributed computing resources. This panel paper presents the views of four researchers in the area of Distributed Simulation and the Grid. Together we try to identify the main research issues involved in applying Grid technology to distributed simulation and the key future challenges that need to be solved to achieve this goal. Such challenges include not only technical challenges, but also political ones such as management methodology for the Grid and the development of standards. The benefits of the Grid to end-user simulation modelers also are discussed