Guide to the galaxy of EU regional funds recipients: evidence from new data

This study presents a new firm- and project-level dataset containing data on over two million projects co-funded by the EU structural and cohesion funds in 25 EU member states during the programming period 2007-2013. Information on individual beneficiary firms and institutions is linked with business data of Bureau van Dijk's ORBIS database. Moreover, text mining techniques are applied to categorise the EU cohesion policy projects into fifteen thematic categories. Stylised facts reveal substantial regional heterogeneity in the distribution of funds to certain projects and beneficiaries (with respect to their size or industry). Furthermore, regional funds distribution differs across less developed and higher-income as well as urban and rural regions. In an econometric analysis, we control for project and firm characteristics that we expect to determine the single project's value, which is confirmed by the results. Nevertheless, there remains unexplained variation in individual project volumes, which differs systematically across countries

Spotlight on the beneficiaries of EU regional funds: A new firm-level dataset

This study introduces a new firm-level dataset containing over two million projects co-funded by the European Union´s (EU) structural and Cohesion funds in 25 EU member states in the multi-annual financial framework 2007-2013. Information on individual beneficiary firms and institutions published by regional authorities is linked with business data from Bureau van Dijk's ORBIS database. Moreover, we show how modern text mining techniques can be used to categorise EU funded projects into fifteen thematic categories proposed by the European Commission. A first analysis of the dataset reveals substantial heterogeneity of beneficiaries and projects across and within countries. While in the majority of lagging regions the largest project expenditure is dedicated to transportation and energy infrastructure, in most other regions the major part is assigned to innovation and technological development as well as business (including SME) support. In an econometric analysis we control for project and firm characteristics and find that the highest single project values are associated with older beneficiary firms that are larger in size. Furthermore, the projects with topmost expenditure are carried out in Dutch and British regions.Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Serie

Using Augmented Reality in Software Engineering Education? First insights to a comparative study of 2D and AR UML modeling

Although there has been much speculation about the potential of Augmented Reality (AR) in teaching for learning material, there is a significant lack of empirical proof about its effectiveness and implementation in higher education. We describe a software to integrate AR using the Microsoft Hololens into UML (Unified Modeling Language) teaching. Its user interface is laid out to overcome problems of existing software. We discuss the design of the tool and report a first evaluation study. The study is based upon effectiveness as a metric for students performance and components of motivation. The study was designed as control group experiment with two groups. The experimental group had to solve tasks with the help of the AR modeling tool and the control group used a classic PC software. We identified tendencies that participants of the experimental group showed more motivation than the control group. Both groups performed equally well

Impact of Defects and Crystal Size on Negative Gas Adsorption in DUT-49 Analyzed by in Situ ¹²⁹Xe NMR Spectroscopy

The origin of crystal-size-dependent adsorption behavior of flexible metal-organic frameworks is increasingly studied. In this contribution, we probe the solid-fluid interactions of DUT-49 crystals of different size by in situ 129Xe NMR spectroscopy at 200 K. With decreasing size of the crystals, the average solid-fluid interactions are found to decrease reflected by a decrease in chemical shift of adsorbed xenon from 230 to 200 ppm, explaining the lack of adsorption-induced transitions for smaller crystals. However, recent studies propose that these results can also originate from the presence of lattice defects. To investigate the influence of defects on the adsorption behavior of DUT-49, we synthesized a series of samples with tailored defect concentrations and characterized them by in situ 129Xe NMR. In comparison to the results obtained for crystals with different size, we find pronounced changes of the adsorption behavior and influence of the chemical shift only for very high concentrations of defects, which further emphasizes the important role of particle size phenomena

Echantillonnage anisotropique et rendu par points différentiels pour les surfaces implicites

Dans cet article, nous proposons une solution adaptant aux surfaces implicites, le rendu par points différentiels ("differential point rendering") de Kalaiah et Varshney [KV01] originellement développé pour les surfaces paramétriques et les maillages triangulaires. La principale difficulté pour cette adaptation est que les deux étapes du processus d'échantillonnage proposé dans [KV01] s'appuient fortement sur des relations de voisinage entre les échantillons, voisinage qui n'existe pas naturellement pour les surfaces implicites. Pour résoudre ce problème, nous proposons d'étudier les possibilités d'extensions de la technique d'échantillonnage par particules de Witkin et Heckbert [WH94] afin de prendre en compte les directions et les valeurs des courbures principales de la surface implicite. Ainsi, nous présenterons des résultats provenant d'une utilisation de particules ellipsoïdales ainsi que les problèmes inhérents à la nature même de l'ellipsoïde. Puis nous proposerons de nouvelles directions de recherche dans le but de résoudre ces problèmes