A poetic pilgrimage towards a cosmopolitan world

The practice-based research-dissertation or “poetic-philosophical praxis” referred to and explored in this Reflective Commentary concerns two major topics: the artistic and intellectual work of the second UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld (1905 – 1961) and the implications of that work for a persuasive new understanding of the cosmopolitan idea. Pursuing these topics, I developed a “poetic-philosophical praxis” intended to reveal the passages toward and contours of the cosmopolitan world in which Hammarskjöld lived and for which he lived. Praxis, as I understand it, does not exclude or oppose theory. In the practice-based research-dissertation – in the form of a book entitled “Dag Hammarskjöld für kosmopolitische Passagen” – a continuum of theory and practice is embodied through “poetic notes” which trace, follow and elaborate the cosmopolitan thinking of Dag Hammarskjöld. As the book unfolds and the poetic-philosophical praxis advances, there are deliberate disruptions and swerves resulting in estrangements and inter-worlds, polyvalent perspectives, contexts radically reconsidered, shifting views that create new perspectives. Instead of setting out to prove and confirm just one meaning in any given context, this artistic practice values the freedom to deviate in order to reveal what I perceive as “meaningfulness”—less exact and restrictive than “meaning” but potentially more enriching. Both the practice-based research embodied in the book and this reflective commentary attempt to uncover in Hammarskjöld’s diplomatic work and mystical thought, elements of statesmanship that shed light on a seemingly paradoxical approach to global community, an approach that strives to escape politics rather than conceive everything in political terms. Social Sculpture has its place here: some of its key concepts and methods offer a philosophical framework for cosmopolitan thinking. The notion of pilgrimage is also central to the praxis. As I construe it, pilgrimage relies on landscape, horizon and the stars in the sky. It does not strive for the fixed structures of mapping but rather for “wayfinding”. To support wayfinding, a special source of guidance is introduced: between the chapters of the book, a narrative ass takes the lead to guide both the researcher-author and the reader. Under the gentle dominion of the ass, the researcher is taken a certain distance from his original pedagogic background. The ass’s intuitive sense of direction leads toward Hammarskjöld’s idea of world government and away from it again. It leads out into nature and wilderness; to the idea of the “higher human being”, rooted in Kierkegaard and the Taoist tradition; to the special example of Marcus Aurelius; and ultimately to the idea of “international community”— the creation of which was a central concern of Hammarskjöld’s. The transformation of Europahaus Burgenland into Akademie Pannonien reflects the origin and sphere of activity of this PhD research. This place of learning, for which I have served as director since 1990, is now being shaped into “an atelier for cosmopolitan theory, practice and poetry” by bringing together ideas of world citizenship and Hammarskjöld’s (anti-)political wisdom. The art of Social Sculpture, rooted in the thought and practice of Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), and developed by Shelley Sacks in the Social Sculpture Research Unit (SSRU) over several decades, is adopted as a creative frame for exploring this material in its wholeness and as an inspiration toward freely rethinking it. The perspective of Social Sculpture allows one to move, like Hammarskjöld himself, between worldly affairs and the mystics of the Middle Ages, between outer tasks and an “inner atelier”i which invites “every human being to be an artist.”ii This commentary offers theoretical support for the practice-based research dissertation embodied in the book. Just as an artist steps back from a painting to see more than is possible whilst working on it, the finished artistic practice will now meet enquiring eyes. This commentary represents a new involvement with the entire practice-based research process and the book: watching it, elucidating it and interpreting it. And, in doing so, completing it.

Critical scales in anisotropic spin systems from functional renormalization

We apply a recently developed functional renormalization group (fRG) scheme for quantum spin systems to the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic XXZ model on a two-dimensional square lattice. Based on an auxiliary fermion representation we derive flow equations which allow a resummation of the perturbation series in the spin-spin interactions. Spin susceptibilities are calculated for different values of the anisotropy parameter. The phase transition between planar and axial ordering at the isotropic point is reproduced correctly. The results for the critical scales from the fRG as quantitative measures for the ordering temperatures are in good agreement with the exact solution in the Ising limit. On the easy-plane side, the deviations from critical temperatures obtained with quantum Monte Carlo are larger but still acceptable. However, at the isotropic point the Mermin-Wagner theorem is violated such that a precise description of the behavior in the vicinity of the phase transition is not possible. We discuss possible reasons for these discrepanies.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Security, Performance and Energy Trade-offs of Hardware-assisted Memory Protection Mechanisms

The deployment of large-scale distributed systems, e.g., publish-subscribe platforms, that operate over sensitive data using the infrastructure of public cloud providers, is nowadays heavily hindered by the surging lack of trust toward the cloud operators. Although purely software-based solutions exist to protect the confidentiality of data and the processing itself, such as homomorphic encryption schemes, their performance is far from being practical under real-world workloads. The performance trade-offs of two novel hardware-assisted memory protection mechanisms, namely AMD SEV and Intel SGX - currently available on the market to tackle this problem, are described in this practical experience. Specifically, we implement and evaluate a publish/subscribe use-case and evaluate the impact of the memory protection mechanisms and the resulting performance. This paper reports on the experience gained while building this system, in particular when having to cope with the technical limitations imposed by SEV and SGX. Several trade-offs that provide valuable insights in terms of latency, throughput, processing time and energy requirements are exhibited by means of micro- and macro-benchmarks.Comment: European Commission Project: LEGaTO - Low Energy Toolset for Heterogeneous Computing (EC-H2020-780681

Rethinking New Venture Growth: A Time Series Cluster Analysis of Biotech Startups’ Heterogeneous Growth Trajectories

Startups are crucial job creators and drivers of economic growth. Research on startups has predominantly targeted high-growth startups, while a comprehensive understanding of alternative growth journeys remains limited. Addressing this gap, we employ the theory of early firm growth and the time-calibrated theory of entrepreneurial action to examine 416 biotech startups. We use time series cluster analysis to unveil four heterogeneous new venture growth trajectories. These are characterized by unique timings, paces, and sequences of financial, human, and innovative resource-related activities. This study contributes to new venture growth research, particularly in science-based high-tech startups, with its nuanced understanding of diverse growth pathways, including intriguing notions of early failure, growth reversal, and high and moderate steady growth

Millimeterwellen On-Chip Antennensysteme für die Integration in SoC Applikationen

In dieser Arbeit werden Antennensysteme für Radar- und Kommunikationssysteme präsentiert. Zusätzlich wird ein QFN Gehäusekonzept erarbeitet. Bei den Antennensystemen für Kommunikationsanwendungen liegt der Fokus auf der Maximierung der abgestrahlten Leistung, um die Reichweite zu erhöhen. Es wird ein neuartiges Konzept zur Leistungskombination von parallelisierten Verstärkern aufgezeigt, bei dem die Signale der einzelnen Verstärker im Antennenelement kombiniert werden

The generic fixed point model for pseudo-spin-1/2 quantum dots in nonequilibrium: Spin-valve systems with compensating spin polarizations

We study a pseudo-spin-1/2 quantum dot in the cotunneling regime close to the particle-hole symmetric point. For a generic tunneling matrix we find a generic fixed point with interesting nonequilibrium properties, characterized by effective reservoirs with compensating spin orientation vectors weighted by the polarizations and the tunneling rates. At large bias voltage we study the magnetic field dependence of the dot magnetization and the current. The fixed point can be clearly identified by analyzing the magnetization of the dot. We characterize in detail the universal properties for the case of two reservoirs

Human Capital in Corporate Venture Capital Units and Its Relation to Parent Firms’ Innovative Performance

Incumbent firms utilize corporate venture capital (CVC) as a vehicle to enhance their innovative performance. Still, little is known about the central individual in this context: the CVC unit head, who acts as a knowledge broker between portfolio ventures and the parent organization. We combine human capital theory with the attention-based view to investigate the effects of various facets of CVC unit heads' experience on parent firms' innovative inputs in the form of explorative and exploitative patenting and innovative outputs, specifically market and technological breakthrough innovation. Drawing on a dataset of U.S.-listed firms with CVC units, our findings contribute to the CVC literature in three ways. First, we introduce CVC unit heads' career experiences as new individual-level antecedents of parent firms' innovative performance. Second, we enhance the understanding of the CVC-core paradox, which is the tension between exploration and exploitation in the parent firm. Finally, by employing a combination of patents and new product introductions as metrics for innovative performance, we bridge the gap between learning and innovation in extant CVC research, demonstrating that the effects of CVC unit heads include customer-facing outcomes.</p