Entrepreneurship in public administration and public policy programs in Germany and the United States

The following contribution hypothesizes that it is crucial for future professionals in public administrations and organizations to be familiar with the concepts, tools, and techniques of policy, public, and social entrepreneurship to address societal, environmental, health, and wicked problems in an innovative and sustainable way. Attention is drawn to the importance of entrepreneurship as an essential asset and feature of public administration and public policy education at higher educational institutions in Germany and the United States. The paper aims at filling a research gap because knowledge about the interrelationships between entrepreneurship and public administration and public policy education is still underdeveloped. Emphasis is put on the discussion why entrepreneurship should be incorporated in curricula and how study programs have been designed or reformed, while placing emphasis on entrepreneurship in meeting current and complex challenges in the public sector. Findings from a systematic online assessment are presented which show whether and how policy, public and social entrepreneurship are taught as an integral element of current governance and public policy study programs and what difference it makes teaching and learning wise. The findings reflect a high demand for entrepreneurship education by public administration and public policy students, on the one hand, and a low incorporation in curricula, on the other hand. Two case studies from Germany and the United States are presented which serve as good practice examples on how to transfer public, policy, and social entrepreneurship into curricula

Ein automatisches und virtuelles 3D-Puzzle von Khmer-Tempeln im Angkorstil

In Banteay Chhmar, Kambodscha, befindet sich eine der größten Tempelanlagen weltweit. Jedoch sind von vielen Mauern heute nur noch Steinhaufen vorhanden, viele scheinbar intakte Mauern benötigen dringend ein neues Fundament. Ein neu entwickeltes Verfahren zur automatisierten und virtuellen Rekonstruktion einer Mauer auf der Grundlage von 3D-Scans gewährleistet, dass solche annähernd quaderförmigen Steine beim Wiederaufbau möglichst wenig bewegt werden müssen. Im ersten Schritt wird jedes hochauflösende 3D-Steinmodell auf die wesentlichen Merkmale, die Ecken, Kanten und Seitenflächen reduziert. Das Verfahren ermittelt auf Grundlage des Winkels zwischen benachbarten Flächen Kombinationsmöglichkeiten von Mauersteinen. Schließlich erfolgt im dritten Arbeitsschritt die Validierung dieser Vorschläge durch den Experten.One of the largest temple complexes in the world is located in Banteay Chhmar, Cambodia. However, many of the temple walls are currently only piles of stone blocks and many of the seemingly intact walls are in urgent need of new foundations. A new method was developed for the automated virtual reconstruction of a stone wall on the basis of 3D scans allowing to limit the moving of the nearly cube-shaped stones to a minimum during reconstruction work. In a first step, each high-resolution 3D stone model is reduced to its essential features, namely vertices, edges and faces. The method then suggests pairs of fitting stone blocks on the basis of the angle between adjacent surfaces. Finally, the expert has to validate the suggested fitting in a third step

GOCE: precise orbit determination for the entire mission

The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) was the first Earth explorer core mission of the European Space Agency. It was launched on March 17, 2009 into a Sun-synchronous dusk-dawn orbit and re-entered into the Earth's atmosphere on November 11, 2013. The satellite altitude was between 255 and 225km for the measurement phases. The European GOCE Gravity consortium is responsible for the Level 1b to Level 2 data processing in the frame of the GOCE High-level processing facility (HPF). The Precise Science Orbit (PSO) is one Level 2 product, which was produced under the responsibility of the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern within the HPF. This PSO product has been continuously delivered during the entire mission. Regular checks guaranteed a high consistency and quality of the orbits. A correlation between solar activity, GPS data availability and quality of the orbits was found. The accuracy of the kinematic orbit primarily suffers from this. Improvements in modeling the range corrections at the retro-reflector array for the SLR measurements were made and implemented in the independent SLR validation for the GOCE PSO products. The satellite laser ranging (SLR) validation finally states an orbit accuracy of 2.42cm for the kinematic and 1.84cm for the reduced-dynamic orbits over the entire mission. The common-mode accelerations from the GOCE gradiometer were not used for the official PSO product, but in addition to the operational HPF work a study was performed to investigate to which extent common-mode accelerations improve the reduced-dynamic orbit determination results. The accelerometer data may be used to derive realistic constraints for the empirical accelerations estimated for the reduced-dynamic orbit determination, which already improves the orbit quality. On top of that the accelerometer data may further improve the orbit quality if realistic constraints and state-of-the-art background models such as gravity field and ocean tide models are used for the reduced-dynamic orbit determination

GPS-derived orbits for the GOCE satellite

The first ESA (European Space Agency) Earth explorer core mission GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) was launched on 17 March 2009 into a sun-synchronous dusk-dawn orbit with an exceptionally low initial altitude of about 280km. The onboard 12-channel dual-frequency GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver delivers 1Hz data, which provides the basis for precise orbit determination (POD) for such a very low orbiting satellite. As part of the European GOCE Gravity Consortium the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern and the Department of Earth Observation and Space Systems are responsible for the orbit determination of the GOCE satellite within the GOCE High-level Processing Facility. Both quick-look (rapid) and very precise orbit solutions are produced with typical latencies of 1day and 2 weeks, respectively. This article summarizes the special characteristics of the GOCE GPS data, presents POD results for about 2months of data, and shows that both latency and accuracy requirements are met. Satellite Laser Ranging validation shows that an accuracy of 4 and 7cm is achieved for the reduced-dynamic and kinematic Rapid Science Orbit solutions, respectively. The validation of the reduced-dynamic and kinematic Precise Science Orbit solutions is at a level of about 2c

GNSS processing at CODE: status report

Since May 2003, the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE), one of the analysis centers of the International GNSS Service, has generated GPS and GLONASS products in a rigorous combined multi-system processing scheme, which promises the best possible consistency of the orbits of both systems. The resulting products, in particular the satellite orbits and clocks, are easily accessible by the user community. In the first part of this article, we focus on the generation of the combined global products at CODE, where we put emphasis not only on accuracy, but also on completeness. We study the impact of GLONASS on the CODE products, and the benefit of using them. Last, but not least, we introduce AGNES (Automated GNSS Network for Switzerland), a regional tracking network of small extensions (roughly 400km East-West, 200km North-South), which consequently tracks all GNSS satellites and analyzes their measurements using the CODE product