MATSuMoTo: The MATLAB Surrogate Model Toolbox For Computationally Expensive Black-Box Global Optimization Problems

MATSuMoTo is the MATLAB Surrogate Model Toolbox for computationally expensive, black-box, global optimization problems that may have continuous, mixed-integer, or pure integer variables. Due to the black-box nature of the objective function, derivatives are not available. Hence, surrogate models are used as computationally cheap approximations of the expensive objective function in order to guide the search for improved solutions. Due to the computational expense of doing a single function evaluation, the goal is to find optimal solutions within very few expensive evaluations. The multimodality of the expensive black-box function requires an algorithm that is able to search locally as well as globally. MATSuMoTo is able to address these challenges. MATSuMoTo offers various choices for surrogate models and surrogate model mixtures, initial experimental design strategies, and sampling strategies. MATSuMoTo is able to do several function evaluations in parallel by exploiting MATLAB's Parallel Computing Toolbox.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure

EU Cohesion Policy: A suitable tool to foster regional innovation? Bertelsmann Policy Paper, 2019

Across Europe, regions are divided into innovation leaders and moderate innovators – the latter referring to regions that lag behind in terms of prosperity and R&D activities. This innovation gap in turn threatens to reinforce the productivity gap between regions. The EU’s Cohesion Policy recently shifted its focus towards funding innovation to deal with these disparities. Is this strategy working

The Earth's Climate, 2005

The most advanced models of the Earth's climate predict gradual warming of the average surface temperature due to the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the burning of fossil fuels. With a good historical temperature record, this warming should be observable by climate monitoring stations. What have scientists observed about the Earth's climate to date?On January 13, 2006, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the world's largest active archive of weather data, released their Climate of 2005 report. The report contains a number of sobering observations about the Earth's climate: average surface temperature continues to warm; polar ice is melting rapidly; hurricane activity is at a record high; and in the United States, low Northwest snowpack contributed to a period of drought in the region.The NOAA Climate of 2005 report is the highly reputed, carefully analyzed product of climate data from around the world, containing the most up-to-date information from the field of climate monitoring. This fact sheet summarizes some highlights from the report, including climate anomalies in the United States

Technological Readiness in the Middle East and North Africa – Implications for Egypt

Innovation is widely recognized as a key driver of sustainable economic development. Governments, international organizations, donors and investors are increasingly interested in evaluating the technological capabilities and innovative capacities in developing countries, but often lack appropriate approaches for such measurement. This paper focuses on innovation and technological progress in the MENA region and discusses the challenges of understanding, expanding and fostering innovative potential in Egypt.Egypt, Middle East, North Africa, Technology, Developing countries

Mean Shift detection under long-range dependencies with ART

Atheoretical regression trees (ART) are applied to detect changes in the mean of a stationary long memory time series when location and number are unknown. It is shown that the BIC, which is almost always used as a pruning method, does not operate well in the long memory framework. A new method is developed to determine the number of mean shifts. A Monte Carlo Study and an application is given to show the performance of the method.long memory, mean shift, regression tree, ART, BIC

FOOD PURCHASING OF DIFFERENT HOUSEHOLD TYPES IN TIMES OF RESTRICTED BUDGET

The second German National Nutrition Survey (NVS II) provides current data for the German population. From this study, data of food purchasing in times of restricted budget will be used for a secondary analysis. In a second step qualitative interviews will be conducted in which indepth information will be gained on consumers’ motives, attitudes, fears and response strategies (to a decreased household budget) regarding food purchases.Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy,

Honey, I’ll Be Working Late Tonight. The Effect of Individual Work Routines on Leisure Time Synchronization of Couples

German time use data for 2001/02 are used to assess the impact of workplace characteristics on the private life of couples. The major aim is to solve the endogeneity resulting from individual preferences for work and leisure to identify the pure effects of the workplace independent from other diluting personal influences in a cross-sectional setting when no appropriate instruments are available. I propose a repeated random assignment of people into pseudo couples as a solution. By this approach, I am able to uncover additional marriage inherent mechanisms that result in a (de-)synchronization of joint time that are still family friendly.Time Use, Time Allocation, Family Economics, Flexibility, Synchronization, Leisure, Endogeneity