India: an ambivalent partner for the West; growing commonalities, growing differences

The relationship between India and Western countries is increasingly characterised by a paradox. On the one hand, the country's rise has caused both sides to increasingly share geostrategic interests, for example in the Indo-Pacific. On the other hand, dif­ferences are growing as New Delhi’s domestic policy moves further and further from Western ideals - this applies to economic policy as well as the state of Indian democ­racy. This change is affecting India's relations with Germany and Europe as the pro­motion of Indian industry and the restriction of democratic rights also affect Euro­pean companies and civil society organisations respectively. The narrative of a part­nership with India based on shared values, which has been cultivated for decades in Europe and the USA, will shift more towards coinciding strategic interests and less towards common democratic values. (author's abstract

Expanding Germany's relations with India: triangular cooperation as the next step in the strategic partnership

India is a central partner for German and European foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific. The German Federal Government's autumn 2020 guidelines and the November 2021 coalition agreement both emphasise the importance of expanding relations with India. To advance the common cause of a multilateral and rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific, both sides should - in addition to deepening their bilateral relations - extend their cooperation to third countries. Such triangular cooperation could herald a new phase of the Indo-German strategic partnership. (author's abstract

All-year vehicle simulation with analysis of capacity control of R-134a and R-744 piston compressors for coach HVAC systems

The reheating of cooled air is the state-of-the-art for controlling the air-side cooling capacity in conventional omnibus HVAC systems. This method is pragmatic, albeit highly energy-inefficient. This paper deals with the structured analysis and improvement of capacity regulation for a conventional system using the example of a coach air conditioning system. Piston compressors are typically used in the air conditioning systems for conventional buses. This compressor type belongs to the group of reciprocating compressors and is a common standard in the constant displacement version for large refrigerant systems in the omnibus sector. The compressor is usually driven directly by the internal combustion engine, which is typically realized by using a V-belt and magnetic clutch. Due to the mechanical connection to the engine and the constant compressor displacement, different control strategies are necessary to realize the required variable cooling capacity. These strategies may influence each other resulting in operating conditions with varying degrees of efficiency depending on the application and refrigerant choice. This leads to the main objectives in this paper: Identifying energy-efficient methods of adapting the capacity of reciprocating piston compressors with a constant displacement volume for air conditioning systems in conventional coaches and identifying energy-saving potentials for different refrigerants and application scenarios. For this purpose, the techniques currently being used in series production for implementing capacity adaption in omnibus air conditioning systems were initially described and the procedures such as cycling-clutch operation and cylinder (bank) shutdown were explained. Subsequently, unestablished and novel methods like speed control by means of pulley transmission and continuously variable transmission (CVT), were presented. Systems were identified using a combination of established and newer methods, and the shift in performance, performance control potentials and the impact on total energy consumption were analyzed. For this purpose, a complete physical vehicle model of a coach was developed and validated. The overall model was split into the following subsystems: driving and environmental conditions as boundary conditions, driving dynamics, bus interior, refrigeration cycle, climate controller, engine cooling and heating cycle and electrical system. Special emphasis was placed on the detailed model of the air conditioning system. Monthly representative simulations for two different refrigerants (R‑134a, R‑744) and three climatically different route and journey scenarios (Germany, Portugal/Spain and India) were analysed and compared with a reference system for a conventional coach. Maximum and average annual fuel saving potentials were identified for various methods of adapting the compressor\u27s transport capacity and identifying the most efficient methods for continuous capacity control in omnibus air conditioning systems. Depending on the application and the refrigerant used, the saving potentials in primary energy were between 2.5% and 6.8% based on one year

Indien: ein ambivalenter Partner für den Westen; wachsende Gemeinsamkeiten, wachsende Differenzen

Das Verhältnis zwischen Indien und den westlichen Staaten ist zunehmend von einem Paradox geprägt. Auf der einen Seite hat der Aufstieg des Landes bewirkt, dass beide Seiten vermehrt geostrategische Interessen teilen, etwa im Indo-Pazifik. Auf der anderen Seite wachsen aber auch die Differenzen, weil Neu-Delhi sich innenpolitisch mehr und mehr von westlichen Vorstellungen entfernt - was für die Wirtschaftspolitik ebenso gilt wie für den Zustand der indischen Demokratie. Dieser Wandel berührt das Verhältnis zu Deutschland und Europa, denn die Förderung der indischen Indus­trie oder die Einschränkung demokratischer Rechte betreffen auch europäische Unter­nehmen bzw. zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen. Das jahrzehntelang in Europa und den USA gepflegte Narrativ der Wertepartnerschaft mit Indien wird sich künftig eher an übereinstimmenden strategischen Interessen und weniger an gemein­samen demo­kratischen Werten orientieren. (Autorenreferat

How to Juggle Columns: An Entropy-Based Approach for Table Compression

Many relational databases exhibit complex dependencies between data attributes, caused either by the nature of the underlying data or by explicitly denormalized schemas. In data warehouse scenarios, calculated key figures may be materialized or hierarchy levels may be held within a single dimension table. Such column correlations and the resulting data redundancy may result in additional storage requirements. They may also result in bad query performance if inappropriate independence assumptions are made during query compilation. In this paper, we tackle the specific problem of detecting functional dependencies between columns to improve the compression rate for column-based database systems, which both reduces main memory consumption and improves query performance. Although a huge variety of algorithms have been proposed for detecting column dependencies in databases, we maintain that increased data volumes and recent developments in hardware architectures demand novel algorithms with much lower runtime overhead and smaller memory footprint. Our novel approach is based on entropy estimations and exploits a combination of sampling and multiple heuristics to render it applicable for a wide range of use cases. We demonstrate the quality of our approach by means of an implementation within the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator. Our experiments indicate that our approach scales well with the number of columns and produces reliable dependence structure information. This both reduces memory consumption and improves performance for nontrivial queries

Perception-Action Coupling Target Tracking Control for a Snake Robot via Reinforcement Learning

Visual-guided locomotion for snake-like robots is a challenging task, since it involves not only the complex body undulation with many joints, but also a joint pipeline that connects the vision and the locomotion. Meanwhile, it is usually difficult to jointly coordinate these two separate sub-tasks as this requires time-consuming and trial-and-error tuning. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for solving target tracking tasks for a snake-like robot as a whole using a model-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm. This RL-based controller directly maps the visual observations to the joint positions of the snake-like robot in an end-to-end fashion instead of dividing the process into a series of sub-tasks. With a novel customized reward function, our RL controller is trained in a dynamically changing track scenario. The controller is evaluated in four different tracking scenarios and the results show excellent adaptive locomotion ability to the unpredictable behavior of the target. Meanwhile, the results also prove that the RL-based controller outperforms the traditional model-based controller in terms of tracking accuracy