Hard currency indebtedness of the developed socialist countries

In recent years the problems of the indebtedness of the communist countries have been driven somewhat into the background by the high foreign indebtedness of many developing countries and the attention attracted by the balance of payments crises in Brazil and Mexico. Yet there are many indications that the need for the socialist debtor nations to adjust their balance of payments policy has not lessened but, to a large extent, simply been deferred. It is therefore not unlikely that the 1980s will witness a new need to solve the problems of those nations and their creditors in the West

Track Reconstruction Development and Commissioning for LHCb's Run 3 Real-time Analysis Trigger

In Run 3 of the LHC, the LHCb experiment faces megahertz-rates of data containing beauty and charm hadron decays. Thus the task of the trigger is not to select any beauty and charm events but to select specific beauty and charm decays interesting for the LHCb physics programme. LHCb has therefore implemented a real-time data analysis strategy to trigger directly on fully-reconstructed events. This is done in two software-trigger stages, the first of which performs a partial event reconstruction on GPUs, while the second stage reconstructs the full event with offline quality on CPUs. This thesis describes LHCb’s CPU-based track reconstruction for Run 3, highlighting the Forward tracking, which is the algorithm that reconstructs trajectories of charged particles traversing the entire tracking system. It is shown that using the capabilities of modern CPUs, the event throughput of the Forward tracking is improved by a factor of 3.5 while reaching reconstruction efficiencies of more than 95% for tracks above 5 GeV/c originating from a B meson

LHCb's Forward Tracking algorithm for the Run 3 CPU-based online track-reconstruction sequence

In Run 3 of the LHC the LHCb experiment faces very high data rates containing beauty and charm hadron decays. Thus the task of the trigger is not to select any beauty and charm events, but to select those containing decays interesting for the LHCb physics programme. LHCb has therefore implemented a real-time data processing strategy to trigger directly on reconstructed events. The first stage of the purely software-based trigger is implemented on GPUs performing a partial event reconstruction. In the second stage of the software trigger, the full, offline-quality event reconstruction is performed on CPUs, with a crucial part being track reconstruction, balancing track finding efficiency, fake track rate and event throughput. LHCb's CPU-based track reconstruction sequence for Run 3 is presented, highlighting the "Forward Tracking", which is the algorithm that reconstructs trajectories of charged particles traversing all of LHCb's tracking detectors. To meet event throughput requirements, the "Forward Tracking" uses SIMD instructions in several core parts of the algorithm, such as the Hough transform and the cluster search. These changes led to an improvement of the algorithm's event throughput by 60%.Comment: Fixed some typos and small writing style improvements as suggested by reviwe

Thermoluminescence Dating of Early Ceramics from Oman

Thermoluminescence (TL) measurements at Samad al-Shan and al-Maysar were conducted in 1981 and evaluated at the Max Planck Institute for physics in Heidelberg. Unfortunately, these were never published. Since the time TL-measurements were made, the typology of slags and our knowledge of the different sites have advanced considerably for all of the periods. TL itself has been subject to considerable study since samples were taken in Oman in 1981. The new datings support other categories of evidence for the dating of the different periods contrasting and complementing those in Gerd Weisgerber's publication, "Mehr als Kupfer in Oman - Ergebnisse der Expedition 1981. Der Anschnitt 33: 174-263." They also have the advantage of providing a corrective to radiocarbon and other dating methods, the most important of which is radiocarbon dating

Thermoluminescence Dating of Early Ceramics from Oman

Thermoluminescence (TL) measurements at Samad al-Shan and al-Maysar were conducted in 1981 and evaluated at the Max Planck Institute for physics in Heidelberg. Unfortunately, these were never published. Since the time TL-measurements were made, the typology of slags and our knowledge of the different sites have advanced considerably for all of the periods. TL itself has been subject to considerable study since samples were taken in Oman in 1981. The new datings support other categories of evidence for the dating of the different periods contrasting and complementing those in Gerd Weisgerber's publication, "Mehr als Kupfer in Oman - Ergebnisse der Expedition 1981. Der Anschnitt 33: 174-263." They also have the advantage of providing a corrective to radiocarbon and other dating methods, the most important of which is radiocarbon dating

Quantification of transport across the boundary of the lower stratospheric vortex during Arctic winter 2002/2003

Strong perturbations of the Arctic stratosphere during the winter 2002/2003 by planetary waves led to enhanced stretching and folding of the vortex. On two occasions the vortex in the lower stratosphere split into two secondary vortices that re-merged after some days. As a result of these strong disturbances the role of transport in and out of the vortex was stronger than usual. An advection and mixing simulation with the Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere (CLaMS) utilising a suite of inert tracers tagging the original position of the air masses has been carried out. The results show a variety of synoptic and small scale features in the vicinity of the vortex boundary, especially long filaments peeling off the vortex edge and being slowly mixed into the mid latitude environment. The vortex folding events, followed by re-merging of different parts of the vortex led to strong filamentation of the vortex interior. During January, February, and March 2003 flights of the Russian high-altitude aircraft Geophysica were performed in order to probe the vortex, filaments and in one case the merging zone between the secondary vortices. Comparisons between CLaMS results and observations obtained from the Geophysica flights show in general good agreement. Several areas affected by both transport and strong mixing could be identified, allowing explanation of many of the structures observed during the flights. Furthermore, the CLaMS simulations allow for a quantification of the air mass exchange between mid latitudes and the vortex interior. The simulation suggests that after the formation of the vortex was completed, its interior remaind relatively undisturbed. Only during the two re-merging events were substantial amounts of extra-vortex air transported into the polar vortex. When in March the vortex starts weakening additional influence from lower latitudes becomes apparent in the model results. In the lower stratosphere export of vortex air leads only to a fraction of about 5% polar air in mid latitudes by the end of March. An upper limit for the contribution of ozone depleted vortex air on mid-latitude ozone loss is derived, indicating that the maximum final impact of dilution is on the order of 50%

Identification and Analysis of Patterns of Machine Learning Systems in the Connected, Adaptive Production

Over the past six decades, many companies have discovered the potential of computer-controlled systems in the manufacturing industry. Overall, digitization can be identified as one of the main drivers of cost reduction in the manufacturing industry. However, recent advances in Artificial Intelligence indicate that there is still untapped potential in the use and analysis of data in industry. Many reports and surveys indicate that machine learning solutions are slowly adapted and that the process of implementation is decelerated by inefficiencies. The goal of this paper is the systematic analysis of successfully implemented machine learning solutions in manufacturing as well as the derivation of a more efficient implementation approach. For this, three use cases have been identified for in-depth analysis and a framework for systematic comparisons between differently implemented solutions is developed. In all three use cases it is possible to derive implementation patterns as well as to identify key variables which determine the success of implementation. The identified patterns show that similar machine learning problems within the same use case can be solved with similar solutions. The results provide a heuristic for future implementation attempts tackling problems of similar nature

Optimizing the Christiansen-Shelyubskii method and its comparison with industrial control methods for homogeneity determination of glasses

The Christiansen-Shelyubskii method used in this work was optimized experimentally. Different tests were performed with two grain fractions of standardized crushed sheet glass. Maximum transmissions, half-widths and their Standard deviations were optimized, and it was further shown that sampling, an appropriate cleaning of the granulated glass and the quality of the optical cells used are of great importance, too. Α variety of industrial glasses was investigated and the Christiansen-Shelyubskii homogeneity numbers were compared with the homogeneity data provided by the glass manufacturers using industrial homogeneity control methods for Container, tube and flat glasses, respectively. Although the physical principles of the homogeneity methods compared were dissimilar, mostly qualitatively similar trends were found. Only in the case of the Mach-Zehnder interferometry method, which is based on a similar principle as the Christiansen-Shelyubskii method, a quantitative correlation analysis was possible. Reasonable agreement between the homogeneity values from both methods was achieved. It was further shown that the Christiansen-Shelyubskii method can monitor the homogeneity during glass melting with external cullet, both in freshly prepared and in composted states