What would a US policy of 'restraint' mean for the Warsaw NATO Summit?

This review discusses how a decision by the United States to pursue the policy recommended by Barry Posen in his book ‘Restraint’ would play out in the NATO alliance. The review does so by examining what ‘restraint’ would mean for how the alliance faces the problems of European divisions (including a potential Brexit and unravelling or fragmentation of the European Union), continued low levels of European defence spending, European perceptions of US indifference, high-handedness and isolationist attitudes in its presidential race, the spectre of Russian aggression and involvement in the Middle East, and ongoing debates about the alliance’s purpose in the face of challenges ranging from traditional military threats through to the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean

An Online Efficient Two-Scale Reduced Basis Approach for the Localized Orthogonal Decomposition

We are concerned with employing Model Order Reduction (MOR) to efficiently solve parameterized multiscale problems using the Localized Orthogonal Decomposition (LOD) multiscale method. Like many multiscale methods, the LOD follows the idea of separating the problem into localized fine-scale subproblems and an effective coarse-scale system derived from the solutions of the local problems. While the Reduced Basis (RB) method has already been used to speed up the solution of the fine-scale problems, the resulting coarse system remained untouched, thus limiting the achievable speed up. In this work we address this issue by applying the RB methodology to a new two-scale formulation of the LOD. By reducing the entire two-scale system, this two-scale Reduced Basis LOD (TSRBLOD) approach, yields reduced order models that are completely independent from the size of the coarse mesh of the multiscale approach, allowing an efficient approximation of the solutions of parameterized multiscale problems even for very large domains. A rigorous and efficient a posteriori estimator bounds the model reduction error, taking into account the approximation error for both the local fine-scale problems and the global coarse-scale system

Numerical upscaling of perturbed diffusion problems

In this paper we study elliptic partial differential equations with rapidly varying diffusion coefficient that can be represented as a perturbation of a reference coefficient. We develop a numerical method for efficiently solving multiple perturbed problems by reusing local computations performed with the reference coefficient. The proposed method is based on the Petrov--Galerkin Localized Orthogonal Decomposition (PG-LOD) which allows for straightforward parallelization with low communcation overhead and memory consumption. We focus on two types of perturbations: local defects which we treat by recomputation of multiscale shape functions and global mappings of a reference coefficient for which we apply the domain mapping method. We analyze the proposed method for these problem classes and present several numerical examples

Die ad hoc Digitalisierung der Lehre in der Corona-Pandemie: Vorteile, Nachteile und offene Fragen

Mit der Schließung von Hochschulen und Universitäten im März 2020 mussten sich Lehrende schnell an die neuen Bedingungen anpassen. Im Mai 2020 haben wir ein Survey mit Professor*innen und Postdocs in der Soziologie durchgeführt, um zu untersuchen, wie die Covid-19-Maßnahmen ihre Arbeit beeinflussen. Die digitale Lehre konfrontiert nicht Lehrende, sondern auch Studierende mit verschiedenen Herausforderungen. Obwohl die ad hoc Umstellung auf digitale Lehre zu Beginn des ersten digitalen Semesters im Mai 2020 eher kritisch gesehen wird, betonen die Lehrenden auch einige Vorteile, die sich aus digitaler Lehre ergeben. Der Beitrag schließt mit einer Diskussion zu den Konsequenzen für Studierende mit Blick auf soziale Ungleichheiten. With closing universities in March 2020 lecturers quickly had to adapt their teaching to the new circumstances. In May 2020 we conducted a survey with professors and postdocs in sociology to explore how the Covid-19 measures affect their work. In this research note, we present the survey results regarding the reorganisation of teaching. Digital teaching confronts not only teachers but also students with various challenges.Despite the rather critical perception of the ad hoc transition to digital teaching in May 2020, lecturers also see some advantages in digital teaching. The paper concludes with a discussion on implications for students with special regard to social inequalities

Adaptive machine learning-based surrogate modeling to accelerate PDE-constrained optimization in enhanced oil recovery

In this contribution, we develop an efficient surrogate modeling framework for simulation-based optimization of enhanced oil recovery, where we particularly focus on polymer flooding. The computational approach is based on an adaptive training procedure of a neural network that directly approximates an input-output map of the underlying PDE-constrained optimization problem. The training process thereby focuses on the construction of an accurate surrogate model solely related to the optimization path of an outer iterative optimization loop. True evaluations of the objective function are used to finally obtain certified results. Numerical experiments are given to evaluate the accuracy and efficiency of the approach for a heterogeneous five-spot benchmark problem.publishedVersio

Gender balance in ECEC : why is there s little progres?

Social attitudes about male participation in the upbringing of children have changed considerably over the past few decades. Men are now seen as important for children’s development and learning. Research from many countries worldwide shows that in early childhood care and education (ECEC), male workers are welcomed by female colleagues and parents. In the last two decades there have been initiatives for more men in ECEC in several European countries. Nevertheless the proportion of male workers ECEC remains low worldwide. This article questions the persisting gender imbalance in ECEC and analyzes ambivalences regarding more men in the field. Based on recent gender theory, efforts and limits of strategies for more male students and workers in ECEC in Belgium, Norway and Germany are discussed. It is concluded that deeply held gendered attitudes and practices in the field of care and educational work with young children have to be put into question. More space in ECEC for embodied subjectivities is needed to overcome essentialist conceptions of differences between body and mind, women and men

Multi-ancestry genome-wide association study of 21,000 cases and 95,000 controls identifies new risk loci for atopic dermatitis

Genetic association studies have identified 21 loci associated with atopic dermatitis risk predominantly in populations of European ancestry. To identify further susceptibility loci for this common, complex skin disease, we performed a meta-analysis of >15 million genetic variants in 21,399 cases and 95,464 controls from populations of European, African, Japanese and Latino ancestry, followed by replication in 32,059 cases and 228,628 controls from 18 studies. We identified ten new risk loci, bringing the total number of known atopic dermatitis risk loci to 31 (with new secondary signals at four of these loci). Notably, the new loci include candidate genes with roles in the regulation of innate host defenses and T cell function, underscoring the important contribution of (auto)immune mechanisms to atopic dermatitis pathogenesis

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged jet production in root s(NN)=2.76 TeV Pb-Pb collisions

We present measurements of the azimuthal dependence of charged jet production in central and semi-central root s(NN) = 2.76 TeV Pb-Pb collisions with respect to the second harmonic event plane, quantified as nu(ch)(2) (jet). Jet finding is performed employing the anti-k(T) algorithm with a resolution parameter R = 0.2 using charged tracks from the ALICE tracking system. The contribution of the azimuthal anisotropy of the underlying event is taken into account event-by-event. The remaining (statistical) region-to-region fluctuations are removed on an ensemble basis by unfolding the jet spectra for different event plane orientations independently. Significant non-zero nu(ch)(2) (jet) is observed in semi-central collisions (30-50% centrality) for 20 <p(T)(ch) (jet) <90 GeV/c. The azimuthal dependence of the charged jet production is similar to the dependence observed for jets comprising both charged and neutral fragments, and compatible with measurements of the nu(2) of single charged particles at high p(T). Good agreement between the data and predictions from JEWEL, an event generator simulating parton shower evolution in the presence of a dense QCD medium, is found in semi-central collisions. (C) 2015 CERN for the benefit of the ALICE Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe

Forward-central two-particle correlations in p-Pb collisions at root s(NN)=5.02 TeV

Two-particle angular correlations between trigger particles in the forward pseudorapidity range (2.5 2GeV/c. (C) 2015 CERN for the benefit of the ALICE Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B. V.Peer reviewe