Logbook

The Euro crisis as direct result of EMU design flaw

2011-05-17T21:27:00.000+02:00

The European Monetary Union (EMU) faces an unprecedented financial crisis. Trade deficit among EMU member states accumulated private and public dept in some countries, without the option of currency exchange rate compensation - a self regulating mechanism that markets usually offer. The founding fathers of the EMU ignored knowingly the need for a primarily centralized tax system to allow transfers from economic stronger to economic weaker EMU member states. This has been an inherent design flaw of the EMU system since the early days and it is existent to date.

Portugal, Ireland and Greece with a combined GDP of $742 bn had to be bailed out with $392 bn (50% of GDP) with lons from EU and IMF. Here are the details:

Ireland: €85 bn bailout (Nov 28, 2010 Bloomberg) to cover dept until 2013 (5.8% interest rate) from EU (€45 bn), IMF (€22.5 bn) and Ireland’s cash reserves and national pension fund (€17.5 bn).
Portugal: €78 bn bailout (May 16, 2011 Spiegel) to cover dept until 2013 (5.7% interest rate). funded by EU, EFSF and IWF €26 bn each. Germany is to cover a total share of €14 bn.
Greece: total dept $466 bn (Reuters), 65 bn EUR ($92 bn) due in 2012-2013 borrowed at 5%, current intest rate is 15% on 10 years bonds. (CNN) French and German banks are the biggest holders of Greek dept: Sept. $100 bn. (BIS), conditions $10 bn cuts + $86 bn privatization. 24% unemployment, income in public sector 3x as in private. 2 years bonds now at 27%, decision on next $17 bn bailout in June 2011.

Spain is assumed to be the next in line, having an immediate need of twice the combined bailout for Portugal, Ireland and Greece.

A fair question would be: how is it possible that some countries where able to accumulate such tremendous dept? After all, the EMU had a regulation in place that member states had to reduce its government deficits to below 3% of its gross national product - even attached with a penalty similar to a speeding ticket. Needless to say: this is not about speeding. This is about a poorly designed system with wrong incentives for the national governments. In the case of Greece, financial transactions with Goldman Sachs and other banks have been reported (NYT) to hide dept in the budget. Ireland has been hiding dept in the property market for many years. It is important to note, that accumulation of dept is not necessarily a sign of mismanagement. It is rather a necessity for maintaining a trade deficit in open markets without currency exchange rate compensation.

Irelands period of rapid economic growth came to an end around 2000. The growth was driven by foreign direct investment, drawing from a well educated young workforce low wages and low corporate taxes.

Rising costs of labor and highly competitive new EU member states in eastern Europe lead to stagnation of foreign direct investment and an migration of multi nationals (e.g. Dell) to Poland and the Baltic countries. The economic base for the "Celtic Tiger" was already gone, but the property market continued to grow for another 7 years by 100% - until 2007. This is when the financial system collapsed. Reckless lending practices of private banks flooded the country with cash, pushing the people to consume. This all with money they will never been able to pay back. The crash was triggered by an increase of interest rates in 2006-2007. Many borrowers run into difficulties with their mortgages leading to the housing market crash. The credit crunch as a result of the US subprime mortgage crisis made it extremely difficult for Irish banks to find additional financing to cover their losses. Job losses and falling wages lead to more mortgage defaults and foreclosures.

To prevent the banking sector from collapsing, the Irish government has nationalized all Irish banks. It even spent around €80 bn to establish National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) to acquire toxic loans. Way too much for a small and shrinking economy. The government's overall debt is around 100% of GDP by the end of 2010 and is expected to be around 124% of GDP in 2011.

There are several scenarios which may lead out of the chaos. One scenario which is popular among the new nationalist movement is to exclude economic weak countries from the EMU. Inevitable, this would lead to a default because this countries would not be able to serve loans in Euro which would then be much higher valued as their national currency. Consequently, official and private creditors - mainly in the remaining EMU countries - would have to realize the losses. Alternatively, the economic strong countries could leave the EMU. Creditors would also have to realize losses because of the weak Euro in relation to their national currency. The outcome of both scenarios do not seem to be desirable for either of the two parties. However, it remains an option if the member states can not agree on a reform of the EMU leading to a further european integration, including a permanent transfer system.

It is clear that some EMU members will not be able to pay back all the debt. Some transfer needs to be done, investors need to realize losses or some combination of both. Official creditors like the EU and the IMF may invoke a principle called "comparability of treatment": if they extend the maturity of loans, the interest rate, the principle amount, then they demand that commercial creditors do the same. According to the rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P): restructuring the dept would be a default. However, rescheduling loans to the EU and the IMF would not be a selective default as long as the commercial dept is left intact. This is a tradeoff that needs to be considered. It seems to be a fair deal to let private investors participate in carrying the burden of the crisis. After all, they contributed to the problem in the first place. However, paying the bill may come cheaper for the public then paying high interest rates on the market and bail-out the Deutsche Bank. A pragmatic solution is what we need!

A default does not necessarily mean financial caos. There have been several countries that have defaulted on their dept in the last 15 years: Russia (1998), Argentine (2001), Jamaica. However, life goes on for them and they have come back into the market quickly. Others did not recover and lost access to international capital markets altogether: Moldova (2002), Ukraine (1998, 2000) and many more. Also, there have been defaults in other monetary unions: CFA-Franc-Zone, eastern caribbean zone. According to John Chambers, S&P - this did not undermine the integrity of the unions. It's not synonymous with monetary collapse.

Time Horizon of individual Concern

2011-03-20T23:46:00.000+01:00

Assume we have an event in the future that influences our live is some way - lets say it makes us happy. This event depends on a set of other things for example events that we can influence ourself, events other people can influence and events that appear as random. Take some other person that has a similar future event which makes him happy, however it makes him to be happy only if he/she sees you being happy. Because our world is connected, assume there is some chance you will meet that other person in the future. In fact, it is just a matter of time when you are going to meet each other. But for now, you are alone and all you need to be happy is a good cup of tee. So, the attention you put in preparing your drink is literally "your own cup of tee". However, if the tee has some longer lasting effect on your happiness, it becomes more likely that you will meet that other person. That person wants to be happy too but it can only be happy if you are happy. Consequently, the business of preparing the tee shifts from an individual concern to a common concern between both of you as longer as the effect of the tee lasts on your state of happiness.
In general, the quantity of interest (1) is the average duration of the consequences of an action of agent A at which the action becomes of equal importance for agent A and some other connected agent B. Therefore, turning from an individual concern into an common concern between agent A and B.
This idea can be extended for a network of interconnected agents. For this case the quantity (2) would be the average duration of the consequences of an action of agent A at which the action becomes of equal importance globally.
Quantity (1) and quantity (2) appear to have some fundamental relevance in decision making processes. Note to self: Have a closer look at this. Comments are very welcome.

What's wrong with economics and finance, and how they can be radically improved?

2010-12-12T01:47:00.002+01:00

The global financial crisis is the result of a massive intellectual mistake of conventional economic wisdom. Today, we can describe a set of things that went wrong with the regulatory structure like inadequate supervision, poor use of credit rating agencies, bonuses payed for excessive risk taking, etc.

But the reason for that was, we where in the grip of conventional economic wisdom and taken by the proposition from neoclassical economics - equilibrium economics, efficient market theory, rational expectation theory - that stated, provided we archived low and stable inflation and we have free financial markets everything will be fine. It turned out that this was an overly optimistic point of few which ignored facts that markets where subject to irrational herde effects or rational self-reenforcing cycle effects (John M. Keynes , Daniel Kahneman). There was a failure of central bank policy, a failure of financial regulation and behind it there was an intellectual error.

We have to go back to real economics, which describes real institutions and real human behavior. The most crucial thing to do is to focus on the world as it is. The assumption that you can derive probability distributions from the past and assume that this is the probability distribution that the world would operate in the future was a fundamental delusion. A delusion that ignored the insights of Keynes Treatise on Probability and that the world is governed by deep inherent uncertainty.

Not just looking for the aggregate growth of credit but also looking for the canals of credit grows and how they relate to productivity growth vs. bubbles and consumption. Keeping the whole thing in equilibrium with adjusting the intrest rate was a mistake. There is something about credit extended, against assets that have replacement value (Himen Minsky), above all - against real estate. They can simply get locked into cycles, where the very process of extending credits is generating an asset price increase, which is therefore appearing to validate the extension of credit and encourage more extension of credit. But this is also generating profit on bank balance sheet which is appearing to generate the extra capital which makes the credit extension possible. We have to understand these cycles, and we have to understand the way they are important in both in residential and also commercial real estate. Every banking crisis in the past 30 year was driven by this cycles. We have to understand that optimal leaders have to incorporate quantitative controls of credit which do distinguish between different sectors of the economy.

The vital role of good economics is in ensuring free market capitalism that drives towards greater social good. One of our core problem is that there is a radical divergence between that was is in the interest of private shareholders or of managers and that which is socially optimal. Shareholders and managers want banks always higher leveraged then is is socially optimal, because they are protected against the downside not only by limited liability but also by the realization that not even the shareholders may not suffer by the full extend because there are lage external costs - externalities, when they fail. This is why we have to regulate the capital ratios of banks and/ or have mechanisms to make sure that even the biggest banks are resolvable in ways that impose losses on dept providers as well as equity providers. The challenge is to provide an environment where there is not a free push option onto the tax payer, but do so in a way which maintains fundamental lending functions to the economy. This is a more difficult challenge for financial institutions then it is to non-financial institutions. In non-financial institutions we have well developed processes of putting people into bankruptcy procedures (capital restructuring) while the company can continue to run the business. The problem with financial institutions is the separation of capital structure from the business, because the capital is the business.

The core of good economics is a good public good. If the propositions of complete free markets where correct - we don't need economists. We need economists to figure out when the great power of the market will not work, when they are bad incentives, when there is a difference between social and private optimality.

Grows is important for emergent markets and stability is important for rich economies that allow freedom of expression and creativity on the important things of life.

Bringing together theory and empirical observations of what actually occurs will be the new trend in economics. Bringing together theory and models and deep understanding of institutional setups through wich a overal economic variables have expression. It has to explain the real dynamics of the markets.

Interview with Adair Turner, chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)

Mac Browser Performance Test: Safari vs. Firefox vs. Chrome

2010-12-09T09:20:00.013+01:00

I did some benchmark testing for different browsers on my MacBook Pro under OSX 10.6.5. On the start is Safari 5.0, Chrome 8.0 and Firefox 3.6. (all software updated today). For those of you who are not interested in the details, the winner is Chrome, followed closely by Safari and far behind Firefox.

Here are the details for the sunspider test: Safari is overall 2.6x as fast as Firefox. This is the case for 3d operations, access, crypto, date, regexp and especially for recursive control flow operations, which are 6x as fast. However, Firefox has some advantage in math and even more in bit operations. Chrome performs overall again 20% faster then Safari. The binary-tree test performs exceptionally well (6x as fast) on Chrome. Safari is strong in bitwise-and operations and sha1 crypto test. Compared to Firefox, Chrome is more then 3x as fast overall. The binary-tree access test shows how far Firefox is behind - it needs 26x as long as on Chrome. There is not much left for Firefox in this match, but still is is faster in partial-sum math and some bit operations.
The V8 benchmark test shows a similar picture.

In terms of support for modern internet standards I had a closer look for html5 support on both Chrome and Safari. Again, Chrome is cutting edge technology. It supports full html5 parsing plus SVG and mathML. Both support H.264 video, but Safari has no Ogg Vorbis and no WebM.
Safari supports custom scheme and contents handler.
I tested also the Safari browser vers. 4.1 on my powerPC mac. The performance v8 score is 165 and sunspider benchmark needs almost 6k ms. This is rather slow, but no surprise on a legacy system. Interestingly, this browser supports almost the same html5 set (except AAC audio) as the modern Safari.

All tested browsers pass security tests for known vulnerabilities.

Conclusion: The best choice on a modern mac is Chrome. Firefox is way behind and can be uninstalled. Safari is still safe to use on legacy systems.

Blogger-Droid Review

2010-08-05T14:42:00.001+02:00

Blogger-Droid is a blog posting app for android. I tested it on blogger (www.blogger.com) in both in online and in offline mode. It supports images but no videos, text formatting, not even links. However, image templates can be edited. Posting in offline mode generates an error. There is an option to save as draft. But for posting you have to be online.
I don't see the advantage to the blogger web interface.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.4.9

Blogaway Review

2010-08-05T13:27:00.001+02:00

Blogaway is a little app for android that allows you offline blogging on Blogger. My expectation was to write a post offline e.g. on the airplane and it syncs as soon as you get connected to the net.

The text editor has some simple formatting tools for bold, italic, underline, and colors. You can add &nbdip;links&nbdip; using the menu key. The same procedure works for images. You can select any image from your phones gallery and it gets uploaded as soon as you get connected. It works even for video. The images are stored on picasa and videos on youtube. You can add labels and there is some configurations to add GPS position, signature, etc. Finally, you can choose to publish your post or save it as draft. It turns out in offline mode you can only save as draft on the phone. This is what the app seems to do automatically from time to time. It's your problem to find the most recent version of your post when you continue working on it. I also lost all the media added to the post. I had to reinsert again in online mode.

To summarize, the app does not sync with the blog. However, you can save your post on the phone and publish once you are online again. The app is unstable on my phone. This is not what I was expecting.

Posted via Blogaway on android phone

Gasoline vs. Diesel Fuel

2010-05-04T10:22:00.002+02:00

Here in Europe you can see more and more diesel engine powered cars on the road. This is in part due to a mislead understanding of fuel efficiency. Indeed, most diesel engine powered cars consume less volume in fuel then comparable gasoline engine powered cars. However, when comparing fuel efficiency one needs to take into account the amount of energy released from the fuel. This figure is usually the lower heating value (also known as net calorific value, net CV, or LHV) of a fuel. The following Table [1] shows the LHV per mass and per volume:

Gasoline	42.5 MJ/kg	32.0 MJ/liter
Diesel	43.0 MJ/kg	36.4 MJ/liter

One can see that the heat per mass values are approximately equal, however diesel contains 16.5 % more heat per volume. This means if you have a gasoline powered car consuming 5 liter/100km (47 MPG), an equal efficient comparable diesel powered car would consume 4.3 liter/100km (55 MPG). However, as you know - efficiency is not the same as (cost) effectiveness. The latter involves fuel prices, taxes and other crazy politics. Even as it may explain the popularity of diesel powered cars in Europe, I am not going to address this issues here.

Another issue worth considering is the carbon content of gasoline vs. diesel fuel, as shown in the table below:

Gasoline	2.42 kg/galon	0.64 kg/liter
Diesel	2.77 kg/galon	0.73 kg/liter

Diesel fuel contains 14 % more carbon per volume. This is what is released after combustion as CO2 in the environment. According to an overwhelming scientific consent, CO2 emissions are made responsible for global warming. Happy driving!

Photo-shooting at Dance School Carnival

2010-02-17T16:32:00.004+01:00

GN668581
Originally uploaded by obochmann

Yesterday, I have been invited to take photos at the Tanzfest, an anual event from the dance department of the music college "Fanny Hensel". It was not just fun to see all this young talents, it was also very colorful. To get some impressions just follow the link.

Bioinformatics Software and APIs

2010-01-30T16:47:00.002+01:00

Automatic Comparative Sequence Analysis (AutoCSA) is a mutation detection software designed to detect small mutations (1-50 bases) in sequence traces. The software is capable of detecting both homozygous and heterozygous base substitutions, as well as small insertions and deletions, to a high sensitivity. It is made for high throughput environments in mind, so it is easy to automate the analysis of large amounts of data with little manual intervention.
DbCon is a Java library that provides a simple interface to DBCP. It offers distributed pooling configuration and provides a clean layer of separation between Java code and SQL. Important features are ConnectionPooling (via DBCP), SingletonConnectionPools (connection pools with only one connection), DataSources backed by the same connection pools, SqlLibrary for SQL storage available both in a custom format and SqlLibXmlFormat, ObjectFacades, Corrects for the OracleMetadata foibles, PasswordObfuscation. The software originally developed by Sanger Cancer Genome Project is available as BSD license.
PICNIC is an algorithm to predict absolute allelic copy number variation with microarray cancer data.
A commonly used software for statistical analysis of microarray data sets is TIGR-MeV. It accepts multiple input data formats. There are mainly two families of data sets: single or multiple chip.
Single chip data sets contain one row per spot (gene), one column per criterion. The different columns typically contain information about green channel intensity, red channel intensity, green channel background, red channel background, spot number, and position of the spot on the slide. There are more elaborate formats like GenePix, spot and TMev that contain additional columns.
Multiple chip data sets combine information from multiple chips. Each chip can represent a given experiment, sample, tissue type, patien type or time point. It contains one row per spot, and one column per chip (plus a few columns with a description of the gene, and some additional parameters). The information in the experiment columns is usully restricted to Red/Green ratios or log(ratios).

Genome, RNA and Protein Data Sources

2010-01-30T13:48:00.006+01:00

Biological knowledge is distributed amongst many different general and specialized databases. The standard resource for finding biological databases is the Database Issue of NAR. I will discuss a few data sets that came to my attention for various reasons.
The Cancer Gene Census is an ongoing effort to catalogue those genes for which mutations have been causally implicated in cancer. The database is searchable by cancer genes that are amplified in cancer, by chromosome, by cancer genes that are characterised by frameshift mutations, by germline mutations, by large deletions (covers the abnormalities that result in allele loss/loss of heterozygosity at many recessive cancer genes), by missense mutations, by nonsense mutations, by other types of mutations ( small in-frame deletions and insertions as found in KIT/PDGFRA and larger duplications/insertions as found in FLT3 and EGFR), by cancer genes that are somatically mutated, by splicing mutations, by cancer gene symbol, and by by translocations.
The COSMIC is a database for somatic mutation information relating to human cancers. It contains information on publications, samples and mutations, including samples which have been found to be negative for mutations during screening (enabling frequency data to be calculated for mutations in different genes in different cancer types). The data include benign neoplasms and other benign proliferations, in situ and invasive tumours, recurrences, metastases and cancer cell lines. The data can be queried by tissue, histology or gene and displayed as a graph, as a table or exported in various formats.
The Pfam database is a large collection of protein families. A protein family is represented by multiple sequence alignments and profile hidden Markov models (HMMs). In order to understand the function of domains (one or more functional regions), the focus is on there combination found in nature. The website allows searches for alignments, trees, protein structure and other functional information for each family. The Pfam libraries of HMMs can be used locally to define domains in complete genomes.
The Rfam database is a collection of RNA families. A RNA family is represented by multiple sequence alignments, consensus secondary structures and covariance models (CMs). RNA families have functional classes: non-coding RNA genes, structured cis-regulatory elements and self-splicing RNAs. These functional classes often have a conserved secondary structure which may be better preserved than the RNA sequence. In contrast to Pfam CMs are used to model both, RNA sequence and secondary structure. Rfam allow the user to search (locally with INFERNAL package or on the web site) a query sequence against a library of covariance models, and view multiple sequence alignments and family annotation.

How I would use Apple's new iPad

2010-01-28T16:15:00.004+01:00

Yesterday, Steve Jobs introduced the newest gadget from Apple. The tablet computer got it's eagerly awaited debut. This device, Apple calls it iPad, is located between the phone and the laptop computer. You can't make phone calles with it, at least not in the conventional manner. Still, there is an interesting opportunity to use it as an voip phone because of the attractive data plans for the 3G version of it. But as a mobile phone it is simply too large. The iPad can be used as an ebook reader. It's 9.7" 1024 x 768 pixel 132 ppi display is larger then the Kindle (6", 600 x 800 pixel, 167 ppi) and it is color. This could be the reading experience comparable to reading a real book or a newspaper. It supports the EPUB format, an open ebook standard. However, keep in mind that EPUB (and other formats) has issues rendering equations at this time. The second strength of the iPad is browsing the web. Apple build a great UI that could make it even a better experience then on a laptop computer. I would add iWorks as the third strength of the iPad. For what I have seen on the demonstration, it could be better then the laptop/desktop version.

So, will I buy the iPad?

As mentioned earlier - it will not replace a mobile phone. Ok, will I need an iPhone? The iPhone apps run on the iPad but the iPad apps will not run on the iPhone/iPod touch. No point of iPhone then. It actually makes sense to go for an more open smart phone then the iPhone. A phone that is more powerful, that can be programmed and run services in the background.
Will the iPad replace my laptop? Maybe at some time. I use my laptop as both, a portable device and a desktop. My laptop is so powerful that it has replaced my desktop computer long time ago. But I would need some device to sync the iPad's backup, music, etc. Also, I would need some device for programming. I'm not sure I would like to go back to a desktop. Maybe it would be a iMac type of entertainment center.

One last thing I would like to mention. I think the iPad could be a cool replacement for the old fashioned land line phone. Just run an sip client on it and place it on a docking station in your kitchen. Maybe Apple will add a cam to it in the future. Then you could even use it as video phone.

Edited May'10: Some more use cases for iPads have emerged.

Science and Ethics

2010-01-27T04:50:00.004+01:00

What are the ethical foundations of scientific practice and the personal and professional issues that researchers encounter in their work?

duty, plagiarism, honesty, peer review, misconduct, fraud, bias, responsibility

On Being a Scientist: Responsible Conduct in Research, Second Edition, 1995, COSEPUP
Henry H. Bauer: Ethics in Science, 1992.
Herbert Gintis, Behavioral Ethics Meets Natural Justice, Politics, Philosophy and Economics forthcoming.

Jung-Kyoo Choi and Samuel Bowles, "The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War", Science 318 (2007): 636--640

Thomas Huxley, Evolution and Ethics

William D. Casebeer, Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectionism, and Moral Cognition

Paul Lawrence Farber, The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics.

Ice Crystals on Snow Surface

2010-01-26T10:07:00.006+01:00

I took this photo last weekend while we where skiing in the Harz. It shows tiny ice crystals all over on the surface of the snow. I am not quite sure about the metheological explanations for this phenomenon. I think the fluffy show sculptures with the glitter crystals against the sun are beautiful. I did some soft focus and focal b&w post-processing on the image.

Crisis Response: Support Disaster Relief in Haiti

2010-01-17T21:13:00.006+01:00

A 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on January 12th. Join recovery efforts mobilizing around the world to assist earthquake victims. Your donation will help disaster victims rebuild their lives and their communities.

Help map Haiti - Directly assist relief workers in saving lives. Post-Earthquake Imagery from GeoEye:

If you have any information that helps people to connect to there family and loved ones in Haiti, please use the person finder below.

The next two weeks I will connect anyone calling my land line here in Berlin (030)57709925 to any number in Haiti for free.

International Calling Rates

2009-12-16T23:31:00.006+01:00

Some visitors to Europe may be surprised how much they have to pay for there telephone fees. Most Europeans are probably used to it, but there is actually no reason for doing so. Below, there is a comparison of calling rates. Most of the services require some sort of internet access. This may cause extra fees. Rates are without calling plan.

I admit that this selection is especially tailored for my own use. If you wish to update some rates or add more providers and destinations to the table just send me your email address.

Ten Simple Rules for ...

2009-12-11T16:29:00.001+01:00

This has been published many times and I still think it is very useful.

The Google Wave Buzz

2009-11-19T13:07:00.001+01:00

Last Friday I got my Google Wave invite and I was spending the whole weekend trying to figure out what this thing is all about. Well, just as they say - it's another interactive online tool, a kind of social networking site with many interactive features, and it is an open source program.
What most people do first is trying out some of the gadgets and robots. Extensions/Gadgets are little applications that make you enter something or give you some information, e.g. a map, a voting ballot, a photo gallery, a bidding agent, a telefon. It seems everything with an API can be integrated here (google services, social networking sites like twitter and face book). Nothing new as long as you are alone in your wave. The new interactive feature becomes visible as soon as you invite contacts to your wave. All user in the wave will see the same instance of it. That means whenever you type something, they see it and vis-a-vis. Whatever the state of your gadget application is, all will see the same and all can modify it.
This sounds like a huge mess. Imagine, having five remote controlled cursors in your text document - entering and deleting text, zooming in and zooming out in a map. Probably not the type of application you are looking for. On the other hand, look at the "bidder" application: Every user in the wave can bid a price, all see the highest bid and the bidder. Take the "who is coming" application: Every user can choose yes, no or maybe. The Table with the users is instantly visible to all. I can see use for this. I can see use in projects where lots of realtime synchronization or competition is necessary. Check your email inbox. If you have more then ten replays on the dame subject and the same day, you may consider using Google Wave in the future. If your realtime constraints are a bit more relaxed, you may use Google docs or SVN.
I am not going to talk a lot about the robots. They are pretty much the same as you may guess. It's a artificial user. Some software that can act like a user - in many cases less intelligent. The robot feature does not seem to work currently. So, I'll keep it for some other time.
To summarize, I think it's a nice tool for realtime collaboration, it is open and it can integrate everything else. For Teams working on the same project with lots of synchronization a big yes; for the control freak a big no no.

Google's Public Data Sources

2009-11-12T22:46:00.015+01:00

Getting data for your research has never been that easy. There is a vast collection of publicly available data ready to use. Google makes a number of World Bank's World Development Indicators available. You can simply make a google search to get this nice chart.

Carbon dioxide emissions are those stemming from the burning of fossil fuels and the manufacture of cement. They include carbon dioxide produced during consumption of solid, liquid, and gas fuels and gas flaring. Source: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, United States.

World Bank's data finder offers another way to print CO2 emissions per capita on a world map. This can be embedded using Google Visualization API. I am using here the geomap visualization class. A geomap is a map, with colors and CO2 emissions assigned to specific regions. Values are displayed as a color scale, and hovertext for regions.

CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita) - 2005

Source: World Bank Data - CO2 emissions

World Bank's data visualizer is another great tool on the to visualize time series of a subset of 2009 World Development Indicators. It contains 49 indicators for 209 countries and 18 aggregates from 1960-2007. Data includes social, economic, financial, information & technology, and environmental indicators.

World Bank's API gives developers free access to the most popular World Bank datasets. The API offers 114 indicators from key data sources and 12,000 development photos.

iSimulate is World Bank's free platform that allows individuals anywhere in the world to perform simulations. It allows to access some of The World Bank's macroeconomic models across the internet. It is currently in private beta service with restricted access.

The World Bank maintains a website with other interesting data sources related to development.

The second major data source currently used in Google search is U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics. A Google search creates this rather depressing chart on unemployment rates.

The chart is updated as new data are available. It might actually look much better by the time you are reading this.

I was trying to get some local data as well. Here in Germany the Statistisches Bundesamt - a government agency - is in charge of collecting this data. It seems that this agency is a bit more dusty then others and they don't believe in free access to public data. You will not find any modern database connector on there website and they make you pay 50 Euro for downloading a bulky text file. Don't take the trouble, you will not even get that far without fluency in German.

Amazing Advances in Robotics

2008-12-17T10:01:00.008+01:00

The first industrial robot I have seen was a paint robot. It was a very simple design: Infront of a sheet metal conveyor, a spray gun was moving up and down with an attached camera. Every time the camera was sensing an object, the spray gun was turned on. It was amazing to see how the sheets where painted slice by slice, no matter what shape they where. Well, not everyone was as amazed as I was. The robot took twice as much paint as his human colleague and the paint finish was closed to waste. People where asking why we bother doing the robot thing at all.

Modern robots doing the paint job same as good as humans. I have seen robots placing chips on printed circuit boards that fast that the eye can not follow it. Robots assembling cars and they are just like a normal tool in todays manufacturing. But what about or daily live? Do you have already your personal assistent called ASIMO or your hiking companion BigDog? Right, why would you bother with robots ...

Honda ASIMO Conducts The Detroit Symphony Orchestra

Boston Dynamics Big Dog

What it needs to make the world addicted to electrons

2008-12-10T17:13:00.010+01:00

The German Karl Benz, inventor of the automobile powered by a four-stroke gasoline engine, began to sell its production vehicles in 1888. This was the initial event for our increasing addiction to oil. 120 years later the automotive industry is still using the same technology and the oil industry was selling a Barrel of oil for $150. At least as long as the economy was booming. Now the economy is dead and the Barrel is back to $50. World oil production has reached its peak in Aug. 2008 and is declining since - the first time in history. The last inexpensive production sides are exploited momentarily and more expensive ones are opened in the future. If we look at the supply side we can say that production is decreasing and getting more expensive. On the demand side we see the lowest possible rate due to the economic crisis. If we do the math we can say that current prices have reached the lower bound.

An anual oil business of $700 billion in the US alone and a conservative and inflexible automotive industry are not able to delay the technological paradigm shift any longer. Automotive industry is in a structural crises due to a failure to innovate and unfortunately they have reached a size that they can blackmail governments for bailouts. However, the current crisis provides a unique opportunity for redefining mobility without dependency on oil. Massive investments in electricity generation, electricity grids, battery technology, power electronics and a vehicle plug in infrastructure are required. Huge electricity buffering capacity can provide synergetic effects in connection with wind and solar electricity generation. Obligations for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions goes just along this line. We are at a point where the technology is ready and where it makes economic sense to go electric.

Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson interviews Shai Agassi.

City of Ames builds new pool in flooding area

2008-05-30T18:34:00.009+02:00

After tremendous rain yesterday and during the night we have large areas flooded in the Brookside park and north of 13th street. The 6th street had to be closed completely because of overflowing water. Even if this area is known to be flooded after heavy rain and melting snow the flooding is more severe this time, causing significant damage to property and infrastructure.

I have been talking to Mark Stephenson, project manager for the city of ames, on sight about his thoughts of using flooding area for new developments. Facing the devastation of construction equipment disappearing in the overflowing water he admits that this is a great loss. However, he also thinks that building the pool on this side is a great use of land and it is respectful to the nature. Mr. Stephenson is overseeing the completely flooded parking area on Friday at 11 am. The water is still rising and he explains "this is as bad as it can get". The side where the actual pool is going to be build was elevated with soil from lower areas last year. While other communities paying respect to the fact of global warming and the consequences of more severe weather situations by enlarging flooding areas, the city of Ames is doing the opposite here. Reducing area that was used as buffer for water after heavy rain increases the pressure downstream, even if as in this case the buffer volume stays the same. The pool as such probably will not be affected by foods in the future because it will be build on the same level as the 13th street, which serves as a kind of dam holding back the water. But people down the river, having there property flooded, can go the the city of ames and say "thank you" for a failed policy of water management.

See more photos here.

We built a snow house

2007-02-07T05:20:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I was hanging with the folks from the climbing club and we build this snow house. It was great fun apart from the fact that it was freezing cold. It's hard to believe that we where in there with eight people.

Moved to Ames, IA

2007-01-11T23:13:00.000+01:00

I recently moved to Ames in Iowa to work with Stephen Proulx as a postdoc at Iowa State University in the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Organismal Biology.
The research will primarily concern the underlying mechanisms that cause evolutionary change. The approach will be similar to that I have been using in earlier research on manufacturing and supply chain networks. We will apply methods from computational mechanics to assess robustness and complexity as well as discover pattern in genetic networks. The goal is to better understand the evolutionary dynamics.
My office is in Bessey Hall 353B (phone: 294 3081).

New Domain and Email

2006-10-25T06:57:00.000+02:00

I am hosting my webpage on my own domain now http://Bochmann.ComplexLab.org/ and I have also a new email: "Olaf.Bochmann(at)ComplexLab.org".

Jonna and Brendan got married

2006-09-23T22:07:00.000+02:00

We have been in Ilomantsi for Jonnas and Brendans wedding. This is in the east of Finland, part of the North Karelia region, where Jonna is originated from. It is not easy to get there but it was certainly worth the effort. It is a beautiful place, we met lovely people and had a great time. We took also some photos.

Revew: The Problem of Tuning Metaheuristics as Seen from a Machine Learning Perspective

2006-04-02T20:58:00.001+02:00

by Olaf Bochmann
In his doctoral thesis [1] Mauro targets the parameter setting problem in metaheuristics. Metaheuristic is a class of concepts to solve optimization problems. The resulting algorithms usually feature a number of problem specific parameters. This parameter settings are sensitive and have a significant influence on the quality of the solution. However, working out the right set of parameters for a particular problem is going to get rather tedious. Therefore, the author proposes an algorithm called F-Race to solve the problem based on a formal statement. In this survey I am interested firstly in the problem statement itself and secondly in the solution. The first question has to do with the nature of the optimization problem: Is it a static problem and the aim is finding the optimal solution - if yes, how does it model disturbances? Is it a dynamic problem and the aim is optimal control - if yes, how does it model the stochastic process? The second question is concerned with the solution of the parameter setting problem - the F-Race algorithm: Does the algorithm converge to the optimal set of parameters and how efficient is it?
In chapter 3 (p. 67) the formal problem statement is given. As "Mario's pizza delivery problem" suggests, it is a sequence of static optimization problems. Each instance is a traveling salesman problem. The performance is measured on individual instances (an estimator for the costs E[\hat{p}]=q+b with \sigma_\hat{q}^2=E[(\hat{q}-E[\hat{p}])^2] and q as function of e.g. length of the tour, time, etc.) and on the whole sequence. The latter concerns the expected value of the performance over a class of instances, which is the average of the instance performances weighted by the probability that the instance occurs. The author assumes that a stochastic process generates a sequence of IID instances which is not very realistic (also read 3.3.1. and 3.3.2). Then, the tuning problem is as such: Find a parameter configuration that maximizes the class of performances of the future sequence of instances.
optimization criterion:
optimal configuration:
cost function:
The cost function can be solved with Monte Carlo simulation which is essentially what is done in the algorithm called F-Race.
To summarize, the notation the author uses to describe the problem is a little wired (or maybe it is me) but I think I got the idea. He describes the problem as a sequence of static optimization problems (instances). This does not make it dynamic as long as the IID assumption for P_I(i) is not relaxed. Just consider the case where Mario can not deliver all the pizza in one hour. Section 3.3.2 goes into that direction, however the discussion on the modelling method is not up to date. I think it all comes down to the question of identifying the process that generates the sequence of instances. Without this process you can not capture lots of dynamic patters (I have done some work on that issue).
I have to admit I was reading very selective and it may be I missed somethings out or got somethings wrong. Anyway I like this thesis because of the idea of bringing it all down to a parameter setting problem, which has been ignored for so long. I have to have a closer look at the F-Race algorithm and at a particular example.
To be continued.
[1] M. Birattari. The Problem of Tuning Metaheuristics as Seen from a Machine Learning Perspective. PhD thesis, Universit? Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, 2004.

Skiing in Lapland

2006-03-25T21:23:00.000+01:00

I have been in the north of Finland for cross-country skiing - an annual organized skiing event across Finland called Rajalta Rajalle-Hiihto (border to border).

It starts at the Russian border and follows roughly the arctic circle to the Swedish border. Between 45 and 84 kilometers skiing daily is what you get for your money. It is a nice workout and does not need any special preparation. All you need is some physical stamina. It helps if you have some decent skiing technique. The type of accommodation varies and is usually rather basic. We had temperatures always below zero, sometimes down to -22°C and good snow conditions. Most people in the group have experience with some sort of Worldloppets or Marathons and enjoy the rather uncompetitive and relaxed atmosphere of this event. Some come back every year. For me it was the second time - after a break of five years.

~~photo book (35MB pdf)~~ sorry too much traffic
photo gallery

Review: The scaling laws of human travel

2006-02-02T11:23:00.003+01:00

by Olaf Bochmann
Scientists from the Max-Plank Institute for Dynamic and Self-Organization and the University of California published an article [1] in the January 26th issue of Nature about a model of how people travel. The model is based on an analysis of data collected by a web site called Where's George -- in which volunteers enter the serial numbers of bills in their possession. The web site builds up a picture of how the cash moves around in the world as the same bill was entered from a different location. The assumption is that the cash travels with the people and this allowed the researchers to model how humans move around in the world without actually tracking them. The latter may be useful in predicting the spread of a possible pandemic. This makes the article relevant in the light of the current discussion on avian influenza (bird flu).
Having a closer look at the mathematics: a two-parameter continuous-time random walk model model, a type of random proliferation known as super-diffusion, was found to describe human dispersal. The analysis was using the trajectory of almost half a million dollar bills. After a registration more then half of the notes reappear within an area of 10 km. A small percentage however travel distances of more then 800 km. If one draws the probability P(r) - that the note has traveled distance r within say 14 days - against r, then one obtains for the range of 20 km to 3500 km a power-law: P(r) ~ r ^{^–(1+β)}, with β ≈ 0,6. One can show that P(r) for β < 2 has an infinite variance <r^²> – <r>^². That means bad news for the short term prediction of the displacement.
The small class of dollar bills is jumping large distance in a relatively short time. This is the cause for a more rapid spread as it would be expected in a diffusion process. Such kind of super-diffusion process is called Lévy-flight, a special case of Markov process. The assumption that the bills would travel according to the Lévy-flight model was a wishful thinking as well. That would mean that all bills should be equally distributed after a relatively short period of time. Reality however was that even after 100 days just a quarter of the bills traveled more then 800 km. If one draws the probability Q(t) - that the note was still close to its origin after time t - against t, one obtains again a power-law: Q(t) ~ t ^{^–(1+α)}, with α ≈ 0,6, which also has infinite variance. Therefore, also bad news for prediction of a period a bill spends on the same place.
The crucial measure is the probability W(r,t) - that at time t a displacement r has happened. W(r,t) fulfills for the displacement of bank notes a universal scaling law W(r,t) t^{^α/β} = f(r/t^{^α/β}) containing the two observed exponents α und β. To validate the model one can draw all scaled probabilities W t^{^α/β} against the scaled distance r/t^{^α/β} one should find all measurement points on the universal curvature.
This is yet another good example of creative thinking wherein a good idea in one discipline is morphed into an unintended application in another. A similar scheme to track euro bank notes can be found here. I would like to see similar applications in modeling material flows for supply chain management and manufacturing control without tracking every single part using RFID tags. Another application could be the flow of information.

[1] D. Brockmann, L. Hufnagel, and T. Geisel. The scaling laws of human travel. Nature, 439(7075):462-465, 2006.
Links:
Where's George: a site for tracking USD notes.
EuroBillTracker: a similar site for tracking Euro notes.
Max-Plank Institute for Dynamic and Self-Organization
University of California
Other reviews:
by Kingsley Dennis
by Rainer Scharf
by Robert Jasmer

Happy New Year

2006-01-02T00:00:00.000+01:00

Seasons greetings and happy new year to everybody! I'm back in Leuven after all that traveling. It was great fun but I missed french class and I probably will fail the exam later in the month. We will have a new year drink in the house - lets find some time for it.

Rock Climbing in Railey

2005-12-21T00:00:00.000+01:00

I decidet to spend some time in Thailand, where I went - apart from other places - to the south of the country. There is a small peninsula called Railey which is known in the rock climbing community for its spectacular shaped limestone cliffs.

The idea to visit this place was born some time ago when I came across a photo on the internet. It was in some way similar to this one from Pra-Nang Beach. To my knowledge it is the only place where you can climb on large stalagmites. The view from the cliffs over the blue sea is breathtaking. Some crags are hidden in the jungle, accessible at low tide only or for some you need a boat. It was a great experience.

photo book (53MB pdf)
photo gallery

Invited talk at University of Aberdeen

2005-10-12T14:00:00.001+02:00

I am giving an invited talk at the Computer Science Department, University of Aberdeen, with the title "Optimal Prediction in Complex Multi-Agent Systems - An Application of Computational Mechanics". Starting from the engineering problem of complex systems and its agent based model, I introduce computational mechanics using probabilistic ideas like mutual information and minimal sufficient statistics. The main mathematical construct, the epsilon machine, is developed and an algorithm for its approximated reconstruction is outlined. Based on a case study in the domain of manufacturing I develop different measures for a predictive model of the process as well as a measure of organization in a stochastic optimization process. Even if the talk focusses on a particular problem in the domain of manufacturing, it is meant to encourage discussion about other possible application areas like speech recognition and knowledge management.

housewarming party

2005-10-07T11:00:00.000+02:00

For those of you who don't know jet, we moved in a new house in the Schapenstraat. It is just a view meters from my old place in the Begijnhof.

It is just outside the main gate and the house is really a beauty! Tonight at about 8pm we invite all our friends, colleges, old and new neighbors to come to our place and have a glass of wine with us.

and now? ... post doctoral depression?

2005-07-03T12:52:00.000+02:00

Well, it is done! And not just like that, it was done in style and in
a very touching atmosphere. Here are some comments from the members
of the jury: "... an intellectual tour de force" (Prof. Van Brussel,
promotor), "unusual analytic work for someone from the engineering
department" (Prof. Maes, Institute for Theoretic Physics), "every-
time I read your book I find new interesting things in there" (Prof.
Kruth, PMA), "very good work ... hard reading but very
entertaining" (Dr. McFarlane, University of Cambridge, Dept. of
Engineering). I'm overwhelmed by all those and just beginning to
realize that is actually happened. This would not have been possible
without the support and encouragement of so many individuals. I would
like to thank everyone who contributed in one or the other way to
this research and made it to what it is - a full scale success.
I would also like to thank for all the greetings and congratulations
that arrived here in the recent days from all over the world. I'm
very touched by your kind words! Many people where asking questions
about my future plans. Whether I would like to stay in academia or go
back to industry. Some where even expressing the opinion, I would be
a waist of talent for the industry - which I do not agree upon. Some
other where asking whether I will relocate again - yes, relocation is
very likely. But in general, all options are open and I am open for
suggestions. One thing is for sure, this dissertation is not the end
of something - it is just the beginning. There are many things coming
up on the horizon, like in teaching courses for graduate students on
computational mechanics, applied information theory, multi-agent
systems, probabilistic methods; in research solving the innovation
problem, making the link from organization to performance; in
application design of emergent systems in manufacturing, logistics,
networking, etc. Some people are trying to prepare me for what they
call "post doctoral depression". Honestly, I don't know what they are
talking about...

Invitation for my doctoral defense

2005-06-27T16:00:00.001+02:00

Dear professors, friends and colleagues,

I would like to cordially invite you to my doctoral defense entitled: "Probabilistic Approaches in Multi-Agent Systems for Manufacturing Coordination and Control". The venue will be the auditorium of Arenberg Castle (Arenbergkasteel, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, 3001 Heverlee

Belgium) on Thursday, June 30th 2005 at 17:00. There will be a reception following the event.

Abstract:

This dissertation addresses the goals of robust, adaptive, scalable, dynamic and distributed agent systems and their application in manufacturing control. A synthesis of methods from dynamical systems theory, computation theory and inductive inference has been developed that suggests a constructive approach to address the problem of emergent computation. Most applications of multi-agent systems in manufacturing control use the term emergence in a rather vague fashion, describing a process where macro-level behavior arises from the interaction of some micro-level components. The actual cause for this emergent phenomenon - the intrinsic computation of the process - has not yet been taken into account.

In this context, the multi-agent system is understood in the sense of an agent based model where each thing is represented as an agent in a population of distinctive agents. Agents observe their environment and reconstruct a model based on patterns that reflect the structure in which the process stores and transforms information. This unique model - it is minimal in complexity and maximal in predictive power - is used in forecasting the manufacturing process. This pattern that allows for a large reduction in complexity a small reduction in accuracy is the emergent phenomenon in forecasting.

More details at:

http://people.mech.kuleuven.be/~obochman/Thesis/

goodbye microsoft!

2005-05-21T22:00:00.000+02:00

yes i did it, my new computer is a macintosh and it is a beauty! i was not sure it was a good idea to go for it shortly before printing my theses and preparing my defence, but now after one hour working on it i'm absolute certain it was.
I'm still in the phase of understanding the philosophy behind the user interface. I would like to know why less function keys, less mouse keys and less buttons is supposed to be more confutable? I would like to know why I need two hands to drag and drop something with the touch pad and why I can't find a "del" key on my keyboard and no "alt" key and ...? if you know an answer please let me know!

finalised date for my doctoral defence

2005-05-20T12:08:00.000+02:00

the jury now agreed on a date for my doctoral defence which will be thursday 30th june at 5pm. the venue is the auditorium of the arenbergkasteel, which is a pretty nice place.

if you want to come and need some more info just drop me a message.

university gets rid of academic honor

2005-05-12T20:00:00.000+02:00

some major operation is going on to change our domain name from 'kuleuven.ac.be' to 'kuleuven.be'. all this years i was suffering from trouble with this long name; even fields on some web pages where to short to accept my 33 character long email address. nevertheless, after all that burden we where proudly typing '.ac' for 'academic' - 'university' - 'being special'. without academic honor my email address has now 30 character and i wonder whether this is worth all the effort. one might follow the mistaken belief that replacing 'kuleuven' by 'kul' would be a better idea. But this is clearly done without the flemish translation in mind (kul=nonsense) and would be an unacceptable assault on the status quo in this institution. The good thing is that 'kuleuven.ac.be' will continue to work at least as long as i'll be here and nonsense emails to 'kul.ac.be' will not be accepted at any time.

wild west in town

2005-05-11T21:00:00.000+02:00

apart from bicycle theft leuven is known to be a rather safe place to live in. even more excitement where created by the news that there was a shooting in one of the bars at the train station. the story is that one mad man shoot two and injured several others before he returned to the bar to finish his beer and to wait for the police to come and arrest him. the other part of the story is that he managed to escape when he was presented to the judge, running down the shopping street, handcuffed and leaving some red faced police man behind. even if the mayor pointed out that there are no similarities to the dutroux case, everyone knows about the competence of the police and nobody seems to bother. the papers where not tired to report that the shooter actually is of 'foreign' origin, so that the mob on the street knows where to make his cross on the ballot next time. don't worry they finally got him 20 hours later, but if you are a foreigner living in leuven be prepared for even more tension.

reading commission approves text and appoints a jury

2005-05-10T18:48:00.000+02:00

the reading commission now approves officially my text and appoints a jury for the doctoral defence. the members of the jury are H. Van Brussel (promoter), D. Van Oudheusden (promoter), Y. Berbers, J.P. Kruth, D. McFarlane, C. Maes and P. Valckenaers. additionally, there will be a chaiman appointed by the rector.

back in leuven

2005-05-09T20:00:00.000+02:00

we got almost 2500 km on the speedo in the last week. fist we went to königsstein to our old little cabin in between the fortress and the bank of the river elbe. nothing has changed after all that years - still the same smell and the same people. same night we went to have dinner in town and noticed quite some changes there. almost all of the houses affected by the flood in 2002 where nicely renovated. donations, public money and hard work has turned even old sheds into little castles. All that wonderland ends at the mark of the high water level. Behind it begins the real existing economic downfall and even the wonderland may be of temporal nature.

we haven't been very lucky with the weather. there was just a little climbing in the bilatal: i took margaret on her first tour in saxony (rosenthaler turm/aw) on thursday and on saturday
matthias took me on a few tours (wegelagerer/kl. beute, schraubenkopf/erika, vo. schroffer stein/sw wand, chinesischer t./ping pong) which was very kind of him because i don't feel confident enough to lead tours there at the moment. for the rest of the time we did some nice hiking tours in heringsgrund after margaret was almost taken into jail during an attempt to cross the border to check republic. Saturday night we all went to the fortress hohenstein, where the klettertreffen came to an end. our horzelbuben sucked in the competition for most of the part. only paul and selma scored the second place at ak5 which was quite remarkable. The party was great craic; sogh was playing live and for what i can say they are really great! also the cozy atmosphere in the burgkeller was same as ever.

the weather turned nasty on sunday. we decided to have a quick visit to berlin. we had a look at the not jet unveiled holocaust memorial and helped to do some clean up in the area. now back in leuven lots of email is waiting to be answered. i got a list of comments from the reading commission on things they want me to change in the text. i think some of the comments are rather hostile - so i'm a little sad about it. felix contacted me, he is going to come over to leuven in september for a summer school on statistical mechanics. i might have to join him in order to finish my paper on scheduling processes.

heading for germany

2005-05-04T06:00:00.000+02:00

this morning i was still trying to figure out the results of yesterdays meeting of the reading commission but there was no sign of my promoter. in the afternoon we decided to throw our backpacks in the car and head for germany. the original plan was to stay in weimar, but traffic was so bad that we ended up in köln for the night.

now it's official

2005-05-01T09:02:00.000+02:00

i finally decided to go online with this blog because i think it is a good idea to let other people now what's going on in my life. it's not that i think my life is more interesting than others but i find it more and more difficult to keep all my friends updated. also i'm always open to make new friends and discuss thinks with others or just point out something what i consider to be interesting.