Contributions in Merlin

null

null

null

The trend of merging telecommunication infrastructures with traditional Information Technology (IT) infrastructures is ongoing and important for commercial service providers. The driver behind this development is, on one hand, the strong need for enhanced services and on the other hand, the need of telecommunication operators aiming at value-added service provisioning to a wide variety of customers. In the telecommunications sector, the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a promising service platform, which may become a ''standard'' for supporting added-value services on top of the next generation network infrastructure. However, since its range of applicability is bound to SIP- enabled services, IMS extensions are being proposed by ''SIPifying'' applications. In parallel to these developments within the traditional IT sector, the notion of Virtual Organizations (VO) enabling collaborative businesses across organizational boundaries is addressed in the framework of Web Services (WS) standards implementing a Service-oriented Architecture (SOA). Here, concepts for controlled resource and service sharing based on WS and Semantic Technologies have been consolidated. Since the telecommunications sector has become, in the meantime ''mobile'', all concepts brought into this infrastructure must cope with the dynamics mobility brings in. Therefore, within the Akogrimo project the VO concept has been extended towards a Mobile Dynamic Virtual Organization (MDVO) concept, additionally considering key requirements of mobile users and resources. Especial attention is given to ensure the duality of the merge of both, SOA and IMS approaches to holistically support SOA-enabled mobile added-value services and their users. This work describes major results of the Akogrimo project, paying special attention to the overall Akogrimo architecture, the prototype implemented, and the key scenario in which the instantiated Akogrimo architecture shows a very clear picture of applicability, use, and an additional functional evaluation.

This article suggests a reform of the organisation of money markets that would largely eliminate the risk of contagion. The notion of “systemically important institution” would be replaced by that of systemically important platform”. Such platforms would only be directly accessible to a group of “offi cially recognised fi nancial institutions” that would have to comply with special regulatory requirements and would be directly supervised by the central bank. The status of “offi cially recognised fi nancial institution” could be revoked by the central bank if these special regulatory requirements are not satisfi ed. A special resolution procedure would be created for these institutions, so that the central bank has the legal powers to close it down, or at least restrict its activities before it is too late. OTC markets would still be active but, since they would be penalised by regulation, it is likely that they would become small, and therefore not in a position to jeopardise the entire system.

There is a well-established body of literature on separately testing the prediction power of different betting market settings. This paper provides an inter-market comparison of the forecasting accuracy of bookmakers and a major betting exchange. Employing a dataset covering all football matches played in the major leagues of the “Big Five” (England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) during three seasons (5478 games in total), we find evidence that the betting exchange provides more accurate predictions of a given event than bookmakers. A simple betting strategy of selecting bets for which bookmakers offer lower probabilities (higher odds) than the betting exchange generates above average, and in some cases even positive returns.

We analyse CO2 emissions reduction costs based on project data from the Climate Cent Foundation (CCF), a climate policy instrument in Switzerland. We draw four conclusions. First, for the projects investigated, the CCF on average pays € 63/t. Due to the Kyoto Protocol, the CCF buys reductions until 2012 only. This cutoff increases reported per ton reduction costs, as the additional lifetime project costs are set in relation to reductions until 2012 only, rather than to reductions realised over the whole lifetime. Lifetime reduction costs are € 45/t. Second, correlation between CCF's payments and lifetime reduction costs per ton is low. Projects with low per ton reduction costs should thus be identified based on lifetime per ton reduction costs. Third, the wide range of project costs per ton observed casts doubts on the widely used identification of the merit order of reduction measures based on average per ton costs for technology types. Finally, the CCF covers only a fraction of additional reduction costs. Decisions to take reduction efforts thus depend on additional, non observable and/or non-economic motives. Any generalisation of results has to consider that this analysis is based on prospective costs of a sub-sample of projects in Switzerland.

null

Software systems have grown so complex and their design is so intricate that no individual can grasp the whole picture. Touch screen technology combined with 3D software visualization offers a promising way for the software engineers involved in a project to share knowledge about a software system in an intuitive way. In this paper we present first results on how such emerging technologies can be combined to support software exploration tasks, such as identifying high-impact changes or revealing problematic parts of the design. As demonstrated with a scenario, this turns the collaborative environment into a vehicle usable during software reviews.