randform

A note concerning myself: Some of my academic email accounts have already been expired – the last accounts are going to expire soon. So please adress any email to me not to the old adresses listed in my scientific publications but to randform or daytar: .

Since 01.06.2010 the Quantum Information Theory Group of Prof. Dr. Matthias Christandl is no longer at the LMU Munich but has moved to ETH Zürich.

->outdated randform post

In todays nature magazine there was an article about the “Global phytoplankton decline over the past century”. I have no access to the article however in an article by Markus Becker – a reporter from the german news magazine Spiegel Online – it was reported that since 1950 on average the mass of phytoplankton declined globally by 40%. Since phytoplankton are amongst others a major food source for food webs this affects e.g. the abundance of fish. Moreover phytoplankton are responsible for much of the oxygen present in the earth’s atmosphere. A main reason for the decline of phytoplankton is climate change.

-> related article on randform about oceans and climate change
->related article on randform on microorganisms and oxygen supply
-> see also here
update 30.7.10: You might also want to kick into the subject by reading
about the decline in fish occurence:
->Elizabeth Kolbert on overfishing on Azimuth
-> randform post about fish consumption and nutrition

some koi after the click
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“hotels and big cars mean wealth”, artwork by Ali Kurt Chamsanet

According to todays Wall Street Journal the CMBS Market Rises From Ashes of Collapse.

MBS are securities or debt obligations which are backed via pools of mortgage loans. CMBS are MBS for the commercial market. Aggregating loans in a pool is called securization. Very simplified: MBS are a means to deal with mortgage loans (in particular by using pools). The securization of socalled “subprime” MBS (MBS for loans with a high risk) was a major reason for the (still ongoing) financial crisis.

According to the Wall Street Journal article there are now some transactions taking place which may indicate a beginning of a stabilization of the commercial real estate market where one has to say that a good month ago it was said that “For CMBS, ‘Worst Is Yet to Come” and moreover the article says:

The rise in delinquencies on existing CMBS loans also is worrying issuers and investors. Today, more than 8% of $578.6 billion of loans packaged into CMBS are at least 60 days past due. Credit-rater Standard & Poor’s expects that rate to reach as high as 11.5% by year’s end.

MBS are hedged and protected by CDS (credit default swaps). So these may give amongst others some indications about the state of CMBS. The CDS was already mentioned together with other derivatives in this randform post. In this post a source (namely the bank for international settlements (BIS)) was given for the notional value of derivatives. However it is difficult to get much more and more detailled information. Even reports may sometimes be less useful. And it is not only me who is having trouble to find better information but even the SIFMA (Securities Industries and Financial Markets association) writes in their position:

SIFMA supports the use of clearing organizations for standardized transactions and reporting through data repositories for all other OTC derivative transactions. SIFMA believes that every OTC derivatives clearing organization and data repository should be subject to federal regulatory oversight, thereby ensuring that the systemic risk regulator and other federal financial regulators have access to all of the information needed to monitor OTC derivatives markets. It is important for the federal government to create a single set of regulations in order to promote clarity and accountability.

So if I understand this correctly the SIFMA wants not only more clarity but also more regulations for derivatives. This could be e.g. the case because the current notional amount for OTC’s according to BIS (2009) is: 614.674 Trillion US dollars (approx. 600 times million times million or 614.67*10^12), the current notional amounts of CDS which are still outstanding are according to this document of BIS (2009) 36.92 trillion US dollars (i.e. 36.92 * 10^12 US dollars) (list). As a comparision the World domestic product 2009 is 57.94 * 10^12 US dollars. As the randform post explains these amounts can be seen as “insurance securities”, which would need to be paid if all “worst cases” come together. It is clear that such a sum can’t be paid, even not if well-meaning billionares would interfere (see e.g. here or here or here (math remark: 120 billion US dollars are 120*10^9 US dollars, i.e. the OTC amount is 5000 times 120 billion). And it is needless to say that a shaky CMBS market may pose a risk which could make to come together not only a few worst cases.

But unfortunately it seems not everybody is convinced about regulations (scroll to headline: grave mistake), thus in particular this may have been a reason why the G20-London summit reached only an (as wikipedia puts it, see headline: outcome) agreement to “ATTEMPT to bring wider global regulation of hedge funds and credit-rating agencies.”

Last time when I was in Göttingen I found a poster at the math department documenting an art science collaboration between mathematics professors William Thurston, Kazushi Ahara and Sadayoshi Kojima on one side and a team around clothing designer Issey Miyake, notably including chief designer Dai Fujiwara of Issey Miyake (here a link to a partial version of the poster, see also absnews article by Jenny Barchfield). A result of this collaboration is that the Issey Miyake Fall-Winter 2010-2011 ready-to-wear collection is inspired by the geometrization conjecture.

From the poster:

In the mid-October of 2009, Prof. Thurston showed us the detail drawings of the “8 Geometry Link models as Metaphor of the Universe” They inspired us to make the collection based on them, accompanying design study with rope and toile. Considering the body itself as the Universe, we have added our own interpretation of beauty to them. The new perception of the body shared by all the members of the team resulted in the discoveries of new lines and forms, which were then applied to textile, color and detail studies. Thus the new collection has taken shape steadily, revealing its whole picture eventually. To sum up the exchange with Prof. Thurston led us to find a completely new kind of beauty and embody it in clothing. This mission was, as it were, an odyssee to explore the Universe with infinite imaginations.

The geometrization conjecture roughly says (I am not an expert on this) that a three dimensional volume form without boundary (a two dimensional analog of such a form would be for example the surface form (i.e. the “skin”) of a ball or the surface form of a doughnut) can be decomposed into “pieces” which have one of 8 characteristic “geometric structures”, which means roughly that in a small neighbourhood of any such “piece” there is – out of only 8 characteristic ways – one specific way to measure length. A theorem states that any three dimensional (oriented) volume form without boundary can be obtained by cutting a “thick” (that is instead of a rope take a ribbon) link out of a three dimensional sphere. Thus you can characterize special types of three dimensional volume forms (here: “the pieces”) by assigning a link to them. This is – by what I understood sofar- why there are 8 links (or link models) on the poster – they characterize the 8 types of possible “pieces”, which built up three dimensional volume forms without boundary.

Why do they call these 8 links “Metaphor of the Universe”? I can only make wild guesses, which sound rather like science fiction than science: Maybe if you imagine the space of the universe to be eventually such a three dimensional volume then by cutting it into pieces (may be along black hole horizons huh?!) and “measuring distances” (determine a metric) one could make deductions about the actual form of the universe? Or – reversely by making assumptions about the form of the universe (like e.g. that its space is a three sphere) one may get informations about what could be inside black holes…given that one finds all black holes…(this is just a funny joke).

But joking aside – I think they call it Metaphor of the Universe because these simple 8 links may be used to describe quite complicated things.

->wikipedia link math and fiber arts

randform reported already earlier about the decline of music education in Berlin. The last post was about a protest note by well-known musicians who protest against the cutbacks of music education in schools .
Currently you can hear the Vuvuzelas everywhere here in Berlin — they are quite LAUUUUt (this is approximately the noise of a german Vuvuzela) — thus one could easily conclude that the decline of music education already reached the bottom.
But of course the Vuvuzelas are due to the soccer fever and luckily there are still some people left in Berlin who prove that its music education has not (yet) reached the bottom. Here a video snippet from the concert of the Musikalische Werkstätten (a music project with pupils from the Berlin districts of Lichtenberg-Hohenschönhausen, Treptow-Köpenick und Marzahn-Hellersdorf, organized by Landesmusikakademie Berlin) where pupils perform not with Vuvuzelas but partially with similar simple instruments the piece “seven nation army” (here the original) in a very cool style.

During the concert I was a bit concerned that parts of the ceiling in the gym at FEZ, where the concert took place would fall down, however then I told myself that just because the ceiling is deformed (probably due to ball shots, see image) that doesn’t necessary imply that it will fall down. ??

The protest has now a website at http://www.ohne-musik-keine-bildung.de/ and you can leave your signature against the cuts in music education (german newspaper article in Morgenpost about the campaign)

While computer games are meanwhile having quite an impact on our societies (here again a link to a video about cognitive changes in people due to computer gaming) the reflection about computer games is rather at the beginning.
Thus not so much is known and documented about early computer games and/or the history of computer games. So it is good that the Computerspielemuseum Berlin (-> earlier randform post) is now going to have a permanent exhibition venue in Berlin. The patron of the museum is going to be Ralph Baer (please see this randform post) the director will be the in the earlier randform post mentioned Andreas Lange. The venue is going to be the former Cafe Warschau on Karl-Marx-Alle. There will be a concept presentation on Friday Juli 2nd from 10.00 to 12.00 o’ clock. If you want to participate please give a note to Mr. Gerstenberger, his adress and the announcement for the museum opening are here.

-> for those who can’t make it to Berlin: museogames exhibition in Paris from June 22 to Nov. 7 2010

On the occasion of the opening of the museum a small randform collection about the architecture of pachinko’s after the click.

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The International society for the interdisciplinary study of symmetry ISIS (not to confuse with Isis Healing or other Isis disambiguations) is soon organizing a conference called “Days of Harmonics” (Regular registration fee: 400 Euro) (Aug. 23 – Aug.28 2010, AUSTRIA). The proceedings are probably going to be published in the journal visual mathematics by the mathematical institute Belgrade.

BerliNordik is a rather new forum for sustainable design, it is

“an international platform that brings together young talented designers from Berlin with their colleagues from the Nordic countries on the subject of sustainable design. “

The berliNordik blog informs amongst others about activities of BerliNordik. Recently BerliNordik coorganized an exhibition called “Bright green design” where I attended the opening. For the exhibition few product design objects were chosen. I actually had also sent in a proposal but unfortunately –again– it wasn’t chosen (maybe I write later about that project in product design). Below some images from the opening.

There are images from three projects in the images. One project is featuring a partially wooden bike called “Holzweg”. Here I was asking myself how good the different material components can be dissassembled. Another project is the Yellowone Needle Cap – a protective cap that turns an empty soft drink can into a safe depository for used needles, by Hân Pham. The third project is “Spot on the BUOY” by Adrian Paulsen. In this envisaged project a buoy is supplied with a paper towel for oil spills and e.g. lights so that the buoy acts as a kind of sensor for oil spills. Clearly the buoy would only be appropriate for rather “light” spills it would certainly not be addaped for the recent oil spills in the gulf of Mexico. Any paper would be totally overstrained with this spill.

(Images of the other projects from create berlin )

In the below images you can see also the discussion of jury members and organizers about “what is green design“. One key issue here was the quandary of eco-designers, which is that to a great extend the task of a designer is to communicate a product and thus in part to encourage more consumption, which is against sustainability. It is also in part the task of an eco-designer to greenwash a product. Last but not least sustainability is often in conflict with economic interests, i.e. due elaborate production methods and materials and e.g. longer durability often only small profits can be made which is a problem in our economic system. Moreover next to the demand of incorproating new green technologies, questions about certification of eco-efficiency, compliance to new standards etc. are making the design process difficult.

->Video of the opening
Interview by Lilli Green with visitors of the exhibition about “what is green design” (-> video)

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This response to a comment by Zaza may be useful not only to Zaza.

“Flautenkreuz” photography by Brad Löw

According to what I read in the study Ökonomische Auswirkungen einer Laufzeitverlaengerung deutscher Kernkraftwerke (in german) which was made on behalf of the BDI (the “umbrella organisation of german industries”) (BDI site) the operational life-span of nuclear power plants in Germany to
-40 years would lead to a financial gain (via cost saving) from:

approximately 3.3 billion Euro/year (2015) to approx. 6 billion Euro/year (2020) (table 3-1, p. 34 of the study),

extending the operational life-span to
-60 years would even lead to a gain from:

approx. 8 billion Euro/year (2020) to approx. 10 billion Euro/year (2025) or approx. 9.3 billion Euro/year (2030) (from table 3-2, p. 35, of the study ).

So on average one can roughly say that the life-span extension of nuclear power plants would lead -according to what I read in this study- to a financial gain of -very roughly averaged- at least 5 billion euros per year. Since it is expected that electricity prices will be made according to market value and not according to that gain which is due to unexpected life-span extensions one could infer that this gain will be the gain of the electricity industry. Consequently the german government (which is planning a life-span extension of nuclear power plants) is planning to demand a share of that prospected gain for their new cuts plans in the socalled “Sparpaket”. According to Spiegel Online the current plans are to ask the electricity industry for a share of 2.3 billion per year. Thus if I conclude rightly this means that the electricity industry may keep a gain of at least 2.7 billion per year (or up to 7.7 billion per year depending on life-span extension) . It is not clear how much of that would be reinvested into renewable energies. Social cuts according to Spiegel Online on that page.

I don’t know, wether the life-span extension of nuclear power plants means that this study is going to be extended.

I also don’t know wether inspection optimization is planned.