An industrial application of symbolic model checking

Model checking techniques are recognized to provide reliable and copious results. Instead of examining a few cases only – as it is done in testing – model checking includes the whole state space in mathematical proofs of correctness. Yet, this completeness is seen as a drawback as the state explosion problem is hard to handle. In our industrial case study, we apply automated model checking techniques to an innovative elevator system, the TWIN by ThyssenKrupp. By means of abstraction and nondeterminism, we cope with runtime behaviour and achieve to efficiently prove our specification’s validity. The elevator’s safety requirements are exhaustively expressed in temporal logic along with real-world and algorithmic prerequisites, consistency properties, and fairness constraints. Beyond verifying system safety for an actual installation, our case study demonstrates the rewarding applicability of model checking at an industrial scale. CR subject classification  D.2.4; F.3.1; J.7 ; C.3     

European funding of culture: Promoting common culture or regional growth?

Since the late 1970s, European funding of the arts has been a feature of the mixed‐funding regime and support of a range of community arts, training, heritage and regeneration programmes in Member States. In the late 1980s, following widened membership and more direct policy engagement by the European Commission, regional development began to support increasing levels of investment in culture, notably heritage, cultural tourism and city regeneration through arts venues. Meanwhile the Commission's own culture programmes have focused on Cities of Culture, language and heritage projects.

However, the funding of culture through the various Structural Funds (although not categorised as such at either European, national and regional levels) has dwarfed that of the Culture Unit. No cultural policy or plan for this significant amount of investment in cultural facilities has been evident, and such programmes have largely bypassed national arts policy, being directed through regional and local authority economic development, tourism and regeneration departments.

Promotion of European ‘Common Culture’ was expounded in the Maastricht Treaty and, it is argued, these objectives have driven increased city‐regional autonomy. Notwithstanding difficulties in categorising grant data in cultural terms, this chapter measures the impact and distribution of such regional funding across beneficiary countries and within the eligible regions. A UK survey provides a regional breakdown of projects receiving support in the 1990s and European funding used as part of partnership funding (lottery, regeneration programmes). The chapter concludes that, while the funding of these cultural projects has been under‐estimated and ‘hidden’, its concentration in city arts and heritage venues raises questions for both European and national cultural policy: whether cultural investment has been of the right type, in the right place; or whether European common culture aspirations have ignored local and more culturally diverse opportunities. In short, whether form has followed funding.     

Bildungsort Familie: Die Transmission von kulturellem und sozialem Kapital im Mehrgenerationenzusammenhang

Die Bildungsbedeutsamkeit der Familie hat vielf?ltige Facetten, die es zu erhellen und zu systematisieren gilt. Dabei wird implizit auf empirisches Material zurückgegriffen, das aus einem laufenden Marburger DFG-Projekt über „Familiale Bildungsstrategien als Mehrgenerationenprojekt“ stammt. Es wird verdeutlicht, in welch vielf?ltiger Weise der Lebenszusammenhang Familie — über das Bereitstellen bzw. das Einwirken auf allgemein günstige Lernausgangsbedingungen hinaus — Ort und Anlass für wechselseitige Bildungsprozesse ist bzw. sein kann. Im Zentrum der überlegungen steht das Postulat, den Horizont der Bildungsforschung so zu erweitern, dass diese in der Lage ist, die skizzierten Dimensionen der Bildungsleistungen der Familie auch empirisch einzuholen. Eine so verstandene Bildungsforschung wird als bildungsbezogene Familien-und Generationenforschung konzipiert, die der Bildungsbedeutsamkeit der Familie den ihr zukommenden Stellenwert zugesteht. Dieser Anspruch wird theorie-und methodenbezogen reflektiert und mündet im Versuch einer Systematisierung des behandelten Forschungszusammenhangs, indem ein Modell der familialen Transmission von kulturellem und sozialem Kapital entwickelt wird.