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In his keynote address, Robert Merton chooses not to focus on the financial crisis. It is clear to him there were “fools and knaves,” as well as “many structural elements that would have happened even if people were well behaved and well informed” -- risks are simply “embedded in our systems.” Instead, Merton explores how financial engineering is essential in preparing for the inevitable next crisis, and in solving critical challenges. “The world has changed; we can’t go back. Let’s talk about what we should do going forward.” To illustrate society’s need for financial innovation, Merton uses “a live case study:” the vast problem of retirement funding. In the past decade, stock market declines and falling interest rates have hit mainstream employer pension...

[ H P I ] . Hasso Plattner-Institut fuer Softwaresystemtechnik GmbH, Potsdam | Hasso Plattner-Institute for software systems engineering GmbH, Potsdam/Germany

Die Wärmedämmung gilt als wichtiger Baustein für die Ziele des Klimaschutzes, die sich unser Staat gesetzt hat. Ist das der richtige Weg? Kritiker bezweifeln das.

Der Großteil des Strom- und Wärmeverbrauchs geht für das Wohnen drauf. Dabei gibt es längst Häuser, die mit Mini-Kraftwerken ausgestattet sind - und mehr Energie produzieren, als sie schlucken. Die Bewohner machen damit sogar Gewinn. 

The annual Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference that concluded in Raleigh, N.C., on Sunday was extraordinarily rich in useful free tool tools for all sorts of data analysis and visualization, thanks to invitations accepted by computer scientists from Google, MIT, Stanford and the like. Here are links to 13 of these free tools that I found to be particularly useful for data analysis in journalism.