Lichtgedanken 02

Editorial 57 02 | LICHT GEDANKEN Ticker Under the microscope Psychologists question young people on their relationship with Europe and the EU Long before the British took their Brexit decision, it was already clear that Eu- rope is facing a crisis. The financial crisis, rising numbers of refugees and growing right-wing populism are pre- senting the European Union with ma- jor challenges. »And the thing is that the EU itself currently has a poor stan- ding with many Europeans,« says Prof. Dr Peter Noack. However, according to the holder of the Chair of Educational Psychology, it is striking that attitudes to Europe and the EU also appear to be a question of age. While it was pri- mary the older generation in Great Bri- tain that voted for Brexit, young people tended to see their future in the EU, he reported. Youth identifies with Europe Against this background, a team in Jena with Prof. Noack is working in collaboration with researchers from Sweden, Great Britain, Estonia, Czech Republic, Portugal, Italy and Greece to study the attitudes of adolescents and young adults towards Europe. A pre- liminary study in which 1,300 young people from eight different countries took part, has provided the first interes- ting results. Adolescents and young adults from all eight countries mainly identified with Europe. This applies, for example, to around three quarters of the persons surveyed in Germany. »However, the fact that the majority of young Greeks also professed a Europe- an identity, surprised us in view of the current situation,« says Noack, Head of the Jena working group. He adds: »It does, however, apply to them least of all by comparison with other countries, and equally to young Italians – which was unexpected.« Young people in Greece reveal themselves to be the most anxious in their attitudes to Eu- rope. This is least true of 16- to 30-year- olds in Germany and Great Britain. US Optimal solutions Computer scientists develop an algorithm that solves abstract pro- blems efficiently and precisely and present it at one of the most presti- gious international conferences on the subject of Artificial Intelligence in the USA Whether for automatic picture re- cognition or self-driving cars: algo- rithms can solve abstract problems. But many of these problems are so complex that optimal solutions can never be calculated or only with an enormous commitment of time. That is why heuristics play a ma- jor role here – techniques by which you can find a solution to a problem with a limited investment of time and without complete knowledge. The disadvantage is that heuristics only ever supply an approxima- tion of the best possible solution. Dr Christian Komusiewicz, resear- cher at the Chair of Theoretical Computer Science, and Masters student Maximilian Katzmann are now able to announce a suc- cessful development in this field: Together, they have developed an algorithm that solves abstract pro- blems efficiently and precisely. This is done, as in the past too, with the aid of a network consisting of individual nodes. Katzmann gives an example of a complex problem: »I would like to fit in as many meetings as possible one after the other within a given amount of time, with each meeting having a certain, specified timeframe.« Every node then stands for a meeting; a connection between the nodes stands for overlapping mee- tings. The aim, therefore, is to obtain as many separate nodes as possible. Hitherto, »local search heuristics« have been used to find a good soluti- on to such problems. Here the algo- rithm first calculates a simple solution. Then it gradually swaps up to three nodes in the network between the solution and the remaining nodes pro- vided this leads to a better solution. The new algorithm developed by the computer scientists in Jena represents a refinement of these »local search heu- ristics« in networks. »Our program not only calculates an approximation, but frequently the optimal solution to a pro- blem,« Komusiewicz says. AB Damaged flag as a symbol for the future of the EU? It is obvious that the community is mired in crisis. But the majority of young people in Europe identify with it, as psychologists have found out in a study.