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With the significant advances in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) over the last half century, there is an increasingly perceived vision that computing will one day be the 5th utility (after water, electricity, gas, and telephony). This computing utility, like all other four existing utilities, will provide the basic level of computing service that is considered essential to meet the everyday needs of the general community. To deliver this vision, a number of computing paradigms have been proposed, of which the latest one is known as Cloud computing. Hence, in this paper, we define Cloud computing and provide the architecture for creating Clouds with market-oriented resource allocation by leveraging technologies such as Virtual Machines (VMs). We also provide insights on market-based resource management strategies that encompass both customer-driven service management and computational risk management to sustain Service Level Agreement (SLA)-oriented resource allocation. In addition, we reveal our early thoughts on interconnecting Clouds for dynamically creating global Cloud exchanges and markets. Then, we present some representative Cloud platforms, especially those developed in industries along with our current work towards realizing market-oriented resource allocation of Clouds as realized in Aneka enterprise Cloud technology. Furthermore, we highlight the difference between High Performance Computing (HPC) workload and Internet-based services workload. We also describe a meta-negotiation infrastructure to establish global Cloud

In this book we aim to present, in a unified framework, a broad spectrum of mathematical theory that has grown in connection with the study of problems of optimization, equilibrium, control, and stability of linear and nonlinear systems. The title Variational Analysis reflects this breadth. For a long time, ‘variational ’ problems have been identified mostly with the ‘calculus of variations’. In that venerable subject, built around the minimization of integral functionals, constraints were relatively simple and much of the focus was on infinite-dimensional function spaces. A major theme was the exploration of variations around a point, within the bounds imposed by the constraints, in order to help characterize solutions and portray them in terms of ‘variational principles’. Notions of perturbation, approximation and even generalized differentiability were extensively investigated. Variational theory progressed also to the study of so-called stationary points, critical points, and other indications of singularity that a point might have relative to its neighbors, especially in association with existence theorems for differential equations.

of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Symbols of United Nations documents are composed of capital letters

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. We construct estimates of external assets and liabilities for 145 countries for the period 1970–2004. We describe our estimation methods and present key features of the data at the country and the global level. We focus on trends in net and gross external positions, and the composition of international portfolios, distinguishing between foreign direct investment, portfolio equity investment, official reserves, and external debt. We document the increasing importance of equity financing and the improvement in the external position for emerging markets, and the differing pace of financial integration between advanced and developing economies. We also show the existence of a global discrepancy between estimated foreign assets and liabilities, and identify the asset categories that account for this discrepancy. JEL Classification Number: F32

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The historical surface temperature dataset HadCRUT provides a record of surface temperature trends and variability since 1850. A new version of this dataset, HadCRUT3, has been produced; benefiting from recent improvements to the sea-surface temperature dataset which forms its marine component, and from improvements to the station records which provide the land data. A comprehensive set of uncertainty estimates has been derived to accompany the data: estimates of measurement and sampling error, temperature bias effects, and the effect of limited observational coverage on large-scale averages have all been made. Since the mid-20 th century the uncertainties in global and hemispheric mean temperatures are small and the temperature increase greatly exceeds its uncertainty. In earlier periods the uncertainties are larger, but the temperature increase over the 20 th century is still significantly larger than its uncertainty.

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The spectre of climate change that is unfolding now is undeniably a cumulative impact of anthropogenic interference in the climate system over the last two centuries. The science is clear and the policy community is being increasingly convinced and galvanised into action to address this emergent challenge in light of the associated economic and human dimensions. The impacts of climate change ranging from sea level rise, melting ice caps and glaciers, severe weather events, drought, flooding, warming, subtle changes in ecosystems – will impinge on every aspect of society and economic life. The costs of inaction will more than outweigh the costs of action. There is only a narrow window of opportunity to redress the situation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Fourth Assessment Report has

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