Taiwan, like many other countries, often incentivizes private investors to participate in the construction of infrastructures for environmental protection. The build-operate-transfer (BOT) or build-operate-own (BOO) model of financing public infrastructure was introduced to Taiwan in the 1990s. Among them, the construction of incinerators to treat the municipal solid waste using the BOT/BOO model was quite a success in the beginning. With the socio-technical change of lifestyle and waste generation, the amount of amount of trash dropped dramatically. The policy failed eventually, however, because the government over-estimated the trash quantity and refrained from inter-municipality cooperation to treat trash efficiently. This failure triggered a rash of intense debates and legal disputes. In the case of the Taitung incinerator, the 26th incinerator located in southeastern Taiwan, the arbitration resulted in the government making significant compensation payments to the private sector. The finished construction was consequently converted into a “mothballed and pensioned off” facility. This study applies in-depth interviews and literature review to discuss aspects contributing to the policy failure and proposes some possible remedial measures. Five aspects are summarized, namely, the administrative organization’s rigid attitude, the irrationality of the BOT/BOO contracts, the loss of the spirit of BOO partnerships, the heavy financial burden on local government, and the abandonment of inter-municipality cooperation. The remedial measures for the policy failure are presented in the form of thorough policy evaluation, room for contract adjustments under the BOT/BOO model, encouragement of cross-boundary cooperation, and revision of the legal framework for implementing decentralization.
Decentralization is 1 way of mastering flexibility demands in postindustrial societies, increasing the need for employees’ autonomous work performance. Company cultures have been applied to integra ...
Blockchain is a distributed database that keeps a chronologically-growing list (chain) of records (blocks) secure from tampering and revision. While computerisation has changed the nature of a ledger from clay tables in the old days to digital records in modern days, blockchain technology is the first true innovation in record keeping that could potentially revolutionise the basic principles of information keeping. In this note, we provide a brief self-contained introduction to how the blockchain works.
Portfolio management is the decision-making process of allocating an amount of fund into different financial investment products. Cryptocurrencies are electronic and decentralized alternatives to government-issued money, with Bitcoin as the best-known example of a cryptocurrency. This paper presents a model-less convolutional neural network with historic prices of a set of financial assets as its input, outputting portfolio weights of the set. The network is trained with 0.7 years' price data from a cryptocurrency exchange. The training is done in a reinforcement manner, maximizing the accumulative return, which is regarded as the reward function of the network. Back test trading experiments with trading period of 30 minutes is conducted in the same market, achieving 10-fold returns in 1.8 month's periods. Some recently published portfolio selection strategies are also used to perform the same back tests, whose results are compared with the neural network. The network is not limited to cryptocurrency, but can be applied to any other financial markets.
Ring signatures are cryptographic protocols designed to allow any member of a group to produce a signature on behalf of the group, without revealing the individual signer's identity. This offers group members a level of anonymity not attainable through generic digital signature schemes. We call this property 'plausible deniability', or anonymity with respect to an anonymity set. We concentrate in particular on implementing privacy on the blockchain, introducing a unique ring signature scheme that works with existing blockchain systems. We implement a unique ring signature (URS) scheme using secp256k1, creating the first implementation compatible with blockchain libraries in this way, so as for easy implementation as an Ethereum smart contract. We review the privacy and security properties offered by the scheme we have constructed, and compare its efficiency with other commonly suggested approaches to privacy on the blockchain.
Aiming at disaster relief emergency fund for tailings pond dam break and financing channels of compensation after disaster in China, with the goal of achieving passing and decentralization of tailings pond dam break risk and reducing the impact on social economic to the utmost, this thesis studied on catastrophe risk financing mode for tailings pond dam break. Through analysis, four main problems were obtained, including risks in relevant system of tailings pond dam break risk financing have not been effectively transferred, occupying production funds of enterprises, insufficient total amount of financing and narrow scope of compensation. Further integrating with foreign catastrophe risk financing experience and application cases of floods, earthquakes and others, catastrophe risk financing mode and operating mechanism suitable for China’s tailings pond dam break were put forward, catastrophe risk financing management mode dominated by government and assisted by commercial insurance company was formed, with the effectiveness and feasibility of such mode guaranteed through insurance technology, engineering risk prevention and increasing of coverage of insurance program.
Leif-Nissen Lundbaek, Andrea Callia D'Iddio, Michael Huth
We propose the formal study of governed blockchains that are owned and controlled by organizations and that neither create cryptocurrencies nor provide any incentives to solvers of cryptographic puzzles. We view such approaches as frameworks in which system parts, such as the cryptographic puzzle, may be instantiated with different technology. Owners of such a blockchain procure puzzle solvers as resources they control, and use a mathematical model to compute optimal parameters for the cryptographic puzzle mechanism or other parts of the blockchain. We illustrate this approach with a use case in which blockchains record hashes of financial process transactions to increase their trustworthiness and that of their audits. For Proof of Work as cryptographic puzzle, we develop a detailed mathematical model to derive MINLP optimization problems for computing optimal Proof of Work configuration parameters that trade off potentially conflicting aspects such as availability, resiliency, security, and cost in this governed setting. We demonstrate the utility of such a mining calculus by solving some instances of this problem. This experimental validation is strengthened by statistical experiments that confirm the validity of random variables used in formulating our mathematical model. We hope that our work may facilitate the creation of domain-specific blockchains for a wide range of applications such as trustworthy information in Internet of Things systems and bespoke improvements of legacy financial services.
The practice of securities holding, transfer, and collateral has changed significantly over the past 200 years—moving from paper certificates and issuer registers, to an intermediated environment, and from there to computerization and globalization. These changes have made transacting more efficient and thus rendered markets more liquid. However, the law has lagged behind and is now itself an obstacle to efficiency because international securities transactions are subject to considerable legal uncertainty. The latest global market development, a cryptographic transfer process commonly called the blockchain, is the most recent efficiency-enhancing change. It offers a unique possibility to create a consistent legal framework for securities from scratch, on the basis of a legal concept that, to some extent, resembles bearer securities. This article shows what the new international legal framework could look like in the light of experience gained from earlier developments.
In this article the author analyzes the perspectives of cryptocurrencies development in modern life and economy as a symbol of frontier economy and extremely new financial matter. A brief overview of electronic payments and virtual currency structure is given alongside with technical background. The emergence of electronic money and cryptocurrencies was an inevitable step in the evolution of Internet and electronic commerce. The author investigates the question how far cryptocurrencies might go in the nearest future as a symbol of frontier economy trends, keeping in mind that famous investors already buying cryptocurrencies, but governments are trying to ban this newly emerged threat to controlled money emission. The author therefore attempts to understand the phenomenon and explain why cryptocurrencies might undermine the existing financial systems.
How is God in the world? Is He, according to Christian theology, both transcendent and immanent? In other words, is He distant and separate from the world and humanity while at the same time working within both? Or, did He create the universe and then remove Himself from it? Are we able to comprehend certain aspects of God through our understanding of the order and beauty of the universe? Or, do humans seek a God who is no longer interested? Many science fiction writers have asked and responded to such questions including Ted Chiang in his collection, Stories of Your Life and Others. Several of his stories deal directly with these questions and we can read them as a critique of faith, religion, belief, and the nature of God. Chiang questions whether God has a role in our lives, what that role may look like, and the ability of religion to provide meaning. Furthermore, these stories are apocalyptic in nature, especially if we think of apocalypse as revelation, the Greek definition. Frederick Krueziger further defines apocalypse as “an unfolding; hence a revelation through unfolding” (5). Such unfolding always takes place within a story; thus, we must consider the inherent connection between apocalypse and story. As Krueziger says, “Apocalypse as story first of all reveals story as that which shapes our search for meaning” (5). The revelation, the unfolding, therefore is the story itself as well as what the story means. We can read Chiang's stories as apocalyptic because they reveal our disillusionment with our world and our inability to find meaning in religion alone. For Krueziger, science fiction as apocalypse illustrates our disillusionment with “the failure of the promise of technology and science to deliver the world from poverty, ignorance, disease, war, famine, plague, and death. &”(6). Although I agree that many science fiction works address these particular disillusionments, Chiang's stories, I would argue, have a certain similarity to the apocalyptic writings of John. People disappointed at the failure of the Second Coming to occur during their lifetime lost faith in the promise of God. John's writings deal with crises of both history and faith. Thus, Chiang's stories are similar to John's writings in that they deal with the disillusionment and failure of faith and religion. Before discussing the stories, it may behoove us to consider the definitions of faith, religion, and belief. Although we may feel we know what these words mean, and may even think they are synonymous, the distinctions among them are of importance to this essay. As John Bishop states, “& at its most general, ‘faith’ means the same as ‘trust‘.” Greg Popcak defines faith more narrowly, asserting that faith “is merely the innate drive to search for meaning, purpose and significance.” Religion, at its most basic, can be defined as a specific form of human activity as a means of achieving spiritual or material improvement. However, this form of human activity is often cultural because it is a system of behaviors and praxes uniting a community. Belief, according to Eric Schwitzgebel, refers “to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true.” Interestingly, many define faith as belief without proof. Although many use these three terms interchangeably, Chiang employs them in specific ways in his stories. In the “Tower of Babylon,” Chiang uses the biblical story of the tower of Babel as his premise. His focus is not on God's creation of various languages as punishment for defying Him, but on humanity's desire “to see what lay beyond [the earth's] borders, all the rest of Yahweh's creation” (5-6). This story juxtaposes science with faith and religion as the Babylonians are building the tower so they can break into the vault of heaven. They desire knowledge about their world, but also desire knowledge about God, believing that the tower will enable them “to ascend to see the works of Yahweh” while allowing Yahweh to “descend to see the works of man” (6). In this story, Ted Chiang combines the above definitions of religion as a “search for meaning, purpose and significance” as well as the desire for material and spiritual improvement (Popcak). The envisaged structure is simple: Earth was seen as being situated in the middle of a great volume of water, with water both above and below Earth. A great dome was thought to be set above Earth (like an inverted glass bowl), maintaining the water above Earth in its place. Earth was pictured as resting on foundations that go down into the deep. These foundations secured the stability of the land as something that is not floating on the water and so could not be tossed about by wind and wave. The waters surrounding Earth were thought to have been gathered together in their place. The stars, sun, moon, and planets moved in their allotted paths across the great dome above Earth, with their movements defining the months, seasons, and year. (60) Chiang brilliantly describes the geocentric worldview through the protagonist of the story, Hillalum, who is an Elamite miner contracted to dig into the vault of heaven. He, along with other Elamite miners, spends four months climbing to the top of the tower. Along the way, he discovers how his world and his universe functions. He comes to know that night is “the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky” (“Tower” 11). He and the others reach a point on the tower where they see “storms from above and from below” and where people “[harvest] crops from the air” (14). After climbing a number of weeks, the miners find themselves “at precisely the same level as the moon when it passed; they had reached the height of the first of the celestial bodies” (14). When they reach the level of the sun, the intense heat forces them to travel at night. Passing this level, Hillalum finds that the sun shines “upward, which [seems] unnatural to the utmost” (15, emphasis in original). When they are level with the stars, the miners discover that a star has hit the tower, leaving “a knotted mass of black heaven-metal, as large as a man could wrap his arms around” (16). Finally, they reach the vault of heaven itself, “a solid carapace enclosing all the sky (16) that ”[seems] to be made of fine-grained white granite, unmarred and utterly featureless“ (18-19). Hillalum's travels to the top of the tower allows him to discover both the meaning and significance of the physical world, not through religion or faith, but through his own observation. Since, in the geocentric view, the Earth is “situated in the middle of a great volume of water,” the Babylonians and the Elamite miners fear that breaking into the vault of heaven will release another Great Flood (Robishaw 60). They believe Yahweh caused the Great Flood, or the “Deluge,” by releasing “the waters of the Abyss & from the springs of the earth, and & [from] the sluice gates in the vault” (19). Concerned that they may hit one of these reservoirs, the Babylonians enlist Egyptian masons who design a system using large blocks of granite that will “slide down until [they] rest in the recess of the floor” and will completely block any opening (22). Using this design, they are able to safeguard the world from another flood when their worst fear is realized and the miners accidently dig into a reservoir. Hillalum and two others are trapped within the vault, but only Hillalum survives. The rising water forces him upward and the current of water carries him until “the walls [open] out away from him” (25). He awakens in a tunnel, but is able to see light ahead. He comes out of what he discovers is a cave and finds himself in the land of Shinnar, which is south of Babylon. Hillalum's return to earth from the vault of heaven forces him to realize that the world is shaped like a seal cylinder, “wrapped around in some fantastic way so that heaven and earth [touch]” (28). Thus, Hillalum's journey is in itself apocalyptic—as his story unfolds, the world reveals itself through his experience. The scientific worldview Chiang incorporates is fascinating; yet, what is even more fascinating is the way the inhabitants view God and their attempts to connect with Him. The people fear God's displeasure and Hillalum feels uneasy at the thought of breaking open the vault of heaven (4). Standing at the base of the tower even Hillalum's senses rebel, “insisting that nothing should stand so high” (6). He and the others continually wait for a sign from God “to let men know that their venture was approved,” yet God is silent (14). When the star mentioned above first hit the tower, “everyone descended &, waiting for retribution from Yahweh for disturbing the workings of Creation. They waited for months, but no sign came” (16). God never acknowledges their efforts, either blessing or damning them for their attempts. Their overwhelming desire for knowledge of God's workings cause them to give “thanks that they [are] permitted to see so much” while at the same time they “beg forgiveness for their desire to see more” (18). Their reactions show lack of surety regarding their purpose as Yahweh fails to respond. The inhabitants debate how God may perceive their attempts to reach Him. Qurdusa, one of the tower's bricklayers argues that “if the tower were sacrilege, Yahweh would have destroyed it earlier” causing one of the Elamites to counter: “If Yahweh looked upon this venture with such favor there would already be a stairway ready-made for us to use in the vault” (19). Hillalum, however, takes a more Deistic viewpoint, saying, “Yahweh may not punish us, but Yahweh may allow us to bring our judgment upon ourselves” (19). The God in this story creates the world but does not actively intervene. When Hillalum and the others hit a reservoir, he believes “his fate had come at last. Yahweh had not asked men to build the tower or to pierce the vault; the decision to build it belonged to men alone, and they would die in this endeavor just as they did in any of their earthbound tasks. Their righteousness could not save them from the consequences of their actions” (24). In this world, the focus is on the choices one makes and the consequences one must pay for those choices. Yes, God exists, but He does not intervene in human lives, nor does He care if they are virtuous or sinful, or if they worship or ignore Him. It was clear now why Yahweh had not struck down the tower, had not punished men for wishing to reach beyond the bounds set for them: for the longest journey would merely return them to the place whence they'd come. Centuries of their labor would not reveal to them any more of Creation than they already knew. Yet through their endeavor, men would glimpse the unimaginable artistry of Yahweh's work, in seeing how ingeniously the world had been constructed. By this construction, Yahweh's work was indicated, and Yahweh's work was concealed. Thus men would know their place. (28). Hillalum comes to understand that faith does not provide meaning or significance to his life. He glimpses “the unimaginable artistry” of the world through human endeavor, not through worship or religious ritual. As Alan Gregory states, while all “apocalyptic texts reveal human life in its precarious contingency,” apocalyptic “science fiction finds the contingency of life before immanent powers” (161). The inhabitants of this world find “a sense of wonder at the complexity of creation” that comes from their own exploration of the world (Smith). Yahweh does not open their minds or increase their understanding of their world and their place in it, only an individual's desire for knowledge does so. Chiang's story is apocalyptic in that it is the story itself that reveals our search for meaning. We do not need religion to achieve spiritual or material improvement; what we need is our continuing desire to discover and understand the physical world. The “Tower of Babylon” is a story illustrating the existence of God through the reasoning and observation of its characters, but not by supernatural manifestations. Such is not the case in “Hell Is the Absence of God.” In the world of the story, the idea of faith as belief without proof is not an issue. Angels make frequent appearances and inhabitants witness the dead ascending into Heaven or descending into Hell. Hell itself becomes visible on occasion, allowing the living to see a place very similar to their world as going to Hell means “permanent exile from God, no more and no less” (“Hell” 208). Angelic manifestations can lead to miracles but can also lead to indiscriminate death and birth defects because of the destructive power of their visitations. Furthermore, anyone caught in “Heaven's light,” which appears “only when an angel [enters] or [leaves] the mortal plain,” go to Heaven, even if they are wicked or evil (226). The protagonist of the story, Neil Fisk, believes in God (as do all in this world since there is no question of God's existence), but he does not love God. Neil in the believing that were of unfolding, or without from Neil is of either or about God, he to go to Hell people like Hell was where when exile from God no fear for Neil as it means without His however, is a that Neil since many of such as he in “the for God that he had love of God had to the then it did make The together even view of God and Neil would have reached the point where he was to However, he is not that is one of during a from the angel is by glass when the of the of the in which was see to Heaven, and while Neil have seen death as a he becomes of He to be with and the only way to achieve this is for Neil to to love God. However, he finds himself in a had been the blessing of his and God had he was to love for it? For it was like a love as a for his he have but was a he He a of those who the but is by the that he should his role as one of God's those who have a to Neil is to his and make with God to find a way to love God, Neil finds a when a and while of the of his an and his was seen ascending to Heaven, to the of his Neil to a one of those who go to where either or the mortal When the angel Neil attempts to him but his into a However, a of light that “the light to Neil all the he should love As he now God an beyond what humans can for one he that he will go to Heaven since of him to Hell In is and he has a he than was when he was but his only is to love God. & He his being to Hell was not a of he he there was no for it, no His love for God, the us, “is the nature of In “Hell Is the Absence of Chiang brilliantly a of those who a religious that God those who love Him. Chiang forces the to with a why would a God on the Chiang believes this “is one of the of and with the that in the this story as of an world in which the is a directly the of the religious that miracles are always I do not agree that it is just the religious who believe miracles are always I do agree that many who would define themselves as religious have such In the world of the story, supernatural can have both and on However, we see on these have no at a witness to the angel believes God has a purpose for him and for “an with the to provide him However, does not either or He Neil death and to which to a of God's people that they can no more in the than in the mortal while them to worship God, just not a one God or not to have no on whether one in heaven or the is to question the of religious faith. In many “Hell Is the Absence of is a on In the world of the story, the inhabitants know God there is no or in to believe or not to The or is situated in the love one has or does not have for God. one God and to then one However, if one God and to as does Neil Fisk, then one is no in this world as one God to the argues that is us to take a religious belief and make it a and by so he forces us to think about ways religion can be so and in our Many of us feel certain as either a blessing or a from God, yet of us would feel a birth for as one or the Chiang us into a world where the inhabitants do not have such a world where is not God is not God is not (“Hell” This God is the God for those who do not see religion as a means of achieving any of spiritual improvement. Chiang the and the of God's We never know why God Neil to Hell and to “Hell Is the Absence of is an apocalyptic story that reveals a of faith, the disillusionment of those who no longer believe in the promise of God to the The disillusionment of faith those who do not see God as a way of their belief as Eric defines it, something we regard as what when one that something return to what if one can that God does not what when the one to it is the one for religious belief In by and what when the seek and find to the questions surrounding religious belief. understanding of and the universe on of the of For “is the of the the and the As a & is and of being & think and the of is to think and the has always with a of discovers this when is a and the understanding of the universe However, to a that is and discovers “a that any number with any other that any two are which of in the same sense of that has world to this but this sense of to that the of is nor with apocalypse reveals that can no longer provide meaning or structure to life and attempts understanding of himself and the universe on his that a of his allows him to a who “the between and and he finds his in his ability to in similar as to world, in the other and the other to world is to discover he has no for was it was something he In he feels more than a sense of to a when faith and religion no longer provide structure and meaning, both and their when they discover that what they have always as the of themselves and their world can no longer be Chiang's structure of by further to the of of faith. The story is out in with the of the which only two and The first is one through and a the other two are on either or a in and we can read one as a for faith and belief. For in the us that two The first one in that that may be but are & His that a of the of is just such a it be by any means using the of In other words, and proof are not the same we can know certain to be while not the ability to they are Such is one of the definitions of belief without proof. Chiang us with an look at what when what we believe meaning the is and the proof not from the but from As the that this is to a that there was no God. just it, but it for a For was something and is “the one who that it is not the same discovers his ability to his belief that meaning his understanding of the does not to for feel He feels as that has the of something he which is why the of the story is However, this this feels for than and their faith and both do so through their and Ted Chiang's apocalyptic stories are on our own search for meaning. Many science fiction writers often consider religion may however, creates and where religion and faith are while at the same time to the As the stories we our own disillusionment and many of us, the in the “Tower of Babylon” are to themselves whether they in knowledge or and Hillalum's and understanding of the world reveals to him that meaning is in scientific not or faith. Fisk, on the other in a world where proof of God is a yet he comes to know that God and may question why God, like the God in “Hell is the Absence of the and the without or In by religion for and “the to of the universe as yet, they find their universe not only but Chiang's story to those belief structure has intense and search for meaning them not to a and but only them further into As with all science Ted Chiang's stories reveal more of our than our reveals to We are not to God's role in our his stories us to question our own Chiang's apocalyptic is out of our own disillusionment that is on the world, but on the promise of God & which has and for some 11). these stories do not us or lead us and Ted Chiang's apocalypse reveals and that meaning and come out of death of
Jovana Gardinali Malagueta, André Luiz Bigal, Érika Valeska Rossetto
Because of the decentralization of the management of public health and the absence of a reform of its financing, the municipalities started to significantly increase the volume of its own funds invested in this area. In this context, this study aimed to analyze the participation of federal entities - Federal, State and Municipalities - the financing of the Unified Health System (SUS) in the municipalities with 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, the Metropolitan Health Region of Campinas, from 2012 to 2014. An integrative literature review and survey data were carried out on the municipalities on the Public Budget using the Health System information. Seven articles were selected and analyzed in full. In relation to the data collected, it was found out that municipalities, state and Union fulfilled what determines the Law n° 141/2012; the three federal entities increased health expenses from one year to another; there was an increase of municipal resources at the local health expenditure and a decrease of Union involvement, and the participation of the State wasn’t significant enough. Thus, health financing, by the Union needs to be corrected and should state resources participate in a more significant way, being extremely necessary discussion of new sources of resources to allow more public investment increase in health.
The increasing collective use of distributed application software platforms, programming languages and crypto-currencies around the blockchain concept for general transactions may have radical implications for the way in which society conceptualises and applies trust and trust-based social systems such as law. By exploring one iteration of such generalised blockchain systems – Ethereum – and the historical lineage of such systems, it will be argued that indeed their ideological basis is largely one of distrust, decentralisation and, ultimately, via increasing disassociation of identity, a fear of the body itself. This ideological basis can be reframed as a crypto-legal approach to the problems of human interaction, one whereby the purely technological solutions outlined above are considered adequate for reconciling many of the problems of our collective existence. The article concludes, however, by re-iterating a perspective of law more so as an entirely embodied and trust dependent notion. These aspects go some way to explaining the necessarily centralised role it takes on within societies. They also explain why the crypto-legal approaches advanced by systems like Ethereum – or even the co-opting of blockchain technology by law firms themselves – will only ever be at best efficiency exercises concerned with the processing of data relating to legal affairs, and not the more radical, ambiguous and difficult process of actual legal thought or, indeed, engagement with trust.
Matthias Stuermer, Gabriel Abu-Tayeh, Thomas Myrach
The modern age has heralded a shift from the industrial society, in which natural resources are crucial input factors for the economy, towards a knowledge society. To date, sustainability literature has treated knowledge-and in particular digital artifacts-mainly as a means to the end of achieving sustainable development. In this conceptual paper, we argue that digital artifacts themselves ought also to be considered as resources, which also need to be sustainable. While over-consumption is a problem facing natural resources, with sustainable digital artifacts, underproduction, and underuse are the biggest challenges. In our view, the sustainability of digital artifacts improves their potential impact on sustainable development. A theoretical foundation for digital artifacts and their ecosystem allows us to present the relevant research on digital information, knowledge management, digital goods, and innovation literature. Based on these insights, we propose ten basic conditions for sustainable digital artifacts and their ecosystem to ensure that they provide the greatest possible benefit for sustainable development. We then apply those characteristics to four exemplary cases: Linux kernel development, Bitcoin cryptocurrency, the Wikipedia project, and the Linking Open Drug Data repositories. The paper concludes with a research agenda identifying topics for sustainability scholars and information systems academics, as well as practitioners. A number of suggestions for future studies on digital sustainability are also put forward.
This article entails an innovative approach to smart grid technology implementation, as it connects governance research with legal analysis. We apply the empirico-legal ‘ILTIAD framework’, which combines Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework with institutional legal theory (ILT), to an empirical case study of a local smart grid project. Empirical data were collected in an exploratory, descriptive example study of a single case, focusing on the Action Situation and interactions towards establishing a local Smart Grid. The case was chosen because of its complexity, following the ‘logic of intensity sampling’. Data triangulation took place combining participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis. Through an exploratory case study, we showed how the ILTIAD framework can help reduce complexity in local decision-making processes on smart grid implementation, as it allows for analytical description and prescriptive design of local smart grid systems. In the analysis we addressed ownership arrangements and contracts and identified barriers and opportunities for realizing a local smart grid system. The design part includes a scenario which revealed the prescribed patterns of behaviour (liberties and abilities) and the consequential aspects that apply to each situation. Analysing and designing normative alignment ex ante to the planning and implementation of a smart grid system provides clarity to stakeholders about their current opportunities. For this reason, the ILTIAD framework can be used as a design guideline for establishing new and integrated smart grid projects.
Sascha Lamstein, Amanda Pomeroy–Stevens, Patrick Webb, Eileen Kennedy
Based on the data collected in Uganda, Nepal, and Ethiopia, the papers included in this supplement fill a critical gap in evidence regarding multisectoral National Nutrition Action Plans. The studies offer new data and new thinking on how and why governance, effective financial decentralization, and improved accountability all matter for nutrition actions in low-income countries. This introductory paper offers an overview of the current state of evidence and thinking on the multisectoral nutrition policy cycle, including how governance and financing support that process. It also explores the benefits of applying a systems lens to understand the dynamic, enabling processes of the policy cycle-from research to knowledge and ultimately action-and to provide more dynamic and accurate information for nutrition advocacy and evidence-based decision-making. It concludes with key findings from the 5 country-level studies included. Several important themes emerge: the egregious gap in human resources needed for effective nutrition actions in most low-income settings, the value of research on bottlenecks and successes, and the need for routine monitoring of national policies and plans to measure their effectiveness in achieving both their own stated goals and global sustainable development goals. Reviewing these studies together provides a path forward in building stronger, evidence-based multisectoral nutrition policies and supporting implementation of the nutrition activities included within them.
Million of dollars are moved worldwide by electronic contracting daily, obviously its legal regulation has been the subject of considerable debates within the contemporary commercial and procedural law. It is not only about analyzing the substantial perspective of electronic contract, but also the possibility of its demand and effectiveness in procedural stages. This article analyzes the principles that impact electronic contracting, with its own jurisprudential and normative development in the Colombian context; this requires a brief overview about the importance of the principles in law and their functions, secondly, an introduction to the phenomenon of electronic contracting, and finally with the detailed study of the principles. Later it will be analyzed its application in bitcoins.
First, Arvind Narayanan and Andrew Miller, co-authors of the increasingly popular open-access Princeton Bitcoin textbook, provide an overview of ongoing research in cryptocurrencies. Second, Song Han provides an overview of hardware trends related to another long-studied academic problem that has recently seen an explosion in popularity: deep learning.
The ICES Journal of Marine Science has been published continuously since 1903, albeit under several different names, making it one of the oldest marine science journals (Anderson, 2012). The Journal has had a series of accomplished Editors-in-Chief (EiC). I have held that role since 2012 (Browman, 2012), and will continue for a second 5-year term, through 2021. My purpose here is to recount how the Journal has developed during my first term as EiC, and to lay out where we are headed in the next 5 years. I am very proud of what has been achieved for the Journal during the past 5 years. This includes: expanding the topical depth and range of Editors and of content so that they match the ICES strategic plan and track ICES strategic initiatives as well as developments and hot topics in marine and fisheries science; launching the Quo Vadimus article type; increasing the number of Food for Thought articles in order to stimulate debate; launching the “luminaries” series of autobiographical essays; growing article submissions from 350 to >600 per year (and from more countries) while at the same time achieving very competitive article handling times; increasing the profile of/interest in the Journal (as reflected by a huge increase in PDF downloads); and taking the Journal’s competitive position to its highest level ever, with a 2015 Journal Impact Factor that exceeds that of many of its closest competitors, including Marine Ecology Progress Series, for the first time ever. At the same time, and while recognizing that there is always room for improvement, we have put an emphasis on earning credibility and respect for the Journal by striving to be service-oriented, ethical, fair, transparent, accountable, accessible, responsive, fast, efficient, decisive, diplomatic, constructive, consistent, merit-based, and humble (including admitting to being fallible). In that context, the Journal has been publishing what our Editors see as high-quality articles that are original, of broad interest, and which contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the sea. The Journal currently distributes about 65% of submitted articles for review and the overall acceptance rate is 37%. The Editorial Board will continue to work towards publishing only science of the highest quality and interest. Authors interested in submitting articles to the Journal should consult the document, “How to get published in the ICES JMS”. Since efficient, effective and fast handling of articles is critical in today’s competitive scientific publishing environment, the Editorial Board and Editorial Office have worked hard to achieve decision times of <40 days from submission. Oxford University Press (OUP), The Journal’s publisher, offers “online first”, so articles appear online as soon as the proofs have been approved by the author, with their final digital object identifier. The average time between final acceptance and online publication is about 5 weeks. Our goal is to offer authors an industry-leading standard of turn-around times, presentation, and accessibility. With respect to the latter, all articles published in the Journal are made freely available after only 1 year. The Journal holds a strong position with its core community. That strength will be maintained and leveraged to further expand the Journal’s reach. We strive to make the Journal an obvious and preferred choice for authors, including those outside what may still be seen as the ICES core community. This includes making greater inroads with the biological oceanography and marine ecology communities, as well as the socioecological systems and human dimensions communities, among others, in both the University and Institute sectors. The Editorial Board will further expand to track these developments, as well as to reflect the evolution of marine and fisheries science. The Journal will continue to actively “stake a claim” to emerging subject areas. This is manifested in the following list of initiatives – ICES-sponsored Symposia, supplemental issues, and article theme sets - underway and planned. Beyond connectivity (2017) Operationalizing and implementing the ecosystem approach (2017) Towards a broader perspective on ocean acidification research—part 2 (2017) Targets and limits for long term fisheries management (2017) Marine socio-ecological systems (2017) Sixth zooplankton production symposium (2017) Biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (2018) Challenges of managing the globalisation of fisheries (2018) Ecosystem studies of subarctic and Arctic seas (2018) Marine protected areas—point/counter-point (2018) Bioinvasion trajectories (2019) Fourth Symposium on climate change and impacts on the world’s oceans (2019) Sustainable use of Baltic Sea resources (2019) The essay series by luminaries in the fisheries and marine science community already includes contributions from Brian Rothschild, Emory Anderson, Ken Sherman, Daniel Pauly, Ken Able, and Ray Hilborn. Essays by Kevern Cochrane and Marc Mangel are forthcoming, and more will follow. I close with words drawn from Emory Anderson's history of the Journal (Anderson, 2012): “The ICES Journal of Marine Science enjoys a rich heritage and owes its present high stature in the world of marine science to many individuals, be they authors, reviewers, Editors, publishers, or ICES staff. All can claim a share of the credit for the manifold jobs well done”. H.I.B’s editorial work for the ICES Journal of Marine Science is supported by the Institute of Marine Research, Norway, Project no. 83741 (“Scientific publishing and editing”).
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionThe existing literature have concluded that foreign resources have played significant role in raising the pace of economic development in developing countries. Most of the developing countries have been facing shortage of resources failing to meet the rising demand of capital over time. In order to overcome this problem these countries have been receiving heavy doses of external resources in the form of loans and grants from developed countries and international financial institutions World Bank, IMF and Asian Development Bank. The developing countries depend on foreign aid due to the desire of achieving rapid pace of economic development in the shortest period of time. Furthermore, for bridging their saving investment gap and export import gap these countries are forced to receive foreign aid from foreign sources. On the other side, developed countries provide loans and foreign assistance to developing countries keeping in view that developing countries cannot borrow from commercial sources due to their limited debt servicing capacity.Oates (1972) stressed that decentralization is one of the important factors which helps the donor countries in transferring resources because the government officials of recipient countries can make correct and appropriate decisions regarding the development projects as decentralization helps in bringing government and people closer. There are two serious problems which may come up in this regard. Firstly, it is very difficult to know about the real needs of the society. Secondly, allocation of the resources under political pressure to meet these requirements is not an easy task.The resource allocation in developing countries remained controversial due to the political pressure and conditions attached to foreign aid. The need for decentralization, comes up because of the existence of gap between spending needs and availability of revenue. There are three levels of government working in Pakistan and the allocation and distribution between them remained under debate. There exists a well-defined process through which resources are redistributed to provincial government by the federal government through National Finance Commission (NFC).The introduction of new formula in 2009 for the share of all provinces in the dividable pool has altered significantly. In the 1990 the Punjab's share was 57.87 according to NFC award based on the population, while there was an insignificant decline observed in 2006. There is decline in the share of Punjab recorded from 57.37 percent in 2006 to 51.74 percent in 2009. The share of Sindh has gone up from 23.71 percent in 2006 to 24.55 percent in 2009. The share of KPK has gone up from 13.82 percent in 2006 to 14.62 percent in 2009. The Baluchistan's share has increased to 9.09 percent on the basis of the revised formula.Several studies have analyzed the effect of foreign aid, fiscal decentralization on economic growth but there is no consensus among the researchers regarding the role of decentralization in economic growth.Easterly (2003) concluded that corrupt institutions having weak policies had adverse impact on foreign aid in achieving its desired objectives. Morrissey (2006) stressed that private investment has appeared to be inversely related to imports and directly related to foreign aid. Aurangzeb (2010) failed to find the evidence related to the impact of foreign aid on economic growth in Pakistan. Javid (2011) concluded that foreign aid may have positive effect on economic growth in Pakistan only in the presence of sound economic policies. The present study is highly important as the results of this study would help the policy makers to formulate and implement better policies consistent with the economic and political conditions prevailing in Pakistan.The rest of the study is organized as follows. Section-II presents theoretical framework. Model specification and interpretation of results are presented in Section-III. …
Yasser Shoukry, Konstantinos Gatsis, Amr Alanwar, George J. Pappas · 7 authors
We consider a problem where multiple agents participate in solving a quadratic optimization problem subject to linear inequality constraints in a privacy-preserving manner. Several variables of the objective function as well as the constraints are privacy-sensitive and are known to different agents. We propose a privacy-preserving protocol based on partially homomorphic encryption where each agent encrypts its own information before sending it to an untrusted cloud computing infrastructure. To find the optimal solution the cloud applies a gradient descent algorithm on the encrypted data without the ability to decrypt it. The privacy of the proposed protocol against coalitions of colluding agents is analyzed using the cryptography notion of zero knowledge proofs.
In this article, the authors assess the benefits of blockchain/distributed ledger technology for the holding, clearing and settlement of securities currently held in intermediated holding structures and consider the steps needed to facilitate an efficient market. The recommendation is that investors should receive full disclosure of the custody and sub-custody arrangements associated with their investments
Joshua Lind, Ittay Eyal, Peter Pietzuch, Emin Gün Sirer
Blockchain protocols are inherently limited in transaction throughput and latency. Recent efforts to address performance and scale blockchains have focused on off-chain payment channels. While such channels can achieve low latency and high throughput, deploying them securely on top of the Bitcoin blockchain has been difficult, partly because building a secure implementation requires changes to the underlying protocol and the ecosystem. We present Teechan, a full-duplex payment channel framework that exploits trusted execution environments. Teechan can be deployed securely on the existing Bitcoin blockchain without having to modify the protocol. It: (i) achieves a higher transaction throughput and lower transaction latency than prior solutions; (ii) enables unlimited full-duplex payments as long as the balance does not exceed the channel's credit; (iii) requires only a single message to be sent per payment in any direction; and (iv) places at most two transactions on the blockchain under any execution scenario. We have built and deployed the Teechan framework using Intel SGX on the Bitcoin network. Our experiments show that, not counting network latencies, Teechan can achieve 2,480 transactions per second on a single channel, with sub-millisecond latencies.
Equity crowdfunding via the Internet is a new channel of raising money for startups. It features low barriers to entry, low cost, and high speed, and thus encourages innovation. In recent years, equity crowdfunding in China has experienced some developments. However, some problems remain unsolved in practice. Blockchain is a decentralized and distributed ledger technology to ensure data security, transparency, and integrity. Because it cannot be tampered with or forged, the technology is deemed to have great potential in the finance industry. This study examines current problems in the practice of equity crowdfunding in China. Based on the analysis of the characteristics of blockchain technology, this study further explores its practical applications in equity crowdfunding. 1) Blockchain technology may be a secure, efficient, low-cost solution for the registration of stocks and shares of a firm financed by crowdfunding; 2) Blockchain technology simplifies the transaction and transfer of crowdfunding equities, and thus facilitates their circulation; 3) Blockchain technology enables peer to peer transactions between investors and entrepreneurs, and solves the problems of regulatory compliance and security of fund management; Blockchain technology can be used to develop a voting system for crowdfunders, which enables them to be involved in corporate governance. This helps protect the rights and interests of small investors; 5) Blockchain technology helps regulators know about market conditions, and supports regulatory activities such as managing investors and fighting money laundering.