This paper provides the analysis of the blockchain use in microgrids. The analysis is given from the hypothesis that with the help of IT instruments, self-governed decentralized organizations based on blockchain technology will take and perform public functions traditionally performed by central authorities and corporations in order to organize their relations within the microgrids.
Christopher D. Clack, Vikram A. Bakshi, Lee Braine
In this position paper, we consider some foundational topics regarding smart contracts (such as terminology, automation, enforceability, and semantics) and define a smart contract as an automatable and enforceable agreement. We explore a simple semantic framework for smart contracts, covering both operational and non-operational aspects, and describe templates and agreements for legally-enforceable smart contracts, based on legal documents. Building upon the Ricardian Contract, we identify operational parameters in the legal documents and use these to connect legal agreements to standardised code. We also explore the design landscape, including increasing sophistication of parameters, increasing use of common standardised code, and long-term research.
Swarms of robots will revolutionize many industrial applications, from targeted material delivery to precision farming. However, several of the heterogeneous characteristics that make them ideal for certain future applications --- robot autonomy, decentralized control, collective emergent behavior, etc. --- hinder the evolution of the technology from academic institutions to real-world problems. Blockchain, an emerging technology originated in the Bitcoin field, demonstrates that by combining peer-to-peer networks with cryptographic algorithms a group of agents can reach an agreement on a particular state of affairs and record that agreement without the need for a controlling authority. The combination of blockchain with other distributed systems, such as robotic swarm systems, can provide the necessary capabilities to make robotic swarm operations more secure, autonomous, flexible and even profitable. This work explains how blockchain technology can provide innovative solutions to four emergent issues in the swarm robotics research field. New security, decision making, behavior differentiation and business models for swarm robotic systems are described by providing case scenarios and examples. Finally, limitations and possible future problems that arise from the combination of these two technologies are described.
Christopher D. Clack, Vikram A. Bakshi, Lee Braine
In this position paper, we consider some foundational topics regarding smart\ncontracts (such as terminology, automation, enforceability, and semantics) and\ndefine a smart contract as an automatable and enforceable agreement. We explore\na simple semantic framework for smart contracts, covering both operational and\nnon-operational aspects, and describe templates and agreements for\nlegally-enforceable smart contracts, based on legal documents. Building upon\nthe Ricardian Contract, we identify operational parameters in the legal\ndocuments and use these to connect legal agreements to standardised code. We\nalso explore the design landscape, including increasing sophistication of\nparameters, increasing use of common standardised code, and long-term research.\n
<p>The invention of the blockchain technology can be equated with the invention of the writing or Internet network, considering their major role in the communication between individuals as well as legal persons, regarding information transfer, money transfer etc. The authors analyse the technology, the implemented and projected examples of its use, its relationship with accounting and auditing as well as its influence on the development of these economic sciences.</p><p>The development of accounting and auditing is linked to the development of modern technologies. Nowadays, according to the technological progress the role of blockhain technology is constantly increasing. Blockhain is a distributed database that maintains a continuously-growing list of data records secured from tampering and revision. Blockchain can be used in financial and banking sectors first of all, but also in e-government and administrative sectors.</p>The implementation of blockchain technologies in accounting and auditing doesn’t change their fundamental principles but increases the auditing capacities. In some countries blockchain is adopted for auditing as a practical matter, including the national level.
Elmar Steurer, David Manatsgruber, Esther Prudence Jouégo
Projects in the energy sector in Africa suffer from a number of barriers. Especially the combination of political instability and an unclear regulatory framework hampers the private sector to realize the investment possibilities in the field of decentralized rural electrification. For debt based projects these barriers result in prohibitively high interest rates – roughly 15% while the return on investment does not exceed the low 10% area. This situation leads to strong reluctance from private investors to provide equity. A possibility to encourage private investors to step in could be a separation of the different risks, especially separating the typical high sovereign risk of a country from the commercial risk of the energy project. As a result, the separated risks can be clearly allocated to different investor groups looking for investment opportunities going along with distinct risks. A structured approach is proposed through which private international investors are exposed only to the general political risk while international development banks cover mainly the regulatory risk. Finally, the newly invented financial instrument convertible grant by the electriFI initiative of the EU provides an equity substitute to take over the commercial risk. With this additional financial support, decentralized electrification projects in Africa have the possibility to be implemented and the potential to be scaled up.
This analysis of the Romanian health system reviews recent developments in organization and governance, health financing, health care provision, health reforms and health system performance. The Romanian health care system is a social health insurance system that has remained highly centralized despite recent efforts to decentralize some regulatory functions. It provides a comprehensive benefits package to the 85% of the population that is covered, with the remaining population having access to a minimum package of benefits. While every insured person has access to the same health care benefits regardless of their socioeconomic situation, there are inequities in access to health care across many dimensions, such as rural versus urban, and health outcomes also differ across these dimensions. The Romanian population has seen increasing life expectancy and declining mortality rates but both remain among the worst in the European Union. Some unfavourable trends have been observed, including increasing numbers of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses and falling immunization rates. Public sources account for over 80% of total health financing. However, that leaves considerable out-of-pocket payments covering almost a fifth of total expenditure. The share of informal payments also seems to be substantial, but precise figures are unknown. In 2014, Romania had the lowest health expenditure as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) among the EU Member States. In line with the government's objective of strengthening the role of primary care, the total number of hospital beds has been decreasing. However, health care provision remains characterized by underprovision of primary and community care and inappropriate use of inpatient and specialized outpatient care, including care in hospital emergency departments. The numbers of physicians and nurses are relatively low in Romania compared to EU averages. This has mainly been attributed to the high rates of workers emigrating abroad over the past decade, exacerbated by Romania's EU accession and the reduction of public sector salaries due to the economic crisis. Reform in the Romanian health system has been both constant and yet frequently ineffective, due in part to the high degree of political instability. Recent reforms have focused mainly on introducing cost-saving measures, for example, by attempting to shift some of the health care costs to drug manufacturers by claw-back and to the population through co-payments, and on improving the monitoring of health care expenditure.
Cryptography is known for it's ability to protect confidential information, but it can also be used for other purposes. One of them is for identity verification or authentication. One of the biggest disadvantages of traditional authencation method is at the end of the session, the verifier knows about secrets which is supposed to be known only by prover. In this paper, we implemented a ZeroKnowledge Proof-based secret ticket verification system using Feige Fiat Shamir protocol. The goal of this system is to help prover identified themselves to the verifier, but also prevent the verifier to understand anything about the prover's secret information. The system is also able to prevent ticket duplication or double-use of tickets by using an interactive proof verification method. By combining it with cryptography, not only we can achieve completeness and soundness property of Zero-Knowledge Proof, but we can also achieve information security property. Index Terms - Feige Flat Shamir, Verification, Zero Knowledge Proof.
The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has transformed various sectors, improving efficiency and connectivity. However, this rise also significantly amplifies security vulnerabilities, exposing IoT ecosystems to various cyber threats. Traditional security mechanisms often fall short in addressing these vulnerabilities due to their centralized nature and scalability issues. Blockchain technology, recognized for its robust security features such as decentralization, transparency, and immutability, offers a promising alternative. This paper explores the application of advanced blockchain technologies, such as smart contracts, zero-knowledge proofs, and off-chain transactions, to enhance IoT security. Through theoretical analysis and empirical data, we demonstrate how blockchain can resolve critical security issues in IoT networks, including data integrity, device authentication, and secure communication. The findings suggest that integrating blockchain technology into IoT frameworks can significantly mitigate risks and bolster security. This research contributes to the academic discourse by highlighting practical implementations, challenges, and future perspectives on the convergence of blockchain and IoT technologies.
Олена Станіславівна Волярська, Ольга Іванівна Пастушок
In the article was considered a question of necessity of introduction of the system approach to organization of education of adult population in European space, to choice of optimal ways of the effective professional preparation of the different categories of adults for the diverse directions of qualification advance, determination of criteria of assessment of informal education of adults. There were grounded characteristics of professional training of specialists and unemployed people by the models on examples of Great Britain, Poland. There was determined the role of formal and informal education of adults. Formal education is given by the higher educational institutions – universities, institutions of postgraduate education, polytechnics and colleges. Informal education of adults is provided by the teaching associations, national educational institutions. There were determined the vectors of modernization of education of adult population: orientation on the real needs of customers (private persons and entrepreneurs); structural transparence and content flexibility of learning programs; multichannel financing; democratization of the system of education of adults by decentralization of managerial authorities.Conceptual principles of systematization of the prospects of development of education of adults in developed European countries are: determinism of educational policy of aforesaid countries by historical, political, national, socio-economic, cultural factors.We assign to the prospective directions of further researches: the theory and practice of education of adult population in the context of elaboration of civil society of the global scale; psychological adaptation of adults to the study and/or work in the foreign countries; acknowledge of the results of formal and informal education within international cooperation
Riccardo Longo, Federico Pintore, Giancarlo Rinaldo, Massimiliano Sala
The BIX protocol is a blockchain-based protocol that allows distribution of certificates linking a subject with his public key, hence providing a service similar to that of a PKI but without the need of a CA. In this paper we analyze the security of the BIX protocol in a formal way, in four steps. First, we identify formal security assumptions which are well-suited to this protocol. Second, we present some attack scenarios against the BIX protocol. Third, we provide a formal security proof that some of these attacks are not feasible under our previously established assumptions. Finally, we show how another attack may be carried on.
M. Teresa Higuera‐Toledano, Uwe Brinkschulte, Achim Rettberg
The increasing complexity of contemporary embedded computing systems requires the use of self-management in order to handle unforeseen changes in both hardware and application environments (i.e., hardware/software defects, resource changes, and non-continual feature usage). Moreover, often these systems are distributed, running on processor architectures with multiple cores, which may require self-organization to ensure efficiency and reliability. Real-time properties are another key issue in many complex systems. Adaptive and self-organized properties extent the area of operations and improves the efficiency of the system resources at the cost to introduce additional complexity, overhead, and resource requirements. Consequently, real-time adaptive systems must be careful analyzed, designed, and built taken into account the right tradeoffs between flexibility and complexity, while accomplishing time-constrains. The combination of the flexibility and uncertain behavior of self-organizing systems with time-predictability is a grand challenge. Therefore, substantial research has been done in the last years to address the so-called Self-X features (e.g., self-configuration, self-optimization, self-adaptation, self-healing, and self-protection). This fact has as resutl that self-organizing computing systems become an established research nowadays as they promise to handle the increasing complexity resulting from highly distributed systems and ubiquitous applications. In addition, real-time properties are required in many areas (such as cyber physical systems) self-organizing computing systems are dealing with. Combining the flexible and and uncertain behavior of self-organizing systems with time-predictability necessary for real-time systems is a grand challenge. The Workshop on Self-Organizing Real-Time Systems (SORT) is specifically dedicated to research on adaptive real-time systems. SORT started 2014 as a workshop attached at International Symposium on Object/Component/Service-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing (ISORC). The purpose of this workshop is to provide an open forum to discuss new and ongoing research that is centered on the idea of adaptability in real-time systems. The target audience includes researchers from academia, tool vendors, system suppliers, and users in industry who are interested in the all aspects of the topics mentioned below. This special issue of Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience contains four invited papers from the SORT 2014 workshop that has been expanded and carefully peer reviewed. The first paper, titled An Artificial DNA for Self-Descripting and Self-Building Embedded Real-Time Systems 1, Uwe Brinkschulte proposes an approach to use an artificial DNA-based approach for embedded real-time and distributed systems. This kind of systems is growing more and more complex because of the increasing chip integration density, larger number of chips in distributed applications and demanding application fields (e.g., in cars and in households). Bio-inspired techniques like self-organization are a key feature to handle this complexity. Because many embedded systems can be composed from a limited number of basic elements, the structure and parameters of such systems can be stored in a compact way representing an artificial DNA deposited in each computation node. This leads to a self-describing system. Based on the DNA, the self-organization mechanisms can build the system autonomously providing a selfbuilding system. System repair and optimization at runtime are also possible, leading to higher robustness, dependability, and flexibility. Autonomous adaptation in self-adapting embedded real-time systems introduces novel risks as it may lead to unforeseen system behavior. An anomaly detection framework integrated in a real-time operating system can ease the identification of such suspicious novel behavior and, thereby, offers the potential to enhance the reliability of the considered self-x system. However, anomaly detection is based on knowledge about normal behavior. When dealing with self-reconfiguring applications, normal behavior changes. Hence, knowledge base requires adaptation or even reconstruction at runtime. The stringent restrictions of real-time systems considering runtime and memory consumption make this task to a really challenging problem. In next paper, Two-Level Extensions of an Artifical Hormone System 2, Mathias Pacher describes a decentralized software which is able to allocate tasks in a system of heterogeneous processing elements. Tasks are allocated according to their suitability for the heterogeneous processing elements, the current processing element and task relationships. This software provides properties like self-configuration, self-optimization, and self-healing in the context of task allocation. In addition, it is able to guarantee real-time bounds for such self-X-properties. However, using self-organization principles introduces increased system complexity such as control of system parameters for self-organization and additional communication effort, which have been addressed by using a hierarchic structure. This solution uses a machine learning approach presenting an Observer-/Controller architecture. The user has to provide a simple set of initial rules and the Observer-/Controller is able to generate new rules if needed. This paper also presents a hierarchical structure to save communication bandwidth, which consists of several different clusters of processing elements where each cluster has its own communication infrastructure (e.g., a bus system). In the paper titled Online behavior classification for anomaly detection in self-x real-time systems 3, Katharina Stahl presents an online construction of application behavior knowledge that does not rely on training phase. The applications' behavior is defined by the application's system call invocations. For the knowledge base, they use Suffix Trees to represent application behavior patterns and associated information in a compact manner. The online algorithm provided by Suffix Trees is a basis to construct the knowledge base with low computational effort. Anomaly detection and classification is integrated into the online construction method. New behavioral patterns do not unconditionally update the behavior knowledge base. They are evaluated in a context-related manner inspired by Danger Theory, a special discipline of Artificial Immune Systems. For highly safety-critical applications, rigorous offline verification should be complemented by online verification. One promising technique is Online Model Checking (OMC). As OMC is a run- time-provided service, it seems to be natural providing it by an operating system service like any other service offered by the OS. In the paper titled Efficient Integration of Online Model Checking into a Small-Footprint Real-time Operating System 4 the authors study the feasibility of integrating OMC as an RTOS service. In order to ease understanding the approach, the paper discusses various integration methods in which OMC runs concurrently to the application task to be online model checked. The OMC may become: (i) an integral part of the RTOS, (ii) a separate task running on the same host as the RTOS, or (iii) a remote host as a kind of service-oriented architecture.
Досліджено вплив процесів фінансової децентралізації на систему місцевих фінансів України. Визначено основні трансформаційні зміни системи місцевих фінансів внаслідок реалізації заходів реформи та шляхи її адаптації до нових умов. Розкрито базові характеристики зміни ролі державних органів влади та органів місцевого самоврядування, їх взаємозв’язків та відносин у системі, посилення участі населення в ухваленні рішень місцевого значення. Сформульовано основні вимоги до системи місцевих фінансів із урахуванням впливу процесів фінансової децентралізації, зокрема формування ефективної і стійкої бази для мобілізації фінансових ресурсів у межах кожної територіальної громади; забезпечення достатнього обсягу ресурсів для збалансованого і динамічного розвитку на місцевому рівні; підвищення ефективності управління місцевими фінансами із застосуванням процесного та проектного підходів. Запропоновано план заходів щодо зміни системи місцевих фінансів України в контексті фінансової децентралізації на п’ятирічний період. План заходів передбачає унормування регуляторних положень у сфері управління місцевими фінансами, підвищення кваліфікації посадових осіб місцевого самоврядування, розвиток ресурсного потенціалу, моніторинг та оцінювання ефективності діючої системи місцевих фінансів.
George Huntington c. 1868. (Mulfold Album, Courtesy of the East Hampton Library, Pennypacker Long Island Collection). A naturalist as well as a hunter despite his severe asthma, George Huntington also sketched and painted landscapes and local scenes all his life, a practice that no doubt contributed to his keen powers of observation. His travel reports, published in a Long Island newspaper, testify to his early skill as a writer. Map of Connecticut and environs, c. 1780. Including East Hampton (white arrow) [H. Klockhoff and B. Romans, ‘Connecticut and Parts Adjacent‘ (Amsterdam: Covens and Mortier and Covens Jur., 1780) Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division]. Phebe Hedges and her mother, also called Phebe, descended from one of the oldest and most prominent East Hampton families who had settled the town in the 17th century from New England. [They bore no known relation to the East Anglia families whom P. R. Vessie and M. Critchley later and erroneously characterized as disreputable ancestors of many Huntington’s families in the USA (Wexler, 2008)]. They were patients of George Huntington’s grandfather, known as the Honourable Abel Huntington (1777–1858), a highly respected physician who had arrived in East Hampton from Connecticut in 1797 and found the disease well established there. The Huntingtons were long considered relative newcomers but they quickly won the esteem of their neighbours and played active roles in the local community, state, and even nationally. When Abel’s political activities drew him away from East Hampton, his physician son, George Lee Huntington (1811–81), became the doctor to the descendants of Phebe and Captain David Hedges. George Huntington, the son of George Lee and his wife Mary, born in 1850 and educated in East Hampton, was thus a third generation physician in a medical family that had lived alongside families with hereditary chorea since the end of the 18th century and was well situated to observe, over multiple generations, who did and did not have the disease. In the fall of 1871, soon after graduation from medical school, George Huntington moved to Pomeroy, Ohio. His cousin had married a clergyman in Pomeroy and suggested the young George open a medical practice there. Invited to present a paper to the local Meigs and Middleport Academy of Medicine in nearby Middleport, he chose to talk ‘On Chorea’, perhaps because he had recently observed cases of childhood (Sydenham’s) chorea in the clinic as a medical student in New York City and was struck by the differences from the chorea he had observed back home. Most of the paper, in fact, described this common type of chorea but in the final paragraphs George Huntington outlined three predominant characteristics of a type of chorea he believed to be present ‘exclusively on the east end of Long Island’. First was its hereditary nature, for it was ‘confined to certain and fortunately a few families, and has been transmitted to them, an heirloom from generations away back in the dim past’. It differed, however, ‘from the general laws of so-called hereditary diseases’ in which the disease may skip a generation. ‘Unstable and whimsical as the disease may be in other respects, in this it is firm, it never skips a generation to again manifest itself in another; once having yielded its claims, it never regains them.’ Second, was the tendency to what George Huntington called, in 19th century parlance, ‘insanity, and sometimes that form of insanity which leads to suicide’. (19th century meanings of ‘insanity’ ranged from disturbances of mood to disorders of thought and behaviour as well as personality changes. Suicide typically cast the deceased as having suffered from insanity.) He also noted specifically the tendency to cognitive impairment. ‘As the disease progresses the mind becomes more or less impaired, in many amounting to insanity, while in others mind and body both gradually fail until death relieves them of their sufferings’. He further described a lack of self-awareness and loss of inhibitions on the part of sufferers, offering a far more nuanced description than had been given in earlier accounts. Finally, he noted that the symptoms generally manifested in adult life, most often between 30 and 40 years of age, increasing very gradually ‘until every muscle in the body becomes affected (excepting the involuntary ones)’. The disease progressed inexorably without any periods of remission. ‘When once it begins it clings to the bitter end.’ Huntington ended by acknowledging that he knew nothing of its pathology and offered his account, ‘not that I considered it of any great practical importance to you, but merely as a medical curiosity, and as such it may have some interest’. Pages from the ledgers and daybooks of George Huntington’s grandfather Abel (A) and father George Lee (B) who cared for the families whose illness George later described (Courtesy of the East Hampton Library, Pennypacker Long Island Collection). See Supplementary material for further references. But he also incorporated the knowledge of the East Hampton families themselves, including their recognition that this malady was hereditary. Actually many ailments were considered to be inherited in the 19th century. It is not surprising that, in an old community with memory going back many generations, the affected families—indeed the entire community—recognized that this disorder was hereditary. Nor is it surprising that they theorized about its genealogical origins and even spoke of families ‘who belonged to the disease’. What surprises is that they were expert diagnosticians who had precise ideas of who did or did not have this illness in each generation. They understood its terrors, for as George Huntington wrote, ‘it is spoken of by those in whose veins the seeds of the disease are known to exist, with a kind of horror, and not at all alluded to except through dire necessity, when it is mentioned as “that disorder”’. (According to Henry P. Hedges, a distant relative of Phebe Hedges and a historian of East Hampton, it was also called St. Vitus’s dance although ‘the subject is avoided by most people as distasteful’.) The families also understood its trajectory, for ‘its end is so well known to the sufferer and his friends, that medical advice is seldom sought’. Years after he published ‘On Chorea’, George Huntington the artist as well as the physician beautifully captured both his own childhood awe on first encountering persons with chorea and his empathy as an adult for the suffering of those who had been his family’s neighbours and friends: ‘Driving with my father through a wooded road leading from East Hampton to Amagansett, we suddenly came upon two women, mother and daughter, both tall, thin, almost cadaverous, both bowing, twisting, grimacing. I stared in wonderment, almost in fear. What could it mean? My father paused to speak with them, and we passed on. Then my Gamaliel like instruction began; my medical education had its inception. From this point my interest in the disease has never wholly ceased. Then came the hanging of D.H. in his blacksmith shop. He was a victim of incipient chorea, knew it, possibly had been waiting for it, the “Sanctus Invictus,” and well knowing the character of the foe he must meet, the so dreaded, the long expected, the conquering, he cut short the taper and his life went out. Other victims had sought the same refuge again and again by drowning. Others, of a different nervous organization perhaps, lived on if not content, still seemingly reconciled to Fate, until mind and body both exhausted they fell asleep.’ George Huntington’s 1872 paper ‘On chorea’ in the Medical and Surgical Reporter. His later talks before various medical societies on Huntington’s chorea were published, in the Brooklyn Medical Journal (1895), the Transactions of the Tri-State Medical Association (1903), and The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1910). His unpublished papers are in the Special Collections of the Columbia University Health Sciences Library, New York City, and the Pennypacker Long Island Collection, East Hampton Library, New York. With the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws in 1900 and also the establishment of eugenics societies in many countries, the hereditary dimension of Huntington’s chorea—and the specific pattern of inheritance—began to draw increased attention, not only from clinicians but also from biologists studying Mendelian heredity more broadly. In addition to its interest as a case study in human Mendelian inheritance, Huntington’s chorea now appeared to some influential supporters of eugenics as a cause for public health alarm. With the resources of the Carnegie-funded Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, the biologist and eugenics leader Charles B. Davenport in 1911 initiated the first large-scale pedigree study of families with Huntington’s chorea, creating pedigrees that included some 962 alleged cases, living and deceased, in a total of ∼4370 individuals in the northeastern USA. Davenport and Muncey’s 1916 paper ‘Huntington’s Chorea in Relation to Heredity and Eugenics’, was widely cited and largely unchallenged for decades despite Davenport’s extreme eugenic views, which helped to normalize the notion of sterilization as the recommended method of prevention, a notion that prevailed well into the 1960s (Davenport and Muncey, 1916). At that time Hans and Gilmore and later Wexler demonstrated that these pedigrees were riddled with unreliable or clearly erroneous diagnoses and gross genealogical errors, including errors that laid the foundation for subsequent claims about Huntington’s and witches, ‘criminality’, and violence (Hans and Gilmore, 1969; Wexler, 2008). Such claims, repeated even today, deepened the stigmatization of Huntington’s families while discouraging research toward effective treatment. They also gave families further incentives for maintaining secrecy and silence about this disease (Wexler and Rawlins, 2005). Reports on the neuropathology of chorea in adults appeared as early as the 1870s, with researchers generally agreed that the basic lesion was located in the basal ganglia, with the striatum, particularly the caudate nucleus, showing the greatest degree of atrophy. However, there was little agreement on its cause and relatively little progress for decades. The confluence of several developments in the 1960s radically transformed this bleak research landscape. First, the discovery of L-DOPA and its benefits for patients with Parkinson’s disease spurred an international gathering of neurologists in 1967 to organize a Research Group on Huntington’s Chorea. Second, the rise of social movements in the 1960s challenged the legacy of eugenics and encouraged members of families with Huntington’s to become active on their own behalf. Activists such as the North Americans Marjorie Guthrie, widow of the songwriter and singer Woody Guthrie who died with Huntington’s in 1967, and Milton and Nancy Wexler, husband and daughter of recently diagnosed Leonore Wexler, along with Ralph Walker in Canada, Mauveen Jones in the UK, Gerrit Dommerholt in the Netherlands, and Huntington’s family members elsewhere spearheaded efforts to improve care as well as to interest scientists in research. In the late 1960s and 1970s they formed disease advocacy associations in many countries (called self-support organizations or health voluntary agencies) which, along with revolutionary advances in molecular genetics and neuroscience, expanded biomedical interest in Huntington’s. New technologies of gene mapping opened up possibilities for identifying—and perhaps disabling—the aberrant gene. New modes of imaging offered possibilities for understanding—and potentially intervening in—the sequence of pathological changes in the brain. At a 1972 Centennial Symposium on Huntington’s disease, in Columbus Ohio, near the town where George Huntington presented his landmark paper, some 136 researchers and a few members of Huntington’s families from around the world gathered to commemorate his contribution and develop new directions for research. Out of this meeting came the impetus for a bold collaborative project focused on a unique cluster of affected families in Venezuela who had been diagnosed back in the 1950s by a local physician, Americo Negrette, author of the first monograph ever published on Huntington’s disease (Negrette, 1963). Drawing on the new somatic cell genetics for mapping genes, this project, led by Nancy Wexler, culminated in 1983 in the identification of a genetic marker for Huntington’s (Gusella et al., 1983). Besides demonstrating that the new technology could be used for mapping the human genome, the landmark marker discovery for the first time enabled those at 50% risk for Huntington’s disease to learn either that they were forever free of the disease and were not in danger of passing it on to their children or grandchildren, or that they did carry the abnormal version of the gene and would therefore develop symptoms if they lived long enough: a momentous form of new knowledge. It also inspired the formation of the legendary Huntington’s Disease Collaborative Research Group, again under the leadership of Nancy Wexler and the Hereditary Disease Foundation. After 10 agonizing years of work, the group collectively announced the identification of the abnormal Huntington’s disease gene (Huntington’s Disease Collaborative Research Group, 1993; Wexler, 2012) (Fig. 6). In a coding region of chromosome 4 initially labelled IT-15 (‘interesting transcript 15’), the Collaborative Research Group had found an expanded CAG triplet repeat that segregated completely with Huntington’s disease cases. The gene was soon renamed HTT and its protein product baptized ‘huntingtin’. So began a new age of Huntington’s disease: armed now with certainty of the cause of every past, present and future case of Huntington’s disease, researchers could focus their efforts on understanding the gene, studying the protein in its wild-type and mutant forms, elucidating the mechanisms through which mutant huntingtin (mHTT) causes disease, and working on therapies targeting the mutation and its known effects. Hopes that the gene discovery would lead overnight to a cure for Huntington’s disease quickly sublimated into a realization that a long road lay ahead—but at least, a road illuminated by the certitude conferred by the genetic basis of Huntington’s disease. At every branch-point, paths unconnected to the expanded HTT gene could be discounted. This certainty offers researchers on Huntington’s a potent advantage over those studying more common neurodegenerative diseases, which remain almost entirely idiopathic. Our understanding of the complex roles of the protein and the multiple toxicities of its mutant counterpart rapidly burgeoned, but there was solace to be drawn from knowing each was a potential new target for therapeutic development (reviewed in Wild and Tabrizi, 2014; Bate et al., 2015). The first mouse model of Huntington’s disease, the R6/2, expressing HTT exon 1 under control of the human promoter, followed rapidly in 1996 and remains a mainstay in the field thanks to its robust phenotype and rapid progression. mHTT-containing protein aggregates were soon found in its neurons and in the brains of human patients. Numerous model systems from cells to primates and everything in between are now available to elucidate aspects of pathology and explore therapeutics (reviewed in Bates et al., 2015). Huntington special issue of Neurographs. In 1908 the New York neurologist William Browning devoted an entire issue of his journal Neurographs to Huntington’s chorea, emphasizing what he called ‘the world-wide interest’ in the disease. Collectively authored paper describing the identification of the CAG triplet repeat expansion in IT15 responsible for Huntington’s disease. This discovery was considered so momentous that it appeared on the front page of The New York Times (24 March 1993). Overview of current therapeutic targets for Huntington’s disease. From Wild and Tabrizi (2014). If we could achieve in humans, using a targeted drug molecule, what was seen in Yamamoto’s conditional HTT knockout mouse, we would theoretically treat every facet of Huntington’s disease. Work on such ‘gene silencing’ or ‘huntingtin lowering’ approaches began in Huntington’s disease model animals in 2005 using RNA interference. Similar approaches using antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs)—modified single-stranded DNA—began around the same time. Each aims to reduce HTT expression by targeting its mRNA transcript for removal by the cellular mRNA degradation machinery. For the past decade these technologies have been honed and put through their paces in animal models (Wild and Tabrizi, 2014). Huntington was almost 22 when he presented his seminal work, and by coincidence it was 22 years after the discovery of the HTT gene that the first injection of an ASO therapeutic targeting huntingtin production in the brain was administered into the spinal of a with Huntington’s disease in in either or remains the of this first the of Huntington’s age of therapeutics targeting the cause and known of Huntington’s now at the ASO and its are by and established and by of Huntington’s disease family who are their time and to knowing they are not to but that many others years after George Huntington’s his disease is no the and malady that it was his Nor is it considered so New have a at in the UK, than was about although the has et al., while Huntington’s is still it is no reduce movements and and to improve of life, for family members as well as for those at risk and those living with the disease. New technologies such as in and genetic increased for those at risk who to have families without passing on the malady et al., 2015). The and of Huntington’s family the has helped reduce the and social that has long to the suffering with the disease. But all these advances are many people in Huntington’s families, not only in countries but also in not have to these it is that we to in research on it is also that therapies and be to those who them if the of is to be is by the Medical Research This was in part by the for Health University Research and the Supplementary material is available at
Pedro Moreno-Sánchez, Muhammad Bilal Zafar, Aniket Kate
Abstract The decentralized I owe you (IOU) transaction network Ripple is gaining prominence as a fast, low-cost and efficient method for performing same and cross-currency payments. Ripple keeps track of IOU credit its users have granted to their business partners or friends, and settles transactions between two connected Ripple wallets by appropriately changing credit values on the connecting paths. Similar to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, while the ownership of the wallets is implicitly pseudonymous in Ripple, IOU credit links and transaction flows between wallets are publicly available in an online ledger. In this paper, we present the first thorough study that analyzes this globally visible log and characterizes the privacy issues with the current Ripple network. In particular, we define two novel heuristics and perform heuristic clustering to group wallets based on observations on the Ripple network graph. We then propose reidentification mechanisms to deanonymize the operators of those clusters and show how to reconstruct the financial activities of deanonymized Ripple wallets. Our analysis motivates the need for better privacy-preserving payment mechanisms for Ripple and characterizes the privacy challenges faced by the emerging credit networks.
Abstract We present an efficient method for answering one-dimensional range and closest-point queries in a verifiable and privacy-preserving manner. We consider a model where a data owner outsources a dataset of key-value pairs to a server, who answers range and closest-point queries issued by a client and provides proofs of the answers. The client verifies the correctness of the answers while learning nothing about the dataset besides the answers to the current and previous queries. Our work yields for the first time a zero-knowledge privacy assurance to authenticated range and closest-point queries. Previous work leaked the size of the dataset and used an inefficient proof protocol. Our construction is based on hierarchical identity-based encryption. We prove its security and analyze its efficiency both theoretically and with experiments on synthetic and real data (Enron email and Boston taxi datasets).
The Constitution of the Republic of Serbia from 2006. has been the subject of sharp criticism of many legal experts. The way it was written, adopted and approved in the referendum, for sure it can’t be a praiseworthy example of legality and, with some of its controversial solutions, it inevitably indicates the necessity to be altered. These problematic Constitutional provisions are the subject of this article. Starting from the very preamble of the Constitution, unnecessarily discriminating position between the autonomous provinces, politicizing and the non-coexistence of the Constitutional text could be clearly observed. The Constitutional attack on the freedom of parliamentary mandate has been causing constant and numerous criticism of domestic and foreign public but at no time it did not make most of the parties hesitate to use their unfairly acquired right. Decentralization always causes a live debate, proposing various models and modalities, but only few of them could be possibly finalized by a general consensus. Serbian firm commitment to become a member of the European Union, at one point calls for a constitutional revision which would transfer the execution of certain part of sovereign rights to that supra-national organization. We could only hope that the political elite will not use any future reform to violate guaranteed constitutional rights, as was the case with the reform of the judiciary. Amending the Constitution has been always a difficult and time consuming process, hence the sooner the amending starts, the more likely are the chances to have it completed in democratic and tolerant atmosphere for the benefit of all citizens of Serbia.
Aggelos Kiayias, Ηλίας Κουτσουπιάς, Maria Kyropoulou, Yiannis Tselekounis
We study the strategic considerations of miners participating in the bitcoin's protocol. We formulate and study the stochastic game that underlies these strategic considerations. The miners collectively build a tree of blocks, and they are paid when they create a node (mine a block) which will end up in the path of the tree that is adopted by all. Since the miners can hide newly mined nodes, they play a game with incomplete information. Here we consider two simplified forms of this game in which the miners have complete information. In the simplest game the miners release every mined block immediately, but are strategic on which blocks to mine. In the second more complicated game, when a block is mined it is announced immediately, but it may not be released so that other miners cannot continue mining from it. A miner not only decides which blocks to mine, but also when to release blocks to other miners. In both games, we show that when the computational power of each miner is relatively small, their best response matches the expected behavior of the bitcoin designer. However, when the computational power of a miner is large, he deviates from the expected behavior, and other Nash equilibria arise.
One of today’s main challenge related to cloud storage is to maintain the functionalities and the efficiency of customers’ and service providers’ usual environments while protecting the confidentiality of sensitive data. Deduplication is one of those functionalities: it enables cloud storage providers to save a lot of memory by storing only once a file uploaded several times. However, classical encryption schemes block deduplication. One needs to use a “message-locked encryption” scheme (MLE), which allows the detection of duplicates and the storage of only one encrypted file on the server, which can be decrypted by any owner of the file. However, in most existing scheme, a user can bypass this deduplication protocol. In this article, we provide servers verifiability for MLE schemes: the servers can verify that the ciphertexts are well-formed. This property forces a customer to prove that she complied to the deduplication protocol, thus preventing her to deviate from the prescribed functionality of MLE. Then, we provide an MLE scheme satisfying this new security property. To achieve the deduplication consistency, our construction primarily relies on zero-knowledge proofs. Unlike Abadi et al.’s MLE, we instantiate those proofs, so<br> that we obtain a more efficient scheme, secure in the random oracle model.
A public ledger is a tamperproof sequence of data that can be read and augmented by everyone. Public ledgers have innumerable and compelling uses. They can secure, in plain sight, all kinds of transactions ---such as titles, sales, and payments--- in the exact order in which they occur. Public ledgers not only curb corruption, but also enable very sophisticated applications ---such as cryptocurrencies and smart contracts. They stand to revolutionize the way a democratic society operates. As currently implemented, however, they scale poorly and cannot achieve their potential. Algorand is a truly democratic and efficient way to implement a public ledger. Unlike prior implementations based on proof of work, it requires a negligible amount of computation, and generates a transaction history that will not "fork" with overwhelmingly high probability. Algorand is based on (a novel and super fast) message-passing Byzantine agreement. For concreteness, we shall describe Algorand only as a money platform.
Dimitris Chatzopoulos, Sujit Gujar, Boi Faltings, Pan Hui
The popularity of digital currencies, especially cryptocurrencies, has been continuously growing since the appearance of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency protocol enabling transactions between individuals without the need of a trusted authority. Its network is formed from resources contributed by individuals known as miners. Users of Bitcoin currency create transactions that are stored in a specialised data structure called a block chain. Bitcoin's security lies in a proof-of-work scheme, which requires high computational resources at the miners. These miners have to be synchronised with any update in the network, which produces high data traffic rates. Despite advances in mobile technology, no cryptocurrencies have been proposed for mobile devices. This is largely due to the lower processing capabilities of mobile devices when compared with conventional computers and the poorer Internet connectivity to that of the wired networking. In this work, we propose LocalCoin, an alternative cryptocurrency that requires minimal computational resources, produces low data traffic and works with off-the-shelf mobile devices. LocalCoin replaces the computational hardness that is at the root of Bitcoin's security with the social hardness of ensuring that all witnesses to a transaction are colluders. It is based on opportunistic networking rather than relying on infrastructure and incorporates characteristics of mobile networks such as users' locations and their coverage radius in order to employ an alternative proof-of-work scheme. Localcoin features (i) a lightweight proof-of-work scheme and (ii) a distributed block chain.
Algorand is a truly decentralized, new, and secure way to manage a shared ledger. Unlike prior approaches based on {\em proof of work}, it requires a negligible amount of computation, and generates a transaction history that does not fork with overwhelmingly high probability. This approach cryptographically selects ---in a way that is provably immune from manipulations, unpredictable until the last minute, but ultimately universally clear--- a set of verifiers in charge of constructing a block of valid transactions. This approach applies to any way of implementing a shared ledger via a tamper-proof sequence of blocks, including traditional blockchains. This paper also presents more efficient alternatives to blockchains, which may be of independent interest.
Algorand significantly enhances all applications based on a public ledger: payments, smart contracts, stock settlement, etc. But, for concreteness, we shall describe it only as a money platform.
Planar nearrings play an important role in nearring theory, both from the structural side as being close to generalised nearfields, as well as from an applications perspective, in geometry and designs. We investigate the distributive elements of planar nearrings. If a planar nearring has nonzero distributive elements, then it is an extension of its zero multiplier part by an abelian group. In the case that there are distributive elements that are not zero multipliers, then this extension splits, giving an explicit description of the nearring. This generalises the structure of planar rings. We provide a family of examples where this does not occur, the distributive elements being precisely the zero multipliers. We apply this knowledge to the question of determining the generalized center of planar nearrings as well as finding new proofs of other older results.
Open access
Rings, Modules, and Algebras
Advanced Topics in Algebra
Advanced Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems