Aku Kwamie, Han van Dijk, Evelyn Ansah, Irène Akua Agyepong
The district health system in Ghana today is characterized by high resource-uncertainty and narrow decision-space. This article builds a theory-driven historical case study to describe the influence of path-dependent administrative, fiscal and political decentralization processes on development of the district health system and district manager decision-space. Methods included a non-exhaustive literature review of democratic governance in Ghana, and key informant interviews with high-level health system officials integral to the development of the district health system. Through our analysis we identified four periods of district health system progression: (1) development of the district health system (1970-85); (2) Strengthening District Health Systems Initiative (1986-93); (3) health sector reform planning and creation of the Ghana Health Service (1994-96) and (4) health sector reform implementation (1997-2007). It was observed that district manager decision-space steadily widened during periods (1) and (2), due to increases in managerial profile, and concerted efforts at managerial capacity strengthening. Periods (3) and (4) saw initial augmentation of district health system financing, further widening managerial decision-space. However, the latter half of period 4 witnessed district manager decision-space contraction. Formalization of Ghana Health Service structures influenced by self-reinforcing tendencies towards centralized decision-making, national and donor shifts in health sector financing, and changes in key policy actors all worked to the detriment of the district health system, reversing early gains from bottom-up development of the district health system. Policy feedback mechanisms have been influenced by historical and contemporary sequencing of local government and health sector decentralization. An initial act of administrative decentralization, followed by incomplete political and fiscal decentralization has ensured that the balance of power has remained at national level, with strong vertical accountabilities and dependence of the district on national level. This study demonstrates that the rhetoric of decentralization does not always mirror actual implementation, nor always result in empowered local actors.
Infective endocarditis (IE)((1)) is a severe condition complicating 10-25% of Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia. Although host-related IE risk factors have been identified, the involvement of bacterial features in IE complication is still unclear. We characterized strictly defined IE and bacteremia isolates and searched for discriminant features. S. aureus isolates causing community-acquired, definite native-valve IE (n=72) and bacteremia (n=54) were collected prospectively as part of a French multicenter cohort. Phenotypic traits previously reported or hypothesized to be involved in staphylococcal IE pathogenesis were tested. In parallel, the genotypic profiles of all isolates, obtained by microarray, were analyzed by discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC)((2)). No significant difference was observed between IE and bacteremia strains, regarding either phenotypic or genotypic univariate analyses. However, the multivariate statistical tool DAPC, applied on microarray data, segregated IE and bacteremia isolates: IE isolates were correctly reassigned as such in 80.6% of the cases (C-statistic 0.83, P<0.001). The performance of this model was confirmed with an independent French collection IE and bacteremia isolates (78.8% reassignment, C-statistic 0.65, P<0.01). Finally, a simple linear discriminant function based on a subset of 8 genetic markers retained valuable performance both in study collection (86.1%, P<0.001) and in the independent validation collection (81.8%, P<0.01). We here show that community-acquired IE and bacteremia S. aureus isolates are genetically distinct based on subtle combinations of genetic markers. This finding provides the proof of concept that bacterial characteristics may contribute to the occurrence of IE in patients with S. aureus bacteremia.
Open access
Antimicrobial Resistance in Staphylococcus
Infective Endocarditis Diagnosis and Management
Bacterial Identification and Susceptibility Testing
This article is aimed at augmenting current awareness of virtual currencies ("VCs") in the South African legal community. To this end, it introduces the reader to VCs in general and decentralised convertible VCs ("DCVCs") in particular. Due to their design and interaction with the real economy and currency, DCVCs are on the radar of many financial regulators worldwide. As Bitcoin is considered the leading type of DCVC in terms of value and volume, its early beginnings in South Africa are probed. Although regulation should follow innovation, awareness of the VC ecosystem will not only warrant appropriate regulatory intervention when the time comes, but will also enable the growth and development opportunities associated with VCs. South Africa has not promulgated any legislation pertaining to VCs. The potential applicability of all current legislation and regulations relevant to VCs calls for in-depth research. This article aspires to serve as an appetiser to do so.
This dissertation analyzes the institutional development and policy performance of the Federal Reserve System from 1913-1968. Whereas existing scholarship assumes Federal Reserve institutions have remained static since 1913, this project demonstrates that the Federal Reserve was a site of extensive institutional experimentation across its first half century of operations. The 1913 Federal Reserve Act created thirteen autonomous agencies without offering guidance regarding how these units should function as a coherent system. The extent to which this institutional jumble congealed into a central bank-like organization has fluctuated over time. Institutional changes were driven by external shocks and shaped by an ongoing internal debate about normative systemic governance. Some agents called for greater institutional centralization to increase the system’s strategic capacity. Others drew upon shared liberal ideals to defend the system’s decentralized governance traditions. These debates resulted in frequent reconstitutions of the policy-making regime. This dissertation argues the Fed’s temporally-specific institutional configurations were consequential for United States monetary and exchange rate policies. During periods of relatively centralized Federal Reserve governance, internationally-oriented agents wielded control over the system’s policy-making levers to help stabilize the dollar’s exchange rate. During periods of institutional fragmentation, by contrast, monetary policies grew increasingly rigid, promoting dollar instability. Consequently, the structure of American central banking institutions has important implications for both the domestic and international political economies. This project suggests that insights from the positive study of institutions should be applied to the design of central banking institutions. Although institutional fragmentation can check arbitrary power, it likewise can paralyze the policy-making process and undermine the formation and steady pursuit of long-term strategic goals.
Enormous amounts of data are collected by hospitals, social networking systems, government agencies, and other organizations. There are huge social benefits in analyzing this data, but we must protect the privacy of the individuals in the data. The current standard definition of data privacy is differential privacy [22, 19]. In this thesis, we introduce new definitions of data privacy that can be better than differential privacy in certain ways. We first argue that differential privacy might not be strong enough in social network settings. We then introduce a zero-knowledge based definition of privacy called zero-knowledge privacy, which is strictly stronger than differential privacy and is particularly attractive when modeling privacy in social networks. Both differential privacy and zero-knowledge privacy provide strong privacy guarantees. However, for certain tasks, mechanisms satisfying these privacy definitions have to add a lot of "noise", thus lowering the utility of the released data. Thus, we introduce a new definition of privacy called crowd-blending privacy that strictly relaxes the notion of differential privacy. We demonstrate crowd-blending private mechanisms for histograms and for releasing synthetic data points, achieving strictly better utility than what is possible using differentially private mechanisms. Differential privacy guarantees the same level of privacy protection for all individuals. However, we demonstrate that some individuals may need more privacy than others. Thus, we introduce a generalization of differential privacy called tai- lored differential privacy, where an individual's privacy parameter is "tailored" for the individual based on the individual's data and the data set. We focus on a natural instance of tailored differential privacy, which we call outlier privacy: an individual's privacy parameter is determined by how much of an "outlier " the individual is. In this thesis, we also study the problem of strategy-proof voting, which is plagued by impossibility results. We take a bounded-rationality approach to this problem and consider a setting where voters have "coarse" beliefs (a notion that has gained popularity in the behavioral economics literature). In particular, we construct good voting rules that satisfy a notion of strategy-proofness with respect to coarse i.i.d. beliefs, thus circumventing the existing impossibility results.
Peter de Vries, Stéphanie M. van den Berg, Cees Midden
OBJECTIVE: The present research addresses the question of how trust in systems is formed when unequivocal information about system accuracy and reliability is absent, and focuses on the interaction of indirect information (others' evaluations) and direct (experiential) information stemming from the interaction process. BACKGROUND: Trust in decision-supporting technology, such as route planners, is important for satisfactory user interactions. Little is known, however, about trust formation in the absence of outcome feedback, that is, when users have not yet had opportunity to verify actual outcomes. METHOD: Three experiments manipulated others' evaluations ("endorsement cues") and various forms of experience-based information ("process feedback") in interactions with a route planner and measured resulting trust using rating scales and credits staked on the outcome. Subsequently, an overall analysis was conducted. RESULTS: Study 1 showed that effectiveness of endorsement cues on trust is moderated by mere process feedback. In Study 2, consistent (i.e., nonrandom) process feedback overruled the effect of endorsement cues on trust, whereas inconsistent process feedback did not. Study 3 showed that although the effects of consistent and inconsistent process feedback largely remained regardless of face validity, high face validity in process feedback caused higher trust than those with low face validity. An overall analysis confirmed these findings. CONCLUSION: Experiential information impacts trust even if outcome feedback is not available, and, moreover, overrules indirect trust cues-depending on the nature of the former. APPLICATION: Designing systems so that they allow novice users to make inferences about their inner workings may foster initial trust.
This Request For Comment (RFC) is a proposal for a new protocol to use money over the Internet. Features like a distributed architecture, a published cryptographic algorithm, a minimal authority responsibility, the absence of fees will make this protocol a perfect tool for citizens in today's digital World. An implementation has validated the main principles and we entering now a testing phase (v0.1). Depending of the results, a released date for the 1.0 revision will to decided to allow anybody to send or to receive money to/from anyone, in any currency, with a regular and personal smart-phone. A distributed hash table (DHT) is used to store all transactions, public keys and certificates redundantly on several nodes. The all system may replace coins, banknotes and classical checks in the future. We also argue that the Bitcoin technology does not satisfy the requirements for a digital mean of payment. This proposal is expected to be reviewed and commented by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
The public administration of the environment in Colombia is characterized by decentralized\n. Based on this form of organization , renewable natural resources are\norganized under criteria ecosystem unit subject to the territorial jurisdiction of the\nregional autonomous corporations CAR. The CAR is part of what in Colombia\nis called the National Environmental System, SINA, and although they are not\nsubject to administrative hierarchies by the Ministry of environment, discusses the\ntrue scope of its administrative autonomy. The discussion about the autonomy of\nthe CAR has created tensions between the central level and the decentralized level\nto the point of being necessary the intervention of the constitutional court to set\nlimits to the possibility for the Ministry to intervene in the proceedings of the CAR,\nand to define those competencies that the CAR can act autonomously.
Petra Kralj Novak, Miha Grcar, Borut Sluban, Igor Mozetic
Unstructured data, such as news and blogs, can provide valuable insights into the financial world. We present the NewsStream portal, an intuitive and easy-to-use tool for news analytics, which supports interactive querying and visualizations of the documents at different levels of detail. It relies on a scalable architecture for real-time processing of a continuous stream of textual data, which incorporates data acquisition, cleaning, natural-language preprocessing and semantic annotation components. It has been running for over two years and collected over 18 million news articles and blog posts. The NewsStream portal can be used to answer the questions when, how often, in what context, and with what sentiment was a financial entity or term mentioned in a continuous stream of news and blogs, and therefore providing a complement to news aggregators. We illustrate some features of our system in three use cases: relations between the rating agencies and the PIIGS countries, reflection of financial news on credit default swap (CDS) prices, the emergence of the Bitcoin digital currency, and visualizing how the world is connected through news.
The I-710 and CA-60 highways are key transportation corridors in the Southern California region that are heavily used on a daily basis by heavy duty drayage trucks that transport the cargo from the ports to the inland transportation terminals. These terminals, which include store/warehouses, inland-railways, are anywhere from 5 to 50 miles in distance from the ports. The concentrated operation of these drayage vehicles in these corridors has had and will continue to have a significant impact on the air quality in this region whereby significantly impacting the quality of life in the communities surrounding these corridors. To reduce these negative impacts it is critical that zero and near-zero emission technologies be developed and deployed in the region. A potential local market size of up to 46,000 trucks exists in the South Coast Air Basin, based on near- dock drayage trucks and trucks operating on the I-710 freeway. The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), California Air Resources Board (CARB) and Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) — the agencies responsible for preparing the State Implementation Plan required under the federal Clean Air Act — have stated that to attain federal air quality standards the region will need to transition to broad use of zero and near zero emission energy sources in cars, trucks and other equipment (Southern California Association of Governments et al, 2011). SCAQMD partnered with Volvo Trucks to develop, build and demonstrate a prototype Class 8 heavy-duty plug-in hybrid drayage truck with significantly reduced emissions and fuel use. Volvo’s approach leveraged the group’s global knowledge and experience in designing and deploying electromobility products. The proprietary hybrid driveline selected for this proof of concept was integrated with multiple enhancements to the complete vehicle in order to maximize the emission and energy impact of electrification. A detailed review of all technologies included in the demonstrator is presented in this report. The project was completed in July 2015 with a final demonstration of the concept vehicle on a simulated drayage route around Volvo’s North American headquarters in Greensboro, NC. The route included all traffic conditions typical of drayage operation in Southern California as well as geofences defined to showcase the zero emission capabilities of the truck. The demonstrator successfully completed four consecutive trips with a gross combined vehicle weight of 44,000 lb., covering approximately 2 miles out of a total distance of 9 miles per trip in the Zero Emission (ZE) geofence. This vehicle is expected to use approximately 30% less fuel than a typical drayage truck in daily operation, and it is designed to allow full electric operation whenever operating in a marine terminal in the ports of Los Angeles / Long Beach. A paper study on the feasibility of expanding the capabilities of the plug-in hybrid concept developed as part of this project was also delivered as an addendum to the regular progress reports.
Ring signatures enable a user to anonymously sign a message on behalf of group of users. In this study, the authors propose the first ring signature scheme whose size is O (log 2 N ), where N is the number of users in the ring. They achieve this result by improving Chandran et al .’s ring signature scheme presented at the International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming 2007. Their scheme uses a common reference string and non‐interactive zero‐knowledge proofs. The security of their scheme is proven without requiring random oracles.
A homomorphic public key crypto-scheme based on the Boolean Satisfiability Problem is proposed. The public key is a SAT formula satisfied by the private key. Probabilistic encryption generates functions implied to be false by the public key XOR the message bits. A zero-knowledge proof is used to provide signatures.
Bitcoin, the first electronic payment system, is becoming a popular currency. We provide a statistical analysis of the log-returns of the exchange rate of Bitcoin versus the United States Dollar. Fifteen of the most popular parametric distributions in finance are fitted to the log-returns. The generalized hyperbolic distribution is shown to give the best fit. Predictions are given for future values of the exchange rate.
The interaction of competing agents is described by classical game theory. It is now well known that this can be extended to the quantum domain, where agents obey the rules of quantum mechanics. This is of emerging interest for exploring quantum foundations, quantum protocols, quantum auctions, quantum cryptography, and the dynamics of quantum cryptocurrency, for example. In this paper, we investigate two-player games in which a strategy pair can exist as a Nash equilibrium when the games obey the rules of quantum mechanics. Using a generalized Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) setting for two-player quantum games, and considering a particular strategy pair, we identify sets of games for which the pair can exist as a Nash equilibrium only when Bell's inequality is violated. We thus determine specific games for which the Nash inequality becomes equivalent to Bell's inequality for the considered strategy pair.
Bitcoin is a decentralized crypto-currency, and an accompanying protocol, created in 2008. Bitcoin nodes continuously generate and propagate blocks---collections of newly approved transactions that are added to Bitcoin's ledger. Block creation requires nodes to invest computational resources, but also carries a reward in the form of bitcoins that are paid to the creator. While the protocol requires nodes to quickly distribute newly created blocks, strong nodes can in fact gain higher payoffs by withholding blocks they create and selectively postponing their publication. The existence of such selfish mining attacks was first reported by Eyal and Sirer, who have demonstrated a specific deviation from the standard protocol (a strategy that we name SM1). In this paper we extend the underlying model for selfish mining attacks, and provide an algorithm to find $ε$-optimal policies for attackers within the model, as well as tight upper bounds on the revenue of optimal policies. As a consequence, we are able to provide lower bounds on the computational power an attacker needs in order to benefit from selfish mining. We find that the profit threshold -- the minimal fraction of resources required for a profitable attack -- is strictly lower than the one induced by the SM1 scheme. Indeed, the policies given by our algorithm dominate SM1, by better regulating attack-withdrawals. Using our algorithm, we show that Eyal and Sirer's suggested countermeasure to selfish mining is slightly less effective than previously conjectured. Next, we gain insight into selfish mining in the presence of communication delays, and show that, under a model that accounts for delays, the profit threshold vanishes, and even small attackers have incentive to occasionally deviate from the protocol. We conclude with observations regarding the combined power of selfish mining and double spending attacks.
Xiaoyun Liu, Lixia Dou, Huan Zhang, Yang Sun · 5 authors
BACKGROUND: Current literature systematically reports that interventions to attract and retain health workers in underserved areas need to be context specific but rarely defines what that means. In this systematic review, we try to summarize and analyse context factors influencing the implementation of interventions to attract and retain rural health workers. METHODS: We searched online databases, relevant websites and reference lists of selected literature to identify studies on compulsory rural service programmes and financial incentives. Forty studies were selected. Information regarding context factors at macro, meso and micro levels was extracted and synthesized. RESULTS: Macro-level context factors include political, economic and social factors. Meso-level factors include health system factors such as maldistribution of health workers, growing private sector, decentralization and health financing. Micro-level factors refer to the policy implementation process including funding sources, administrative agency, legislation process, monitoring and evaluation. CONCLUSIONS: Macro-, meso- and micro-level context factors can play different roles in agenda setting, policy formulation and implementation of health interventions to attract and retain rural health workers. These factors should be systematically considered in the different stages of policy process and evaluation.
مستخلص البحث \n \nاللغة العربية لغة مهمة للمسلمين ولكن صعبة في تعليمها عند رأي معظم الطلاب. وهذا الذى يتحدى المدارس والمعاهد الإسلامية في ترقية برامج تعليم اللغة العربية حتى تكون جذابة لدى طلابها. لكل المدارس والمعاهد الإسلامية في إندونيسيا لها اتجاهات مختلفة في تعليم اللغة العربية، منها يكون تعلم اللغة العربية أداة في فهم التعاليم الإسلامية وكتب التراث الإسلامية كالمعاهد السلفية واتجاه آخر كمهنة ومهارة وفنّ مثل المعاهد المعاصرة. فإن تعليم اللغة العربية بمختلف اتجاهاتها يحتاج إلى إدارة التعليم الجيدة والمناسبة.من حيث التخطيط والتنظيم والتنفيذ والمراقبة. أن يقارن هذا البحث بين الإدارة اللغوية فمعهد كمعهد السلفي ومعهد الأمين كمعهد الخلفي. \n \nيهدف هذا البحث على المعرفة تخطيط وتنظيم وتنفيذ ومراقبة برنامج تعليم اللغة العربية في معهد النقاية ومعهد الأمين سومنب مادورا. \n \nومنهج هذا البحث هو من نوع البحث الوصفي بالمدخل الكيفي ودراسة المقارنة. وميدان البحث مركزاللغة في معهد النقاية جولؤ-جولؤ ومعهد الأمين برندوان سومنب مادورا. ومن الأدوات لجمع البيانات:1. المقابلة 2. الملاحظة 3. التوثيق. طريقة تحليل البيانات: تنقيص البيانات أوباختصار البيانات واختيار الأحوال المهمة المطابقة عرض البيانات ثم الاستنباط أوالاستنتاج. \n \nنتائج هذا البحث العلمي : يختلف عملية التخطيط في مركز اللغة بمعهد النقاية والأمين. تخطيط البرامج في مركز اللغة النقاية يجري مستقلاً يعنى تخطيط البرنامج من المرؤوسين إلى الرئيس وأداء البرامج اللغوية يجري بصفة اللامركزية. وتخطيط البرامج في مركز اللغة الأمين يجري غير مستقلاً يعنى جميع البرامج قد صُمّمت بالرأساء أوالمستشار والمرؤوسون تنفيذها. أداء برامجه يجري بصفة مركزية. \n \nفى مرحلة التنظيم يستخدم مركزاللغة بمعهد النقاية والأمين الوسائل البسيطة في تعليم اللغة العربية مثل السبورة ومقلمة والمادة المعينة وأحيانا هم يستعملون الأداوات الإلكترونية والمسجلات مثل الكمبيوتر أوالحاسب. ومن حيث هيكل التنظيمي وتصنيف العمل قد قام بهما هذين مركزين اللغة. \n \nالنتائج فى مرحلة التنفيذ، من حيث النظام في تنفيذ البرامج اللغوية قد قام به مركز اللغة بمعهد النقاية والأمين. تشجيع المدبرين أوالأعضاء يقوم مركز اللغة في معهد النقاية ومعهد الأمين به باللسان وبهدية. وفى مركز اللغة في معهد النقاية يدخل المسابقة إلى تشجيع الأعضاء والتقويم ولكن في معهد الأمين المسابقة إلى التقويم.لترقية كفائة المعلمين : يرسل مركزاللغة النقاية المبعوث لمشاركة التدريب اللغوى خارج المعهد أوبالتدريب اللغوى الذى يقوم به مركزاللغة المركزى بطبعة المجلة. ومركزاللغة بمعهد الأمين بالدورة المكثفة للمحرك والمحركات اللغة وإعطاء التوجيه مؤقتاً والتعليم النمودج قبل التدريس. \n \nالنتائج فى مرحلة المراقبة يقوم التقويم مركزاللغة بمعهد النقاية بملاحظة وبسؤال إلي مدبرين مركزاللغة لكل منطقة ومن إنتهاء المواد في تدريسيها. والتقويم مركزاللغة بمعهد الأمين بالإجتماع بين محرك الفصول ومسهل الحجرات مع مسؤول مجلس الشورى للمنظمة ومسؤول مركزاللغة. ووهما يستخدمان المسابقات والمسرحية واصدار النشرات اختبار التحريري والشفوى في تقويم البرامج اللغوية. \n \nABSTRACT \n \nArabic language is very important for muslims as a language of religion, but many students which find it difficult for the study it. This has been challenge for school and boarding school. So language institute must be creates the interesting Arabic Language Program. Every school and educational institutions in Indonesia had been different purposes in the conduct of Arabic language learning, for the example classic boarding school, it's have the purpose of language learning as tool for understanding religion and classic books. It's difference with the purpose of language learning at modern boarding school their purpose as skills, arts and profession. The difference of language learning purpose it takes the good management, from the planning aspect, organizing, actuating and controlling. Therefore this research want to compare management of Arabic Language Program at classic boarding school and modern boarding school. \n \nThe purposes of this research is in order to know how the planning, organizing, actuating and controlling of language program at At An-Nuqayah And Al-Amien Boarding School Sumenep Madura. \n \nThis research is a descriptive study and with a qualitative approach and Comperative Study. The location of this research is at language center of An-Nuqayah And Al-Amien Boarding School Sumenep Madura. The Method of data Collecting is interview, observation and documentation. The method of data analysis is data reduction, triangulation and conclusion. \n \nBased on data collected, then the conclusion of this research are : \n \n1. The planning : there is a difference between the planning of language center at An-Nuqayah And Al-Amien Boarding School. the planning of An-Nuqayah language center is autonomous and decentralization, it's mean that language center branch have an autonomous rights in creating and implementing of Arabic Language Program, language center didn't conceptualize of Language Program, it's only coordinate of the big program and monitoring of the language development at language center branch. And the planning of language center at Al-Amien Boarding School is non- autonomous and centralization in planning and implementation of language program, it's mean that language center it has been conceptualized the program, lesson and learning method. The language section it's only carry out of program design. \n \n2. The Organizing : a both of that language centers more use a simple media, for the example whiteboard, markers, subject matter etc. But sometimes use electronic tools, for the example tape recorder, computer or laptop in learning the language program. a both of that language centers it has been compiled organizational structure and job description. \n \n3. In the actuating of language program a both of language center has been created a rule which must be adhered to by all members and provide motivation orally to all of staff/ personal and members or materially. But there are differences between a both of them, language center at An-Nuqayah making race and staging as motivation and evaluation to all of members. Whereas language center at Al-Amien making race and staging as evaluation because of the two activities can be known ability of the members. And to improve the ability of the personal, language center at An-Nuqayah delegating the teachers participated in various training off campus or by holding the training in the campus which involving all personal of language center and by publishes magazines or newsletters. Whereas language center at Al-Amien is providing intensive training for mover language, exercise teaching before the implementation of activities and intensive guidance. \n \n4. In the implementation of controlling, language center at An-Nuqayah has been hold controlling by asking for the report from the supervisor of branch and lessons taught. And the controlling implementation of language center at Al-Amien is controlling in every language activities, meeting with all of movers language every classes and rooms. A both of language center used competition, staging, magazine publishing, oral and written exam as evaluation of language activities. \n \nABSTRAK \n \nBahasa Arab adalah bahasa yang sangat penting untuk dikuasai oleh kaum muslimin sebagai bahasa agama, tetapi banyak siswa/ mahasiswa yang merasa kesulitan dalam mempelajarinya. Hal ini menjadi tantangan bagi sekolah ataupun pondok pesantren atau lembaga kebahasaan dituntut untuk membuat kegiatan kebahasaan yang unik dan menarik minat siswa dalam mempelajarinya. \n \nSetiap sekolah atau lembaga kebahasaan di Indonesia punya tujuan yang berbeda dalam mengadakan pembelajaran bahasa Arab, seperti pondok pesantren salaf tujuan pembelajaran bahasa sebagai alat untuk memahami ajaran agama dan kitab-kitab klasik. Lain halnya dengan tujuan pembelajaran bahasa di pondok pesantren modern, tujuan mereka belajar bahasa Arab sebagai keterampilan, seni atau profesi. Keragaman tujuan tersebut membutuhkan manajemen yang bagus dan sesuai, baik dari segi perencanaan, pengorganisasian, pelaksanaan dan pengawasannya. Maka dari itu penelitian ini ingin membandingkan manajemen kegiatan kebahasaan di pondok pesantren salaf dan modern. \n \nTujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimana perencanaan, pengorganisasian, pelaksanaan dan pengawasan kegiatan kebahasaan di pondok pesantren An-Nuqayah dan Al-Amien Sumenep Madura. \n \nPenelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif dengan pendekatan kualitatif dan studi komparatif. Sedangkan lokasi penelitiannya di Markazul Lughah pondok pesantren An-Nuqayah Guluk-Guluk dan Al-Amien Prenduan Sumenep Madura. Metode pengumpulan datanya menggunakan wawancara, observasi dan dokumentasi. Sedangkan metode analisisnya menggunakan reduksi data, triangulasi dan penarikan kesimpulan. \n \nBerdasarkan data yang terkumpul, maka kesimpulan dari penelitian ini adalah sebagai berikut : \n \n1. Dari segi perencanaan, ada perbedaan diantara keduanya. Markazul Lughah Pondok pesantren An-Nuqayah besifat Otonom dan desentralisai dalam merencanakan program dan pelaksanaannya. Yaitu markazul Lughah perdaerah punya hak otonom dalam membuat dan melaksanakan kegiatan kebahasaan, Markazul Lughah pusat tidak mengkonsep kegitan, hanya mengkoordinir kegiatan besar dan memantau perkembangan tiap daerah. Sedangkan Markazul Lughah Pondok pesantren Al-Amien bersifat non-otonom dan sentralisasi dalam perencanaan dan pelaksanaan kegiatannya. Artinya Markazul Lughah pusat sudah mengkonsep semua kegiatan, materi serta metode pembelajarannya, bagian kebahasaan perdaerah hanya melaksanakan rancangan tersebut. \n \n2. Dari aspek pengorganisasian, kedua markazul lughah lebih banyak menggunakan media sederhana seperti papan tulis, spodol, materi dan sebaginya. Namun kadang-kadang menggunakan alat elektronik seperti alat perekam, computer atau laptop dalam pembelajaran bahasa. Dari struktur organisasi dan metode kerja keduanya sudah merancang dan menyusunnya. \n \n \n3. Dalam pelaksanaan
This paper proposes the first hash opinion dynamics model, named SkyHash, that can help a P2P network quickly reach consensus on hash opinion. The model consists of a bit layer and a hash layer, each time when a node shapes its new opinion, the bit layer is to determine each bit of a pseudo hash, and the hash layer is to choose a hash opinion with minimum Hamming distance to the pseudo hash. With simulations, we conducted a comprehensive study on the convergence speed of the model by taking into account impacts of various configurations such as network size, node degree, hash size, and initial hash density. Evaluation demonstrates that using our model, consensus can be quickly reached even in large networks. We also developed a denial-of-service (DoS) proof extension for our model. Experiments on the SNAP dataset of the Wikipedia who-votes-on-whom network demonstrate that besides the ability to refuse known ill-behaved nodes, the DoS-proof extended model also outperforms Bitcoin by producing consensus in 45 seconds, and tolerating DoS attack committed by up to 0.9% top influential nodes.
Virtual currencies have been well-cited and well-discussed in the near past. Due to the loss of trust in the banking sector and the fear of loss of capital, low interest rates and uncertainty of existing currencies, the ground for a virtual currency was given. Virtual currencies and the money flows are controlled only online by the anonymous group of volunteers (also called peer); every single transaction is documented. Approximately 10,000 businesses worldwide accept payments with virtual currencies already, and the number is increasing steadily. This article analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of virtual currencies in comparison to real money and gives an outlook to a new banking system with high transparency and the chance to lead to a paradigm shift in the world of transactions and banking.
Bitcoin was not the first attempt at a digital currency, but it has been the most successful and it is now being accepted by a number of major retailers. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and operates as a peer-to-peer network. Its security is guaranteed by cryptographic algorithms instead of governments and has the potential to become a major means of payment for e-commerce and may even materialize as a viable challenge to traditional money-transfer providers. Instead of serving one country or some countries, Bitcoin serves the entire world.
The decision of selecting the appropriate procurement/delivery system for large investment construction projects is a critical and challenging task for clients, and therefore a significant factor for the project’s success. Complex projects as electric power plants can involve managing multiple contracts or subcontracts simultaneously or in sequence. The aim of this paper is to develop, and analyze a decision support tool to select the most efficient procurement/delivery system for multiple contracts Combined Cycle Power Plants (CCPP) constructed in Egypt and funded by the publicsector. This process involved the identification of various procurement routes, followed by the utilization of quantitative values developed in accordance with the requirements of the multi-criteria decision analysis technique known as simple multi-attribute rating technique (SMART). Results revealed that the procurement/delivery system with the highest score, for all contractual packages, is the integrated project delivery method (IPD) under which other procurement/delivery methods could be utilized such as performance-based contracting (PBC), and construction management (CM). Further in this research, a sensitivity analysis approach was adopted to validate the IPD selection, and to determine the most critical criterion and the most critical measure of performance for each contractual package.
We consider sequences of games $\mathcal{G}=\{G_1,G_2,\ldots\}$ where, for all $n$, $G_n$ has the same set of players. Such sequences arise in the analysis of running time of players in games, in electronic money systems such as Bitcoin and in cryptographic protocols. Assuming that one-way functions exist, we prove that there is a sequence of 2-player zero-sum Bayesian games $\mathcal{G}$ such that, for all $n$, the size of every action in $G_n$ is polynomial in $n$, the utility function is polynomial computable in $n$, and yet there is no polynomial-time Nash equilibrium, where we use a notion of Nash equilibrium that is tailored to sequences of games. We also demonstrate that Nash equilibrium may not exist when considering players that are constrained to perform at most $T$ computational steps in each of the games $\{G_i\}_{i=1}^{\infty}$. These examples may shed light on competitive settings where the availability of more running time or faster algorithms lead to a "computational arms race", precluding the existence of equilibrium. They also point to inherent limitations of concepts such "best response" and Nash equilibrium in games with resource-bounded players.
The use of Bitcoin as an alternative to traditional “flat” currency is “unnerving precisely because a world where it is used for all transactions is one where the ability of a central bank to guide the economy is destroyed, by design.” Bitcoin, the first decentralized digital currency, is a peer-to-peer payment system that allows international transactions to take place at any hour and in any place for very low cost. This Note analyzes Bitcoin and ultimately proposes a short-term solution to Bitcoin’s regulatory uncertainty that aims to strike a balance between the government’s interest in regulation and Bitcoin’s rejection of central authority – a loosely defined legal framework that operates with a minimal degree of governmental intervention.