Blockchain Papers

Béla Gipp, Norman Meuschke, André Gernandt

Trusted timestamping is a process for proving that certain information existed at a given point in time. This paper presents a trusted timestamping concept and its implementation in form of a web-based service that uses the decentralized Bitcoin block chain to store anonymous, tamper-proof timestamps for digital content. The service allows users to hash files, such as text, photos or videos, and store the created hashes in the Bitcoin block chain. Users can then retrieve and verify the timestamps that have been committed to the block chain. The non-commercial service enables anyone, e.g., researchers, authors, journalists, students, or artists, to prove that they were in possession of certain information at a given point in time. Common use cases include proving that a contract has been signed, a photo taken, a video recorded, or a task completed prior to a certain date. All procedures maintain complete privacy of the user's data.

Kala Seetharam Sridhar

Solid waste, being a basic urban service, is invariably related to urbanization and economic development. In this article, we make an attempt to understand what explains solid waste management (SWM) coverage, a local public service problem, using cross-national data. Using regressions, we find that higher levels of income bring along with them the public awareness, institutional structure, and fiscal capacity to deliver better levels of public services not only in the city but also in the informal settlements. Hence, the objective should be to build awareness of the environmental and health consequences of poor SWM. Furthermore, we find that large cities and decentralized countries are in a better position to deliver SWM in the informal settlements because of the local nature of the service. We find that a major challenge foreseen in meeting the public service demands over the next decade, as it relates to SWM, is financing.

Jeremy Papp

Banks and other financial institutions have evolved along with e-commerce by enabling unfamiliar parties to transact around the globe with little to no risk. This service does not come without a price. Bitcoin was established as a more efficient way to securely transact online, removing the need for third-party financial institutions. The purpose of this Note is to highlight the potential of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, making Internet transactions more flexible and affordable to all. The author analyzes Bitcoin’s current price volatility, highlighting a trend of Bitcoin-backed investments, and argues against any government action in support of these purely speculative and short-sited investment schemes. This Note expounds upon the major obstacles facing Bitcoin’s acceptance by mainstream commercial marketplaces. Most importantly, the author looks at future government intervention, and argues against any direct legislation on the Bitcoin system in order to allow for its growth and development.

Joseph Bernstein

The practice of orthopaedic surgery has become highly specialized. According to a recent American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) census, 77% of members reported a specialty interest [1]. Along those lines, Morrell et al. [12] estimate that at least 90% of graduating orthopaedic surgery residents pursue fellowship training. It would be no surprise, therefore, to discover that the AAOS Board of Specialty Societies boasts 22 member groups. To some, greater specialization is no doubt a step in the wrong direction. Back in the days of the giants, this nostalgic argument goes, a “real” surgeon would be happy to fix a femur fracture and straighten a spine on the same day. (In fact, the true giants would fix a fracture and straighten a spine only after removing an appendix and delivering a baby or two.) Today's orthopaedic surgeons, by contrast, are feckless and feeble. A more reasonable view acknowledges the benefits of specialization. For one, surgeons who do only one procedure are apt to become quite efficient [6]. Better still, the high-volume specialist-surgeon will produce superior results [7]. Specialization similarly enhances career prospects: The Top Doctor lists are filled almost exclusively with specialists and academic advancement criteria emphasize depth over breadth. Of course, a reasonable view would also acknowledge the costs of specialization. Specialists—like all of us—see the world through the prism of experience. As such, they can easily overlook or discount important findings. This so-called “availability bias” would spur a neurosurgeon to attribute index finger pain to a cervical radiculopathy and a hand surgeon to blame the median nerve—with both of them relatively blinded to the possibility that a metabolic abnormality, say, is the true cause. Yet even if specialists could break free of their cognitive constraints, patients may still pay as they shuffle from expert to expert in search of total care. This cost comprises not only hassle and dollars, but a potential for poor communication and other forms of uncoordinated care [3]. There is, furthermore, a problem of distribution. Specialists quite rationally tend to congregate in larger urban areas: Places with enough patients to keep them busy in their own narrow practice enclaves. Hence, specialization can lead to a manpower shortage (and impeded access to care) in small towns and a glut (with overtreatment) in big cities. In addition, too much specialization within a surgeon's practice exposes that surgeon to the risk his or her practice might implode if the demand for a particular service disappears. Simply put: The surgeon who knows how to do only knee replacements will be out of work if a medical cure for arthritis is discovered. Of course, it is highly unlikely that a medical cure for arthritis will be discovered so quickly that the surgeon will be unable to adapt, but the risk is not zero. (Those who place the risk at zero have never witnessed a cardiothoracic surgeon crying about the discovery of coronary stents). Maintaining mastery over many surgical procedures is an excellent hedge against the possibility that one of these procedures falls out of favor. But there is an even more pressing reason for surgeons to resist too much specialization: It just might be bad for the soul. In his classic book The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith noted that the division of labor leads to “universal opulence.” Smith clearly recognized the benefits specialization and is rightly considered one of its greatest champions. But Smith went on to assert “The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations … generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” According to Smith, repeatedly doing the same operation (a word we may want to take in its modern medical sense) creates a “torpor of [the] mind.” This torpor, Smith claims, is a state in which the specialist becomes unable to conceive of any “generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life.” In modern parlance: Burnout. So what to do? Because specialization imposes costs on patients, it may be reasonable to insist on professional rules to limit it somewhat. (The broad ABOS recertification examination can be considered such a step, as are normative standards that ask orthopaedic surgeons to provide general emergency room coverage in their community). In addition, our leaders should educate young orthopaedic surgeons about specialization's hidden costs. This knowledge will let enlightened self-interest—what Smith called the “invisible hand”—motivate the correct course of action. Pierre J. Hoffmeyer MD Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery University Hospital of Geneva Hyperspecialization in orthopaedic surgery is here to stay. This is especially true in economically favored regions benefitting from high levels of resources [4]. Hyperspecialization has political support because of increasing public pressure stemming from the needs and demands of an aging and active population [2]. In this setting of economic affluence, orthopaedic surgeons have been able to narrow their surgical practice to one joint, to one disease process, or even to one technique. The corollary is that as the number of hyperspecialized experts increases, the quality of the holistic approach towards musculoskeletal care diminishes. How this situation of increasing hyperspecialization will progress will depend on many issues touching on education, legal environment, and economics. Young surgeons training in academic centers are educated by teachers who themselves are highly specialized. These specialists serve not only as mentors but also as role models. It is likely that trainees will follow in the footsteps of their teachers. It is doubtful that this situation is likely to change soon given the structure and organization of most major teaching institutions. The legal environment plays a major role in the molding of surgical practice. In fact, the first question facing a surgeon entangled in a medicolegal issue is how competent he or she is in performing a given procedure. A diploma attesting to the completion of a general orthopaedic education is no longer sufficient to demonstrate competence. Today, proofs of fellowship training as well as the performance of the appropriate numbers of specialized interventions have become mandatory if the surgeon is to convince opposing parties that he or she is competent to safely and effectively perform a given operation. This vision of capability embodied by the high-volume surgeon specialist will undoubtedly persevere [2, 8]. Arguably, regional economics differentiate surgical practice in affluent constituencies from less-prosperous areas. Well-equipped regions with high-quality infrastructures allowing rapid travel to centers of highly specialized expertise will have a large range of hyperspecialized surgeons providing expertise in all the domains of orthopaedics and traumatology. For the individual patient, this could mean better care, fewer complications, and improved efficiency for a given procedure [8, 11]. Conversely, hyperspecialization will entail higher costs because of the increased number of specialists working in a technology-rich environment. For less-favored regions, one surgeon will have to tackle a broad spectrum of diseases, master many techniques, and be knowledgeable in many areas. He or she will have to deal with a variety of situations, but perhaps not as efficiently or complication-free for a given procedure as the hyperspecialized surgeon. Although a generalist approach might appear to be cheaper in the short-term, patients may not always benefit from the latest, safest, and most efficient techniques [2, 11]. Since it appears hyperspecialists are here to stay, solutions must be found. The obvious answer lies in education. All practitioners of orthopaedic surgery, regardless of specialization, must possess a broad base of knowledge in the musculoskeletal field. One should not confound technical and procedural skills with overall expertise and knowledge [13]. The education of surgical trainees and fellows needs to emphasize the necessity of a broad culture in terms of diseases and trauma of the musculoskeletal system regardless of the field of hyperspecialization. This knowledge should be controlled in the recertification process, specializing on the joint, technique, or disease in which the surgeon is focused as well as on his or her general level of knowledge in the broader field of orthopaedics and traumatology. Augusto Sarmiento MD Professor and Chairman Emeritus University of Miami Dr. Bernstein identifies several important issues concerning exaggerated subspecialization in medicine and does not hide his personal concerns regarding its uncontrolled explosion. However, his attempts to propose solutions to the problem do not match his clear exposure of the unhealthy consequences of failure to arrest the progression of the trend. His suggestions along this line are rather timid and sometimes even unrealistic, such as “asking orthopaedic surgeons to provide general emergency room coverage in their community.” This suggestion falls in shallow water even if the fear of litigation could be eliminated. Dr. Bernstein further suggests, “In addition, our leaders should educate young orthopaedic surgeons about specialization's hidden costs.” In this instance, who will educate the “leaders” who have been the ones primarily responsible for the creation and perpetuation of the problem? I commend CORR® for publishing this thoughtful article on a subject that needs a forceful and aggressive debate. However, in his column, Dr. Bernstein underestimates the fact that greed has crept into our profession to the point where many consider it as being primarily a profitable business. Unfortunately, greed is at the very essence of the subspecialization problem. The current situation will not be assuaged with warm compresses and a few aspirins. The entire issue of education of the physician must be brought to the frontline [14-16]. This is a golden opportunity for orthopaedics, as a major and instrumental profession, to provide leadership to a force that requires active input from a variety of disciplines within the medical establishment as well as from other social and political bodies. Harmful, exaggerated fragmentation of our discipline has allowed several traditional medical and paramedical professions to assume the care of musculoskeletal conditions, long a territory exclusively managed by the orthopaedist. For example, podiatrists and chiropractors have expanded the scope of their disciplines into orthopaedic territory, and more recently, nurse practitioners and physician assistants have claimed the right to provide care for conditions they consider themselves qualified to treat. If we cannot appropriately correct the already ridiculous degree of fragmentation in orthopaedics, the overall situation will continue to deteriorate to a degree that could seriously compromise the vitality of our profession. K. Daniel Riew MD Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery Washington University in St. Louis Dr. Bernstein's article is an excellent summary of the benefits and risks of overspecialization. His arguments against specialization are all valid. I would add what Konrad Lorenz said about scientists, (even more appropriate for specialists): They “are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing” [5]. But as a hyperspecialist who specializes only in cervical spine, I have to respectfully disagree with the final message. In my opinion, not only is specialization inevitable, it is the correct path for science, education, and patient benefit. The history of medicine has demonstrated an inexorable path towards subspecialization. In The Evolution of Orthopaedic Surgery [9], author Leslie Klenerman tells us how orthopaedics became a specialty and seceded from general surgery: “It is little more than a generation since orthopaedic surgery began its astounding and near exponential ascent from relative obscurity under the dominance of general surgery to itself become a major influence.” But Klenerman notes that the forces are inexorably pushing the subspecialties away from orthopaedics: “How much longer will the interests of specialization within it, allow it to remain united before it too falls victim to the fragmentation that destroyed the supremacy of its erstwhile master?” The desire to subspecialize is driven by at least three factors. First, we live in a world of information overload. MEDLINE adds more than 5000 articles per weekday. Even if we assume that only 1% of these pertain to orthopaedics, it is nearly impossible for most busy physicians to stay current with all the articles. Would we want the next generation of surgeons to be trained by generalists who cannot keep up, or specialists, current with the literature in their area? Second, legally, general practitioners are held to the same standards as subspecialists. Therefore, if a generalist mismanages a cervical spine fracture, they will be held to the same standards as a cervical spine surgeon. Unless they are current with all aspects of cervical spine care, they are placing themselves at medicolegal risk. Third, in surgery, volume drives success, improves outcomes, shortens operative times, decreases complications, and improves efficiency. We are the cognoscenti when it comes to orthopaedic problems. Who among us would choose to have a delicate tumor removed from our dominant hand by a general orthopaedic surgeon, instead of a hyperspecialized hand surgeon who has great experience with such tumors? Knowing that the results would be highly likely to be better, would we not want the same for all of our family and friends? If we would want these for our loved ones, do our patients deserve any less? A generalist still serves a useful purpose and there are many downsides to everyone becoming a hyperspecialist. However, in my opinion, this is not an adequate reason to recommend that we remain a “jack of all trades and a master of none.”

Carlos Duarte Torres

This research focuses on the analysis of the Colombian multiculturalism through an operative characterization. In this sense, the assessment of multicultural policies goes beyond the traditional discourse analysis, and instead it empirically reviews the implementation of differential rights translated into concrete public policies. To meet this goal, this study first explores the different symbolic schemes of the relationship between the State-Nation and the indigenous populations. In a second stage, it analyses how the policies that recognize cultural difference since 1991, are articulated with a project of state modernization of neoliberal characteristics, that is exemplified by the territorial decentralization phenomena. Finally, this research presents an analysis of the actual effects of multiculturalism in the fields of health, education, economic production and political governance for the Misak people, specifically for the Resguardo Mayor de Guambia, an indigenous reserve located in the department of Cauca. From this case study, readers will be able to discover how in the Colombian context, there are un-meet aspects (des-encuentros) and paradoxical effects between the Government’s neoliberal vision on public policies, the dynamics of ethnic recognition promoted by the state and the communitarian autonomous processes advocated by indigenous organizations.

Juan José García Chávez, Carlo Kleber da Silva Rodrigues

No abstract is available for this record.

Juan Eduardo Pazmiño, Carlo Kleber da Silva Rodrigues

No abstract is available for this record.

Davide Carboni

The ability to assess the reputation of a member in a web community is a need addressed in many different ways according to the many different stages in which the nature of communities has evolved over time. In the case of reputation of goods/services suppliers, the solutions available to prevent the feedback abuse are generally reliable but centralized under the control of few big Internet companies. In this paper we show how a decentralized and distributed feedback management system can be built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain

Michael Fleder, Michael S. Kester, Sudeep Pillai

Bitcoins have recently become an increasingly popular cryptocurrency through which users trade electronically and more anonymously than via traditional electronic transfers. Bitcoin's design keeps all transactions in a public ledger. The sender and receiver for each transaction are identified only by cryptographic public-key ids. This leads to a common misconception that it inherently provides anonymous use. While Bitcoin's presumed anonymity offers new avenues for commerce, several recent studies raise user-privacy concerns. We explore the level of anonymity in the Bitcoin system. Our approach is two-fold: (i) We annotate the public transaction graph by linking bitcoin public keys to "real" people - either definitively or statistically. (ii) We run the annotated graph through our graph-analysis framework to find and summarize activity of both known and unknown users.

정승영

No abstract is available for this record.

Mary Hallab

If, as many critics assert, vampires embody our “worst fears,” they also stand for our deepest wish—not to have to die. In their folklore origins, vampires were part of a folk science of disease and death. They have not lost this association. With the advent of modern medical science, vampires did not simply disappear but instead proliferated and evolved to fill varied and complex roles in popular literature, almost always related to their ability to defeat death. At the same time, popular belief in the inevitability of suffering and the necessity of death, based in a firm Christian, (usually) conservative fatalism, gradually faded to be replaced by an even firmer conviction in the power of medical science to prevent disease and prolong life expectancy. Doctors play a role in the escalating battle in much vampire literature between science and the occult—and not always on the side of science. Because vampires are human, and their longevity is a medical anomaly, they are, even in fiction, a natural object of medical curiosity and speculation. In vampire literature, doctors frequently accompany vampires as commentators, antagonists, or observers, representing science and its transformations and accomplishments for good or evil, enacted in the vampire. Paradoxically, the doctor figures both assert the positive and curative value of science, while at the same time casting doubt on the power of science in a world controlled by mysterious occult forces. Where there was no medicine or no doctors to explain death, or prevent it, rural people relied on their own traditional medicine, which included both natural and supernatural elements—warding off vampires with garlic or crosses, for example. Hungarian folklorist Tekla Domotor (1981) says that for rural people, “taking a keen interest in the supernatural was in reality also a means of conducting scientific inquiry” (14–15).1 It is not entirely unreasonable, as Paul Barber points out, that this inquiry included blaming death on the dead, especially in the case of contagious diseases (3). In Eastern Europe or Greece, when a vampire was said to be killing people or causing other calamities, a self-appointed vampire expert could, often for a fee, prevent or stop these depredations according to traditional methods. But one vampire event in the 1700s reveals—indeed, plays a role in—how a whole worldview was changing, as superstitious or religious explanations were replaced by rational scientific investigation. In a Serbian village, villagers accused deceased soldier Arnold Paul (who had claimed to have been bitten by a vampire in earlier years) of coming out of his own grave, attacking villagers, and spreading a vampire epidemic. He did so in a manner wholly in accord with traditional expectations and was eventually dispatched with the prescribed methods. Two waves of vampire scares devolved from this circumstance. In both cases (3 weeks later and 40 days later), the body was disinterred and surgeons present attested, according to the obvious symptoms, that Paul was indeed a vampire. In the second case, one of the surgeons, an Austrian Field Surgeon Johannes Fluckinger, issued an official report in 1732 that created a media sensation all over Western Europe (Melton 518–19). In his study Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origin of an Enduring Legend (2010), Mark Collins Jenkins speculates that, whereas tales from the East about revenants were fairly common, this one report of “scientific observations” attracted Enlightenment scholars because a conclusion by a reputable doctor seemed to acknowledge that vampires might actually exist: It kindled “a fierce debate throughout the German academic and medical establishment” as to the reality of such fantastic beings who could defeat death (Calmet 237–40; Jenkins 111). These accounts of vampires, that sent shockwaves in the West, were not myths or tales of yore like the Greek stories of lamiae or Goethe's “The Bride of Corinth” (1797), but were accounts of real people, known in their communities, with families, and names—who might really have come out of their graves. Ironically, Arnold Paul's case among others brought these “real” vampires into modern medical science—and killed them. Even the Church-appointed vampire investigators Dom Augustine Calmet and Giuseppe Davanzati, looking at this and similar cases, were inclined to regard vampires as a generally harmless superstition. (Otherwise, they would present a serious theological conundrum.) In 1749, Pope Benedict rejected vampires as “fantasy.” And, in a triumph for natural science, after a survey by her personal physician Gerhard Van Sweiten in 1755 and 1756, the Hapsburg Empress Maria Theresa condemned vampire belief as “superstition and fraud.” She removed the consideration of phenomena “not readily explainable in natural terms” from the authority of the clergy to that of government officers and decreed punishments for those who desecrated corpses (Frayling, 29–30; Jenkins 116–17). Debunked by medical science, vampires were demoted to mere superstition, but they did not go away. Instead they became literature. These fabled walking corpses inspired the literary vampires of Western Europe that became part of the fascination with decay, death, and the occult that we associate with the Romantic Movement. Although elevated in social status and appearance, the vampire retained from the past the ghastly and dangerous character of the grave. At the same time, the vampire's medical examiner or hunter or slayer slowly morphed into a more assured and competent expert, perhaps like the sorcerer in Raupach's “Wake Not the Dead” (1823),2 and soon, into an educated scientific physician like the sympathetic Dr. Heselius whose papers retell the story of Le Fanu's “Carmilla” (1872) and convince us to accept her account. Literary vampires are talkative and often quite intelligent, fully aware of the hardships of their problematical existence in the complexities of the real and ever-changing world in which they often find themselves waking. For vampires do have their problems: outcasts from society, caught between the actual and the supernatural, clinging to a human consciousness and sense of self, they yet feel themselves pulled toward the darkness of evil and death. Vampires are set off against, destroyed, or sometimes saved, by the solid, sensible, reliable presence of the doctor, whose job is to know about them and to tell us what we can expect from them. For our vampires now are part of our folklore that, with the help of their varying casts of victims, slayers, and doctors, change and develop into what we, their audience, need or want them to be—sexy, powerful, clever—and physiologically possible. So, although actual belief in vampires has never run high in Western Europe, these fanciful literary figures have “arisen” with science and scientific speculation—that, ironically, requires belief. Vampires provide a focus of speculation for the dreams that modern medicine has created for us. Much vampire literature is a kind of science fiction; hence, the doctor—with the vampire as his double or opposite—or even his victim—demonstrates, to some (admittedly rather vague) degree, our own evolving understanding of medical research and practice, our faith in it (or lack thereof), and our expectations for the future. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when news of vampires traveled to Western Europe, expectations of medical technology were already high. In her introduction to the third edition of Frankenstein (1831), Mary Shelley tells us about the inception of Doctor John Polidori's influential story “The Vampyre” (1819), along with her own novel about Doctor Frankenstein's monster, in the ideas that Byron and Shelley discussed on that famous stormy night in Geneva in 1816. These concerned the restoration of life through scientific endeavor, not through religion or magic, but by means of electricity, suspected by many to be the “Life Force” that pervaded the universe–a belief promoted by the pseudo-scientific electrical cures practiced by Anton Mesmer and his followers as well as more scientific experiments, for example, those of Luigi Galvani, recently popularized in a series of lectures by Sir Humphrey Davy at the Royal Society. But although both Shelley's Frankenstein and Polidori's Lord Ruthven suggest that making life from dead body parts, or bodies, may not be such a good idea, the fantasy has persisted and has had to be repeatedly crushed as impracticable or even immoral, as it is in so many works, from Raupach's “Wake Not the Dead,” to Stoker's Dracula (1897), to the rampaging dead in the movie Re-Animator (1985). Doctors, in and out of the literature, have been the inventers and popularizers of vampires. Dr. John Polidori, at the time the youngest doctor to graduate from Edinburgh Medical School, accompanied Byron to Geneva in 1816 as his personal physician. As David MacDonald depicts him, he was immature and vain and thought himself as great a poet as Byron, but his efforts to chummy up to Byron were rebuffed. His “Vampyre,” based on a fragment of a story begun by Byron, is clearly an attack on Byron in the character of the vampire Lord Ruthven. The popularity of Polidori's story established the Byronic Hero/Villain (Byron's own creation) as the archetype for thousands of vampires to come, from any number of nineteenth-century melodramatic villains or heroes to Lugosi to the present—Edward Cullen, for example, in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. So, ironically, two living doctors were responsible for the character of our vampire mythology: Dr. Fluckinger brought the vampire into Western Europe in the report of Arnold Paul, which was sensationalized in the press and discussed in such reputable studies as the work of Dom Augustin Calmet, Yet, we might also say that Doctor John Polidori, through his influential story, was the actual creator of the vampire as we know him—handsome, suave, sophisticated, and malign. Vampires often do bad things—kill people, for example. But the most shocking evil of these “monsters” is that they are supernatural humans resurrecting themselves, climbing out of the grave—defying the laws of God and Nature. In addition to their dangerous behavior and disconcerting presence, vampires (folkloric and fictional) seem evil to many because they obscure the forbidden boundary between soul and body, spirit and matter, and thus undermine “a sound predictable reality.” This, of course, is what the Romantics so admired. But according to Linda Bayer-Berenbaum, even in our day, Gothic beings like Brunhilda in “Wake Not the Dead” or Dracula, in cahoots with sorcery or science, blot out our neat Christian dualism between good and evil (35). Grisly, Gothic, unnatural medical investigations or treatments that seem to cross heretofore physically impassable boundaries, like stem cell research, cloning, or organ transplants, are repugnant to many as a prideful playing at God that will come to no good. According to W. Scott Poole, modern vampires (like Blade, for example, who needs constant medical attention) embody these anxieties that modern medical technology will make us into something unnatural, inhuman cyber-beings, robots, heartless and evil (Poole 221, 223). One kind of “unnatural” crossing of boundaries in the real world began in the seventeenth and continued through the nineteenth centuries (until even now)—in the mysterious cures of Anton Mesmer. Mesmer convinced many people that treatments with invisible forces like magnetism, that is, electricity (considered by many to be the “Life Force”) and with hypnotic trances would ultimately put an end to all illnesses and prolong life. Think of Poe's story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845), in which a corpse is hypnotized to remain sentient and whole (more or less) until the spell is broken. Eventually, Mesmeric healers used only their own “natural magnetism” conveyed to the patient by touch and suggestion to diagnose illnesses, to anesthetize even severe pain, and even to effect cures. According to Alison Winter in her book Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (1998), in the nineteenth century a rather unpleasant medical controversy arose: a number of researchers attempted to demonstrate through mesmerism that the mind, will, soul, and spirit were all just physical things—and others, with similar mesmeric carryings-on, demonstrated the opposite, that is, that the spirit determined the body's well being. In this kind of well-publicized medical context rose Rymer's hypnotic Varney the Vampire (1847), Le Fanu's “Carmilla” (1872), and Stoker's Dracula (1897).3 Dracula often behaves like a mesmerist controlling his victims with the power of his will—as does Dr. Van Helsing. Indeed, the battle of wills between Dracula and Van Helsing seems to reenact the kinds of roaring conflicts described by Winter, between the mesmerists who saw the practice as a kind of electrical projection or even mystical imposition of power from the stronger to the weaker and the more scientific view that the victim (or patient) willingly gave up her or his will to the dominance of another. This medical contest of wills plays out in any number of Dracula spin-offs, as the vampire mesmerizes the weaker characters—but not the strong-minded doctor, who will not relinquish his self-control. Thus, a medical phenomenon highly publicized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries provides the “lore” of hypnotic or mind control powers—even mental telepathy—for modern vampires.4 Another medical mystery of mind (or soul) and body drawn on in vampire literature was, and still is, determining what death is—that is, when one might know for sure when a body is actually dead. Traditional vampire belief and modern vampire fiction depend on the survival of a more or less intact dead body moved by some sort of conscious animating force that is a fair representation of the living personality—and on someone's ability to detect if it is a vampire. According to Philippe Aries, by the eighteenth century, diagnoses of death (Is he really dead?) and discussions of its nature and its meaning for body and soul—the very essence of vampire literature—were increasingly the concern of doctors rather than clergy. And there was much debate among doctors about the point at which death actually occurs—that is, when does the soul leave the body? (Aries 353–60) This problem became even trickier in the nineteenth century when, because of the many epidemics and plagues suffered in Europe, fear of contagion from the dead led to stringent regulations about the prompt and secure burial of bodies. This in turn led to the fear of being buried alive that obsessed so many in the nineteenth century. Some scholars have speculated that the few “real” vampires reported in these years were simply the result of over-hasty burials like that of Poe's Madeline in “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) (Jenkins 85–92). By the eighteenth century, dead bodies themselves became the object of serious scientific study. The medical profession regarded dissection as essential to valid medical research and paid highly for fresh corpses, discretely obtained. Grave robbing, or “body snatching,” or even murder for bodies became a lucrative business for some “resurrection men” like the infamous William Burke and William Hare (1827–1828; Jenkins, 76–78). This environment of sensational disappearing corpses provides a believable Gothic context for vampire fiction and its need for doctors. Doctors can stand as reliable witnesses to the vampire phenomenon because they are assumed to have useful factual knowledge about human bodies and their capabilities. In Varney the Vampire, Doctor Chillingworth is there to tell us that, no matter what he claims, Varney is not a vampire. Chillingworth knows this because he paid the hangman for Varney's supposed corpse for medical study, that he then galvanized into life. And besides, as a rational scientist, he knows that there are no such as vampires. In Le Fanu's “Carmilla” (1872) is by being by a Doctor Stoker's Dracula most of the Dracula out of this Victorian when Europe was still by illnesses and epidemics whose nature and were yet One such an for much of his His stories about the and the in that The effect of these tales in his own story “The in which a is the of off as it her only by being very and good. Stoker's fear of death is the this and other such as The of the for most of our But it that there is not much from Even as Van Helsing to he is it by the vampire's many living is Dracula as an battle between science and the and but who which of these is sometimes to Varney and Dracula are about scientific as it to what we can know and what we can not is their two of scientific by their In Doctor Chillingworth is a rational of science he on of Varney's supposed supernatural existence and scientific means of for the Stoker's Doctor Van in the essence of science to be to any about the physical His his and his high expectations and that science had in to its to Van science had out because it had to what could be and instead of us in that to an mind and not a of the of a Medical science could explain such as the and bodies and were not so Van Dracula can be at a of and a natural being whose ability to death as reported will be as natural In his to Dr. Van Helsing the vampire's existence by to such as an or to a that more to a popular scientific idea, or which he might have a role in the of some or of or that might have help As he it, even with at the was a matter of to do not to on some supernatural essence that only God could that to In the Stoker's Dracula is not by a or by some as in or even by a doctor a but is killed with a by the as a result of the knowledge and of this sometimes but well For all his and like Van Helsing on science, on physical and in Christian and even Stoker's Gothic Dracula and his doctors have continued to and to any number of and many of them to and the complex and of medical science and nature and the Even the well known of Dracula, the presence of a doctor in a vampire movie or book our and us of the by his in of their vampires are human and to which may not always be rational and Chillingworth might but which is often and and in for natural and the of vampires in and literature, and the defeat of vampires a defeat of these natural can be if only we know are good a of science and medicine and is along even into our and their In the movie a to the of in the the vampire is the which not with and but with the of the vampire by the and the of in Dracula as well as the the vampire something like a that is contagious and that can be by of the to the Thus, Van in Stoker's novel the of vampires as natural beings that do not or but remain by and and are to human understanding and in the of the medical as by for example, in the The even vampire and doctor more varied and complex as their mysterious ability to and their and for in vampire literature, the of good and evil, occult and even life and death, to and Some vampire literature of science and about doctors. For one the and of the two may have convinced that death and not in supernatural but in scientific that killed more than they course, even earlier doctors are not all Chillingworth in Varney a rather toward the victims and the vampire he has that of faith in authority and and human of any kind of scientific or religious and doctors to in vampire literature. In the German not to Dracula, a doctor his profession and the of his to provide victims for the who is like of in doctors and medical science is The of the Vampire The and and doctor is a But doctor Dr. who is in reality Dr. a as the result of an for has himself into a vampire much for the value of In the does not on medical science to this vampire a German but the that has in the of his to come to The vampire's evil, like that of is that is, of natural which can also be and and of no to in a doctor useful to provide a to this vampire's traditional and the vampire well as to any that this has into the Dracula in the of his for the doctor to scientific into the for in the century, the vampire may have been not by but by a or a by or as in novel Legend and its movie or by the of an doctor as in novel The epidemics like in the or fear of or related to the result in the of or movie vampires into and even modern medical research is course, most people go to vampire not for a science (or but for the the even the that the fear of the vampire to the of the Gothic supernatural with something like medical science The series of vampire provides an of the value of medical science and with The of Dracula Although Gothic, with and Dracula, this movie seems to the scientific with as a Van who is not by and and who the to and garlic to be But in the the between science and mystical in of the Vampire in which a Dr. up of to the evil vampire Dr. and his In Dracula from the Grave Christian that the to the on a In at the end of the in The of Dracula Dracula medical research to a with the of over the on the of the to be by Dr. Van Helsing with a would the to the medical in the and at the same time that science fiction was so In the their are or of Stoker's and their science is a of to electricity, and science of the nineteenth century as Van Helsing might have known It is the same we so often in the media to us as science, like in or it also our own about what to natural the object of scientific and what It the kind of occult that many have come to the and of the and the of the to much about says of literature in that it of a of the scientific understanding on we view the Indeed, he much literature of the past stories of with the supernatural that science, doubt on the of human and out that science was and that there were of of or It was, he rather of traditional because of the mysterious and mystical so many seemed to of and to The popularity of literature of fantasy and the occult that the is not to with his for or it may As the faded in the they were being replaced by even and more mysterious Gothic vampires of whose presence is only with a and is like to the of a and Vampire But science has no in these from with the Vampire to the no rational or is even by and with his Stoker's Dracula in which a Van and crosses, is almost more Gothic and than Dracula, who as a But Dracula into a and By this time, perhaps the of of a of vampire literature

Tania Scarabel

This paper aims to analyze the principle of differentiation which, under the processes of federalism, identifies a relation of “adaequatio rei et iuris” chosen to allow policies linked on specific local situations. It is worth examining this perspective because the method used to differentiate autonomy, which dates back to the times when Italian Constitution was born, already including special status regions, is currently achieving a growing popularity. In particular, the discussion analyzes the broad doctrinal debate, in both its classical and recent forms, concerning regionalism and federalism, and the theoretical debate on the great principles of equality and autonomy; of uniformity and differentiation. Furthermore, it analyzes in-depth the laws enacted at both state and regional level, the identification of the Best Practices and the constitutional law steps taken in this regard (first part). In the following, the recent experiences of several European countries are taken into account, using the same comparative method: the German, Spanish and Scottish systems of differentiation are analyzed for their many analogies, which can be presented as a step needed for the development of the orientation of the Italian system (second part). The paper then examines the peculiar specialties which have always been in the Italian Constitution in order to verify if, even following the European integration process, the reasons and justifications of the historical specialties still exist (third part). We will show which legislative actions were made with regard to this, as well as the interpretation of the Constitutional Court and the main doctrinal acquisitions achieved during the scientific debate. More specifically, the first part aims to assess, in the first chapter, the constitutional principle of differentiation within the Italian legal system, by considering the theoretical and doctrinal development that accompanied Italian regionalism, and by improving this principle, starting from the of Law no. 142 of the year 1990, up to Bassanini reform. In this context, it is possible to perform an assessment of the third decentralization, which dates over fifteen years ago, by analyzing the tangible situations that have been implemented in the Italian Regions. The discussion then focuses on the origin of Article 116, paragraph III, of the Constitution as changed by Article 2 of the Constitutional Law of October 18, 2001, no. 3, which amended the whole Title V. Methodologically, we decided to illustrate the procedures and limitations with regard to the creation of the differentiation law, as well as the reasons why Article 116, paragraph III, of the Constitution was not implemented, to then analyze the possible areas in which the principle of differentiation could be developed, even in the light of the draft of the Constitutional Law A.C. 2613. The Second part, which is divided into four chapters, depicts the principle of regional differentiation in the European framework. Chapter one specifically focuses on the German federal system, or the so-called Föderalismusreform I – II, which was approved between 2006 and 2009, as a model that is able to effectively combine the flexibility required for continuous development with the rigidity needed to ensure gradual changes in the system. Chapter two covers the evolution of the territorial organization system included in the Spanish Constitution, from 1978 to date, with particular attention to the final result of the differentiated regionalism process by evaluating it both in terms of the doctrinal comments and tangible results. Chapter three focuses on the latest developments concerning Spanish Law and especially on the so-called "Catalan issue" and its statutory events. About this, the research started with an in-depth analysis of the organic law of July 19, 2006, no. 6, before later highlighting the effects of the Constitutional Court ruling (STC 31/2010) of June 28, 2010. Therefore, the composite events that then led to the suspension of the referendum for the independence of Catalonia, as a result of the appeal of the Constitutional Court requested by the Spanish Government, were analyzed. In order to complete the analysis of the differentiation processes, chapter four covers the most recent developments of the nation-building process that occurred in Scotland, whose legislative development and doctrinal issues were studied in-depth. The third part of our research is divided into six chapters and specifically analyzes the only structural differentiation in our country: the one affecting the special status Regions, in order to highlight the main elements of differentiation, both amongst themselves and by comparing them to the other ordinary autonomies. In particular, chapter one contains an in-depth analysis of differentiation within the special status Italian regions. The beginning of the dissertation consists of preparatory works within the Constituent Assembly. After describing the main positions developed in the Italian doctrinal context, some remarks are made on the current status of existence of the special autonomy, even by considering to what extent the financial privileges of some of these special regions can be justified. Chapter two concerns the specialty given to Valle d’Aosta region since a changing process of incremental nature characterizes it. The historical grounds of the specialty are specified by focusing on autonomy in terms of legislation and administration and by describing the structure of the financial autonomy that exists in the region. Chapter three focuses on the autonomy of Friuli Venezia Giulia region by analyzing the specific powers, the exclusive and concurrent regional areas of competence with regard to the different sectors. Chapter four focuses on the specialty of Trentino Alto Adige region, or rather on the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano. With regard to this, an analysis was performed both on the implementation of the legislative decrees of the Statute and on the provincial and regional legislation. In particular, the financial structure, after the Milan Agreement, is discussed in-depth. Chapter five examines the special Statute of Sardegna region at a legislative, administrative and financial level. Furthermore, the constitutional laws that modified the Statute over time (Constitutional Law 1/1972; Law 122/1983; Constitutional Law 1/1986; Constitutional Law 3/1989; Constitutional Law 2/1993; Constitutional Law 2/2001) were carefully analyzed, as well as the actions of the Constitutional Court. Chapter six covers the specialty recognized to region of Sicily by the legislator in terms of exclusive, integrative – concurrent legislations and within the administrative and financial organization. The recent decision no. 255/2014 of the Constitutional Court is also highlighted. The final chapter focuses, even in the light of the comparative analysis carried out, on an overall evaluation of the principle of differentiation by providing observations on the outlook of Italian regionalism.

Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey

Bitcoin became a buzzword overnight. A cyber-enigma with an enthusiastic following, it pops up in headlines and fuels endless media debate. You can apparently use it to buy anything from coffee to cars, yet few people seem to truly understand what it is. This raises the question: Why should anyone care about bitcoin? In The Age of Cryptocurrency, Wall Street journalists Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey deliver the definitive answer to this question. Cybermoney is poised to launch a revolution, one that could reinvent traditional financial and social structures whilebringing the world's billions of unbanked individuals into a new global economy. Cryptocurrencyholds the promise of a financial system without a middleman, one owned by the people who use it and one safeguarded from the devastation of a 2008-type crash. But bitcoin, the most famous of the cybermonies,carries a reputation for instability, wild fluctuation, and illicit business; some fear it has the power to eliminate jobs and to upend the concept of a nation-state. It implies, above all, monumental and wide-reaching changefor better and for worse. But it is here to stay, and you ignore it at your peril. Vigna and Casey demystify cryptocurrencyits origins, its function, and what you need to know to navigatea cyber-economy. The digital currency world will look very different from the paper currency world; The Age of Cryptocurrency will teach you how to be ready.

Paul Lajoie-Mazenc, Emmanuelle Anceaume, Gilles Guette, Thomas Sirvent · 5 authors

—Open and large-scale systems do not encourage their users to behave trustworthily, which may entail non-negligible risks when interacting with unknown users, for instance when buying an item on an e-commerce platform. Reputation mech-anisms reduce these risks by associating a reputation score to each user, summarizing their past behavior. To be useful to users, reputation mechanisms need to guarantee two main properties: the non-monotonicity of reputation scores, in order to exactly reflect the users' behavior, and the privacy of their users, so that the history of their transactions is not publicly available. We propose a distributed privacy-preserving reputation mechanism handling non-monotonic ratings. Our proposition relies on two distinct distributed third parties and on cryptographic tools, including zero-knowledge proofs of knowledge, anonymous proxy signatures, and verifiable secret sharing. We show that this proposal is computationally efficient, and thus practical. To the best of our knowledge, this solution is the first one that preserves users' privacy and handles both positive and negative ratings without relying on a central authority.

Feng Wang, Yujie Wu, Daofeng Li

The protocols for member expansion in secret sharing schemes are very useful for key management in dynamic topology networks. In order to reduce the computation complexity of the existed protocols for member expansion in secret sharing schemes, a new protocol is proposed based on the problem of elliptic curve discrete logarithm. This paper examines fifteen most recent patens that were awarded in the area of secret sharing. Unlike traditional detailed patent reviews that are focused on applying the simple secret sharing method, the proposed protocol has the following merits: 1) there is no trust center ; 2) only requesting broadcast 2 1 t + times to generate the sub-secret for the new participant and the new participant can verify the truth of the sub-secret; 3) the old participants can verify the new sub-secret by the noninteractive zero-knowledge proof protocol; 4) In the sub-secret generation stage, not only sub-secrets of old participants but also the sub-secret of new participant is secure. Compared to the existed protocols, the proposed protocol has lower computational complexity and less communications. Therefore, the proposed protocol has higher performance and is suitable for resource-constrained terminals of dynamic networks.

Loy D. Lytle, William Kops, Christopher B. Seaman

This is the second paper drawn from a two-phase study aimed at (1) determining how summer sessions are organized and administered at AUSS, NAASS, NCCSS, and WASSA member institutions to better understand the range and diversity of essential summer session functions performed and (2) examining whether these administrative/organizational differences affect performance-based outcomes important to the success of the summer term. The first phase of the study (Kops & Lytle, 2013) reported that the organization and administration of summer session functions—assessed by a 38-item survey returned by 115 member institutions—fell along a centralized/decentralized continuum characterized as highly centralized (all or most functions performed by a single summer session office), hybridized (some functions performed by a summer sessions office while others are devolved to campus units/departments), or decentralized (most functions performed by campus units/departments other than summer session). This paper reports on the total 134 member institutions that completed the 38-item survey. As well, it reports on the findings of an outcomes questionnaire sent to all survey respondents to explore the possible extent to which differences in summer session organizational structures affected selected student-based (unduplicated headcount and credit hours) and finance-based (tuition revenue and instruction-related expenses incurred in teaching courses) performance outcomes in the summer 2012 term. The 38-item survey instrument proved sensitive to how functions important for the summer term are managed and performed at the colleges and universities participating in the study. Although the organizational structure of summer sessions varied significantly among survey respondents, with private institutions somewhat more centralized than publicly funded ones, the results of the outcomes questionnaire indicated that the organizational structure had no significant effect on student-based or finance-based performance outcomes.

Anna Piotrowska

The appearance of bitcoin is the beginning of a new era in which advanced technological capabili- ties have changed the perspective on the financial system's functioning rules and have expanded the understanding of the category of money. Bitcoin is used in commercial transactions, transfers and as an investment asset. The establishment of bitcoin is a part of the movement away from cash transactions and the general acceptance of non-material form of money observed around the world. The aim of the study is to analyse the bitcoin cryptocurrency in the scope of the fulfilment of the definition criteria and functions of money formulated in an economic theory, and to present the current legal situation in selected countries relating with its functioning.

Petar Čekerevac, Zoran Čekerevac

Bitcoin, new digital money, recently got into focus. It uses P2P interaction where each owner transfers the electronic coin to the next owner signing and adding to the end of the coin a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner. Payment verification is accomplished by notifying the entire network about the transaction. This prevents double-spending and avoids the generation of nonexistent money. Personal information between parties in the transaction are not transferred. Unlike completely anonymous transaction, the

Saravanan Sundaresan, Robin Doss, Wanlei Zhou

In this paper, we propose a novel zero knowledge grouping proof protocol for RFID Systems. Over the years, several protocols have been proposed in this area but they are either found to be vulnerable to certain attacks or do not comply with the EPC Class 1 Gen 2 (C1G2) standard because they use hash functions or other complex encryption schemes. Also, the unique design requirements of grouping proofs have not been fully addressed by many. Our protocol addresses these important security and design gaps in grouping proofs. We present a novel approach based on pseudo random squares and quadratic residuosity to realize a zero knowledge system. Tag operations are limited to functions such as modulo (MOD), exclusive-or (XOR) and 128 bit Pseudo Random Number Generators (PRNG). These can be easily implemented on passive tags and hence achieves compliance with the EPC Global standard while meeting the security requirements.

Joseph Krug, Jack Peterson

Sidecoin is a mechanism that allows a snapshot to be taken of Bitcoin's blockchain. We compile a list of Bitcoin's unspent transaction outputs, then use these outputs and their corresponding balances to bootstrap a new blockchain. This allows the preservation of Bitcoin's economic state in the context of a new blockchain, which may provide new features and technical innovations.

Jack Peterson, Joseph Krug

Augur is a trustless, decentralized platform for prediction markets. It is an extension of Bitcoin Core's source code which preserves as much of Bitcoin's proven code and security as possible. Each feature required for prediction markets is constructed from Bitcoin's input/output-style transactions.

Stephan Verbücheln

ECDSA has become a popular choice as lightweight alternative to RSA and classic DL based signature algorithms in recent years. As standardized, the signature produced by ECDSA for a pair of a message and a key is not deterministic. This work shows how this non-deterministic choice can be exploited by an attacker to leak private information through the signature without any side channels, an attack first discovered by Young and Yung for classic DL-based cryptosystems in 1997, and how this attack affects the application of ECDSA in the Bitcoin protocol.

Ludovic Vigneron, Ramzi Benkraiem

Using a new and unique dataset dealing with French small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) financing that provides detailed information about 1 116 firm-bank relationships, we test how the number of banks with which a firm works and the organizational structure of its main bank influence its risk-taking behavior. We find evidence that SMEs engaged with a decentralized main bank (a local or mutual one) invest in less risky projects, especially when they work with fewer than three banks (one or two). We also find evidence that single-bank SMEs engaged with a centralized bank (a large or foreign one) take significantly more risks than the others.

Jiří Chudoba

Import 22/07/2015