The optimal stringency of the burden of proof is characterized in a model in which relaxing the proof burden enhances deterrence but also chills desirable behavior. The result are strikingly different from those in prior work that uses a simpler model in which individuals only choose whether to commit a harmful act (so only deterrence is at stake). Moreover, the qualitative differences between the optimal rule and the familiar preponderance of the evidence rule—and related rules that look to Bayesian posteriors—are great, much more so than revealed by prior work.
Taking an aesthetic and biopolitical perspective, we seek to understand the reality show phenomenon, viewed not only as a set of stand-alone programs, but especially as a cultural and operational logic that takes for granted and tends to consolidate values, practices, and discourses proper to the present-day so-called immaterial or cognitive stage of capitalism. Within this panorama we focus special attention on the Big Brother Brazil narrative format, viewed here as a biopolitical dispositif, both because it takes anonymous and real life itself as the raw material for observation and instrumentalization, and because it represents a technology for subjective production and management. However, while we accept that this biopolitical audiovisual production creates perverse effects, based on extremely unequal power relations whose strategies focus on humiliation and embarrassment, we cannot close our eyes to the program s narrative inventiveness, enhanced with each successive edition of the program, featuring the consolidation of a modern and self-reflexive dramaturgy. Our examination of this paradoxical object thus provides the basis for investigating the true paradox at stake: a demand for reality and a will to truth that shifts the truth from the background, from the foundations of our tradition of thought, to the surfaces of images, simultaneously and paradoxically identifying the image with proof of truth, and truth with an effect of the artifice. The will to truth thus becomes the will to artifice. This effect of truth, or effect of the real, thereby legitimizes and self-validates a series of biopolitical practices, meanwhile taking surveillance and exposure of so-called intimacy for granted. Such practices, tied to a biopolitical audiovisual production, shape our contemporary regime of truth, visibility, and sensitivity within immaterial capitalist production.
Cătălina Liliana Andrei, BOGDAN OANCEA, TUDOREL ANDREI
Reforming the public health system is a complex and long process, involving different categories of people. To accelerate the process of integration into the European Union, Romania is currently implementing strategies and programs aimed to increase the quality of public services. In the medical field a series of measures have been undertaken aimed at accelerating the decentralization process and optimize the activities of medical institutions. During the transition period a series of measures have been taken to decentralization and privatization of health services. However, currently we are witnessing a fragmentation of the system, which stressed the inequality in the distribution of medical personnel and reduced people's access to certain types of medical services. Please note that the number of doctors per capita in rural areas is only 20% of the urban area. Another major shortcoming of the system is linked to the financing system and its correlation with the strategies of decentralization. Frequently, decentralization has emerged as a way of placing the central tasks in the task of local government. Using panel data from developing regions we highlight a number of implications of the decentralization process.
A public watermark detection scheme using verifiable secret sharing is proposed. It removes the expensive zero-knowledge interactive proofs and replaces the traditional trusted third party with a group of proxies. Moreover, the scheme is secure against sensitivity attacks and very efficient in terms of computation cost, the number of rounds and bandwidth required in the communications.
Open access
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
The enactment of The act Number 2211999, about The Local Government and The Act Number 2511999, about The Balancing Financial between Central and Local Government, they have changed the centralization system to the decentraiization in form of giving the regional autonomy, which it's real, broad and responsible. One of the impacts of that policy is The Local Government's fiscal decentralization (financing the regional autonomy), which it is authorities to coiiect the local tax and local retribution in order to financing public services in local region. Based on the argument, they important reviewed, such as: (a) how the basic concept of the local tax and retribution tax; (b j What is the legal basis of the local tax and retribution tax; and (c) how the implementation of local tax and local retribution. The basics concepts of local tax and local retribution, its essentially, should be able to provide local revenue in accordance with the degree of fiscal autonomy period and clearly had an impact on the fiscal responsibility of owned the relevant owned. The legal basics of tax collecting, such as The Article Number 23A ofUndang- UndangDasar1945; The Article Number 7, Paragraph 4 of The Act Number 1012004, about The Establishment, Regional Regulation; The implementation of the tax collecting have to based on the principles or system, which it is called "closed list". Kata kunci: Desentralisasi Fiskal, Pungutan Pajak Daerah, "Closed List"
Failure is the norm for urban sanitation infrastructure in Ghana: of the rather substantial number of wastewater and faecal sludge treatment plants, with about 70 mostly decentralized systems throughout the country, less than 10 are operating effectively. This research presents an overview of the related sanitation situation in Ghana, and compares the few successful facilities with their failed counterparts in order to decipher the factors that enable the former to prevail. The research reveals important differences in the operation and maintenance (O&M) strategies, financing schemes and incentive structures in the successful versus unsuccessful facilities, which are probably not unique to Ghana. Based on the findings, we suggest a set of guiding questions for incorporation into the existing planning, funding or general decision-making framework in order to avoid commonly observed traps, which not only undermine progress in the delivery of sanitation services but also harshly affect environmental and public health.
The last decade has revealed a profound paradigm change with respect to the organization and control of logistic systems. Forced by recent trends in the organization of enterprises and new market requirements, logistic systems are confronted with new prospects and challenges that do not fit with the paradigm of central planning. The involvement of several decision making units in one supply chain, the management of real-time data, the division of work and decision making, and a high market dynamic require innovative decision support and business information concepts. Additionally, wide-area-computer networks, ubiquitous computing, and 24-h-data availability provide a data basis as well as an infrastructure for a joint decision making among autonomous entities (e.g. agents). While the paradigm of a monolithic central control of all activities has been in the focus of research and application for several decades, the last years have revealed the intrusion of noncentralized approaches for designing, configuring, and deploying complex systems. More than in other disciplines, there is a paradigm shift in logistics from hierarchical systems to heterachical systems, especially concerning the design and control of compound systems. In order to explore and establish a base for using and exploring the capabilities of distributed decision making, fundamental research must be executed. In the Collaborative Research Centre 637 ‘‘Autonomous Cooperating Logistic Processes—A Paradigm Shift and its Limitations’’, funded by the German Research Foundation, an interdisciplinary group of scientists investigates the prospects and limitation of the interactive decision making among several components of a logistic system. The components of a hierarchically organized logistic system are externally controlled units, which have only limited decision rights. On the other hand, in heterarchical systems, the components constituting a compound system are autonomous units, which interact with each other on their own responsibility, and they are provided with local intelligence and emancipated decision authority. Heterarchical structures grant autonomy to the single system components in order to enable decentralized decision making. Autonomy of components presupposes that interactive units in non-deterministic systems are able to decide and act on their own authority. Autonomous units representing components of a complex logistic system can be found on different levels of appearance and in several contexts. At the lowest level, there are agents representing autonomous physical logistic units like parcels or containers, which are capable and allowed to decide on their handling. At the medium level, there are autonomous planning agents like human schedulers or software agents being responsible for the decisions in a delimited problem area and cooperating with agents responsible for adjacent areas. Finally, at the upper level, there are autonomous organizational units, e.g., profit centers of an enterprise or partners in a collaborative system constituting a coalition following at least one common goal. In practice, most complex logistics systems are built in a hierarchical manner. Currently, there is a tendency to redesign such systems in a heterarchical way by constituting a set of interrelated, partly autonomous, components for the construction of the total system. The objective of the redesign is to achieve a higher degree of robustness and a positive emergence of the total system [1] by increasing H. Kopfer (&) J. Schonberger Lehrstuhl fur Logistik, FB 7, Universitat Bremen, Wilhelm-Herbst-Strase 5, 28359 Bremen, Germany e-mail: kopfer@uni-bremen.de
This publication discusses the decentralization issues faced by countries of Asia and the Pacific. It includes practical suggestions on how to proceed in this area to achieve economic growth, macroeconomic stability, poverty and income distribution, services delivery improvements, and political accountability. This note elaborates on adequacy of local revenues and autonomy, expenditure management and clear service delivery mandates, horizontal imbalances and limited use of incentives in intergovernmental transfers, financing needs and local government borrowing, and local management capacities as the major challenges in a decentralized fiscal architecture. The recommendations to address the above challenges also note the long- term nature of these reforms.
Decentralization will increase economic efficiency because local government are better positioned than the national government to deliver public services as a result of information advantages (Oates' Decentralization Theorem). Consequently, it was thought that decentralized finance would appear to have a potentially useful role to play in economic development (Oates [1993]). From the empirical viewpoint, however, it remains controversial whether there is any relationship between decentralization and economic growth. For example, as pointed out by Ebel and Yilmaz [2002] and Iimi [2005], it has been argued that fiscal decentralization can serve as a means to promote economic growth. On the other hand, there is some empirical evidence that fiscal decentralization is negatively associated with economic growth (e.g., Davoodi and Zou [1998], Zhang and Zou [1998]). Various reasons can be given for the differences in empirical estimations. In particular, the selection of fiscal decentralization variables is thought to be a cause of differences. A widely accepted measure of fiscal decentralization is the subnational share of total government spending. However, this is an imperfect measure of fiscal decentralization because it does not identify the degree of local expenditure autonomy. Ebel and Yilmaz [2002] defined the degree of local expenditure autonomy as the share of subnational own-revenues in total revenues. Though this indicator might capture subnational autonomy, it is difficult to represent the empowerment of people and communities through fiscal decentralization. However, it is important to be able to define fiscal decentralization as the empowerment of people and the community through fiscal empowerment of their local government. People and the community must be able to direct their subnational government officials to use their financial resources in accordance with local needs and preferences (Bahl [2005]). Boex and Simatupang [2008] develop a measure of fiscal empowerment to quantify fiscal decentralization as the gain in empowerment due to the devolution of fiscal power. However, this study does not examine the relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth. This paper sets the stage for a renewed effort to compute alternative measures of decentralization that take into account the degree of subnational autonomy and the empowerment of people and the community, and examines how fiscal decentralization viewed in terms of the empowerment of people and the community can affect economic growth.
In fast-changing business environments, there are companies that have developed autonomous decentralized organizations for better adaptability and productivity. The company split-up and the line company system are typical methods for this, and are widely adapted in business communities. There are problems, however, on how to coordinate decentralized, autonomous divisions. Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd, that has been acknowledged as a model case of autonomous decentralized organizations, started to try to unify the total Mayekawa Group three years ago. Based on their experiences, an investigation is made on why a change from decentralization to integration is needed, and on how it has been done. Through this study of Group Unification" of Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd, six principles for integration of an autonomous decentralized organization would be revealed, namely, clear definition of business territories, total standardization of skills and knowledge, reinforcement of specialization, systematization of organic networks, mutual aids within the community, and sharing of perceptions of all members. These principles seem to be effective for autonomous decentralized organizations to improve productivity through better coordination within themselves, as well as superior adaptability to environmental changes. A comparison with Kyocera Corporation, another famous case of autonomous decentralization, would give us some more supporting evidences.
Health care is widely considered to be an important determinant of health. The health care systems of Western Europe have recently experienced significant reforms, under pressure from economic globalization. Similarly, in Eastern Europe, health care reforms have been undertaken in response to the demands of the new market economy. Both of these changes may influence equality in health outcomes. This article aims to identify the mechanisms through which health care may affect inequalities. The authors conducted a literature review of the effects on health inequalities of European health care reforms. Particular reference was paid to interventions in the fields of financing and pooling, allocation, purchasing, and provision of services. The majority of studies were from Western Europe, and the outcomes most often examined were access to services or income distribution. Overall, the quality of research was poor, confirming the need to develop an appropriate impact assessment methodology. Few studies were related to pooling, allocation, or purchasing. For financing and purchasing, the studies showed that publicly funded universal health care reduces the impact of ill health on income distribution, while insurance systems can increase inequalities in access to care. Out-of-pocket payments increase inequalities in access to care and contribute to impoverishment. Decentralizing health services can lead to geographic inequalities in health care access. Nationalized, publicly funded health care systems are most effective at reducing inequalities in access and reducing the effects on health of income distribution.
L'interpretazione astratta è una teoria che formalizza l'approssimazione conservativa della semantica di sistemi informatici hardware e software, focalizzandosi su alcune proprietà, che espresse mediante opportune strutture algebriche (domini astratti) possono essere calcolate in modo corretto (anche se non completo). Una grande varietà di domini astratti può essere elaborata, a aseconda dei contesti di applicazione, e con scelta dei domini astratti è possibile modulare in modi diversi precisione e complessità computazionale. Questa tesi considera l'applicazione di tecniche di Interpretazione Astratta in tre diversi scenari: Program slicing; Watermarking di database relazionali; Watermarking del codice sorgente di programmi. Relativamente al Program slicing, viene proposto un raffinamento delle tecniche tradizionali già presenti in letteratura. Molto spesso, siamo interessati a una specifica proprietà delle variabili in un criterio di slicing, piuttosto che ai suoi effettivi valori. Questo è il caso, ad esempio, quando si analizza la non-interferenza in language-based security, dove le astrazioni entrano in gioco per modellare il potere osservativo degli attaccanti. In questo scenario, lo slicing tiene in considerazione le proprietà astratte delle variabili e le dipendenze astratte. Questo approccio allo slicing, non è solo la generalizzazione della tecnica tradizionale, ma offre nuovi spunti nelle relazioni tra diverse aree di ricerca dell'informatica. Un secondo scenario di applicazione delle tecniche di Interpretazione Astratta è la progettazione di watermarking di database relazionali, la cui rilevanza è legata al fatto che in Internet è molto importante preservare i diritti di proprietà nei database relazionali mantenuti in outsourcing. In tale ambito, viene proposta una tecnica di watermarking senza distorsione, che migliora la verifica dell'integrità dei database relazionali utilizzando un meccanismo di autenticazione pubblica. L'ultimo scenario considerato è quello del Watermarking del codice sorgente di programmi: all'aumentare della quantità di codice sorgente distribuito sul web, la protezione e il rilevamento delle proprietà del software è diventata una questione importante. Nella tesi, viene presentato uno schema di watermarking software a chiave pubblica (watermarking asimmetrico), basato su tecniche di trasformazione che preservano la semantica, e che è simile nello spirito alle zero-knowledge proofs. L'approccio proposto si pone come un'alternativa alla cifratura e l'autenticazione software piuttosto che come uno strumento per la protezione del copyright.
[Excerpt] It is not surprising that most theories of human capital treat the firm as the key unit of analysis, given the deep imprint that Becker (1964 [1993]) left with his early efforts to distinguish between general and specific human capital. It is especially understandable for research that focuses on American institutions and practices. Ever since the passage of the New Deal employment policies of the 1930s, firms have been assigned central roles in the delivery and financing of a variety of labor-market services, including the provision of workforce training and development (Osterman et al, 2001). Most of the chapters in this volume reflect this emphasis by exploring how individuals and firms allocate the costs and share the benefits of human capital, incorporating human capital development into alternative theories of the firm (such as transaction cost, resource-based, agency, entrepreneurial, and knowledge-based perspectives), and how human capital plays into emerging research on social capital, organizational capabilities, learning, and human resource strategies and architectures. But, as Chapters 12, 22, and 23 each suggest, firm-centric theories, particularly those founded upon the neoclassical economics framework, need to more fully take into account how firm boundaries, strategies, and practices relate to other institutions in society. This is particularly important given the changes in employment relationships that are acting to reduce the labor-market functions served by individual employers. In short, the central argument of this chapter is that a more up-to-date theory of the changing nature of employment relationships is needed to understand whether and how human capital is to serve as a source of competitive advantage in a modern economy—even one as decentralized as that of the US.
The purpose of this study was to assess the nature of Decentralization on Education Service Delivery in view of having the required institutions, manpower, availability of adequate finance and community participation in the provision of service delivery in the Woreda. The study was conducted Dubti Woreda of Afar National Regional State. To meet the above objective, Focus group discussion, In-depth interviews, and Observation were conducted with key informants, professionals, and community representatives. Data for the research was collected for primary sources of data with the help of interview guide, focus group discussion guide and observations. Secondary was also equally reviewed to assess the nature and performance of decentralization on education service delivery in Woreda.. According to the results of the study the student enrollment in the Woreda show that there is less parti cipation in student enrolment. According to the responses obtained from school directors, teachers a nd officials at Woreda Education Office level, the coordination and work relationship between Kebele Education Training Board on one side and Parent Teacher Associations' and Schools on the other is characterized as being very inadequate and minimal. The finding also indicated that the Education Office of Woreda and school are found to have manpower problem which appears to have negatively impacted the service of the office in the Woreda. According to the information obtained from officials through interviews indicated that, Woreda suffered from inadequate budget. Despite the block transfer increase from year to year for the Woreda, the revenue capacity of the Woreda was minimum because, of the Woreda lack of appropriate tax base identification.. Decentralized education service delivery requires available envir onment. However, since Woreda is characterized by Desert it is difficult to deliver education service delivery in the Woreda
This research tested the difference of financial performance between parent areas and new autonomy areas. The financial performances that meant in this research were degree of decentralization, level of independence, capital expenditure ratio, and level of financing capability. The aim of this research was to analyze the difference of financial performance between parent area and new autonomy area. The objects in this research were districts or cities that become parent areas and districts or cities that become new autonomy areas. The division period that used in this research was in the year of 1999—2004. Samples that used in this research were consists of 48 parent areas and 49 new autonomy areas. Data that used in this research is local government revenues and expenditures budget realization report in the period of 2005 —2007. Data analysis performed using independent sample t test from SPSS for window program. \nLevel of significance that used in this research was 5%. Result of this research showing that a) parent areas degree of decentralization significantly better than new autonomy areas, b) parent areas level of independence significantly better than new autonomy areas, c) no significantly difference of financing capability level both parent areas and new autonomy areas and d) new autonomy areas capital expenditure ratio significantly better than parent areas. \n \nKey words: \nparent areas, new autonomy areas, regional financial performance, degree of decentralization, level of independence, financing capability level, capital expenditure ratio.
This article is based on the research project 'The functioning of sector level wage bargaining systems and wage setting mechanisms in adverse labour market conditions', commissioned and financed by the European Foundation for the improvement of Working and Living conditions, whose support is
In this paper, we study methods for improving the utility and privacy of\nreputation scores for online auctions, such as used in eBay, so as to reduce\nthe effectiveness of feedback extortion. The main ideas behind our techniques\nare to use randomization and various schemes to escrow reputations scores until\nappropriate external events occur. Depending on the degree of utility and\nprivacy needed, these external techniques could depend on the number and type\nof reputation scores collected. Moreover, if additional privacy protection is\nneeded, then random sampling can be used with respect reputation scores in such\na way that reputation aggregates remain useful, but individual reputation\nscores are probabilistically hidden from users. Finally, we show that if\nprivacy is also desired with respect to the the reputation aggregator, then we\ncan use zero-knowledge proofs for reputation comparisons.\n
There is an avalanche of interest in health systems with countries, donors, international experts and academic institutions all rushing to promote, fund or build capacity to address this wave of interest. As Anne Mills documents in an article in this volume, there is also a growing literature on how to think about health systems, how to use research on health systems to improve their performance, and pleas for greater investment in knowledge about health systems. We are probably riding on the crest of this new wave and it will be important to make use of it to further our knowledge about how to achieve health system effectiveness. With continuing global economic uncertainty, this wave may pass if we do not take advantage of it now. It is useful to reflect on why there is such interest in this theme now. There are probably many converging causes but the most important, to my mind, is a replay of an old debate between vertical programmes and horizontal, integrated approaches that has experienced swings of interest at least since the Alma Ata Conference in 1978 emphasized the integrated primary health care approach. During the last decade or more, there has been a major focus on vertical disease-specific programmes supported by greatly increased funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among other donors. The major claim of these programmes was that by focusing on clear disease-specific objectives they would be more effective in shorter time periods and they could be held more accountable to donors (since the results could be more measurable) than the difficult and diverse efforts to improve the many elements of a health system through the horizontal integrated approach. While there were evident successes in these programmes, there was also a growing recognition that health system constraints—especially in human resources and logistics systems—were becoming major obstacles to achieving even their limited objectives of increased coverage of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and immunizations. With the added emphasis on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the slow progress toward their achievement in many countries, the international community and national governments have turned increasingly toward attempting to reduce the health system constraints—an approach that is closer to the integrated horizontal approach. Both GAVI and the Global Fund have added a separate fund for health systems interventions. In 2008, the G8 called for greater attention to health system strengthening as compatible with the prior focus on vertical programmes (Reich et al. 2008). In 2009, the World Bank convened a seminar on health system strengthening attended by representatives from the World Health Organization (WHO), GAVI and Global Fund. A task force on Healthy Women and Healthy Children calling for a health system funding platform was initiated at the UN General Assembly. In 2010, the WHO and others sponsored the First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Montreux, Switzerland. While many observers are trying to argue that the two approaches are now more compatible, at least in rhetorical terms it seems that the pendulum is shifting toward greater attention to health system strengthening. So how do we, the readers of Health Policy and Planning, take advantage of this interest? Health Policy and Planning is dedicated to the publication of high quality research that, as the name implies, improves decisions on policy and planning. This poses for us a central question: how can we do research that will improve health systems? The answer is complex for it requires attention to the kind of knowledge that is both researchable and leads to practical, implementable recommendations. The place to start is with a framework of analysis that is both analytical, in that it provides empirically based categories about health systems, and purposive, in that it is oriented toward how to improve the system. Many of the frameworks that are available provide a recognizable set of functional issues whose boundaries help focus attention on specific interactions that can be studied, such as financing, service delivery, human resources, governance (Mills et al. 2001). The WHO Building Blocks framework is a very popular approach that is guiding much of the discussion and research in health systems (WHO 2007). Another approach developed by Harvard School of Public Health faculty is oriented toward using analytical categories in a purposive manner that starts with an ethically derived vision of what we would like to achieve, and works back toward finding the reasons why we have not achieved those objectives. It then focuses our attention on what we can change using evidence on the effectiveness of changing different ‘control knobs’ or policy levers, including financing, payments, organization, regulation and persuasion (Roberts et al. 2004). There is a great deal of overlap in these models and they are compatible in many ways that can guide research toward practical recommendations for policy. A second question is about levels of analysis. Should we attempt to research whole national systems, with typologies of systems and comparisons of the achievements of the different models? We often hear this orientation used in policy arguments such as the recent arguments over whether the USA should adopt the Canadian single payer model. However, this approach suffers from methodological challenges such as the ‘small number’ problem (which limits the ability to use sophisticated quantitative analysis due to the few comparable national systems) and the many different characteristics and historical trajectories that confound the analysis. Few countries—Chile, China, Colombia, Ghana, Taiwan, Turkey and Eastern European countries—have even attempted broad multifaceted health system reforms and they have tended to develop their own reform models rather than copying others. Nevertheless, there are many country studies of health reforms that provide evidence and much can be gained by detailed evaluation of the effectiveness of these models that can inform policy choice in different contexts. An alternative means of assessing health systems is to focus on sub-systems or analysis of specific policy changes, focusing on different social health insurance approaches, pay for performance, contracting, decentralization or other reforms, and assessing their performance in terms of achieving health system objectives like the MDGs, reduction in catastrophic expenditures caused by paying for illness, or broader responsiveness and accountability to citizens. The advantage of this approach is that, if the research is well designed, the causality of the impact of the changes on health system objectives can be more clearly demonstrated, and it allows a more focused attention to policy changes that different countries can adopt in an incremental way. This approach can address both systems issues and vertical programme needs. For instance, the work that I am involved in on decentralization—looking at the relationship between choice, capacity and accountability at different levels of a health system—can be used to make policy recommendations on general health system reform as well as specific reforms of logistic systems, vertical immunization or family planning programme effectiveness (Bossert et al. 2007). The challenge in this approach is to account for the general national context factors—political, economic, social and cultural—which may influence the performance of these initiatives. What works in Chile may not work in China due to many different characteristics of the country contexts. This is a major lacuna in the current research in health systems often covered over by focusing only on the differences in average income levels, assuming for instance that health system changes in low-income countries are all relatively similar. However, governance issues, cultural and ethical differences, past histories with different health systems, all play a role in constraining the lessons learned from one country to another. The recent concern with political economy and political institutionalism may inform future work in this area (Fox and Reich, forthcoming). In addition, focus on one subsystem or one policy lever is likely to miss the interactions among different subsystems changes that synergistically influence outcomes. For instance, changes in decentralization may be enhanced by changes in social insurance programmes, or the creation of a new cadre of health workers. Focusing on one in order to evaluate its separate impact will miss the role of the combined changes on achieving objectives. However, if we are aware of these limitations, it might be possible to move collectively toward setting a research agenda in which multidisciplinary researchers assess the different subsystems in ways that inform each other. Those of us who focus on organizational issues like decentralization and human resources need to be aware of and incorporate in our studies, the work of experts in economics, ethics, politics and other behavioural sciences, as well as epidemiologists and biostatisticians who help us understand the underlying population and social processes underpinning those systems. There is also an imbalance of research on functional areas of analysis with a much greater body of knowledge on financing and payment issues than on organizational issues and governance and regulation. In recent years, there has been greater interest in governance, politics and human resources issues, but these areas are so complex that they require much greater attention and more funded research than is currently in the pipeline. This poses an additional requirement for multidisciplinary studies that address these under-researched areas to bring the level of knowledge up to that of the more economic themes. This is a huge task of course and current funders have little patience for large research projects in health systems. Indeed there is considerable pressure for evaluating the performance of programmes and projects that have been funded in a very short and unrealistic time frame. It suggests that we need to be nimble and develop cadres of multidisciplinary experts to be able to quickly do the solid research necessary but within limited funds and short time horizons to provide well-documented policy recommendations. If we do not, we are likely to have missed the opportunities of this wave of interest as funding for health systems declines due to alternative priorities, donor fatigue or general global economic restrictions. None declared.
We study the Glauber dynamics for the zero-temperature Ising model in dimension d=4 with "plus" boundary condition.Let T+ be the time needed for an hypercube of size L entirely filled with "minus" spins to become entirely "plus". We prove that T+ is O(L^2(log L)^c) for some constant c, not depending on the dimension. This brings further rigorous justification for the so-called "Lifshitz law" T+ = O(L^2) [5, 3] conjectured on heuristic grounds. The key point of our proof is to use the detail knowledge that we have on the three-dimensional problem: results for fluctuation of monotone interfaces at equilibrium and mixing time for monotone interfaces dynamics extracted from [2], to get the result in higher dimension.
We study the Glauber dynamics for the zero-temperature Ising model in\ndimension d=4 with "plus" boundary condition.Let T+ be the time needed for an\nhypercube of size L entirely filled with "minus" spins to become entirely\n"plus". We prove that T+ is O(L^2(log L)^c) for some constant c, not depending\non the dimension. This brings further rigorous justification for the so-called\n"Lifshitz law" T+ = O(L^2) [5, 3] conjectured on heuristic grounds. The key\npoint of our proof is to use the detail knowledge that we have on the\nthree-dimensional problem: results for fluctuation of monotone interfaces at\nequilibrium and mixing time for monotone interfaces dynamics extracted from\n[2], to get the result in higher dimension.\n
In this paper, we study methods for improving the utility and privacy of reputation scores for online auctions, such as used in eBay, so as to reduce the effectiveness of feedback extortion. The main ideas behind our techniques are to use randomization and various schemes to escrow reputations scores until appropriate external events occur. Depending on the degree of utility and privacy needed, these external techniques could depend on the number and type of reputation scores collected. Moreover, if additional privacy protection is needed, then random sampling can be used with respect reputation scores in such a way that reputation aggregates remain useful, but individual reputation scores are probabilistically hidden from users. Finally, we show that if privacy is also desired with respect to the the reputation aggregator, then we can use zero-knowledge proofs for reputation comparisons.
As costly and spectacular art museums have proliferated since the opening of Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim, some critics have complained that “flash and bravura win out over contemplation…and architecture triumphs over art.”1 Hal Foster has even declared that museums like Gehry's Bilbao “inflate the contemporary museum into a gigantic spectacle‐space that can swallow any art, let alone any viewer, whole.”2 The problem is not that bold exteriors outshine the art, but that strange curves, odd angles, or enormous heights inside may generate a “spectacle‐space” that interferes with our attention to the art.3 For example, a number of the acutely angled gallery walls of Daniel Libeskind's 2006 Denver Art Museum addition slant inward or outward in ways that many people have found intrusive. But other critics have been willing to overlook functional defects in favor of audacious formal qualities, even if not all would go as far as Phillip Johnson's “if the architecture is as good as in Bilbao, fuck the art!”4 These conflicting responses to dramatic art museum architecture seem to reflect two deeper intuitions about architecture in general: it seems only natural to expect aesthetics and function to complement each other in architecture, yet it also seems natural to overlook functional defects when aesthetic qualities are outstanding. In this article, I will suggest a way to reconcile these two intuitions by outlining a perspective I call “moderate functionalism.” Moderate functionalism tries to avoid the faults of two polar positions on aesthetics and function in contemporary philosophy of architecture. One position, going back to Roger Scruton's Aesthetics of Architecture and recently updated by Edward Winters, accepts the necessity of function in general but denies the aesthetic relevance of particular functions, a position that would justify those who give priority to formal audacity in art museum architecture.5 At the opposite pole, Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson's “functional beauty” proposal would make aesthetic appreciation directly depend on a building satisfying its “proper” function, a position that would support those who champion the priority of a museum's exhibition functions.6 In what follows, I criticize both the separatist and functional beauty approaches and then show how a moderate functionalist position can unite the intuition of a desirable concord between aesthetics and function and the intuition that spectacular aesthetic achievements may override functional faults. Before beginning a critique of the separatist and functionalist beauty positions, I need to outline some preliminary assumptions. The first is that the aesthetic experience of architecture is not only about the contemplation of visual form, but is also multisensory and immersive, involving the volumes, textures, and sounds that determine how a building feels as we move through it.7 Of course, we do experience many buildings only visually from the outside. In fact, the “spectacle” art museum controversy has arisen partly from the desire of some museum boards to have an iconic building whose external appearance will draw paying crowds. The importance of such issues as iconicity and symbolism suggests that our concept of aesthetic experience also needs to include a cognitive dimension. The cognitive aspect of aesthetic judgment seems especially appropriate to contemporary art museum architecture, which includes not only sculptural designs (Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Libeskind) but also works influenced by conceptual art (Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio) or deconstruction (Peter Eisenman), whose formal and sensory satisfactions may be less important than the way they embody certain ideas. Like the concept of the aesthetic, the concept of function is not only unsettled but is also inflected by its application to architecture.8 Early modernists sometimes interpreted Louis Sullivan's “form follows function” to refer to “structural” function (form should reflect construction), at other times to refer to “practical” function (form should reflect human needs). But architecture theorists have also written of many other architectural functions: urban, environmental, social, ethical, symbolic, even aesthetic.9 The fact that there are many kinds of functions means that aesthetic and practical functions are almost always found intertwined with other functions, among which the symbolic and social are especially important for art museum architecture. Symbolic functions obviously concern architectural meanings, whether understood in terms of “exemplification,”“allusion,” or in some other way.10 Historically, one of the most important symbolic aims of art museum architecture has been to express the value of art itself. In the nineteenth century, this concern gave us those familiar classical temple forms with their grand stairways, spacious reception halls, and sumptuous materials, whereas today's “spectacle” museums try to send similar messages by means of radical shapes, dramatic massing, acres of glass, and unusual materials. Social functions in architecture concern the way buildings affect such things as our sense of well‐being, our sense of place, or the quality of human interactions within them. Arthur Danto has called attention to the way Steven Holl recently designed a stairwell in a faculty office building at New York University to invite chance meetings, thus creating “a remarkable aesthetic experience while solving a sociological problem.”11 When these kinds of social concerns inform specific practical functions in the design of schools, hospitals, or museums, spaces for teaching, healing, or exhibition can be transformed into something far richer than a neutral means to an end.12 This blending of social and practical functions also calls attention to their normative dimension, which has been so effectively described in different ways by Karsten Harries and Yuriko Saito.13 The normative dimension of functions is what makes us ready to criticize an otherwise aesthetically and symbolically exciting building for failing its practical or social purposes or, to criticize an otherwise functionally efficient building, for its sterility and lack of aesthetic vitality. With these general considerations in mind, we are in a better position to examine the separatist view that aesthetic and practical functions should be treated as simply parallel to each other. Roger Scruton and Edward Winters, reacting to extreme versions of “functionalism,” have claimed that a building's specific functions are irrelevant to its aesthetic appreciation.14 Scruton goes so far as to declare that the very idea of function is “fundamentally, and perhaps irremediably, obscure,” so that “all we can say … is that buildings have uses.”15 Moreover, both he and Winters believe that even if we could somehow get a clearer concept of function, it would not make any difference since a building's functions are liable to change with time.16 What remains most important for Scruton is “to find meaning in appearance itself,” so that “aesthetic considerations … must take precedence over all other factors.”17 But the separatist approach cannot do justice to the fact that most architects’ aesthetic choices take into consideration practical and other kinds of functions in the process of design, so that a particular set of functional concerns becomes embodied in architectural form. Major encyclopedic art museums, for example, are likely to have specialized spaces for a variety of practical functions, such as reception (entry halls), exhibition (galleries), or halls), whose architectural forms will have also been for social, symbolic, and aesthetic The specific practical functions of and for example, are dramatic such as for the or for the Art whose architectural forms not only aesthetic responses but also at the a of from the even as they symbolic similar of aesthetic qualities with social, and symbolic functions in the museum gallery the between the and as we move from the and architectural has to the less dramatic forms and spaces may be to a for a for art not that the architecture as in with design for the in New architectural forms should be aesthetically in ways that complement the art even as those forms a for and aesthetic I believe at this of the social, and aesthetic of gallery design when he neutral works of art as as spaces that make the building into a of In for example, one through its dramatic the of the for seem like an Libeskind's radical in Denver sometimes with the art for our go to the other extreme and an aesthetically less for than for The between the aesthetic and practical functions for gallery architecture can be to what has about the halls, such as in or Frank Gehry's in their designs to of an experience architecture by means of the as the are for the quality of their so the gallery designs make of natural to the experience of for example, Louis for the for the Steven walls for the Museum or for the museum in that give it a and In what to be an to this of aesthetic and practical concerns in gallery design, the Frank who so to the function of to in has as the idea that museum architecture should be and not with the the Bilbao museum's than a with a by and be a “spectacle‐space” to swallow almost in this is not the at also designed a number of for and and sculptural for contemporary and of the at Bilbao are are most of intrusive. 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Peters (2011a) defined an optimal leverage which maximizes the time-average growth rate of an investment held at constant leverage. It was hypothesized that this optimal leverage is attracted to 1, such that, e.g., leveraging an investment in the market portfolio cannot yield long-term outperformance. This places a strong constraint on the stochastic properties of prices of traded assets, which we call "leverage efficiency." Market conditions that deviate from leverage efficiency are unstable and may create leverage-driven bubbles. Here we expand on the hypothesis and its implications. These include a theory of noise that explains how systemic stability rules out smooth price changes at any pricing frequency; a resolution of the so-called equity premium puzzle; a protocol for central bank interest rate setting to avoid leverage-driven price instabilities; and a method for detecting fraudulent investment schemes by exploiting differences between the stochastic properties of their prices and those of legitimately-traded assets. To submit the hypothesis to a rigorous test we choose price data from different assets: the S&P500 index, Bitcoin, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., and Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. Analysis of these data supports the hypothesis.
In mid 1997, Indonesia was seriously affected by the Asian economic crisis. This quickly spread into monetary, political, and social crises. Following a new presidential appointment, pressures and demands from the grass-roots to reform government systems become stronger and more persistent. Several provinces, particularly those having rich natural resources, pressed for greater autonomy. They felt that their natural resources were being taken by the central government but only a small part came back to them. If the central government did not respond to their pressures and demands, they threatened to proclaim independence from Indonesia. <br><br>Education in Indonesia has been a decentralized system since the issuance of Law Number 22/1999 on Local Government. This law was reviewed in 2004 and became Law Number 32/2004 on Local Government. The essence of Law Number 22/1999 was that education was devolved mostly to local government which in Indonesia is at the district level. As a consequence, education was no longer dominated by the central government; local government had voices in policy, planning, management, finance and delivery of education. Law Number 32/2004 revised some earlier decisions and provided more authority to Provinces. <br><br>Despite an initial impression that the Ministry of National Education (MONE) has real power, its reach is limited and constrained by political and bureaucratic structures and the capacity of those working in the system at all levels. It is worth noting that the MONE’s role is rendered even more complex by the fact that education in Indonesia falls under three ministries: MONE, Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA) and Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA). While MONE has the responsibility for coordinating education, each ministry has its own political and administrative agenda and processes, complicating the already complex and demanding tasks associated with decentralization. <br><br>Implementation of education decentralization in Indonesia is not easy because of its political dynamics and geographic and administrative complexity. The dynamics and complexity of Indonesia can be seen in its demography – population size and variations in density and ethnicity, and its geography – the 13,000 islands causing serious communication problems. From the political perspective, issues such as bureaucratic complexity, complex processes of decentralization due to it being driven by political and donor forces, and implementation complexity involving a range of actors and arenas have also contributed to the challenges. From the administrative view point, the challenges included rapid implementation (big bang), simultaneous political, administrative, and fiscal decentralization, and delays in establishing legal frameworks stipulating the divisions of obligatory functions between central, provincial, and district levels. In addition, the lack of capacity amongst local managers to do their jobs created real problems at the district level. <br><br>Decentralization of education in Indonesia has brought a lot of changes and one of the most important of them is community participation in education. The community must now take part in the quality improvement of educational services, which includes planning, monitoring, and evaluation of educational programs through Boards of Education.<br>