Blockchain is at the center of attention recently and it is expected to have a huge impact on healthcare industry including dentistry as well. Blockchain is a fundamental technology behind Bitcoin and itis all about decentralization, security, reliability, and transparency. These characteristics of the technology empower it to disrupt the current healthcare industry in innumerable practices such as supply chain management in pharmaceuticals to prevent the counterfeited medicine, clinical trials to guarantee transparency, healthcare information exchanges or personal health record systems to ensure data integrity and interoperability, etc. It will surely revolutionize the way the current healthcare system works; from provider-oriented to patient-centered. Hence, it is time to seriously consider how we could be a part of this blockchain revolution in dentistry.
Bit coin is a type of crypto currency and worldwide payment system. It allows system to work without a central bank or single administrator and the first decentralized digital currency. Bit coin was invented by an unknown person or group of people under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. The network is peer-to-peer and transactions between the users are direct which are verified by network nodes through the use of cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger which is replicated, shared and synchronized digital data called a block chain. Block chain is used as the core technology for the transaction of bit currency, as block chain uses the concept of public and private key. People might think that the lack of control could mean chaos, but this is not true at all because the technology (block chain) behind bit coin is one of the most accurate and secured ever created.
René Mesías Villacrés Borja, Mónica Elizabeth Bonilla Manobanda, Sergio Enrique Fierro Barragán, Mario Enrique Escobar Gortaire
This paper focuses on the results of the research carried out to determine the incidence of Fair Trade as a factor in reducing the poverty of small cocoa producers in the province of Los Rios, Ecuador. It also aimed to ascertain if there are guaranteed aid that will grant them a more direct access to the market for their products, under fairer and more equitable conditions. A mixed research design was used in the study. The qualitative activity was focused on observation, interviews, compilation of documents, registers, materials, and exchanges developed with cocoa producers to collect the information and know their criteria and opinions on the conditions and standard of living. This, however, was carried out from a quantitative point of view. The greatest amount of information was achieved through a structured survey with the application of a multivariate option questionnaire applied to a sample of 177 farmers. The main results obtained revealed that Fair Trade is a key element in reducing poverty levels as long as it is a fundamental part of the territorial development plans of Decentralized Autonomous Governments at all levels. Also, trade unions provide real support to farmers and they also assert their claims using a more continuous use of development premiums, adjustment of minimum guaranteed prices, and pre-financing.
Alan de Carvalho Dias Ferreira, Kassandra Pereria Vitor, Marcelo de Castro Haiachi, Alberto Reinaldo Reppold Filho
The financial support to the Elite Sports carried out historically through tax exemptions to the sports entities, in recent years has been added to a series of governmental actions, with emphasis on the agreements, the granting of scholarships to athletes and the Sports Incentive Law. This paper aims to describe the investment of federal public resources from agreements in paralympic sports, in addition to identifying their main beneficiaries and the types of expenses incurred. In order to do so, a descriptive research was carried out, using documentary research, in the National High-Performance Sport Secretariat of the Ministry of Sports (SNEAR), for the cataloging of agreements, onlending and decentralization agreements entered into by the federal public administration via SNEAR, to finance Paralympic sports from 2008 to 2016. It has been verified that Brazil has invested resources in the Paralympic sport with greater intensity between 2008 and 2014. However, it was evidenced that the Federal Government does not have systematized information or method to systematize the information on the transfer of financial resources through agreements, which was developed in this study. Other public entities, committees, confederations, leagues, federations, clubs and educational institutions are the destinations of the financial resources of the agreements, which can be applied in 12 different ways. Between 2008 and 2016 there was an increase in the amount of funds invested in Paralympic sports, mainly for the preparation of the Rio 2016 Games. The investments made through agreements are mainly in facilities and sports materials. It is concluded that financial resources of the Federal Government are spent without classification of the actions, entities or public to which such resources are destined. Thus, the systematization of this information, presented in this work, can substantially collaborate with the evaluation and formulation of government policies and actions.
Bitcoin is a virtual currency and a payment system based on cutting-edge innovations in cryptography and distributed systems. It has gained a wide range of popularity since its inception in 2009 and became the most successful crypto-currency in the financial market. It was devised by Satoshi NAKOMOTO and has been developed by many other experts before reaching maturity. Bitcoin security has been looked at by different experts in the past with different levels of analysis and it is still a hot research topic since new improvements are continuously being adopted by the community. Our study provides a high-overview of risks related to Bitcoin as a currency and as a payment system using EBIOS method.
The article presents the results of analysis of the distributed registry technology called blockchain. The analysis was performed for the possibility of using the blockchain technology in different spheres of human activity.
Authentication over insecure public networks or with untrusted servers raises more concerns in privacy and security.Modern algebra is one of the significantfields of mathematics. It is a combination of techniques used for a variety of applications including the process of the manipulation of the mathematical categories. In addition,modern algebra deals in depth with the study of abstractions such as groups, rings and fields,the main objective of this article is to provide a novel algebraic verification protocol using ring theory. The protocol is blind, meaning that it detects only the identity, and no additional information will be known anything about the prover (the biometric) to the authenticating server or vice-versa. More officially a blind authentication scheme is a cryptographic protocol that comprises of two parties, a user (the prover) that wants to achieve having signs on her messages, and a signer (the verifier) that is in ownership of his secret signing key. In this paper, we employ the algebraic structure called central Armendariz rings to design a neoteric algorithm for zero knowledge proof. The proposed protocol is established and illustrated through numerical example, and its soundness and completeness are proved.This method gave two important properties for the central Armendariz zero knowledge protocol compared with other known protocols.
A well-functioning financial sector in developing countries is extremely important for economic development. This requires local institutions, which originally were often state-controlled, but gradually non-state actors conquered the financial market. Recently the growing importance of alternative forms of finance in many African countries has become remarkable. Although often created by donors, their role changed when financial inclusion, economic liberalisation and decentralization became more important. Microfinance institutions started to compete with banks by also offering a broad range of services (loans, savings, transfers, accounts, insurance). This is a frugal innovation (less regulated financial institutions compete with regulated ones at a lower cost). Meanwhile, mobile payment revolution has been taking place in Africa and other developing regions. This article analyzes these developments and suggests that these new financial technologies contribute substantially to the 4th industrial revolution in the third world countries. Financial resources that become more available replaces development initiatives and allows developing countries finance industrial and agricultural revolutions with local money. We will deal in detail with one example – the role of M-Pesa in helping people to be 'financially included' and trying to learn from their experience with customer satisfaction for other countries.
In this paper, the German and Korean trade unions are investigated on their history, unionism and strategies. Through an international comparative study between the two countries, the author attempts to draw applicable implications from German-style unionism unique labor relations for Korean unions and their leaders. During the Weimar Republic, the German labor unions were divided along partisan lines, a situation that led to competition among the socialist, communist, Catholic, and liberal trade associations. After World War II, labor leaders wanted to break from the past, and to form a trade union federation independent of political parties. The result was the establishment of the Federation of German Trade Unions (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund—DGB) in 1949. Four principles guided the founders of the DGB. First, the labor movement wanted representation through an organization that was unitary and autonomous, with no ties to particular religions or political parties. Second, labor leaders decided to organize the unions along with industrial lines so that all workers at one firm would belong to the same union irrespective of their individual occupations. This organizing principle provides unions with greater bargaining power when negotiating with employer associations, because one union represents the entire workforce of an industry. Third, a decentralized system of interest representation was created. Individual unions typically emulate the federal structure, with local, district, state, and national offices. Each level has some input into the shape of union policy. Fourth, the unions chose to rely on legislation for the protection of workers' rights, rather than on direct negotiations with business representatives. German Codetermination Act (Mitbestimmungsgesetz). The act implements the rule of parity (that is, equal representation of shareholders and employees on a supervisory board), especially for German stock corporations, German private limited liability companies and German limited liability partnerships with more than 2,000 employees. The German Codetermination Act was originally highly disputed, but has become an accepted part of corporate Germany in past decades due to attempts to balance the interests of shareholders and employees. ‘Social partnership’ has played a major role to integrate German society, and to alleviate labor disputes after the World War II in Germany. German unionism characterized by codetermination and ‘social partnership’ between the labor and management can shed light on Korea’s future industrial relations. Korea’s union participation rate of 10.2 percent is less than half of what it was in 1989. Among OECD countries, Korean workers’ unionization ranks near bottom. That does not mean that unions do not wield considerable power. Critics accuse union leaders of serving their own interests before those of their workers and undue participation in politics, and say the current setup harms Korea’s business competitiveness. To others, the unions are a necessary counterweight to the power of chaebol and to thank for gains in workers’ rights and working conditions―making the idea of curbing their power ridiculous if not sinister. An important development in Korean unionism after 1987 was the emergence and rise of a movement independent of the officially recognized Federation of Korea Trade Unions. There were many attempts to organize a separate national center by union activists who did not follow FKTU policy lines although Korean law allowed only one national center until 1997. Non-recognized unions formed the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions and the KCTU was officially recognized by the government in 1999.
Purpose-The financial aspect of local government autonomy is considered a very important topic in the public finance literature especially for the developing countries. Fiscal autonomy empowers the local government units with the right means to provide better services for the community and to proper allocate the funds based on the citizens needs. The purpose of this paper is to study the level of financial autonomy in Albanian municipalities and compare the characteristics within different units of local government. Methodology-In this paper we analyze the financial autonomy of Albanian municipalities by proposing an index to compare the governmental units and classify them in four classes according to the degree of autonomy. Seven quantitative indicators are used in the index, with different importance coefficients. Findings-In Albania, while important progress has been made on advancing the decentralization reform in the last decade, autonomy of local government still remains a challenge. Local authorities do not have appropriate financial resources and they are depended on transfers from the central government budget.
This research aims to analyse the degree of fiscal dependence of local government upon the central government in the regency of Mimika, one of Indonesia’s eastern regencies. The ratio of fiscal decentralization is used to calculate the local government’s ability to increase its regional revenue in order to support development initiatives in all sectors (Malmudi, 2010). Secondary data of locally-generated revenue and total revenue from the period 2010-2015 are used to measure the degree of fiscal decentralization. The results show that the degree of fiscal decentralization in the regency remained at a low level, reflected from the average value of 12.92 percent with the highest degree, of 25.09 percent in 2012. An analysis of fiscal decentralization in the period 2010 – 2015, indicates that the regency lacked sufficient fiscal capacity, showing heavy dependence upon financing from the central government. The local government is expected to develop the region’s potentiality through creative efforts within their governmental apparatus to increase local revenues. The funds from the central government could provide a positive contribution if used in the consumption of goods and services that potentially support economic activities.
In the second decade of the 21st century, blockchain definitely became one of the most trending computational technologies. This research aims to question the feasibility and suitability of using blockchain technology within e-voting systems, regarding both technical and non-technical aspects. In today's world, although the course of this spreading is considerably slow, several countries already use means of e-voting due to many social and economic reasons, which we further investigated. Nevertheless, the number of countries offering various e-government solutions, apart from e-voting, is significantly high. E-voting systems, naturally, require much more attention and assurance regarding potential security and anonymity issues, since voting is one of the few extremely critical governmental processes. Nevertheless, e-voting is not purely a governmental service, but many companies and nonprofit organizations would benefit the cost-efficiency, scalability, remote accessibility, and ease of use that it provides. Blockchain technology is claimed to be able to address some, obviously not all, important security concerns, including anonymity, confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation. The analysis results presented in this article mostly confirm these claims.
이 논문에서는 지방교육재정분권의 개념을 정리하고, 세입과 세출 측면에서 현황을 간략하게 살펴본 뒤, 지방교육재정분권을 위한 향후 과제를 제안하였다. 재정분권화는 지방교육자치제도 발전을 위한 핵심요소로서 권한 및 재원의 지방 이양, 지방의 자율성 제고와 더불어 이에 상응하는 책임성이 요구된다. 한국의 지방교육재정은 세입분권 측면에서 이전재원중심의 불안정한 세입구 조를 보이고 있고, 세출분권 측면에서는 중앙의 통제권한과 국가사업수행을 위한 재정지출 과다, 재정운용의 자율성 취약의 특징을 보여준다. 앞으로 지방교육재정의 세입분권 강화를 위해서는 지방교육발전을 위해 필요한 재정 확충, 안정성 강화, 과세자주권 확보가 필요하다. 세출분권 강화를 위해서는 관련정책 결정 및 법령 제·개정시 참여 보장, 재정운용의 자율성 확대, 지방교육자치 제도의 강화가 요청된다. 그리고 책무성 확보를 위해서는 재정관리 역량의 강화와 협력적 거버넌 스의 확대가 병행되어야 한다.In this article, the concept of local education finance decentralization was summarized, and the present situation was briefly reviewed in terms of revenue and expenditure, and the future task for decentralization of local education was proposed. Fiscal decentralization is a key factor for the development of the local education autonomy, which requires the delegation of authority and financial resources, the improvement of local autonomy, and the corresponding accountability. In Korea, the local education finance shows the characteristics of the dependency of transferring resources and the unstable revenue structure in terms of revenue decentralization. And in terms of expenditure decentralization, there is excessive central government control and fiscal expenditure for national projects, and fiscal autonomy is weak. In order to strengthen the decentralization of local education finances, it is necessary to secure stable financial resources for the development of local education, to secure its own resources, to simplify the tax structure and to secure taxation autonomy. In order to strengthen the decentralization of expenditure, it is required to guarantee the participation in decision-making of related policies and regulations, the autonomy of financial management, and the strengthening of local education autonomy. In order to secure accountability, it is necessary to expand cooperative governance and enhance financial management capacity.
Blockchain is a highly popular paradigm for non-centralized applications, especially in finance and trade. Performance is a major challenge for blockchains, since consensus approaches are known not to scale. In this presentation we address blockchain performance, from the perspective of model-based prediction as well as benchmark-based assessment. We present research results about smart contracts in the Ethereum blockchain and discuss the requirements for generic benchmarks for blockchain performance. Benchmarking is a common approach to compare industry-class systems. As blockchain technologies mature, the role of reliable benchmarks will become increasingly important. However, definitions of benchmarks for blockchains are still in their infancy. We argue that there is a clear need for benchmarks, and that benchmarks should be based on the sound scientific principles of metrology [1]. A variety of important performance issues should be addressed, including the performance of the proof (be it work, stake, or other), transaction processing and block creation. Moreover, in all these situations, establishing energy consumption benchmarks is critical in determining if incentives are in place for miners to operate the blockchain system. A particularly interesting element in some blockchains is the mechanism of smart contracts. For instance, in Ethereum, the fees associated with executing contracts depend on the benchmarked performance of the operation code. In [2] it was demonstrated that uncertainty with respect to the correctness of the anticipated execution time impacts the decisions miners will take. We will discuss improved benchmarking approaches for operational code.
Introduction. Blockchain technology is becoming one of the main drivers of innovation in the global economy. Its adoption will have a huge impact on how businesses and governments operate and on the way people organize their everyday lives. Financial services industry is the one experiencing the biggest impact of the blockchain disruption so far, while financial institutions are among the first adopters of the technology. At the same time, being a relatively traditional industry, shipping has not yet seen many use cases with blockchain, but the technology is able to change this industry dramatically. Aim and tasks. As the industries of finance and shipping have huge potential in the blockchain space and often interact, determining how the blockchain technology adoption can influence the industries of finance and shipping in the future was the main purpose of this article. Research results. To fulfill this purpose, it was important to describe the origins of the blockchain technology, its main characteristics, functioning principles and consensus algorithms. Supported by the recent hype, cryptocurrencies are the biggest use case for blockchain so far, therefore, the article analyzes the largest of them, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and some others, as well as the cryptocurrency market as a whole. The level of worldwide adoption of blockchain and the overall market size are defined further in the article. Various applications in finance are also mentioned, paying particular attention to the insurance industry. Based on this information, the key areas in which blockchain can disrupt finance and insurance are identified. As the number of blockchain companies increases rapidly, the two main fundraising channels for such companies, venture capital and initial coin offering, are analyzed and compared. The ways in which blockchain may impact the shipping services industry are identified further. Conclusion. Afterwards, the article describes a number of blockchain consortia formed by public institutions and private entities to research and test possible applications of the technology across various industries and countries. While the potential of blockchain is still largely undiscovered, all the gathered information and performed research help to make a conclusion that the blockchain technology will have a big impact on many different industries, including financial and shipping services. The coming years will definitely see an exponentially growing interest in blockchain in academic and business fields, as the technology becomes more and more mainstream.
In this piece of provocation we focus on the words of people who we view as increasingly powerful institutional actors in the field of organization theory and what they signify about ‘what needs to be done’ and ‘how it needs to be done’ in order to rectify the many failings they identify. We suggest that their actions reflect a desire for an integrated, general theory of organizations and the conception of organization studies as a nomothetic science to which they (and perforce we) are philosophically and ideologically committed. These are seen to be intellectual and ideological forces at work on both sides of the Atlantic. We provide a critique of this emerging orthodoxy within contemporary organization theory, briefly drawing on Swift’s metaphor of Lilliputian ‘big enders’ and ‘little enders’ but also offer contemplation of the architectural metaphors of ‘cathedral’, ‘mystery house’ and ‘the tower of Babel’ (conceived of as ruination) to consider the alternative imaginary edifices that may influence the structure of our studies. Finally, we specify an alternative research agenda for organization theory which focuses upon ‘the organization of destruction’ rather than ‘the organization of production’ or ‘the organization of consumption’. Rather than seeing any contestation of intellectual traditions, analytical frameworks and methodological strategies as mental manacles and shackles which we need to ‘throw off’ to rediscover our true vocation as organization scientists, we contend that organization theory needs to reignite a fierce dialogue over ‘organization’ and its relation to order and disorder that has stretched over, at least, two millennia and still speaks to our lives today and tomorrow.
The review discusses the ideas presented in the book by D. Tapscott and A. Tapscott - specifically, the concept of distributed capitalism allowed for by blockchain technology. The blockchain era is characterized by development of a new institution of trust; disruption of financial intermediation; economic inclusion of hundreds of millions of citizens in developing countries; an increase in competition and a decrease in inequality. The authors see the blockchain revolution as a solution to the problem of discrimination against intellectual property creators, who have to hand over a large part of the value created to intermediaries. They consider the main opposition to distributed capitalism to stem from the feudal financial system which loses ground under new conditions, where economic agents may use alternative currencies and interact directly with each other without risk and high transaction costs.
Cryptocurrency is a form of money that is secured by cryptography, a technology that will keep safe any information from third parties, to pacify the transactions and to control its value over time. Cryptocurrency has no organization or institution who has authority to control it, which makes some people think that it is not safe. Many research has talking about cryptocurrency in its technological side. However, no study has ever been correlating this topic with economic growth. Using panel data regression, this thesis correlating BTC, as the most known and expedienced type of cryptocurrency with GDP as the variable that represent economic growth. It also has 3 other variables as the control variable that will make sure the result to be unbiassed. Those are capital (K), labor (L), and Technology (A), as in the Solow’s growth theory which reviewing growth through its supply side, the input production function. The sample are taken from 5 Asian countries with the highest number of Bitcoin usages (Japan, China, India, Singapore, Indonesia), with period that started from 2011 to 2016. KEYWORDS: Cryptocurrency, economic growth, solow growth model, bitcoin.
There is an absence of a theory explaining the non-structural institutional practice of autonomous regions in Indonesia, which is part of new public management form of decentralization. This has an effect on the increasingly unfamiliar role of civil society combined agencies and governmental elements in order to assist in the delivery of public services. Yet this relatively new institutional model, able to address the issue of substantial democracy in developing countries such as Indonesia, which affects the quality of development of a region. At the praxis level, the increasing variety of challenges both domestically and internationally and the demands of fast-paced and instant society make the central government institutions overwhelmed to answer the various policy issues. What is the role of nonstructural institutions in order to participate in local governance? This research analyzes the role of 3 non-structural institutional in Semarang City such as Semarang City Bureau Management Board, Sima Polder Management Board and Town Planning Development Board of Semarang in local governance through interview, literature study and a series of observations on activities in the three of non-structural institutions during November 2016 until November 2017. The results show that the role of non-structural institutions involving various stakeholders, both civil society elements and government elements, is able to accelerate the process of public participation in the framework of urban development, to present informal communication in the context of the effectiveness of public policy socialization, policy issues that are easily identified and able to present experts who comes from diverse educational backgrounds and experiences to take an active role in providing policy solutions and alternatives. Keyword : Functional decentralization, Substantial Democracy and Non Structural Organization
Davide Frey, Marc X. Makkes, Pierre-Louis Roman, François Taı̈ani · 5 authors
Blockchains have a storage scalability issue. Their size is not bounded and they grow indefinitely as time passes. As of August 2017, the Bitcoin blockchain is about 120 GiB big while it was only 75 GiB in August 2016. To benefit from Bitcoin full security model, a bootstrapping node has to download and verify the entirety of the 120 GiB. This poses a challenge for low-resource devices such as smartphones. Thankfully, an alternative exists for such devices which consists of downloading and verifying just the header of each block. This partial block verification enables devices to reduce their bandwidth requirements from 120 GiB to 35 MiB. However, this drastic decrease comes with a safety cost implied by a partial block verification. In this work, we enable low-resource devices to fully verify subchains of blocks without having to pay the onerous price of a full chain download and verification; a few additional MiB of bandwidth suffice. To do so, we propose the design of diet nodes that can securely query full nodes for shards of the UTXO set, which is needed to perform full block verification and can otherwise only be built by sequentially parsing the chain.
This article presents the formal syntax and semantics for a large subset of the Solidity programming language developed for the Etheruem blockchain platform based on our resent work about developing a general, extensible, and reusable formal memory (GERM) framework and an extension of Curry-Howard isomorphism, denoted as execution-verification isomorphism (EVI). This subset is denoted as Lolisa, which, to our knowledge, is the first mechanized and validated formal syntax and semantics developed for Solidity. The formal syntax of Lolisa adopts a stronger static type system than Solidity for enhanced type safety. In addition, Lolisa not only includes nearly all the syntax components of Solidity, such as mapping, modifier, contract, and address types, but it also contains general-purpose programming language features, such as multiple return values, pointer arithmetic, struct, and field access. Therefore, the inherent compatibility of Lolisa allows Solidity programs to be directly translated into Lolisa with a line-by-line correspondence without rebuilding or abstracting, and, in addition, the inherent generality of Lolisa allows it to be extended to express other programming languages as well. To this end, we also present a preliminary scheme for extending Lolisa to other languages systematically.