Urgency of the research.The competitive position of the national economy depends on the power of human capital, the foundation of which is based on the system of secondary education. The reform of the decentralization of budgetary relations allows the local authorities to influence the financial provision of the Concept of the "New Ukrainian School", based on the needs and interests of each region. Target setting. The concept of the "New Ukrainian School" implies that the distribution of financial resources is based on the principle of "money goes after the child." In September 2018 the elementary school moves to a new content of education and financing. Budget decentralization is a powerful tool for creating a new educational environment. Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. Topics of reforming education and the specifics of its financing were investigated by I. Kohut, O. Kuklin, E. Stadnyi, A. Seitosmanov, L. Tsymbal, O. Fasolya, P. Hobzsey, N. Kholyavko and other scholars. Uninvestigated parts of general matters defining. There is an urgent need to research the regional aspects of financing secondary education in the context of budget decentralization. The research objective. To substantiate the conceptual approaches to financing decentralization of secondary education taking into account regional specificity. The statement of basic materials. Modern theoretical and methodological approaches and analytical materials concerning the reform of secondary education are analyzed. The economic and political preconditions of providing educational reform in conditions of decentralization are showed. Conclusions. The constructive implementation of the decentralization reform of the financing of the secondary education system and the implementation of the concept of the "New Ukrainian School", the transfer of significant powers and budgets from state authorities to local has been proved. The tendency to increase financing of education is revealed and specified directions for improving the provision of educational services.
With the advancements in Internet technologies and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), a new era of the Internet of Things (IoT) is being realized. IoT produces a lot of information which can be used to improve the efficiency of our daily lives and provides advanced services in a wide range of application domains. However, the privacy and the data fusing problems remain major challenges, mainly due to the massive scale and distributed nature of IoT networks and the amount of data collected from IoT increasing at an exponential rate. Thus, a privacy-protected and inter-cloud data fusing platform is needed to the demand for data mining and analytic activities in IoT. In this paper, we propose such a platform based on JointCloud Blockchain and study a novel case of smart traveling based on the proposed platform.
Our paper presents on an information dissemination model for scholars on cryptocurrencies. The objectives are to review the existing information dissemination models, identify known factors influencing information dissemination process, and propose an information dissemination model for scholars on cryptocurrencies. The research questions are on why the epidemic models could be used for understanding cryptocurrencies, what are the known factors influencing the relevant information dissemination model, and how could information spreading model on cryptocurrencies work for scholars. We explored the epidemic models and their influencing factors on cryptocurrencies through a survey of literature. We found that the epidemic model can describe the information spreading for scholars on cryptocurrencies. We have added the activities triggering the S-I-E-R model.
This article studies the emergence of Share&Charge, a German platform that organizes the sharing of charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) and the billing for the energy transactions. Share&Charge follows a peer-to-peer fashion, enabling direct transactions between charging station owners and EV drivers. On the demand side, the platform, with its interactive map, makes it possible for EV owners to find a charging station in the most suitable location, for instance, at their place of work or where they live. On the offer side, Share&Charge enables station operators (private individuals or companies) to rent their charging stations and eventually to sell the electricity they produce. Charging tariffs within the charging station network are determined by the charging station operators themselves, but the platform provides indicative tariffs. Launched in September 2017, Share&Charge follows other initiatives, such as the French platforms Wattpop and ChargeMap, and the Swedish Elbnb. Share&Chargeâs network is already proven to be successful with German citizens. Share&Charge adds certain elements of value at different stages of EV utilization. First, this model allows for a co-financing of charging infrastructures by individuals and businesses in the private sector by sharing the infrastructure costs among EV drivers. Besides the purchase price of EVs, the implementation of charging infrastructures and their financing represent a significant barrier to the rise of e-mobility. Share&Charge helps remove this obstacle without adding a further burden on the governmental budget. In addition, this approach follows the âuser pays principle,â which engages in fair and effective financing. Second, the platform increases decentralized production value and facilitates its expansion. It also helps in avoiding grid congestion and energy loss, as well as increasing flexibility within the electricity market. Third, data use enables the optimization of energy demand and supply, and the optimal determination of tariffs, although these remain facultative. Models like Share&Charge could thus positively impact energy policy by tackling several upcoming obstacles associated with the development of EVs and decentralized energy production capacities. However, new forms of network structures (decentralized networks, sharing economy) and new actors (prosumers, platforms, etc.) also raise regulatory challenges. This article presents some of the legal issues associated with the development of models like Share&Charge. In particular, we study the tax framework applicable to this model, assuming that as such, it would be introduced into the Belgian market.
The radical growth of Bitcoin revolutionized the field of digital currencies by offering a secure replacement for online electronic payments like card payments and Internet banking. Notably, Bitcoin has become popular since it maintains the anonymity of the users and enables peer-to-peer instant payments across the world. It is a decentralized money transfer protocol that does transactions without exposing user credentials and does verifications without any third-party intervention. Though it maintains anonymity, decentralization concept introduced vulnerabilities leading to severe security issues like double spending, block withholding and 51% attacks. These issues necessitate security specific enhancements in Bitcoin protocol. Therefore, this paper proposes a method of incorporating criteria check for miners to participate in mining process and a verification process to join the mining pool. The proposed idea mitigates double spending, block withholding, and 51% attacks. Further, a new approach is proposed namely, refining block creation and verification strategy for improving transaction rate without compromising security.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
JointCloud is a new generation of cloud computing model which facilitates developers to customize cloud services. JCLedger is a blockchain based distributed ledger for JointCloud computing which can make cloud resources exchange more reliable and convenient, and it is the combination of JointCloud and BlockChain. One of the most important elements for creating JCLedger is the consensus algorithm. PoW (Proof of Work) is the consensus algorithm for Bitcoin, which is proved to be quite safe but needs much computing power. The original PoW is not suitable for JCLedger because the identities of participants are not equal in computing power, which may lead to accounting monopoly, and the throughput cannot satisfy the requirement of the massive and high-frequency transactions in JointCloud. In this paper, we propose a PoW based consensus algorithm called Proof of Participation and Fees (PoPF), which can save much computing power and handled transactions more efficiently for JCLedger. In our design, only the candidates have the opportunities for mining and the candidates are chosen according to the ranking which is determined by two factors: the times of the participant to be the accountant and the fees the participant has paid. The difficulty for candidates of solving the PoW hash puzzle is different (the higher ranking means easier for mining). The simulation experiment shows that the distribution of accountants is well-balanced, that is to say, the unequal computing power of participants in JointCloud is shielded, and all the users who have enough contribution in JCLedger will have the opportunities to be accountants.
In traditional Chinese medicine, the growth situation of the surface of nails reflects the physiological condition of the human body. Diagnosis by nail can effectively predict and prevent disease. Human nails have a high degree of uniqueness, and it can be used for biometric recognition. In this work, microscope sensor was used to capture the clear image and segment the lunula and nail plate effectively through image preprocessing. Fingernailsâ image is managed as the identity authentication. Histogram of oriented gradients and local binary patterns are used to capture the characteristic value. It uses support vector machine and random forest tree for classification. The performance of each feature extraction algorithm was analyzed for the two classifiers and the deep neural network algorithm was used comparatively. Furthermore, the security and privacy of the Internet of Things is still a challenge. This work uses the highly anonymous blockchain technology to effectively protect data privacy and manage each userâs data through the blockchain, in which any change or manipulation can be recorded and tracked, and the data security is improved. Therefore, this article presents a nail analysis management system with the use of microscopy sensor and blockchain.
Higher education governance reform is one of the greatest challenges for post-Soviet countries [1]. This is, in particular, true for Kazakhstan that has launched the State Program for Education Development in 2011 that has prioritized decentralization of higher education institutions (HEIs). According to the recent report of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), it underscored the first positive shifts in the decentralization of Kazakhstani HEIs [2]. This study is aimed to assess the current level of university autonomy of a joint-stock company (JSC) type of HEIs that is chosen due to its unique status. Previously, JSC was a public university but as a result of corporatization, now it is a for-profit organization that accelerates university autonomy of HEIs. Thus, the purpose of the study is to assess the degree of university autonomy at JSC and to define to what extent it is autonomous based on four dimensions of university autonomy (academic, staffing, organizational, and financial autonomy) adapted from the University Autonomy Scorecard II [3].The study employs the sequential mixed methods, where the qualitative data are obtained through the semi-structured interviews with senior administrative and academic staff of JSC involved in financial, academic, staffing, and organizational affairs. Afterwards, the primary data are converted into 0-2,5-5 point scale to obtain numerical scores for each dimension of university autonomy. This has allowed the researcher to compare each dimension of university autonomy against each other and to identify the most autonomous and restricted dimensions of university autonomy. Major findings of the study showed that the most restricted dimensions of university autonomy are financial autonomy (60 per cent) and organizational autonomy (62,5 per cent), whereas academic autonomy (80 per cent) and staffing autonomy (75 per cent) have scored higher. In other words, the relationship between the state and JSC has not changed dramatically after corporatization. Paradoxically, the state regulation still dominates in public funding allocation, and standard financial bylaws still regulate JSC regardless of its for-profit nature. Alternatively, the selection of the executive head of JSC is decided by the Board of Directors which is largely represented by line ministries of JSCs. Therefore, it is essential to allow the private sector to have at least 50 per cent of shares of JSC, which will increase their engagement in the institutional governance. Additionally, it is crucial to revise state regulations on JSC universities, which are flagship universities in promoting university autonomy in Kazakhstan.References:[1] R. Hartley, M.; Gopaul, B.; Sagintayeva, A.; Apergenova, âLearning autonomy: higher education reform in Kazakhstan,â High. Educ., vol. 72, no. 3, pp. 277â289, 2016.[2] OECD, âHigher Education in Kazakhstan 2017,â Paris: OECD Publishing, 2017.[3] T. Estermann, T. Nokkala, and M. Steinel, âUniversity Autonomy in Europe II. The Scorecard,â Brussels: European University Association, 2011.
Reviews 209 Jamie Dow, Passions & Persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric (Oxford University Press) Oxford & New York, 2015. 248 pp. ISBN9780198716266 Aristotle s Rhetoric has long posed problems of fit, which makes its uptake particularly revealing of the preoccupations that define a historical moment. Where should the Rhetoric be situated in the Corpus Aristotelicuml Is it primarily a practical work in the handbook tradition, or is it supposed to offer a full-blown theory of rhetoric? Should it be approached as a kind of philosophy, or something else entirely, especially since it devotes so much attention to style and passion? Is it even a coherent text to begin with? In his ambitious book, Passions & Persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric, Jamie Dow begins with these basic questions in mind, and he defends a set of interlocking answers that point to the Rhetoric as a serious, philosophical work along the following lines. Aristotle's Rhetoric is primarily a work on argumentation as understood by medieval Arab commentators along with some of our contemporaries including Bumyeat and Allen; it offers a full blown theory of rhetoric opposed to the handbook tradition of Gorgias and Thrasymachus; it is coherent in general and in detail, and it legitimates on philosophical grounds the use of passion in rhetoric. Thus, Dow's project also speaks to our historical momentâbroadly postwarâwhen passions in political life became suspect for good reasons. Few will agree with all of the key claims as laid out by Dow or with each of the demonstrations offered. But it is an outstanding virtue of the book that Dow defends each claim with such care that even objections can be sharpened productively. In what follows, I outline the main arguments and what appears to be at stake. The first page offers the basic argument and a sense of the imperatives that make Dow's book bracing. "The principal claim defended in this book is that, for Aristotle in the Rhetoric, arousing the passions of others can amount to giving them proper grounds for conviction, and hence a skill in doing so is properly part of an expertise in rhetoric. This claim rests on two principal foundations. First, it involves defending the attribution to Aristotle of a norma tive view of rhetoric, centered around its role in the state, in which rhetoric is a skill producing proper grounds for conviction. If the arousal of the passions is part of rhetoric, thus understood, Aristotle must hold, second, a particular view of the passions: he must think they are representational states, in which the subject takes things to be the way they are represented" (p. 1). First Foundation I: this normative view, according to Dow, contrasts sharply with the merely practical understanding of rhetoric held by his pre decessors in the handbook tradition, and it diverges from the Platonic expectation that the orator needs to know the truth about the subject matter. Instead, according to Dow, Aristotle's orator should skillfully grasp plausi ble starting points for the listener's deliberations in the form of reputable opinions" (endoxa) related to the subject at hand (pp- 34â5). So how exactly is the rhetor obligated, and why isn't this obligation arbitrary? Here Dow is careful not to invoke some higher ethical principle. The obligation of the 210 RHETORICA rhetor remains immanent to the skill itself, as it becomes manifest in the context of the state organized along participatory lines. That is to say, rhetoric is by virtue of the world in which it appears as suchâoriginally in the lawcourts and in the political assembly (p. 9). Understood at the most basic level, a rhetor should exercise skill precisely where the subject at hand speaks to the commonplaces and reputable opinions anchored in the state thus consti tuted. This is an important point that Dow wishes to extend beyond Aristotle per se: rhetorical skill has wide value and it must be measured as such (p. 76). Hence Dow gives us an ethos-proof like this: "they believe the things Pericles has said, because they believe Periclesâhe himself is what is pistos" (p. 98). And then more formally this example of a pathos-proof: "1.1 register evidence...
Rhetoric and Communication Studies
Classical Philosophy and Thought
Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
Several years after the inception of the most dominant cryptocurrency, bitcoin, the European Central Bank in 2015 indicated the need for establishing legal clarity by relevant authorities through explaining how the current legal framework applies to cryptocurrencies. Three years later, no meaningful step has been taken by any of the European Union (EU) institutions including the parliament. By examining the EUâs legal framework governing payments services, including the Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) Regulation, the Electronic Money Directive, the Payment Services Directive and the proposed AML/CTF Directive, this article concludes that (a) because the existing payment services laws apply to payments effected in currencies (legal tenders) and cryptocurrencies are not defined as currencies under the EU law or the laws of member states, they do not cover cryptocurrencies. It also argues that it is impossible to design sui generis payments services law for cryptocurrencies without curbing their essential features, especially decentralization. Lastly, the article proposes centralization and the creation of state cryptocurrency as possible solutions moving forward and examines their strengths and challenges.
Abstract The present paper describes the trajectory of China's fiscal and tax reform in the past 40 years, which can be summarized in five phases. The reform commenced with âdecentralizing power and transferring benefits.â Then, under great fiscal pressure, institutional reform was instigated, which aimed to establish a new fiscal and tax system. To regulate the government revenue and expenditure beyond the fiscal and tax system, reforms were put in place to build an institutional framework for public finance. As the fiscal and tax reform had gradually entered the more sophisticated phases, China took a series of measures to further improve the public finance system. Since 2012, based on the overall plan of comprehensively deepening reform, China has embarked on establishing a modern public finance system. The present paper characterizes China's fiscal and tax reform as gradually moving toward a system that aligns with the overall reform and complements the goal of marketization and modernization of state governance.
Since its independence the Republic of Croatia has commenced a thorough reconstruction of its taxation system according to the market economy taxation policy. Essential taxation reforms have brought the system closer to EU systems i.e. it has been being harmonized with taxation systems of developed European countries. The Republic of Croatia has adopted solutions that are used by the majority of European countries. Current tax system of the Republic of Croatia can be viewed through three fiscal levels, but this paper deals with decentralization and revenue, especially tax revenue of local and regional self-government units. The paper will present importance and a way of collecting revenue, especially tax revenue and satisfying public needs in terms of counties, cities and municipalities. The local and central characteristics of the certain types of taxes and the specialities thereof, as well as the applied functional differences are also scrutinized, and a widely accepted opinion of the taxpayers is explained. Taking these into account, the scientific contribution of this paper is that it provides a basis for further research on tax system development.
Blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen significant adoption in the past few years and show promise to design applications without any centralized reliance on third parties. In this paper, we present Endolith, an auditing framework for verifying file integrity and tracking file history without third party reliance using a smart contract-based blockchain. Annotated files are continuously monitored and metadata about changes including file hashes are stored tamper-proof on the blockchain. Based on this, Endolith can prove that a file stored a long time ago has not been changed without authorization or, if it did, track when it has changed, by whom. Endolith implementation is based on Ethereum and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). Our evaluation on a public blockchain network shows that Endolith is efficient for files that are infrequently modified but often accessed, which are common characteristics of data archives.
Blockchain is a distributed ledger system based on P2P network and originally used for a crypto currency system. The P2P network of Blockchain is maintained by full nodes which are in charge of verifying all the transactions in the network. However, most Blockchain user nodes do not act as full nodes, because workload of full nodes is quite high for personal mobile devices. Blockchain search queries, such as confirming balance, transaction contents, and transaction histories, from many users go to the full nodes. As a result, search throughput of full nodes would be a new bottleneck of Blockchain system, because the number of full nodes is less than the number of users of Blockchain systems. In this paper, we propose an acceleration method of Blockchain search using GPUs. More specifically, we introduce an array-based Patricia tree structure suitable for GPU processing so that we can make effective use of Blockchain feature that there are no update and delete queries. In the evaluations, the proposed method is compared with an existing GPU-based key-value search and a conventional CPU-based search in terms of the throughput of Blockchain key search. As a result, the throughput of our proposal is 3.4 times higher than that of the existing GPU-based search and 14.1 times higher than that of the CPU search when the number of keys is 80 Ă2^20 and the key length is 256-bit in Blockchain search queries.
In this article, the author tracks developments in bitcoin trading and considers regulatory responses. 2017 has witnessed a so-called bitcoin bubble, as entrepreneurs and professional investors rushed into the market to take a bet on the upcoming cryptocurrency age. The price of a bitcoin exceeded $19,300 in December 2017, worth only $0.06 in July 2010. The popularity of bitcoin mining and trading activities has raised legal and regulatory concerns pertaining to anti-money laundering, evasion of forex regulations, the illegal fundraising of start-ups by Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), as well as a potential financial crisis. Global financial regulators have acted proactively to regulate bitcoin. Most recently, China, once accounting for 90% of bitcoin trading volume, issued an immediate ban of ICOs and ordered the reorganisation of three major bitcoin exchanges: OKCoin, Huobi and BTCC. Over-The-Counter (OTC) transactions have not been affected. Financial authorities in certain countries have been testing state-backed cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies have transpired as one of the trending financial software systems. They depend on a secure and consigned ledger data structure; mining being an indispensable part of such systems. Mining reconsiliates records of past transactions to the distributed register known as the Blockchain, that allows users to reach secure, robust and concord for each transaction. Mining also introduces wealth in the form of new units of currency named as âbitcoinsâ. Cryptocurrencies lack a central delegate or authority to mediate transactions because they were designed as peer to-peer end sub-systems. They rely on miners to validate and scrutinize their transactions. Hence Cryptocurrencies require a strong, secure mining algorithms. In this article we survey, compare and contrast the current mining techniques as used by major Cryptocurrencies. We scrutinize the strengths, weaknesses, and possible threats to mining strategy. Overall, a perspective on how Cryptocurrencies mine the datasets, where they have comparable performance and assurance, and where they have unique threats and strengths are outlined.
This paper reviews the technical, economic and legal aspects underlying cryptocurrencies â the native digital assets that form the basis of an open public blockchain infrastructure. This structure is then extended to discuss secondary tokens, where blockchains can be leveraged to issue, register and settle digital assets that may represent securities, private forms of money or other property rights. The viability, complexities and limitations of such models are reviewed with the purpose of providing the reader with a strong foundation for deeper exploration of this complex and emerging field.
Jieying Chen, Xiaofeng Ma, Du Mingxiao, Zhuping Wang
Medical information are private and medical data are valuable for medical research. Medical information sharing is challenging as the data might be manipulated improperly and revealed during the whole operational process. Medical institutions need shared information for scientific research and develop, on the contrary, privacy issue inhibits the sharing process. In this paper, a new business process and a novel architecture for medical information sharing based on blockchain are proposed. Exploiting the advantage of blockchain in recording transactions, information can be shared and verified among parties like a distributed ledger. On the other hand, medical information can be shared securely between users without an intermediary. The main benefit is that both the information and the traces of the transaction can be distributed stored which avoid manipulation and fraud. Consequently, the value of information can be fully utilized.
This paper explores the design of a robot and interaction model that enables a robot to engage in human-like financial transactions, and to enter into agreements with a human counterpart. More explicitly, (1) we bestow the agent with a cryptocurrency wallet and (2) define bilateral and multilateral agreements that can be automated as smart contracts in a distributed ledger. As a use case of a robot with such features, we describe roBU - a traveling robot, that can enter into financial agreements in exchange for assistance in traveling the world. With this effort, we expect to validate the idea of near-future scenarios where autonomous or semi-autonomous agents are endowed with, a type of, social autonomy and the ability to engage in financial transactions. We believe the latter can improve task completion and enable further exploration of robot-human relationships, dependencies and trust.
I would like to jump on the blockchain bandwagon. I would like to be able to say that blockchain is the solution to the longstanding problem of secure identity on the Internet. I would like to say that everyone in the world will soon have a digital identity. Put yourself on the blockchain and never again ask yourself, Who am I? - you are your blockchain address.
Leopoldo Catania, Stefano Grassi, Francesco Ravazzolo
This paper studies the predictability of cryptocurrencies time series. We compare several alternative univariate and multivariate models in point and density forecasting of four of the most capitalized series: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple and Ethereum. We apply a set of cryptoâpredictors and rely on Dynamic Model Averaging to combine a large set of univariate Dynamic Linear Models and several multivariate Vector Autoregressive models with different forms of time variation. We find statistical significant improvements in point forecasting when using combinations of univariate models and in density forecasting when relying on selection of multivariate models.
Mareena Fernandes, Saloni Khanna, Leandra Monteiro, Anu Thomas ¡ 5 authors
Advancement in technological developments introduced virtual currency exchange methods viz Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and so on which are evolving rapidly. Cryptocurrencies were introduced to eliminate financial intermediaries leading to direct peer-to-peer transactions. With the spread of the global Coronavirus pandemic, the relationship between Bitcoin and the equity market has expanded. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile but can also prove to be good investments. Cryptocurrency, being a novel technique for transaction systems, has led to a lot of confusion among investors and any rumours or news on social media has been claimed to significantly affect the prices of cryptocurrencies. The huge percentage increase/decrease in Bitcoin's price over a short period of time is an intriguing phenomenon that cannot be foreseen. For a long time, bitcoin price prediction has been a hot topic of study.In this paper, we discuss the implementation and results of the Deep Learning Bitcoin Price Prediction Model and prepare a strategy to maximize gains for investors. The paper covers to framework with a set of deep learning models, analysis methods with a fixed set of factors to predict daily Bitcoin prices and design-integration of price prediction of different cryptocurrencies using RNN (Recurrent Neural Network), LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) and GRU (Gated recurrent units). The idea of incorporating Public Sentiment in the prediction of the hikes and falls of the Bitcoin market from Social Media platforms like Reddit and Twitter leading to meaningful predicted results. This prediction can bring confidence to the common man to invest with lesser risk and more profit. Also, this can enable the digital new-age currency to become a primary method of transaction.