Blockchain Papers

David A. Hensher

No abstract is available for this record.

Areej M. Abduldaim, Ahmed M. Ajaj

Authentication is a process by whichaparty (could be a person or intended computer) establishes its identity to another party. In private and public communication channels including the Internet, authentication is usually done via the use of login passwords. Knowing of the password is supposed to guarantee that the user is authentic. Online business and many other deals need a stricter authentication procedure. With this type of protocols, many cryptographic operations, such as; authentication, identification, key exchange, etc. are implemented without presenting any secret information through the commination process. In this article, a novel approach for zero knowledge protocol is proposed using different perspective. The category of ring theory is adopted to design a new algorithm for zero knowledge proof using the π-Armendariz rings. The key idea of our algebraic zero knowledge protocol is the condition in the definition of this ring, in addition to its the properties. The proposed approach used a secret polynomial whose coefficients are in a π-Armendariz ring, this polynomial is kept by the prover and the algebraic zero knowledge protocol does not reveal any information about the polynomial.

Olga Gouveia, Enestor Dos Santos, Santiago Fernández de Lis, Alejandro Neut · 5 authors

Distributed ledgers are a technology that can support a digitized version of cash while potentially withholding its four major features: universality, anonymity, peer-to-peer exchangeability (P2P) and a constant nominal value.

Carlos Pérez-Leguízamo, Juan Sebastian Guadalupe Godinez-Borja

Services Oriented Architectures (SOA) represents a new model in the traditional way of designing systems because it is constructed around individual processes of different areas in an organization. In recent years, the necessity to integrate critical applications in a SOA has increased, that is the case of the Financial Applications. These applications require high reliability, information consistency and timeliness that are not satisfied by conventional SOA infrastructures. In this article we present a novel approach of combining SOA with Autonomous Decentralized Systems (ADS) in order to provide an infrastructure that can satisfy those requirements. We have named this infrastructure Autonomous Decentralized Service Oriented Architecture (ADSOA). We present the concept and architecture of ADSOA, as well as the basic technologies for its realization. Moreover, a real implementation in a mission critical banking transaction processing system is shown in order to prove its effectiveness.

Ruzhi Xu, Lu Zhang, Huawei Zhao, Yün Peng

There exist many unsolved problems in the traditional digital rights management of network media. For example, in the traditional management system it is hard to guarantee the quality of media works, to protect the copyrights, to find the effective profit model and so on. To solve these problems, we propose in this paper a network media's digital rights management scheme based on blockchain. Blockchain is a technology that makes use of cryptographic algorithm, hash chains and consensus mechanism to implement consensus, irreversibility and traceability for online data. The proposed scheme can use these functionalities of blockchain to implement the effective production management, copyright management, transaction management and users' behavior management for network media. Furthermore, our proposed scheme can predictively provide an important support for the network media platform to build a sustainable development of benign ecological environment.

Mohd. Yatim Abdul Fattah

No abstract is available for this record.

Tyrone Canaday

Payment services are in the frontline of the ongoing digital technology revolution. Financial technology (FinTech) companies are breaking boundaries and offering services such as digital cash, cognitive systems and distributed ledger technology to offer customers a more streamlined, user-friendly and cost-effective experience. Some traditional financial institutions are partnering with FinTech firms in an effort to be part of the digital revolution rather than be left behind. But such partnerships and experiments with financial technology products and services need to be managed carefully. This article discusses the current and future state of the payments innovation environment, key change drivers, disruptors, and considerations for a strategic transformative journey which balances speed of innovation with risk.

Huawei Zhao, Yong Zhang, Yün Peng, Ruzhi Xu

Blockchain is a technology of recording ledgers in a distributed manner. It uses a consensus mechanism, digital signature and hash chains to realize the reliable storage of ledgers, and provide services such as traceability, integrity and no-repudiation for transactions in ledgers in a decentralized way. These services make blockchain have great application potentiality in the fields of healthcare, Fintech, computational law and so on. Before wide spreading its applications, blockchain must solve problems such as efficiency and privacy. Among these problems the privacy is an important one. Because blocks on blockchain are open, when transactions in blocks involve privacy data, these data can be leaked. Thus, certain security mechanisms must be built to protect privacy data. The core of these mechanisms is the appropriate key management schemes. However, blockchain is a developing technology, and few studies have been done on key management schemes for it. Because healthcare is a big application scenario of blockchain, in this paper, according to the features of health blockchain, we use body sensor network to design a lightweight backup and efficient recovery scheme for keys of health blockchain. Analyses show that the scheme has high security and performance, and it can be used to protect privacy messages on health blockchain effectively and to promote the application of health blockchain.

Florian Kammueller, Manfred Kerber, Christian W. Probst

This paper applies machine assisted formal methods to explore insider threats for auctions. Auction systems, like eBay, are an important problem domain for formal analysis because they challenge modelling concepts as well as analysis methods. We use machine assisted formal modelling and proof in Isabelle to demonstrate how security and privacy goals of auction protocols can be formally verified. Applying the costly scrutiny of formal methods is justified for auctions since privacy and trust are prominent issues and auctions are sometimes designed for one-off occasions where high bids are at stake. For example, when radio wave frequencies are on sale, auctions are especially created for just one occasion where fair and consistent behaviour is required. Investigating the threats in auctions and insider collusions, we model and analyze auction protocols for insider threats using the interactive theorem prover Isabelle. We use the existing example of a fictitious cocaine auction protocol from the literature to develop and illustrate our approach. Combining the Isabelle Insider framework with the inductive approach to verifying security protocols in Isabelle, we formalize the cocaine auction protocol, prove that this formal definition excludes sweetheart deals, and also that collusion attacks cannot generally be excluded. The practical implication of the formalization is demonstrated by code generation. Isabelle allows generating code from constructive specifications into the programming language Scala. We provide constructive test functions for cocaine auction traces, prove within Isabelle that these functions conform to the protocol definition, and apply code generation to produce an implementation of the executable test predicate for cocaine auction traces in Scala.

Kazumasa Omote, Makoto Yano

A ledgerLedger can be defined as a “book of permanent record.” With modern information technology, data have become economic resources if they are associated with exclusive owners and put into a ledgerLedger. It is shown in Chaps. 3 and 4 that IoTInternet of Things (IoT) data can be transformed into productive resources while Chaps. 5 and 6 show that transaction data can be turned into money-likeMoney bank deposit currenciesDeposit currency.

Jamal Bouoiyour, Refk Selmi

During times of extreme market turmoil, it is acknowledged that there is a tendency towards "flight to safety". A strong (weak) safe haven is defined as an asset that has a significant positive (negative) return in periods where another asset is in distress, while hedge has to be negatively correlated (uncorrelated) on average. The Bitcoin's surge alongside the aftermath of Trump's win in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections has strengthened its status as the modern safe haven. This paper uses a truly noise-assisted data analysis method, termed as Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition-based approach, to examine whether Bitcoin can act as a hedge and safe haven for U.S. stock price index. The results document that the Bitcoin's safe-haven property is time-varying and that it has primarily been a weak safe haven in the short term and the long-term. We also demonstrate that precious metals lost their safe haven properties over time as the correlation between gold/silver and U.S. stock price declines from short-to long-run horizons.

Kieron O’Hara

Increasingly in e-commerce, smart contracts have relied on the code as the contract. But code can be hacked and fail, leaving multiple parties potentially exposed to legal gray areas, great financial loss, and little recourse. Here, Kieron O'Hara considers the ramifications of such contracts by exploring what happened when the Ethereum platform was hacked in the summer of 2016.

Joerg Osterrieder, Julian Lorenz

We provide an extreme value analysis of the returns of Bitcoin. A particular focus is on the tail risk characteristics and we will provide an in-depth univariate extreme value analysis. Those properties will be compared to the traditional exchange rates of the G10 currencies versus the US dollar. For investors, especially institutional ones, an understanding of the risk characteristics is of utmost importance. So for Bitcoin to become a mainstream investable asset class, studying these properties is necessary. Our findings show that the bitcoin return distribution not only exhibits higher volatility than traditional G10 currencies, but also stronger non-normal characteristics and heavier tails. This has implications for risk management, financial engineering (such as bitcoin derivatives) — both from an investor's as well as from a regulator's point of view. To our knowledge, this is the first detailed study looking at the extreme value behavior of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

Ali Dorri, Salil S. Kanhere, Raja Jurdak, Praveen Gauravaram

Internet of Things (IoT) security and privacy remain a major challenge, mainly due to the massive scale and distributed nature of IoT networks. Blockchain-based approaches provide decentralized security and privacy, yet they involve significant energy, delay, and computational overhead that is not suitable for most resource-constrained IoT devices. In our previous work, we presented a lightweight instantiation of a BC particularly geared for use in IoT by eliminating the Proof of Work (POW) and the concept of coins. Our approach was exemplified in a smart home setting and consists of three main tiers namely: cloud storage, overlay, and smart home. In this paper we delve deeper and outline the various core components and functions of the smart home tier. Each smart home is equipped with an always online, high resource device, known as “miner” that is responsible for handling all communication within and external to the home. The miner also preserves a private and secure BC, used for controlling and auditing communications. We show that our proposed BC-based smart home framework is secure by thoroughly analysing its security with respect to the fundamental security goals of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Finally, we present simulation results to highlight that the overheads (in terms of traffic, processing time and energy consumption) introduced by our approach are insignificant relative to its security and privacy gains.

Lakshmi Prasad. Chinthalapalli, Y. V. Lakshmana Rao

The sustainable development of State requires infrastructure and good governance system i.e. Infrastructure, decentralized administration, digitalization, technology based E-governance; infrastructure finance will help the government of Telangana to attain the new heights of economic growth and development. The development process of Telangana is a better design through T-hub, Policy initiatives and peoples participation.

Willy De Geyndt

No abstract is available for this record.

Tamlyn Eslie Roman, Susan Cleary, Di McIntyre

BACKGROUND: The concept of decision space holds appeal as an approach to disaggregating the elements that may influence decision-making in decentralized systems. This narrative review aims to explore the functioning of decision space and the factors that influence decision space. METHODS: A narrative review of the literature was conducted with searches of online databases and academic journals including PubMed Central, Emerald, Wiley, Science Direct, JSTOR, and Sage. The articles were included in the review based on the criteria that they provided insight into the functioning of decision space either through the explicit application of or reference to decision space, or implicitly through discussion of decision-making related to organizational capacity or accountability mechanisms. RESULTS: The articles included in the review encompass literature related to decentralisation, management and decision space. The majority of the studies utilise qualitative methodologies to assess accountability mechanisms, organisational capacities such as finance, human resources and management, and the extent of decision space. Of the 138 articles retrieved, 76 articles were included in the final review. CONCLUSION: The literature supports Bossert's conceptualization of decision space as being related to organizational capacities and accountability mechanisms. These functions influence the decision space available within decentralized systems. The exact relationship between decision space and financial and human resource capacities needs to be explored in greater detail to determine the potential influence on system functioning.

Kim Kaivanto, Daniel Prince

Fintech business models based on distributed ledgers -- and their smart-contract variants in particular -- offer the prospect of democratizing access to faster, anywhere-accessible, lower cost, reliable-and-secure high-quality financial services. In addition to holding great, economically transformative promise, these business models pose new, little-studied risks and transaction costs. However, these risks and transaction costs are not evident during the demonstration and testing phases of development, when adopters and users are drawn from the community of developers themselves, as well as from among non-programmer fintech evangelists. Hence, when the new risks and transaction costs become manifest -- as the fintech business models are rolled out across the wider economy -- the consequences may also appear to be new and surprising. The present study represents an effort to get ahead of these developments by delineating risks and transaction costs inherent in distributed-ledger- and smart-contracts-based fintech business models. The analysis focuses on code risk and moral-hazard risk, as well as on mixed-economy risks and the unintended consequences of replicating bricks-and-mortar-generation contract forms within the ultra-low transaction-cost environment of fintech.

Stanislav Ponomarev, A. E. Voronkov

Multi-agents systems communication is a technology, which provides a way for multiple interacting intelligent agents to communicate with each other and with environment. Multiple-agent systems are used to solve problems that are difficult for solving by individual agent. Multiple-agent communication technologies can be used for management and organization of computing fog and act as a global, distributed operating system. In present publication we suggest technology, which combines decentralized P2P BOINC general-purpose computing tasks distribution, multiple-agents communication protocol and smart-contract based rewards, powered by Ethereum blockchain. Such system can be used as distributed P2P computing power market, protected from any central authority. Such decentralized market can further be updated to system, which learns the most efficient way for software-hardware combinations usage and optimization. Once system learns to optimize software-hardware efficiency it can be updated to general-purpose distributed intelligence, which acts as combination of single-purpose AI.

Frank W. Garrison, Valorie Dearmon, Rebecca Graves

FigureA nursing shortage, whether at the individual market level or the national level, profoundly impacts healthcare delivery.1 Nurse administrators continually seek ways to address nursing shortages by attracting new nurses to the profession and supporting their success as novice practitioners. Nurse residency programs (NRPs) are commonly employed to develop and support new graduate RNs (NGRNs), reducing vacancy and turnover.2-4 Putting an effective NRP into practice can be challenging in any setting, but particularly so for smaller hospitals where resources are seriously limited. In 2015, our 100-bed community hospital hurriedly implemented an NRP to address the facility's critical nursing shortage. Predictably, we identified opportunities for improvement of the newly developed NRP soon after implementation. Here, we explain how we optimized our NRP at minimal cost to achieve sustained improvements in nursing vacancy and turnover. A quick fix Our hospital implemented its original NRP in response to a 2014 nursing vacancy rate of 17% and a turnover rate of 37%. We needed a solution to provide immediate relief from our nursing shortage, but a policy was in place that prohibited hiring nurses with less than 2 years of experience. The CNO and management team decided to revise the policy to allow the hiring of NGRNs contingent on their completion of an NRP, which the hospital quickly developed and implemented. Although the NRP brought significant relief to the nursing vacancy crisis, the CNO and nurse managers feared that the program was only a quick fix. They wanted to replace it with a well-developed and evidence-based solution able to sustain vacancy reduction and prevent future turnover. For the NRP to be most effective, the team believed that it needed greater emphasis on competence development of NGRNs and preceptors alike to support the hospital's mission of excellence. However, with substantial capital already invested—approximately $20,000 per NGRN over traditional orientation, predominantly for salary dollars—requesting further funds to enhance the NRP presented a challenge. Identifying best practices The CNO and project team, which included nurse managers, nurse educators, and recent graduates from the hospital's NRP, conducted a comprehensive literature review to identify NRP best practices. The use of NRPs to improve competence and reduce vacancy and turnover is well documented in the literature, but program variations make it difficult to define best-practice strategies.4,5 Agencies such as the American Association of Colleges of Nursing have established guidelines for NRPs, and accreditation status is awarded for a fee to organizations meeting the established guidelines.6 However, as with our organization, resource limitations prevent some facilities from seeking accreditation. Nonetheless, criteria found within the accreditation standards underscore best practices and can guide the selection of evidence-based strategies within the context and constraints of any organization. Our literature review identified that competent preceptors are essential to NGRN development.2,7 The preceptor-NGRN bond is vital to NGRN confidence and skill building.8 Effective preceptors possess clinical expertise combined with the knowledge and ability to facilitate another's competence.2,7 Interprofessional collaboration is also key to NGRN success.9,10 Engaging NGRNs in collaborative work promotes decision making, confidence, and communication.9-11 Simulation can facilitate competence and help develop collaborative skills.8,9,12 It allows novice nurses to practice skills without fear or risk of hurting patients, honing critical-thinking and decision-making abilities.12-14 A recent landmark study validated the effectiveness of high-fidelity simulation as a substitute for up to half of traditional clinical hours for nursing students.14 Lastly, studies repeatedly find that socialization and long-term support are vital to NGRN competence, retention, and professional commitment.2,5,7 Other strategies, such as extending the duration of NRP class time, are recommended, but these were eliminated by our team due to prohibitive cost. The project team carefully examined the evidence and selected best practices appropriate to our setting and circumstances. Three measurable objectives guided NRP improvement: 1) increase NGRN competence through practical skill-building methods; 2) increase preceptor competence, with NGRN competence correlating with preceptors' teaching and mentoring skills; and 3) develop a social and professional support system for NGRNs to promote competence and foster professional and organizational loyalty. Getting to work The project team formalized the competence development plan, obtained institutional review board approval, and set out to implement the NRP improvements for an incoming 2016 class of NGRNs (N = 6). The team began the implementation process by partnering with a local university's school of nursing for simulation lab use with faculty instruction. Next, the team purchased validated assessment tools from a national company for NGRN and preceptor pre- and posttraining competence assessment. The instruments consisted of an NGRN clinical competence assessment tool and a preceptor clinical and precepting competence tool. Assessment findings were analyzed by the contracted company, providing detailed reporting of each individual's strengths and weaknesses. A group of seven preceptor nurses within the facility completed the nurse preceptor competence assessments; the project team used the assessment results to tailor the preceptors' education to areas of needed improvement. The hospital hadn't previously assessed preceptor competence, and the new approach allowed for customized education to improve preceptors' abilities. The hospital's education department conducted the training; afterward, the preceptors took a posttraining assessment. During the course of the project, three of the preceptors had to be replaced due to unforeseen circumstances. The substitute preceptors received training but weren't in the initial preassessment group, so only the assessments of the remaining four preceptors from the original group were considered as part of the study results. The costs for assessments for both the preceptors and NGRNs were minimal, as shown in Table 1.Table 1:: Annual NRP improvement project expensesThe enhanced NRP commenced a few weeks after the preceptors completed training. Each of the six NGRNs took nationally validated NGRN-specific nursing competence assessments aligned to clinical specialty areas of interest to establish pre- and posttraining competence; three of the six NGRNs took an additional pre- and posttraining competence assessment necessary for the combined clinical focus of their selected department. The NGRNs completed an initial hospital orientation and then began the competence development curriculum consisting of simulation lab training, didactic interprofessional collaboration training, preceptor-guided nursing shifts, and social and professional support group meetings. (See Table 2.) Many of the simulation scenarios and the didactic interprofessional collaboration lessons were based on findings from the NGRNs' baseline competence assessments and feedback from the hospital's recent NRP graduates. The project team analyzed this information to identify areas of needed improvement and allocated didactic instruction time accordingly to those areas.Table 2:: NGRN competence development curriculum examplesCollaborative skills were practiced during interprofessional simulation scenarios. Furthermore, numerous NGRN classes were taught by various hospital leaders, again focusing on improvement areas identified from the baseline assessments and the previous NRP class feedback. Class time included a variety of role-play scenarios, allowing the NGRNs to practice the skills necessary to communicate accurately, effectively, and collaboratively. Faculty from the nursing school also taught classes on time management skills and the impact of effective collaboration on overall time management. The NGRNs worked scheduled shifts to care for patients under the direction and guidance of their preceptors, observing and/or participating in all nursing activities, including multidisciplinary rounds. As the NRP progressed, the amount of nursing work performed independently by the NGRNs increased steadily as preceptors observed improvement in the NGRNs' skills and readiness. The importance of socialization and professional support to the NGRNs' success can't be understated. Providing social and professional support requires a time investment as opposed to capital. During each NRP class day, a 1-hour catered lunch was scheduled as social and professional support time. Some of these lunch meetings focused on strengthening NGRN peer relationships, whereas others included preceptors and managers for fostering social and professional networks outside of the NGRNs' peer group. When the didactic portion of the NRP was complete, the social and professional functions were changed to a breakfast meeting at morning shift change. The breakfast meetings continue for a full year to provide time for NGRNs to engage with each other, their preceptors, the CNO, and other nurse leaders by asking questions, resolving challenges, making suggestions, and sharing successes in their transition to professional practice. Success! The project was an enormous success from the perspective of the project team and hospital administration. The best practices integrated into the existing NRP markedly strengthened the program. Incorporating simulation lab training was highly valuable, but even more efficacious was the relationship between our hospital and the university. Developing the infrastructure for the partnership between the hospital and university required a significant time commitment for both parties because a number of meetings were required to understand each other's needs and goals. As the parties grew to understand what each had to offer, a mutually beneficial contractual agreement for simulation training was formalized. The contract established a partnership with the school for use of its high-fidelity simulation lab and faculty instruction in the lab to facilitate NGRN skill building. The fees for simulation training required an investment that was significant to the hospital's budget, but the resulting partnership between the hospital and university was well worth it. The relationship helped meet the hospital's need for nursing staff and the school's need for NGRN placement in the workforce. Faculty also volunteered a significant amount of time, at no additional cost to the hospital, to assist the project team in educating the NGRNs during the NRP didactic class times. The partnership led to an agreement for the school's family NP students to perform clinical rotations in the hospital and its clinics, and for the hospital to be the school's sole provider for women's services clinical rotations. The relationship even resulted in the CNO's placement on a university advisory council. Competence assessment data also revealed project success. Pre- and posttraining assessment data were analyzed using statistics software. Measures of central tendency and variance were evaluated and, because of the normal distribution of all variables, differences in the means were analyzed by paired-samples t tests. The itemized score reports from the preceptors' initial competence assessments revealed opportunities for improvement in the areas of communication, critical thinking and problem solving, and orientation plans. The competence assessment group mean score for the four preceptors who participated in the entire project increased from a pretraining score of 77.00 (SD = 2.94) to a posttraining score of 79.00 (SD = 4.55); however, statistical significance wasn't found (t(3) = -.608, P = .586). Also, the reassessment itemized score reports for the individual preceptors revealed an improvement in the pre- and posttraining mean score in the three identified areas of need. Similarly, the NGRN competence development curriculum, as informed by the NGRNs' baseline assessments and feedback from the hospital's recent NRP graduates, led to improved NGRN competence. The posttraining assessments demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in overall NGRN competence. The mean for the nine baseline tests was 72.11 (SD = 6.03) and for the nine reassessment tests, 81.22 (SD = 3.59). A significant increase from the baseline assessment to the reassessment was found (t(8) = -3.833, P = .005). The NGRNs also completed the Casey-Fink Graduate Nurse Experience Survey at the end of didactic training. The Casey-Fink survey is a valid and reliable self-assessment of NGRN competence, with content validity established by expert review and a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.89 after repeated measures.15,16 The survey findings provided additional insight into project effectiveness by revealing the NGRNs' self-perceptions of nursing competence after the NRP. For example, in the 24-question Likert scale portion of the survey, 83.3% of the responses from the six NGRNs demonstrated a favorable view of the transition experience. The survey results were also useful in departmental placement of the NGRNs at the end of didactic training and for planning additional education for individual NGRNs in areas of self-perceived need. The hospital's nursing vacancy continued to improve during the enhanced NRP. The current vacancy rate dropped from 17% at the end of 2014 to 7.5% by mid-2016, and that reduction has occurred even as the hospital has increased nursing positions by 20% to account for growth since the inception of the NRP. The vacancy rate is impacted by a variety of factors; implementation of an NRP is one such factor. In our case, the NRP resulted in an impactful reduction in vacancies. Although the small cohort size for the NRP improvement project limits the generalizability of our study, the improvements significantly increased NGRN competence, which has been linked to increased retention.3 Whether improvements in the NRP will impact nurse retention and sustain lower vacancy rates downstream is yet to be determined, but early findings are promising. In summary, at the onset of the NRP, a valuable partnership was established benefitting all parties involved. Areas of preceptor weakness were identified and successfully addressed in preparation for the NRP, although the improvement in preceptor competence wasn't statistically significant. However, NGRN competence did significantly improve from baseline after the NRP. The Casey-Fink survey indicated a favorable view of the NGRNs' transition experience and identified areas to target individualized education going forward. Finally, the facility's nursing vacancy rate improved, decreasing by more than half. In progress The costs of implementing and operating an NRP are considerable, but the expenses required to make impactful best-practice improvements to an existing NRP are far less substantial. With the exception of the simulation lab fees, the overall costs of the improvement project were minimal. Although simulation added to the costs, the long-term benefits of the relationship between the hospital and university, along with improved NGRN competence, were deemed a solid return on investment. The expense for the competence assessment tools and analysis of findings wasn't an additional cost to the improvement project because our parent company was already requiring us to use an outside company to measure new employee competence. A hospital interested in NGRN competence assessment but lacking the resources to engage an outside company can use other assessment instruments free of charge, such as the Casey-Fink survey or an internally developed tool. Nurse leaders in community hospitals with limited capital for NGRN recruitment and retention need to evaluate the in-house resources available to support NGRNs and strategize ways to optimize those resources. For example, the project team realized that a tactic as simple as involving various hospital departments in NGRNs' education can improve their interdepartmental knowledge and collaboration. We also learned that purposefully designed social and professional support activities are a far more productive use of lunch and breakfast hours than unstructured break times. Nurse leaders also need to consider looking beyond the four walls of the hospital for any available resources.7 Not every community hospital has access to a nearby university or nursing school, but other community resources may be available. For example, a long-term acute care facility may be willing to conduct educational in-services for NGRNs on how the facilities work collaboratively for safe care transitions. Learning from and partnering with sister hospitals can also serve as an excellent NRP improvement resource. Perhaps partnering with a sister hospital can allow for specialty training of NGRNs that one facility's NRP isn't equipped to provide. Even pharmaceutical and medical representatives may be willing to provide in-services on medications and equipment to increase NGRNs' knowledge about the nursing care they provide and further their understanding of how hospitals work with these entities. By identifying both the internal and external resources available, hospitals with limited capital to direct toward recruitment and retention of NGRNs can work smarter to increase nursing competence and support long-term retention.

Muhamad Ardhinata Juari, Supeno Djanali, Hudan Studiawan

Sistem pemungutan suara di Indonesia yang lebih dikenal dengan nama pemilihan umum (pemilu) sampai saat ini masih dilaksanakan secara manual. Dalam sistem tersebut, dibutuhkan waktu yang lama serta tenaga yang besar untuk menghitung hasil dari pemlihan umum tersebut. Sistem manual juga memiliki banyak kelemahan yang bisa dimanfaatkan oleh pihak tertentu untuk memanipulasi hasil pemilihan umum . Untuk mengatasi masalah ini, salah satu solusinya adalah dengan menerapkan sistem pemilihan umum dengan sistem berbasis perangkat elektronik yang lebih dikenal dengan istilah E-Vote . Berbagai macam metode telah diterapkan dalam sistem E-Vote untuk mengatasi kecurangan, salah satunya dengan menggunakan sistem enkripsi-dekripsi data dari pemilih ke sistem. Namun hal ini kurang efektif apabila kecurangan terjadi ketika data sudah dirubah sebelum masuk ke sistem. Dengan menerapkan mekanisme rantai kepercayaan (chain of trust) untuk mendeteksi adanya perubahan surat suara serta sistem autentikasi digital, mekanisme keamanan bagi peserta pemungutan suara bisa diwujudkan. Proses autentikasi digital menggunakan ponsel pintar dengan teknologi NFC dipadukan dengan sistem enkripsi asimetris dan digital signature . Pemilih bisa mendeteksi adanya perubahan surat suara melalui digital signature yang ada dan sistem E-Vote bisa mengenali peserta dari kunci publik yang ditawarkan oleh autentikator. Kemudian sistem E-Vote bisa memverifikasi keaslian kunci publik peserta melalui autentikasi berbasis zero-knowledge proof challenge . Hasil pilihan peserta kemudian dikirimkan ke autentikator untuk ditandatangani dan tandatangan tersebut digunakan sebagai bukti peserta telah melakukan pemilihan. Dari hasil uji coba yang dilakukan, terbukti bahwa autentikator bisa mendeteksi ketidaksamaan antara data dengan signature, dan autentikator bisa melakukan autentikasi dengan sistem E-Vote dengan tepat. Data hasil pilihan peserta bisa diverifikasi dengan signature yang ada untuk memeriksa integritas data.

Andrew D. Gross, Jeff Hemker, Jamie Hoelscher, Brad J. Reed

No abstract is available for this record.

Tomas Sjögren

This article concerns capital taxation and public good provision in a two-layer fiscal union where the federal government uses lump-sum transfers to redistribute resources between two local jurisdictions, and where each local government uses a capital tax and a lump-sum tax to finance the provision of a local public good. The novelty is to allow for simultaneous horizontal and decentralized leadership (double leadership) which means that one of the local governments is able to exercise Stackelberg leadership both vis-a-vis the other local government and vis-a-vis the federal government. Among the results it is shown that the capital tax becomes redundant as a policy instrument for the double leader if the other state government acts as a decentralized leader vis-a-vis the federal government. If, instead, the other state government does not exercise leadership vis-a-vis the federal government then the double leader will implement a capital tax which is allocatively efficient from the perspective of the fiscal union as a whole. It is also shown that double leadership exacerbates the under-taxation inefficiency that earlier research has shown exists in a fiscal union with decentralized leadership.

Jianbing Ni, Kuan Zhang, Khalid Alharbi, Xiaodong Lin · 6 authors

Smart grid enables two-way communications between operation centers and smart meters to collect power consumption and achieve demand response to improve flexibility, reliability, and efficiency of electricity system. However, power consumption data may contain users' privacy, e.g., activities, references, and habits. Many smart metering schemes have been proposed utilizing homomorphic encryption for users' privacy preservation. Unfortunately, some abnormality of smart meter reading, e.g., caused by electricity theft, cannot be discovered since data is encrypted. Meanwhile, operation centers could become curious in reality. To address the above issues, we propose a new privacy-preserving smart metering scheme for smart grid, which supports data aggregation, differential privacy, fault tolerance, and range-based filtering simultaneously. Specifically, we extend lifted ElGamal encryption to aggregate users' consumption reports at the gateway to reduce communication overhead, while supporting fault tolerance of malfunctioning smart meters effectively. We also leverage zero-knowledge range proof to filter abnormal measurements caused by electricity theft or false data injection attacks without exposing individual measurements. In addition, our scheme can resist differential attacks, by which the curious operation center can violate users' privacy through comparing two aggregations of the similar data set. Finally, we discuss the properties of the proposed scheme and evaluate its performance in terms of security and efficiency.