Blockchain Papers

Antonio Sitges‐Serra

The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies, for the pattern is new in every moment and every moment is a new and shocking valuation of all that we have been. — East Coker , T.S. EliotMedicine is not a science: it is a cultural product. As such, the way it is practiced and conceived is much affected by cultural contexts, academic traditions, politics, personal interests, the health industry, experts’ and medical bodies’ opinions, journalists and medical publishing companies. Obviously, science and research have played and will continue to play a key role in the development and progress of medical knowledge. Science, however, proceeds slowly, requires the test of time and relies on strict methodological principles and in personal integrity; briefly, good science is at stake in a world dominated by technolatry1: a self-imposed commitment for continuous innovation within an industrial culture dominated by planned obsolescence and profit increase for the myriad companies that live on the global health market. Evidence-based medicine was launched to encourage a scientific and proof-based approach to medical practice.2 As an ideological movement, it has had a significant impact on how doctors read the medical literature, how clinical research should be planned and how new concepts and therapies are scrutinised before being implemented. However, because medicine, in opposition to science, requires bedside decision making, it cannot rely only on hard data. First, because in many domains, such hard, class A data are not available in many instances. Second, the robustness of the data may be challenged by new findings. Third, because the clinical setting is much more complex than the scenario created by clinical trials that, in order to obtain meaningful conclusions, oversimplifiy the decision-making process through strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. Fourth, because the acquisition and implementation of new knowledge is …

Malte Harder

From a visual standpoint it is often easy to point out whether a system is considered to be self-organizing or not, though a quantitative approach would be more helpful. Information theory, as introduced by Shannon, provides the right tools not only quantify self-organization, but also to investigate it in relation to the information processing performed by individual agents within a collective. This thesis sets out to introduce methods to quantify spatial self-organization in collective systems in the continuous domain as a means to investigate morphogenetic processes. In biology, morphogenesis denotes the development of shapes and form, for example embryos, organs or limbs. Here, I will introduce methods to quantitatively investigate shape formation in stochastic particle systems. In living organisms, self-organization, like the development of an embryo, is a guided process, predetermined by the genetic code, but executed in an autonomous decentralized fashion. Information is processed by the individual agents (e.g. cells) engaged in this process. Hence, information theory can be deployed to study such processes and connect self-organization and information processing. The existing concepts of observer based self-organization and relevant information will be used to devise a framework for the investigation of guided spatial self-organization. Furthermore, local information transfer plays an important role for processes of self-organization. In this context, the concept of synergy has been getting a lot attention lately. Synergy is a formalization of the idea that for some systems the whole is more than the sum of its parts and it is assumed that it plays an important role in self-organization, learning and decision making processes. In this thesis, a novel measure of synergy will be introduced, that addresses some of the theoretical problems that earlier approaches posed.

Siong Hook Law, Nirvikar Singh

No abstract is available for this record.

박광덕

Local autonomy is not only limited abusing official authoriry in negatively, but also each local government of dealing with own problem in itself and by own organization in posibility. And Devolution authority of the central government and local government enforcement is the problem about basic reign system in a country. So functional allocation and devolution authority focused on consensus on basic reign system, for example role allocation of public versus private, central-local relationship. But in my paper, focusing on central local relaltions I studied on devolution authority and allocation functions in social services. Our government have pursued functional delegation with decentralization than transferring of governments authority until now. For example discrepancy between governement authority and responsibility, the differences between affairs and finance, ets.. So our government enact Act for Decentralization and Devolution Authority(1999) In my paper, I focused on devolution authority and affairs allot of governmental relations in social welfare, especially contents limited in Public Assistance and personal social services. First of all, I reviewed the reality of delogation and affairs allot and I analyzed problems about delegation and allocation functions in Korea. Finally I figured out desirable devolution of authority and decentralization of government fuctions.

Yasir Arafat, Lina Bertling Tjernberg, Per-Anders Gustafsson

The traditional electrical grid is transitioning into the Smart Grid (SG) and the introduction of Smart Meter (SM) is a first stage towards Smart Grid. The SM can offer new functionalities such as remote reading, automatic event reporting and the possibility of remote switching by the Distribution System Operator (DSO). The DSO can send remote signal to the breaker of the SM to disconnect or connect customers. This could be used when customers are moving or do not have a contract. DSO is currently applying this technique regularly for customers but one by one which do not affect the grid's power quality remarkably. But this technique has never been applied for multiple customers at a time in a single neighborhood and the possible effect on the grid's power quality is still unknown. This condition is studied in this paper through test scenarios which have already been planned to test. This paper presents necessary steps of remote SM switching for a large number of customers. Power quality standards and steps for measuring power quality during the tests are outlined. Possible risks of the test as well as the probability of occurring risk and also the consequences of those risks are studied in this paper.

Wolfgang Johannsen

BIOLOGY has evidently borrowed the terms “heredity” and “inheritance” from everyday language, in which the meaning of these words is the “transmission” of money or things, rights or duties—or even ideas and knowledge —from one person to another or to some others: the “heirs” or “inheritors.” The transmission of properties—these may be things owned or peculiar qualities—from parents to their children, or from more or less remote ancestors to their descendants, has been regarded as the essential point in the discussion of heredity, in biology as in jurisprudence. Here we have nothing to do with the latter; as to biology, the students of this science have again and again tried to conceive or “explain” the presumed transmission of general or peculiar characters and qualities “inherited” from parents or more remote ancestors. The view of natural inheritance as realized by an act of transmission, viz., the transmission of the parent's (or ancestor's) personal qualities to the progeny, is the most naive and oldest conception of heredity. We find it clearly developed by Hippocrates, who suggested that the different parts of the body may produce substances which join in the sexual organs, where reproductive matter is formed. Darwin's hypothesis of “pangenesis” is in this point very consistent with the Hippocratic view, the personal qualities of the parent or the ancestor in question being the heritage. Also the Lamarckian view as to the heredity of “acquired characters” is in accordance with those old conceptions. The current popular definition of heredity as a certain degree of resemblance between parents and offspring, or, generally speaking, between ancestors and descendants, bears the stamp of the same conceptions, and so do the modern “biometrical” definitions of heredity, e.g., as “the degree of correlation between the abmodality of parent and offspring.” In all these cases we meet with the conception that the personal qualities of any individual organism are the true heritable elements or traits! This may be characterized as the “transmission-conception” of heredity or as the view of apparent heredity. Only superficial instruction can be gained by working on this basis. Certainly, medical and biological statisticians have in modern times been able to make elaborate statements of great interest for insurance purposes, for the “eugenics-movement” and so on. But no profound insight into the biological problem of heredity can be gained on this basis, for the transmission-conception of heredity represents exactly the reverse of the real facts, just as the famous Stahlian theory of “phlogiston” was an expression diametrically opposite to the chemical reality. The personal qualities of any individual organism do not at all cause the qualities of its offspring; but the qualities of both ancestor and descendant are in quite the same manner determined by the nature of the “sexual substances”—i.e., the gametes—from which they have developed. Personal qualities are then the reactions of the gametes joining to form a zygote; but the nature of the gametes is not determined by the personal qualities of the parents or ancestors in question. This is the modern view of heredity. The main result of all true analytical experiments in questions concerning genetics is the of the transmission-conception of heredity, and the different of as as have in that to the same point of view, the as we may the conception of heredity just Here we can not the of the ideas concerning heredity, not even in the but it be as a that a very great of the terms by the modern biological have been the of the and that the of and are not from that old may be words as “transmission” and The science of genetics is in a an science just as the in the times of who the an in chemical The as have the modern view of heredity, not from the old “transmission-conception” as but it from the of and who with more or less tried to the the great of the for the in of more in of and in of but have suggested that the elements for inheritance elements of or of the different or of the individual from the in question. has an elaborate hypothesis of heredity, that of the are of in the of a in the of a being in some the of an or a of that in the to organs, and that of the are of parts of the inheritance in question are the or ideas may have some interest as of the but they have no in the of is evidently the a view of heredity any The of the by and but as an expression of the insight by and is in the degree a all the of and it may is a that is not we to even to but that it may be by of the to the current This is the it is to a in all cases where or are being developed. terms are by their in or and from which they of not to the have the terms and and some as and to be in the science of The is nothing but a very with and it may be as an expression for the or in the by modern is the of all the in a or in a a is by the of this is in one point and the of the gametes in question in one point from to the nature of the it is as of no to any but that the a is from The have the great of being in their In accordance with this quite natural the of the may be to the of the We do not a but we are able to or in these the and The very by as may be with in so as the is the of the of the in question. these are is by the as of The the and the in the of the individual the organism is a and its reactions are determined by its with the of all may it be or the is with the The can be by the qualities and reactions of the in question. that some of are different then these produce more or less as to the personal qualities of the individual of of different it be quite to they have or have not the same we to be We may find that the in question so that they to the same the current of this or we may in cases that they a so that or more different may be of by or by of or may be characterized as are real the or of are again and again the for in the are and the of the of as to and characters of the has been the of natural which was a science of by the of the has of with in its concerning The of by from one to another have and the of are the in very but that is an point may be in one which the the view the of the in different are the main and the transmission-conception we may this conception as a in to the the has been gained in and The to an of the or the may an of the of the The of has its most in all where the are where with the or by to one this being characterized by the of the of any of and so This is to the all between the different in question the of and and have the point for as a of may be as the from one by is a nothing as to the qualities of the in question. to be (or even the of a of can be as as are very of be quite in and in to one and the same the was but The of the is a main point in the of of nature is not at all a for the of with is the of which the of have some The of from has been the for the that is not able to the nature of The of the of a by from to in the by the to the a of in the a great of those is for the of the of any be for the result of the no or have been at a in which is no as to the in have no This result has in been by in Here may the experiments of with experiments which have been quite of and which have been of great for the and of the The of these experiments has been on the that the but this matter to of no in the The that of and of in the of as a is a of the Also experiments with the of and the of as to may be as for this has at the same as to the by The famous of and its by to have the of in by the of the of in these of correlation have been in their of may be in but they have nothing at all to do with genetics or general are for insight into the nature of heredity. to heredity, it is a expression for a The are the in but generally the in is In no of the can be all of the as to the of and may even a that the is in in heredity speaking, a of the “transmission-conception” and nothing The characters of ancestors as as of are both in quite the same manner reactions of the of the gametes in question. between an ancestor and one or more of as heredity is in the as we have to the is not a of the personal of any The of a or a may be with a This in of its realized but not in of the of its it may be with the of gametes and its is its which are determined by its In the in are in of are The it is to by of any individual the to which it the the as as in the no The is an view of the reactions of as as true heredity is This view is an to the chemical view, as chemical have no is and in the same may be the of its or the of its that it is to this of heredity in its to the to the of we meet with true viz., the of and all of is a very great but is quite different from heredity. may be of and the of is not an is in to as of some of or in their of the of from more Certainly, of of and of all on by of with the not the but their But all this has nothing at all to do with the biological of heredity. is of to that the of by has in but this nothing as to for which is The very form of the may be to be in all its in cases of experiments in In nature and even in the chemical the chemical are not to be in quite The of a may be by to the with the we the question the of a may not be by some or from the individual organism in which the was developed. Here we meet with the cases of heredity, e.g., the of the gametes or as may be in certain cases of and of heredity may have the of or but they do not at all with the of heredity. In cases as that by viz., the “heredity” of a form of by “transmission” the of the not this may at the be as we have to do with a of the or the in and that may be the for the of heredity the which no or a The of being as quite it may be very to clearly from determined which the form of heredity both and The and not to be in with of any may be to in the and consistent of the that may be characterized as by or it be that as as are no between and of is but not is a The of or, is of for the question of the inheritance of “acquired and are in the most both the of the with the the with the of the of the in question. The of with and the experiments of that of the are by as no with has any for the Lamarckian view, the most to the experiments by for the of their have not but have the of some by and are at the same the in personal qualities being to the in are their of it is that their in biology as ideas has been most some cases of apparent of may have with Lamarckian e.g., of by as “the that has of the was that with analytical that has the great But at the the from the is in on the of for are for the the that the was not at all the of to point the of as to the of in The and more the The of or of in may be for the of not to we have an times by viz., the of with as it has been that we have the essential The in have been the the been from the and to the result be a of the those The to to no for the The are a to of with and in the of this are to any questions of and they make as to the nature of heredity and has the of as a be an in heredity. to the of it has been by e.g., that is a old and This is quite not in a manner the of but even tried a to But it can not be that the of as a true analytical as an of in as a at any and of a from this analytical been in the times of or it even been in by the the real of have been by the of The may then be characterized as and may to a certain with the most of of with a of for a a we may even that the may be as of the or ideas may as be but they are by the of The of a in question is the conception at by and is a between different This has been by may be as an In very on experiments with as that was as a of of and experiments to the Lamarckian view have as even these may be as all the of experiments is in quite in of But we in and that for a of the the is a The of in question is to this can not statements just as to their but accordance with conception the famous words from the be from and some very of have the for the is that we different as different in This is an essential but no in the to that view be In a very manner be for are the in the degree or of any as it different e.g., the of by and may be very as of the of the in and they a in The of the in question between the but this is not the e.g., with or even with very some of the are the between the may or may even with of as to the in the and is no as to their But that these are with the of between the to have the the of the the reactions of the may different all of or has nothing at all to do with or of of genetics to some may to has great the of in all of from to may be with different in of the to not from that be of may in one be different in e.g., the of the that of In another may or their may be of may produce and it is to that some of on the reverse is realized on In of both characterized by a degree of to produce in the the in of The are the of the in as as in the just are of just as as the of different chemical as to chemical it may be to that different chemical or of which are to be and may quite to point the of for different of and in different or in with The essential point in the matter of that a in the same manner all chemical or in as in chemical or are not to at less to do so in the same all even quite may be for the of as some are to a This is a in as in the of has the of this point for the the of as to the and are a of the and we find in current this of with and we even have with the that the of a may in in different or but that in they into one In this of the of the in a is that view has been by in this but be in the is not for an to with questions of and between the are the of and the of and is We have with some of the it is to at The of this of has an of and cases that at with the have been more on a and have quite in accordance with The of a of this of it may be that the most of the essential point in the of the personal in heredity. the same it the of as being by the of the that the personal qualities of the organism in are the of the reactions of the The of one of may have the the of for any to be even in cases where no of to as to the cases of it is not to of the in the or for their and being reactions of that may have in the be a of to the of different as as Here we meet with the questions of correlation and of can not into a discussion as to the of with its in a discussion is to be may point that cases of presumed correlation may be cases of or more characters to the even one The and even the that they are reactions of different The of and as to the are in some with of correlation and of The discussion of the for and as to may the of may be has in as to in a of the the of we an between the of and the the in manner may be able to of the the main of the a on this it may be suggested that the or of a may be more to from its the from the of the may be of any as working as to the of is the nature of these can not as a discussion be in that the is and and even have this the in their and has clearly that it may be quite to a is to or to the of a in the that can as be determined in this by is the of between the gametes a may be The facts, that a may be in some but in and that in different cases may be very that are The famous of as to the form of may be as an In the is in it is and in both cases the one has that is a of and from in one as with But from in with as in and in the with this it is as not to or is the form of for the of which the of are to be the most is the most may even be an expression for a of in the The of the by in all cases be and it is quite to that the of the in are in cases in but in as to with chemical reactions it be in that a may be the of of any as as the of any in the in question. The elaborate of of has very and the most is the most of any in question. The or in are quite the of in the it may be that for one may be elements for the of quite this be the then the of characterized by the of in the of different able to may be by a in which be any is no to that the the of into The of by of the of are a of interest in this to cases of in which and do not the it at be that some apparent are by of the for The experiments of and have to that may and be or as to the of the is no for or In inheritance we meet with of the same nature as in the of as the for the more or less of the different of in may the as has in cases the different degree of with which the of gametes is realized may the of in the as has Here we can not the in a of the a of concerning this Only one of may be viz., the to or In cases of inheritance the in question be to by the act of or, in accordance with the and the to the in some manner be In this which is very with the conception of as be of to be in the of the modern some cases in the of as to the of to be a the insight by experiments as as by concerning the of has the question in a The of and have to quite as to the of In cases no is no is in cases is no for any or of as to this has the in question. But cases of these as to the of the of are the most and most has in a and manner that the in with the be of cases to these and gained an with and was in But even this may with The for is has clearly of the concerning the of the with the of the of that of and in is a The is determined by different in the same and the of by and of these a of in be these the of the in question. we have to and we for the the which is between as and as in of no a as an and it is not to find that the of the of the be the of the so it is in the of experiments with as has clearly of heredity in concerning both and may be with in question. in that certain in for the view that we have no inheritance but true as as in the cases of as we may in the cases of may then in a more manner the true nature of the apparent in as we can that this not with be in that have been very between the in these experiments are with great and parts of the those may have can not be to it is that in may have great the and in a which into and to be into has a very the and form of the in question. Here are not the the of viz., that or characters may be determined by different and that one of may have different it that is in a very but may be even very for this the may be into But is to do in the as as to the is as the of be a with But all the of the of do not as to to the that the of and so on may be regarded as or of the and of all things in the as their This view is even in those cases where can be In the discussion as to the of true the have of a as characters of in cases where the elements of the in question are as it may be is not at all for the of But the of for is quite different from the that elements have for the of heredity. The question of as the presumed of to be an not able to any for “the of the in the The organism is in its and by its parts of the individual are as to In has been no as to this and as to has for a the same view the of and who have suggested that is determined or at any by a of the we the in the of the The of and the of parts in the individual may their the of the But these as a not or the of the in question. on we the problem of by Here we have to point the that with a more those substances or the reactions of which we of characterized by the of The of the of their to that this as as the and of in the some of the of The discussion of to the question of or In the of modern of presumed of in e.g., as to in But more analytical experiments have in cases in the the characters in question to be more reactions at has the question in a quite a working the be not of but of the gametes as a not be as the by of the of a with be of of the that this be able to “the of so with in and so or by Here we again the question of that the by and are more consistent with the real nature of the in question. the has not been able to that cases of are of but even the as to in and by as a not to any real for cases as has viz., nature being for in some may at the of being to or to different of in the in question. But a to the real of The very of as to the of certain characters in have clearly a or a in of any be in that a of are in and these concerning all and a to the of all it be suggested that in parts of the some of may or even the of which the The to be to the of by e.g., the of and of Here we the of in or with so by be a for the of the in e.g., for the nature of the of the (or for the in not be produce at are to point that may have a as to but that this question is in of the problem of or may be but the in modern genetics in the of as the we the of as an essential for the of matter in and for the or of we in of to find in the of and the of the and in be But this is not the The experiments of in a manner the of in the a degree of and in things it we may in modern genetics be of the and of that things in nature may be and the in heredity we may the in nature as as in more of the famous of and the of to the modern of and all as to point the of the in question. Here we not the it is to that the essential point is the or of of the The experiments of as to have in the most manner that the which produce the in this viz., the and of are able to act in a manner the of the and has the of in with the may in some cases be certain to be by but it is that in all is the in the of to the of which may the of of be that are from by in be with But is no for this in the between the in characters may be a of as it be is not at all with has the between the of in and in and as the in nature have all as in experiments with The chemical to may be the of and so on. The may be by more But are of very for the of The by the great of experiments as to and not personal as a of any as by and been are meaning from point of of characters gained to an of and the may the of as to may be as to the old question of this problem in the famous cases of has in a most manner been into terms by the and experiments of and This of the and has been for for the The not to a true or of heredity, but may be regarded as an for an that in its may be to be and even all may some to But as it to be the most in may then be as the of in ancestors and descendants, or, as in accordance with this heredity for those of the that find their expression in the and developed it is to this for its real but for the and of the great problem of heredity. In this the of famous as in as in has been the for the and the old in This is a in the of the of it at and to ideas of and in and a great of the of But just these qualities have the of for the analytical of modern which has in a true in

Stan Cristian, Manea Adriana Denisa

The specifics of contemporary society involve, at the level of educational sciences, both epistemological adjustments as well as adjustments in the relations of the school as an institution with the governing authority. Reduction of the state's involvement in the organization and operation of the school implies, alongside decentralization and the reduction of allocated budgetary resources, both the assumption of the principle of self-financing by the various educational institutions and the concern for competitiveness as a prerequisite for survival in the conditions of a competitive type of educational reality. Schools thus become competitors in the field of educational offers, beneficiaries of the education system become consumers in the educational market and the orientation of the marketing activity towards increasing institutional visibility constitutes one of the basic conditions for success.

Josh Carney

REFRACTIONS OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN TURKEY Daniella Kuzmanovic New York: Palgrave Macmi llan, 2012 (x iv + 211 pages, bibliography, index, i llustrations) $85.00 (cloth)In Refractions of Civil Society in Turkey, Daniella Kuzmanovic offers an ethnographic engagement with both the concept of and practices associated with civil society in contemporary Turkey. She situates her project within a broad literature on the rise of civil society organizations (CSOs) globally since the end of the Cold War, frequently referring to the anthropological work of John and Jean Comaroff. She also addresses a more particular field of ethnographic work in Turkey focusing on relations between citizens and the state and exemplified by the work of Yael Navaro-Yashin, Jenny White, and Esra Ozyurek. Adopting Navaro-Yashin's argument that the binary of state and civil society is more an abstraction than a clear analytical catego- rization, Kuzmanovic holds that ethnographic investigation should focus on the way civil society activists conceive of their work. To this end, she draws on the field of existential anthropology and particularly the work of Michael Jackson, which endeavors to show how practices such as activism contribute to the making of autonomous, agentic subjects (30). She returns to this theme throughout the book as she grapples with the overarching questions of what civil society is and how it functions in the Turkish milieu.Kuzmanovic performed approximately seventy interviews throughout 2005 and 2006 with a variety of interlocutors, including representatives of twenty-seven CSOs from across Turkey's sociopolitical spectrum. She also attended numerous seminars, worked with some of the organizations she studied, and collected publicity materials. Her analysis is supported with transcribed interviews, field-note excerpts, and occasional illustrations.Sincerity (samimiyet) is, for Kuzmanovic, the key term for under- standing how civil society is discussed in Turkey. Activists wish to appear sincere, while often questioning the of others. Kuzmanovic's task is to map the social territory of this clearly subjective and relational term and to assess the work it performs. The sociopolitical context plays a major role in how the of a CSO is perceived, and Kuzmanovic highlights three cleavages that characterize this context: (1) the secular/religious divide, (2) differences on how Turkey should integrate and interact with the outside world, and (3) the divide between leftists, on the one hand, and the often cooperating forces of right-wing nationalists and the Turkish state, on the other. Activists and the CSOs they work with are judged both by the public and by other CSOs in terms of their perceived position vis-a-vis these cleav- ages, with sincerity functioning as a kind of catch-all term that validates such judgments. These positions can sometimes literally be mapped within Turkey. CSOs in Ankara, for instance, are frequently perceived as more secu- larist and state-focused, while those in Istanbul are more likely to be seen as coming from a variety of political perspectives, including Islamist, and may have stronger ties to the international community. But can also be assessed with reference to a number of other factors. For the individual activist, life experiences such as having spent time in prison for a cause or having been excluded from school for wearing an Islamic headscarf can increase one's credibility, as can being a volunteer rather than a paid worker. Even the type of organization one works for often has implications, with some (usually conservative) activists seeing religious foundations (vakiflar) as particularly sincere, while networks (orgutler) are often associated with questionable activities, including terrorism, in part because the term orgut has come to function as shorthand for a decentralized organization with a revolutionary mindset, whether this is actually the case or not. …

Sankita Patel, Mitali Sonar, Devesh C. Jinwala

In this article, the authors propose an approach for privacy preserving distributed clustering that assumes malicious model. In the literature, there do exist, numerous approaches that assume a semi honest model. However, such an assumption is, at best, reasonable in experimentations; rarely true in real world. Hence, it is essential to investigate approaches for privacy preservation using a malicious model. The authors use the Pederson's Verifiable Secret Sharing scheme ensuring the privacy using additively homomorphic secret sharing scheme. The trustworthiness of the data is assured using homomorphic commitments in Pederson's scheme. In addition, the authors propose two variants of the proposed approach - one for horizontally partitioned dataset and the other for vertically partitioned dataset. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is scalable in terms of dataset size. The authors also carry out experimentations to highlight the effectiveness of Verifiable Secret Sharing scheme against Zero Knowledge Proof scheme.

Olivier Coutu

Dans les crypto-monnaies telles Bitcoin, l’anonymité des utilisateurs peut être compromise de plusieurs façons. Dans ce mémoire, nous effectuons une revue de littérature et une classification des différents protocoles existants pour anonymiser les usagers et analysons leur efficacité. S’appuyant sur certains critères désirables dans de tels protocoles, nous proposons un modèle de mixeur synchrone décentralisé. Nous avons ciblé deux approches qui s’inscrivent dans ce modèle, le plan de transaction et le réseau de transactions, le second étant une contribution originale de ce mémoire. Nous expliquons son fonctionnement puis analysons son efficacité dans le contexte actuel d’utilisation de Bitcoin

Chaia Heller

Weary as it is, the still-standing U.S. Left continues to refuse to take no for an answer. However, we face two prominent conundrums: How do we decipher the meaning of “revolution” during a post-socialist and particularly counterrevolutionary period in history? And how do we address an increasingly compromised natural world whose very ability to sustain organic life has been dramatically called into question?It’s been a few hundred years since anything resembling a revolutionary tornado has touched down on U.S. soil. Whereas peoples living throughout Latin America and the Middle East are quite fluent in the idiom of revolution, U.S. leftists have relegated the notion to a poetic dustbin dwelling somewhere just to the left of the deep past. Many entertain notions of particularistic “revolutions” in domains of the human spirit, art, technology, and even sexuality, yet they cannot expand the concept to encompass society as a whole. This loss of revolutionary memory and vision is tied, at least in part, to the collapse of revolutionary projects associated with the works of Marx.At the same time, we are facing a monstrous expression of capitalism: neoliberal tentacles are squeezing the life out of prior attempts by progressives and radicals alike to appease its appetite to devour all things human and nonhuman. In such times, questioning the “need” for a Left in the United States is more than slightly decadent.Moving any further to the right brings yet more crude liberalization and deregulation — and thus more dispossession and ecological destruction. Surfing the wave of leftist progressive liberalism or social democratic reformism will merely keep us treading water in the very muck we are trying to climb out of.Too often, well-meaning leftists opt for merely turning the capitalist clock backward. Many yearn for a revival of the 1930s-era New Deal, thinking back to a time when “we” enjoyed a kinder, gentler capitalism. In so doing, they romanticize a time when the state did its best to curb corporations’ ravenous demands, subsequently allowing many members of America’s white majority to enter a consumer-driven, car-crazed, working-middle class that enjoyed retirement benefits and Disneyland vacations. Sadly, the second coming of a dreamy New Deal blew up in our faces in 2006 when the bursting of the housing bubble ushered in another Great Depression, which we are still experiencing currently. Who has the time or dough to say, “see you in Disneyland” today?U.S. leftists who long for more than a revitalized New Deal gaze upward toward Canada or set their hopes on a more European style of social democracy. Our utopian horizons are studded with starry notions of state-subsidized health care and higher education, and lengthy paid-for summer vacations. When the best dreams that leftists can muster are of European welfare states (which are currently being eviscerated by neoliberalism), we have not only lost our revolutionary nerve, but our revolutionary vision as well.The question is not whether we need a Left, but what kind of a Left do we desire? What kind of Left is capable of moving us from a corrupt republican democracy to a direct democracy? What kind of Left can allow us to shift away from a capitalist system that empties out the meaning of what it means to be human? What kind of Left can create a moral economy in which citizens extend a logic of self-governance to realms of production and distribution, creating a democratized and ecologized economy? And finally, what kind of Left is capable of cultivating a way of thinking ecologically and democratically that can guide a revolutionary process to carry us in the direction we need to go in order to survive?Unless we are to prop up the ghost of the communist revolutionary tradition, we must think up another solution to the problem of what is to become of a Left bereft of a workable and coherent plan. Anyone donning a centuries-old garment should be willing to consider that its hemline or waistband might be due for a major alteration. And the U.S. Left might take a lesson or two by looking at what its more radical wings have been up to in the Leftist alteration department. There have been at least two riotous and instructive attempts to alter the U.S. Left that are worth taking note of in the past fifteen or so years — the anti–World Trade Organization protests of 1999 and the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in the fall of 2011.The anti-WTO protests of 1999 (a sort of “mini–May 1968”) did not come out of nowhere. It was a series of movements that I have decided to call the “Alter-Left” that bore this Seattle-based fruit.The Alter-Left had been growing since the 1980s, with deep roots in anti-neoliberal Latin American movements. During the 1980s, groups throughout Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico began to view the leftist project through an increasingly internationalist lens, coining the term neoliberalism to describe a resurgence of the vulgar liberal individualism associated with an Enlightenment gone awry. Neoliberalism is the structure under which corporations gained rights — as “individuals” — to operate unfettered by state-determined regulations, taxes, and standards that might hinder their individual corporate freedom.In the 1980s, countries throughout Latin America were roiling with hunger, poverty, and unemployment caused by rising debt to global loan-shark agencies such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (renamed the World Trade Organization in 1994). These agencies in turn created structural adjustment programs, strong-arming countries to trade national debt for reduced state regulations in the domains of trade, labor, and the environment (including water treatment and access).As they organized in opposition to deregulation/neoliberalism, leftists began to alter the structure and culture of the Left, creating a novel Alter-Left. Before the 1980s, Latin American militant activity tended to emerge within labor unions or workers parties. In the 1980s, in contrast, movements were increasingly led by peasants, indigenous peoples, women’s groups, anti-poverty activists, ecologists, and human rights activists fighting forms of dehumanization ranging from racism to heterosexism. Rejecting a central party or leadership structure, groups worked autonomously, assisting communities facing chronic poverty, landlessness, and hunger. Going beyond the Marxist idiom, groups altered leftist discourse, calling not only for workers’ control, but also for democratization and citizens’ rights.What does all of this have to do with Seattle and the U.S. Left? The U.S. Left was in deep dialogue with global anti-neoliberal activists, taking note of others’ new ways of redefining leftist political structure and goals. Indeed, by the mid-to-late 1990s, a new set of international activists and organizations gained prominence, voicing global discontent not only with state-driven economic and political policies, but also with supranational bodies bolstering neoliberal capital.There is a clear line drawn between the 50 Years Is Enough campaign, for instance, and what has been called the Battle of Seattle. The 50 Years Is Enough project was a network of 300 grassroots groups from more than sixty-six countries that was founded in 1994 to decry the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of supranational agencies such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. By saying “enough,” this network sent a message in a bottle on behalf of the downtrodden in the Global South. And U.S. activists in our very own far Left caught that bottle with both hands.The line strung between 50 Years Is Enough and the anti-WTO protests in Seattle also runs through another key Alter-Left moment: the Zapatista uprisings of 1994. The Zapatista mobilizations sent ripples around the world, inspiring leftist political cultures globally to become increasingly international, anti-capitalist, identity driven, directly democratic in character, and ecologically focused. And meanwhile, Left-altering organizations such as Peoples’ Global Action and the World Social Forum emerged, as well. The marginalized from the world over voiced solidarity against neoliberalism, its attachés (nation-states), and its ring of supranational disciplinarians.And so when U.S. activists learned in 1999 that the WTO would be meeting in Seattle, they too joined this effort to alter the Left, throwing a signature sensibility of American “movement democracy” into the mix. By movement democracy, I mean a form of leftist organizing where activists design movement meetings, plan direct actions, and design organizational structures along directly democratic lines. Under this model, there are no leaders endowed with autonomous decision-making power. Instead, a network of small groups called “affinity groups” are each empowered to express their collective will to the larger movement via rotating delegates chosen by the groups themselves. Activists first meet in affinity groups to clarify and define their groups’ position on particular issues facing the movement as a whole. After reaching a decision, the affinity group sends its spokes-person to the larger spokescouncil, which functions as a coordinating committee for the movement as a whole. In this way, decision-making swells from the bottom up. At the “non-top” of this non-hierarchy are recallable delegates who have no decision-making power at all. Through movement democracy, activists engage in face-to-face direct democracy, flexing and developing the democratic muscles required for the radically new society to come.Forms of movement democracy surfaced in the sixties but were further refined by anarchist wings of the U.S. anti-nuclear movement. The hub of the U.S. anti-nuclear movement was the Clamshell Alliance, a decentralized network of over eighty groups and organizations scattered throughout New England. The U.S. anti-nuclear movement was a particularly successful endeavor; it radically deterred the government’s grand plan to make the country 80 percent nuclear-reliant. Through organizing in opposition to nuclear arms and energy, activists created the country’s largest-ever network of decentralized and horizontal decision-making bodies aimed at ridding the world of nuclear technology. The anti-nuclear movement popularized the idea that a movement could be built up out of many affinity groups that trained and worked together. The affinity groups of the 1970s and 1980s set the stage for Alter-Leftists committed to nonhierarchical and socially cohesive forms of movement democracy.The anti-nuclear movement was also marked by an expressive political sensibility. Its drum circles, public art installations, and whimsical nonviolent direct actions captured the imagination of many throughout the world. In Seattle of 1999, a new set of leftist actors, agendas, non-structures, and post-hippy expressive sensibilities exploded like a confetti ball when the WTO came to town. Today, many associate Alter-Left demonstrations with the sky-high street puppets first pioneered in the 1970s by the Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont. By 1999, David Solnit from Art and Revolution had begun working with Bread and Puppet artists, teaching young activists to craft the puppet-driven demonstrations so many have come to expect and enjoy.For more than one rainy week, indigenous groups, peasants, workers unions, women’s groups, anarchists, ecologists, anti-racism activists, and queers from around the world poured into Seattle to say “enough” to neoliberal non-democracy. Neoliberalism’s grand meeting (real and metaphorical) was at least temporarily cancelled. As activists drummed on garbage cans and milk jugs, the Alter-Left chanted a collective “no” to the WTO.After Seattle, a question arose: did the over-the-top aesthetic of the anti-WTO protest help or hinder the growing alter-globalization movement? Many in the country were alienated by these counter-cultural images, but on the other hand, the drumming, chanting, dancing, and puppetry helped capture journalists’ attention. Undoubtedly, many journalists were determined to depict activists in violent terms, reinforcing notions of activists-as-criminals. Yet, the front pages of newspapers the world over were instead graced with images of activists in whimsical butterfly costumes (referencing studies on the toxic impacts of genetically modified foods on monarch butterflies). The expressive protest culture also helped assuage protesters’ fears of the state’s potentially violent response to activists’ nonviolent actions, and participation in a common aesthetic helped forge a deep, if transient, sense of political community. The celebratory protest culture of Seattle became a wellspring of inspiration for Alter-Leftists to come.A post-Seattle political culture propelled similar actions internationally, as people in Canada, Prague, Southern France, and Italy cultivated their own carnivalesque and nonviolent protest culture. Yet suddenly, out of nowhere, a plane zoomed into Manhattan. Then another. Death and more death ensued, now in the form of war with Iraq and Afghanistan.When those planes destroyed the Twin Towers, they also shot through the blossoming center of the U.S. alter-globalization movement. The U.S. Alter-Left was hijacked by a McCarthy-like U.S. political culture that equated U.S. activism with terrorism. Although a fragmented anti-war movement did surface throughout the country, it tended to regress back into a top-down and colorless protest culture unable to capture the imagination and moral outrage of the U.S. populace.And then, somehow, we found ourselves in the fall of 2011. The housing bubble burst as subprime mortgage loans went flying. Government bailed out Wall Street with our last cents. And there it was again: the U.S. Alter-Left, re-born in the form of Occupy Wall Street. That year, Occupy went national, then global. People from all corners of the Left enacted movement democracy, becoming the kind of democratic, self-governing, life-affirming revolutionaries the world needs now more than ever.Sometimes, leftists must look at what we do — rather than at what we don’t do — to understand the path we’re on. What the more radical, far-flung Left has been up to is altering the Left, creating a newfangled version of something old, something new, something borrowed, and something that blew in all the way from Latin America.For those who rightly note that the Alter-Left is bereft of what the New Left was missing as well — a coherent revolutionary theory — we are justified in noting so. We have altered the U.S. Left’s legacy of labor-centered theory. We have altered the old Left’s lingering shadow that led activists to privilege the idea of “workers” as the key site of revolutionary action. Now altered, we move from a theory that privileged workers to a perspective attending to the many for whom the system simply isn’t working (the 99 percent). While Occupy rightfully included union leaders and workers, it also welcomed the Alter-Left’s cadre of homeless and unemployed people, youth, queers, students, climate justice activists, and racial justice activists, to name but a few.We have indeed altered the methods of movement building and organizing, improvising decentralized, directly democratic networks of expressive activists who are willing to engage in civil disobedience and direct action. And we have tossed in all matters of ecology as we take stock of a dual disaster in the making — one humanitarian and one planetary. And we are indeed ready. All we need is a coherent revolutionary theory — a plan.Those who brought us Seattle and Occupy Wall Street are young and old, ready to draw from the best of the old Left, the New Left, and the social movements that brought us the women’s movement, black power, ecology, and the LGBTQ movements. We are ready to create an Alter-Left with revolutionary nerve.The motto of the World Social Forum is “Another World Is Possible.” The many who created the forum felt weighed down by a politics of refusal that could only say “no” to what it didn’t want, entertaining only a vague sense of other possible worlds to come. The French expressed a similar desire to go beyond an “anti” politics captured in the term “anti-globalization.” Creating instead a notion of alter-mondialization (alter-globalization), French activists captured the notion of alterity — or an “otherness” built out of imaginative and humane possibility. This idea of alternate worlds — the notion that we can redeem humanity and the rest of the natural world through compassionate and intelligent human ingenuity — is breathtaking.As we catch our breath together and conspire (which literally means to “breathe together”), we can draw and direction from the of social more than social from around the world have a collective to move the Alter-Left beyond our post-socialist toward a directly democratic, radically and ecological ecology key which to political direct democracy social and These are ready to be or by peoples around the world to create a just and Social ecology for in in this means to these means each is to its on the way each is into this idea of in into means this world of states into a horizontal of This could the form of and even international In this way, each or could a political life in which committed meet in to the political their world. By in face-to-face direct democracy, each on education, technology, or for instance, would be to a common in the What we call would be determined by the as of direct democracy, social and ecology to the way common are and In this way, this project would to the a capitalist economy that of and By ourselves to these social throughout the world to a socially democratic, and ecological of social ecology did to this vision of a — a vision for how to move away from our and society and toward a just and ecology a coherent revolutionary Yet in its for it a to a a to a Instead, it all of our communities to engage in how to its to our particular cultures and movement building us to a logic of direct democracy, social and ecology to a revolutionary process that will to a society that those very people are by state and ecological destruction. The U.S. Alter-Left is well to move our society away from this position and toward a vision that and the rest of the natural world to time to come together to create a movement that and also working to create a global of directly democratic communities together by a The way to that movement is by a in which we our thinking through how to these into a political movement capable of a society in need of radical problem with the American Left is that it its far left time to catch our our and think ecologically as we our way to a world that is for the

Zhengrui Qin, Shanhe Yi, Qun Li, Dmitry Zamkov

Cognitive radio plays an important role in improving spectrum utilization in wireless services. In the cognitive radio paradigm, secondary users (SUs) are allowed to utilize licensed spectrum opportunistically without interfering with primary users (PUs). To motivate PU to share licensed spectrum with SU, it is reasonable for SU to pay PU a fee whenever the former is utilizing the latter's licensed spectrum. SU's detailed usage information, such as when and how long the licensed spectrum is utilized, is needed for PU to calculate payment. Providing usage information to PU, however, may compromise SU's privacy. To solve this dilemma, we are the first to propose a novel privacy-preserving mechanism for cognitive radio transactions through commitment scheme and zero-knowledge proof. This mechanism, on one hand, only allows PU to know the total payment to SU for a billing period, plus a little portion of SU's usage information. On the other hand, it guarantees PU that the payment is correctly calculated. We have implemented our mechanism and evaluated its performance.

David Flint

No abstract is available for this record.

Hsihui Chang, Christopher D. Ittner, Michael Paz

ABSTRACT This study focuses on three broad Finance organization roles: reporting, compliance, and internal control/risk management (RCCR); performance management; and strategic partner. Using data from a global survey of 832 firms, we examine the determinants of the various roles' importance and their relation with Finance effectiveness. While the effects of organizational change, market growth, international operations, firm size, decentralization, and industry on Finance responsibilities vary depending upon the role, we find little evidence of tradeoffs between the various roles. Instead, we find evidence of complementarities between roles, whereby greater emphasis on one role is associated with greater Finance effectiveness in the other roles. Additionally, we find that information system integration (ISI) not only has a positive direct impact on effectiveness in all three roles, but also interacts with the importance placed on RCCR and performance management roles to improve the Finance organization's effectiveness at carrying out these responsibilities.

Jinan El-Hachem

Web 3.0, the web of social and semantic cooperation, calls for a methodological multidisciplinary architecture in order to reach its mainstream objectives. With the lack of such an architecture and the reliance of existing efforts on lightweight semantics and RDF graphs, this thesis proposes "Web3.OWL", an ontology-driven framework towards a Web 3.0 knowledge architecture.
\nMeanwhile, the online social parenting data and their corresponding websites users known as "mommy bloggers" undergo one of the fastest online demographics growth,
\nand the available literature reflects the very little attention this growth has so far been given and the various deficiencies the parenting domain suffers from; these deficiencies all fall under the umbrella of the scarcity of parenting sociomedical analysis and decision-support systems.
\nThe Web3.OWL framework puts forward an approach that relies on the Meta-Object Facility for Semantics standard (SMOF) for the management of its modeled OWL (Web Ontology Language) expressive domain ontologies on the one hand, and the coordination of its various underlined Web 3.0 prerequisite disciplines on the other.
\nSetting off with a holistic portrayal of Web3.OWL’s components and workflow, the thesis progresses into a more analytic exploration of its main paradigms. Out of its
\ndifferent ontology-aware paradigms are notably highlighted both its methodology for expressiveness handling through modularization and projection techniques and algorithms,
\nand its facilities for tagging inference, suggestion and processing.
\n
\nWeb3.OWL, albeit generic by conception, proves its efficiency in solving the deficiencies and meeting the requirements of the sociomedical domain of interest. Its conceived ontology for parenting analysis and surveillance, baptised "ParOnt", strongly contributes to the backbone metamodel and the various constituents of this ontology-driven framework.
\nAccordingly, as the workflow revolves around Description Logics principles, OWL 2 profiles along with standard and beyond-standard reasoning techniques, conducted experiments and competency questions are illustrated, thus establishing the required Web 3.0 outcomes. The empirical results of the diverse preliminary decision-support and recommendation services targeting parenting public awareness, orientation and education do ascertain, in conclusion, the value and potentials of the proposed conceptual framework.

Hong‐Seok Park, Ngoc-Hien Tran

Smart manufacturing (SM) considered as a new trend of modern manufacturing helps to meet objectives associated with the productivity, quality, cost and competiveness. It is characterized by decentralized, distributed, networked compositions of autonomous systems. The model of SM is inherited from the organization of the living systems in biology and nature such as ant colony, school of fish, bee’s foraging behaviors, and so on. In which, the resources of the manufacturing system are considered as biological organisms, which are autonomous entities so that the manufacturing system has the advanced characteristics inspired from biology such as selfadaptation, self-diagnosis, and self-healing. To prove this concept, a cloud machining system is considered as research object in which internet of things and cloud computing are used to integrate, organize and allocate the machining resources. Artificial life tools are used for cooperation among autonomous elements in the cloud machining system.

Parth Chandarana, M. Vijayalakshmi

Big Data concerns massive, heterogeneous, autonomous sources with distributed and decentralized control. These characteristics make it an extreme challenge for organizations using traditional data management mechanism to store and process these huge datasets. It is required to define a new paradigm and re-evaluate current system to manage and process Big Data. In this paper, the important characteristics, issues and challenges related to Big Data management has been explored. Various open source Big Data analytics frameworks that deal with Big Data analytics workloads have been discussed. Comparative study between the given frameworks and suitability of the same has been proposed.

Beatriz Cuadrado‐Ballesteros

No abstract is available for this record.

Niels Vandezande

With the increasing use of virtual currencies such as bitcoin, tax officials have started paying attention. Privacy and virtual identity specialist Niels Vandezande of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT (ICRI) at the KU Leuven – University of Leuven explains the implications of the recent IRS ruling on Bitcoin in the US, arguing that it may undermine the core reasons such virtual currencies were created.

Adam Mateusz Suchecki

Decentralization of public finance in Poland was an important element of changes in the political system of the country. As a result, some tasks of the state were transferred to the local government level. The Public Finance Act of 2009 introduced new public management methods, such as the performance-based budget and the long-term financial forecast, to the local government finance management. The purpose of this paper was to analyse the budget expenses on cultural tasks incurred by local government units in Poland in the years 2003- 2010 and the impact of the attempted application of the performance budgeting method to local government expenses relating to this field of economy.

Soňa Čapková, Lucia Roncakova

The year 2013 is already the ninth year of implementing fiscal decentralization in the Slovak Republic. The aim was to ensure independence as well as responsibility of subnational governments and improve the ability to finance their original competences from own sources. As decentralization leads to growth of imbalance intergovernmental transfers are the instruments used by central government to reduce fiscal disparities and fill the gap between the spending needs and fiscal capacity of some local authorities. Tax sharing system in Slovakia, is an important tool of horizontal fiscal imbalance equalisation. Despite the title, shared taxes play the role of unconditional grants if even they are formally labelled as local government own revenues under current legislation. In this paper we examine the allocation of personal income tax share as an instrument of regional policy and factors affecting interregional disparities in Slovakia. The paper presents some results of the research project VEGA1/0822/11 Redistribution of financial resources in the decentralized fiscal system in Slovakia.

Niels Vandezande

Mobile payments are on the rise, as are virtual currencies emitted by private market players or by automated decentralized systems. The Payment Services Directive and E-money Directive form the legal framework for protecting consumers in transactions with payment services and e-money providers. However, the unclear scope of applicability of that legal framework could lead to legal uncertainty. Moreover, evolutions in the market, such as Bitcoin, are excluded from its scope. The European Commission has proposed a new framework, which will be analysed to establish whether it can bring more legal certainty to the scope of application of this legal framework.

Authors unavailable

No abstract is available for this record.

Alistair Sinclair, Piyush Srivastava, Marc Thurley

No abstract is available for this record.