Dubravka Jurlina Alibegović, Sunčana Slijepčević, Željka Kordej-De Villa
Decentralization can be generally described as a process in which selected functions are assigned to sub-national units. The literature identifies number of positive consequences of decentralization which all lead to better satisfaction of citizens? needs for public services. Although decentralization process in Croatia started more than 10 years ago, it still has not been finished. It led to new division of authorities and responsibilities to the local government units, but the level of fiscal decentralization remained lower than in the EU countries. The efficient decentralization should incorporate delegation of authorities, responsibilities and resources to local government units based on the clear criteria, but also should ensure better coordination and cooperation of all entities in providing public functions. In the paper we analyze fiscal capacity of local government units to provide an insight into the main problems of decentralization in Croatia. We show that the most of local government units have very low fiscal capacity and cannot finance basic public functions from their own resources. The paper also presents result of the performed survey about decentralization process among local councilors at the regional level in Croatia. We explore how local councilors at regional level in Croatia evaluate different goals of decentralization. Having in mind the lack of fiscal capacity, we identify two possible solutions for an optimal provision of public functions. The first one is level of political will for the joint provision of public functions between different local units, and the second one is change in territorial division of the country. We measure the difference in the attitudes toward these questions across counties.
Kemas Muslim Lhaksmana, Yohei Murakami, Toru Ishida
The future of computing systems is leading to a growing complexity of heterogeneous computing systems integration situated in highly dynamic and uncertain environment. Self-organization has been proposed to be one of the solutions due to its autonomous capability to govern itself and to adapt upon changes. Developing self-organizing systems requires a suitable modeling method because of its unique characteristics, such as self-adaptive, decentralized, and emergent. Existing multiagent systems engineering methodologies lack modeling methods to design behavior adaptation for self-organizing systems. This paper proposes a role modeling method that allows designers to model how agents perform behavior adaptation at runtime by making transitions from one set of roles to another in decentralized manner. The behavior adaptation of each individual agent may eventually emerge as the adaptation of the organization. The proposed modeling method also helps designers to analyze issues that may occur because of playing multiple roles, such as role conflict, role overload, role transition oscillation, and other common issues in concurrency.
The Bitcoin network was launched in 2009 by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, a developer who worked extensively on the project but only interacted with people on developer forums. At the end of 2010, Nakamoto disappeared from view, announcing his departure and handing off the project to the open source community . No one knows his (or her) true identity, but what is known is Nakamoto's wealth. He is said to have roughly $100m worth of bitcoins by today's value, and hasn't spent any of it. Bitcoin's decentralised financial network is not immune to attack. It has already been subject to attacks on numerous occasions, and is in danger of experiencing more. While the concept behind the crypto-currency is designed to minimise interference , both researchers and criminals have found ways to subvert it. Danny Bradbury explores some of the vulnerabilities surrounding this alternative to conventional fiat currency, and describes some of the changes being made to ensure it remains secure and stable.
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency records its transactions in a public log called the blockchain. Its security rests critically on the distributed protocol that maintains the blockchain, run by participants called miners. Conventional wisdom asserts that the protocol is incentive-compatible and secure against colluding minority groups, i.e., it incentivizes miners to follow the protocol as prescribed. We show that the Bitcoin protocol is not incentive-compatible. We present an attack with which colluding miners obtain a revenue larger than their fair share. This attack can have significant consequences for Bitcoin: Rational miners will prefer to join the selfish miners, and the colluding group will increase in size until it becomes a majority. At this point, the Bitcoin system ceases to be a decentralized currency. Selfish mining is feasible for any group size of colluding miners. We propose a practical modification to the Bitcoin protocol that protects against selfish mining pools that command less than 1/4 of the resources. This threshold is lower than the wrongly assumed 1/2 bound, but better than the current reality where a group of any size can compromise the system.
Bitcoin is a "crypto currency", a decentralized electronic payment scheme based on cryptography which has recently gained excessive popularity. Scientific research on bitcoin is less abundant. A paper at Financial Cryptography 2012 conference explains that it is a system which "uses no fancy cryptography", and is "by no means perfect". It depends on a well-known cryptographic standard SHA-256. In this paper we revisit the cryptographic process which allows one to make money by producing bitcoins. We reformulate this problem as a Constrained Input Small Output (CISO) hashing problem and reduce the problem to a pure block cipher problem. We estimate the speed of this process and we show that the cost of this process is less than it seems and it depends on a certain cryptographic constant which we estimated to be at most 1.86. These optimizations enable bitcoin miners to save tens of millions of dollars per year in electricity bills. Miners who set up mining operations face many economic incertitudes such as high volatility. In this paper we point out that there are fundamental incertitudes which depend very strongly on the bitcoin specification. The energy efficiency of bitcoin miners have already been improved by a factor of about 10,000, and we claim that further improvements are inevitable. Better technology is bound to be invented, would it be quantum miners. More importantly, the specification is likely to change. A major change have been proposed in May 2013 at Bitcoin conference in San Diego by Dan Kaminsky. However, any sort of change could be flatly rejected by the community which have heavily invested in mining with the current technology. Another question is the reward halving scheme in bitcoin. The current bitcoin specification mandates a strong 4-year cyclic property. We find this property totally unreasonable and harmful and explain why and how it needs to be changed.
Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole, Grant Jordan, Kirill Levchenko · 7 authors
Bitcoin is a purely online virtual currency, unbacked by either physical commodities or sovereign obligation; instead, it relies on a combination of cryptographic protection and a peer-to-peer protocol for witnessing settlements. Consequently, Bitcoin has the unintuitive property that while the ownership of money is implicitly anonymous, its flow is globally visible. In this paper we explore this unique characteristic further, using heuristic clustering to group Bitcoin wallets based on evidence of shared authority, and then using re-identification attacks (i.e., empirical purchasing of goods and services) to classify the operators of those clusters. From this analysis, we characterize longitudinal changes in the Bitcoin market, the stresses these changes are placing on the system, and the challenges for those seeking to use Bitcoin for criminal or fraudulent purposes at scale.
Hormones, growth factors, and cytokines coordinate metabolism between tissues and within tissues. The transforming growth factor superfamily signaling pathway encompasses members of the TGFβ, activin, bone morphogenetic protein, Nodal, and growth and differentiation factor subfamilies, in addition to numerous other ligands, receptors, coreceptors, downstream signaling effectors, and regulating molecules. The elaborate multifunctional effects of this superfamily are highly cell-type and context-dependent (1, 2). Many of these ligands are involved in organ specification, patterning, proliferation, and differentiation, including important roles in the pancreas (3, 4). Studies of transgenic and knockout mice highlight the importance of this signaling pathway in islet development (5), and more recent work has also implicated the TGFβ superfamily in adult β-cell function and maturity (6, 7). In this issue of Endocrinology, Boerner and colleagues (8) report a novel role for Nodal, a secreted TGFβ superfamily member known for its roles in early embryogenesis and its mitogenic signaling through Smad2/3 and Smad4. Detailed studies on the role of Nodal in adult β-cells had not been reported. Boerner et al (8) identified Nodel in adult islets and used complementary techniques, including flow cytometry, to demonstrate that Nodal stimulates human pancreatic β-cell proliferation. This contrasts with studies employing pancreatic cell lines wherein Nodal was reported to induce apoptosis and inhibit proliferation (9, 10) and highlights the need to perform proliferation studies in nontransformed cells. This novel role of Nodal adds to the numerous roles that this family appears to have on adult pancreatic cells. Here, we will review developments in the field of TGFβ signaling in islets and emphasize that delineating clear roles of this signaling pathway has been quite challenging. Genetically engineered mouse models have provided insight, as well as confusion, on the roles of TGFβ family members (Table 1). Life-long global knockouts can provide information on gene function in the whole organism over its entire lifetime. Distinguishing effects of TGFβ family members on adult β-cell physiology from effects on development is not possible without conditional loss-of-function or gain-of-function models, but these are relatively few in number (11–13). Despite these caveats, a picture of multiple effects of TGFβ signaling on adult β-cell homeostasis has begun to emerge. A recurring phenotype manifested in adult mice carrying mutations in various TGFβ superfamily genes includes decreased β-cell mass, impaired glucose tolerance, and in some cases diabetes. Table 1 provides a glimpse of the plethora of effects of this superfamily, and its downstream signaling molecules, on pancreatic islets. Deletion of the negative downstream effector of TGFβ signaling Smad7 (14) in Pdx1-expressing cells decreased hormone-positive cells in late development (5). On the other hand, conditional overexpression of Smad7 in adult Pdx1-expressing cells altered the β-cell gene signature and reduced pancreatic insulin production and release, leading to diabetes (11). Furthermore, Smad7 appears to be crucial for beta-cell proliferation after partial pancreatectomy (50). Thus, the same TGFβ effector can have opposing roles depending on the temporal context. Moreover, the TGFβ signaling effectors can have opposing roles, given that Smad3 appears to be a negative regulator of insulin secretion and glucose tolerance (13). Taken together, many lines of evidence clearly suggest a role of this signaling pathway in regulating β-cell mass and function. More inducible knockout mouse studies are needed to clarify the specific cell targets and mechanisms of actions of this family on pancreatic cells. Pancreatic Actions of the TGFβ Superfamily Abbreviations: ALK, activin receptor-like kinase, ActR, activin receptor; BMP, bone morphogenetic protein; GDF, growth and differentiation factor. Pancreatic Actions of the TGFβ Superfamily Abbreviations: ALK, activin receptor-like kinase, ActR, activin receptor; BMP, bone morphogenetic protein; GDF, growth and differentiation factor. The effects of the TGFβ superfamily ligands on adult pancreatic β-cells can be directly tested in vitro, bypassing the complexities of the in vivo environment. For example, acute activin A treatment increased glucose-stimulated insulin secretion from human (15) and rat (16) islets, whereas prolonged treatment decreased glucose-stimulated insulin secretion from mouse islets, an effect reversed by the endogenous antagonist follistatin (17). β-Cell proliferation was increased by activin A treatment in adult rat islets (18) and a mouse β-cell line (17). Interestingly, there appears to be a species difference in the islet expression and action of activin A, follistatin, and TGFβ1 (19). Although TGFβ1 acutely stimulates glucose-stimulated insulin release from rat islets (19), prolonged treatment of human islet cells with TGFβ1 had a negative impact on the expression of genes important for β-cell function, likely via the Smad3 pathway (13). Interestingly, Boerner et al (8) did not report evidence of β-cell dedifferentiation, although β-cell function remains to be rigorously investigated in this model. The range of (and sometimes opposing) effects of the same factors observed on pancreatic cells illustrates the complexity and context-dependence of this signaling pathway. Although studies using animals with genetic manipulations are crucial, results from human islets are vital to uncover any species differences and for future clinical translation. One of the most important contributions of the Boerner study was the use of islets from human donors (8). Studies with human islets, or at least >1-year-old mice (which are equally refractory to β-cell proliferation), are crucial for clinical translation of the limited basic knowledge around primary β-cell proliferation mechanisms (20). The ultimate goal of this research is to provide the basis for a diabetes cure. Diabetes results from the immune-mediated destruction (type 1 diabetes) or functional failure (type 2 diabetes) of pancreatic insulin-producing β-cells (21). There are theoretically numerous approaches to treating or reversing diabetes using cell-based therapy, including in vivo regeneration via induction of replication of remaining β-cells, transdifferentiation of other adult cell types (in vivo and in vitro) and differentiation of embryonic (or induced) pluripotent stem cells into functional β-cells (22). Significant preclinical obstacles remain for each of these approaches. At this point, islet transplantation from cadaveric donors remains the only viable alternative to insulin therapy for treating type 1 diabetes (23). Nevertheless, the lack of islet donor tissue prevents widespread patient access to this therapy. Hence, the expansion of primary human islets is of great interest to the diabetes research community. Various studies have shown efficient induction of young rodent β-cell proliferation, yet the same approaches have either not been tested or failed to produce significant results on adult human β-cells (20, 24). Failure to induce proliferation in human islets could be in part a species difference and the fact that the human islet donor age is generally much higher in relative comparison with the young adolescent mice being used for studies (25). As has been elegantly shown, β-cell proliferation in mice and humans ceases to nearly zero after 1 and 30 years of age, respectively (26, 27). Hence, any study showing that a ligand can overcome this resistance of adult human β-cells to reenter the cell cycle, and stimulate proliferation even modestly, is an important contribution to the field. Boerner et al (8) found an ∼1.5-fold increase in human β-cell proliferation with Nodal treatment without affecting viability. Because it is estimated that only 1% of type 1 diabetes patients can be treated with the current scarce availability of donor islets (28) and the fact that a single patient requires at least 103 islet equivalents (from ∼2 pancreas donors) per kilogram of body weight (29), the expansion of islets from a single human donor pancreas would require at least an ∼200-fold increase for a widespread application of human islet transplantation. Therefore, more extensive research in human β-cell expansion is needed. Boerner et al (8) echoed statements by many in the field when they proposed in their paper that the ultimate therapeutic approach may require simultaneously harnessing multiple local signaling pathways. Indeed, genomic advances have revealed that islets produce hundreds of soluble ligands and express hundreds of receptors for ligands produced locally and in other tissues (30). It is clear that using high-throughput approaches will be required to make breakthroughs in this area. Pancreatic β-cell proliferation is exceedingly hard to measure in samples from humans and older adult rodents, given the rarity of events and the potential for false-positives with semiautomated counting. This means that there must be exceptional rigor. Bulk measurements of DNA synthesis are clearly unacceptable in heterogeneous human islet cell cultures where β-cells usually make up a minority of endocrine cells, to mention nothing of the fibroblast-like cells that dominate these cultures after a few days. Imaging must be of sufficient X, Y, and Z resolution such that highly proliferative fibroblasts, which overlay virtually all human islet cultures, are not mistaken for proliferating β-cells. In this regard, the use of flow cytometry by Boerner et al (8) to detect human β-cell proliferation is an important technical proof-of-concept. Clearly, the bar for measuring β-cell proliferation needs to continue to get higher to prevent costly false-positives in the field. Even considering the technical limitations, only a handful of studies have shown significant in vitro stimulation of human β-cell proliferation. These include cocktails of 1) hepatocyte growth factor, fibroblast growth factor 4, nicotinamide and fibrin gel (∼2-fold) (31), the L-type calcium channel agonist Bay K8644 (∼1.5-fold) (32), a diarylamide compound WS6 (∼5-fold) (33), and glycogen synthase kinase-3 inhibitors (∼2-fold) (34). It remains unclear whether any ligand alone will be able to safely increase human β-cell proliferation to therapeutic levels in vivo. It is not clear at this point whether TGFβ superfamily ligands are useful therapeutic targets for manipulating β-cell mass or function in vivo, because they may have off-target systemic effects. Most of the TGFβ family ligands share the same receptors, downstream effectors and antagonists (1) and are expressed ubiquitously in various tissues, including pancreatic islets (8, 12, 17, 19, 30, 35). Thus, the local concentration and length of exposure of the ligands as well as the combination of receptors, effectors and antagonists locally expressed will ultimately provide the final concerted effect on the β-cell, both in vivo and in vitro. Nodal and other TGFβ family members may be more promising factors for in vitro differentiation, expansion, and maturation of pancreatic β-cells. However, for human in vitro β-cell expansion to become clinically relevant, much more potent mitogens and/or combinations of factors working synergistically to retain β-cell maturity, viability, and function need to be evaluated. It will take the collaborative efforts between disciplines from basic β-cell biologists to physicians and engineers (36) to accomplish such an endeavor. Disclosure Summary: The authors have nothing to disclose.
Shantanu Bhattacharya, Sameer Hasija, Luk N. Van Wassenhove
We analyze the efficacy of different asset transfer mechanisms and provide policy recommendations for the design of humanitarian supply chains. As a part of their preparedness effort, humanitarian organizations often make decisions on resource investments ex ante because doing so allows for rapid response if an adverse event occurs. However, programs typically operate under funding constraints and donor earmarks with autonomous decision‐making authority resting with the local entities, which makes the design of efficient humanitarian supply chains a challenging problem. We formulate this problem in an agency setting with two independent aid programs, where different asset transfer mechanisms are considered and where investments in resources are of two types: primary resources that are needed for providing the aid and infrastructural investments that improve the operation of the aid program in using the primary resources. The primary resources are acquired from earmarked donations. We show that allowing aid programs the flexibility of transferring primary resources improves the efficiency of the system by yielding greater social welfare than when this flexibility does not exist. More importantly, we show that a central entity that can acquire primary resources from one program and sell them to the other program can further improve system efficiency by providing a mechanism that facilitates the transfer of primary resources and eliminates losses from gaming. This outcome is achieved without depriving the individual aid programs of their decision‐making autonomy while maintaining the constraints under which they operate. We find that outcomes with centralized resource transfer but decentralized infrastructural investments by the aid programs are the same as with a completely centralized system (where both resource transfer and infrastructural investments are centralized).
Issue Serbia started the process of decentralization soon after the first phases of reforms were completed, as the integral part of the European integration process. The Law on Health Care has enabled decentralization in the primary health care sector, in order to strength the democratic governance and to improve administrative and service delivery effectiveness. Through the project with the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS), the Serbian Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities in cooperation with public health experts, assisted capacity building of local authorities. The aim of establishing Decentralized Service Improvement Networks is to advance the role of local authorities in public health and primary health care institutions, and to foster horizontal coordination between other social policy areas. Description of the problem Local governments were not aware of opportunities they have as founders of primary health care institutions- to monitor the effects of the undertaken measures in the field of financing, preventive actions and public health protection. Results DSIN for primary health care was established for the six chosen municipalities, comprising of at least 3 representatives of each local government. The cycle of 6 meetings started with a managerial meeting (mayor, heads of the services) in order to agree on a coordinated approach in the municipality and pointing out the challenges for such approach, applying SWOT analysis. DSIN have improved access to relevant statistical and administrative data, set the list of indicators to be monitored at the local level, developed and piloted the methodology for periodical survey of users satisfaction with primary health care and actively analysed and shared experiences (local and international). Furthermore, this network sucessfuly cooperated with the relevant institutions from education, social protection, NGOs, and users of services. Based on the review of all collected relevant data, every municipality have chosen to improve one priority public health service. Lesson The practice of DSIN is based on critical analysis of own performance in the context of performance of other similar institutions, on the basis of opinions of clients of the service and with wide utilization of best practices tested already in other local governments. Key messages Professional network at the local level motivates municipal authorities to perform better, to adopt innovative approaches and to learn from other experiences and good practices. The network enables local governments to learn from each other and to discuss and agree how to best use emerging good and European practice to improve the target services in their municipalities.
AbstractTEAM = Together Everyone Achieves More. The key elements in the art of working together are how to deal with change, how to deal with conflict and how to reach our potential in a collective coordinated way. A swarm is a collection behavior of moving together in same direction. It involves process of mutual trust, communication and interaction. It shows a path that how the team can solve the complex problem through the collective behavior. Natural examples of Swarm Intelligence SI include ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, bacterial growth and fish schooling. Swarms can achieve things that an individual cannot. It is the natural way of dealing with complex problem that can be solved by collective behavior.Keywords: Swarm Intelligence, Biological Motivation, Team effort, Human Behavior, Challenges.IntroductionAn individual may be worthless and inexpensive but with local interactions, change can be amazingly dynamic. Swarm behavior is a distributed system of interacting autonomous agents that can achieve goals, performance optimization and robustness through self-organized control, cooperation (decentralized) and division of labor through distributed task allocation and indirect interactions. SI is inspired by nature like colonies of ants, swarm of bees, school of fishes and flocks of geese to understand how they work together and distribute complex problem into smaller solutions. This is what as managers we need to understand that the complex problems can only be solved by swarm behavior and responding to challenges in a more coordinated way.Swarm Intelligence SI in Animal BehaviorSI is inspired by group work like colonies of ant, flock of geese and school of fishes to know the practical way of adapting to solve nature's problems. Social Intelligence helps to solve complex problems in a better and easier way. It refers to a kind of problem-solving ability that emerges in the interactions of simple information-processing units. It is a process of solving problem collectively which is impossible to be solved by individual units. The role of SI is to inquire about a assortment of options, encourage free antagonism and use effective system to taper the preference. The ants can converse with each other by the odor of their body. The ants find the undeviating path with a simple behavior by laying and following a pathway of pheromones.Swarm Intelligence in Bees* Colony cooperation* Regulate hive temperature* Efficiency via Specialization: division of labor in the colony* Communication: Food sources are exploited according to quality and distance from the hive.Swarm Intelligence in Wasps* Pulp foragers, water foragers and builders* Complex nests* Horizontal columns* Protective covering* Central entrance hole.Swarm Intelligence in Ants* Organizing highways to and from their foraging sites by leaving pheromone trail* Form chains from their own bodies to create a bridge to pull and hold leafs together with silk* Division of labor between major and minor ants.Swarm Intelligence in Insects* Flexible* Robust* Decentralized* Self-Organized.The complexity and sophistication of Self-Organization is carried out with no clear leader. What we leam about social insects can be applied to the field of Intelligent System Design. The modeling of social insects by means of SelfOrganization can help design artificial distributed problem solving devices. This is also known as Swarm Intelligent System.With a change in the environment, swarm intelligent systems will adapt to this change and find the new optimal solution.Why Swarm Intelligence behavior needed in organization?When it became evident that effective leaders did not seem to have a particular set of distinguishing traits, researchers tried to isolate the behavior characteristic of effective leadership style. …
<p class="Abstract1">The regional autonomy in Indonesia gives the implication to the shift of authority between the center and local government in many sectors. The regional autonomy also makes the decentralization that related with the local financing management, the economy planning including the local planning and other planning that shifted from the central government to the local government. The study aims to know the effect of fiscal decentralization from the income and spending aspect towards the local economic development in Indonesia (gas and oil nationally). The method analysis in this study is the panel data from 1995-2000 and 2001-2004.The result shows that before decentralization on the year of 1995-2000, the fiscal decentralization whether from income or spending aspect has negative influence to the economy growth. Coming into decentralization from 2001-2004, the fiscal decentralization on supporting the economy development, whether from government income or spending is increasing. But the fiscal decentralization is exceeding the spending aspect compare to the income, whether in national level, with oil and gas or without oil and gas, inside Java or outside Java. <p class="Keyword1"> <p class="Abstract2"><strong></strong>Pelaksanaan otonomi daerah di Indonesia membawa implikasi pada pelimpahan kewenangan antara pusat dan daerah dalam berbagai bidang. Adanya otonomi daerah maka terjadi desentralisasi yang menyangkut pengelolaan keuangan daerah, perencanaan ekonomi termasuk menyusun program-program pembangunan daerah dan perencanaan lainnya yang dilimpahkan dari pusat ke daerah. Studi ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh desentralisasi fiskal dari sisi penerimaan dan pengeluaran terhadap pertumbuhan ekonomi daerah provinsi di Indonesia (nasional dengan migas dan tanpa migas, di Jawa dan di luar Jawa). Metode analisis yang digunakan dalam penulisan studi ini menggunakan data panel secara terpisah pada periode 1995-2000 dan 2001-2004. Hasil analisa menunjukkan bahwa sebelum pelaksanaan era desentralisasi periode 1995-2000, pengaruh desentralisasi fiskal dari sisi penerimaan dan pengeluaran berpengaruh negatif terhadap pertumbuhan ekonomi, baik untuk tingkat nasional dengan migas dan tanpa migas, di Jawa dan di luar Jawa. Memasuki era desentralisasi selama kurun waktu 2001-2004, pengaruh desentralisasi fiskal dalam mendorong pertumbuhan ekonomi, baik melalui sisi penerimaan maupun pengeluaran mengalami peningkatan dibandingkan sebelum era desentralisasi. Namun pengaruh desentralisasi fiskal tersebut jauh lebih besar melalui sisi pengeluaran dibandingkan sisi penerimaan daerah, baik di tingkat nasional dengan migas dan tanpa migas, di jawa maupun di luar Jawa. <p class="Keyword1">
International Baccalaureate Diploma Program is an academically challenging self-funded high school program which is recognized by the world’s leading universities. It was introduced in one of the regions of Russia (Permskii krai) by the local government with the aim to ensure access to high quality education and to improve regional educational system overall. High school students get international IB diploma while this process is largely financed by the regional government. The aim of this paper is to examine how effective this scheme is and to give recommendations for its improvement.In order to answer the research question different major stakeholder groups were surveyed: students, school-leavers, and teachers. Official documents, underlying the implementation of this program, were analyzed. Analysis of the findings was made with the help of institutional approach.The results of this paper represent benefits and shortcomings for each stakeholder group of the project. The recommendations given in the paper deal with the increase of efficiency of this scheme: additional incentives should be created and introduced to increase benefits for the regional part of the contract. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p527
This paper introduces a new information technology: ma3tch (autonomous anonymous analysis). Ma3tch enables virtual information integration to build a `dynamic networked collective intelligence' without infringing upon security, confidentiality, privacy and/or data protection regulations. It provides organizations with information and knowledge advantages. The ma3tch technology is empowered by a decentralized information oriented architecture: a `privacy by design' framework that uses distributed agents to facilitate decentralized but integrated information access, processing and analysis. It shapes a `virtual information cloud' between autonomous organizations that enables secure, integral and intelligent real time information analysis. Relevant information and knowledge distributed between autonomous organizations is automatically detected and applied throughout the network as soon as it emerges. The dynamic design principles allow practically any type of (cross domain) information to be virtually integrated: government, commercial, intelligence, law enforcement, financial, telecom, biomedical, compliance, etc., without infringing privacy, confidentiality, security or data protection rules and regulations. It advances both privacy AND knowledge beyond conventional limitations.
We present a constant-round concurrent zero-knowledge protocol for NP. Our protocol relies on the existence of families of collision-resistant hash functions, and a new, but in our eyes, natural complexity-theoretic assumption: the existence of P-certificates-that is, "succinct" non-interactive proofs/arguments for P. As far as we know, our results yield the first constant-round concurrent zero-knowledge protocol for NP with an explicit zero-knowledge simulator based on any assumption.
Hava Mucolları, Alba Dumi, Zaim Korsı, Elisabeta Duçellari
This paper includes partnerships with community-based organizations, public and private colleges, universities, public school teachers, public health departments. Additionally, more number of community leaders have been trained to deliver educational workshops; PSI has developed a robust workshop leader database, which permits remote access to (and entry of) service delivery information. This will be an important point of administrative changes in Albanian public policies as an obstacle to the operating foreign investments, comparison of EU. Entrepreneurship ambition has worked to support changes in Albanian law that would offer anti-discrimination protections in keeping with international standards. Another point of administrative changes in Albanian public policies as an obstacle to the operating foreign investments, comparison of EU is: (1) International investments contributed to the improvement of Albania’s financial regulatory environment which has strengthened public confidence in the banking system and has provided a more secure, efficient and transparent financial system to meet the credit, savings and insurance needs of businesses and individuals. The paper provides support for legislative initiatives and local government activities that advance the decentralization process and increase the control of local government by local constituents, thus decreasing the control of central authorities. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n10p34