Blockchain Papers

Chris Bongie

Despite a great deal of cultural materialist work over the past several decades devoted to the insight that literature is, in Alan Sinfield's words, ‘an institutional arrangement we have made to dignify some writing (at the expense of other)’ (2004: 31), Francophone postcolonial studies, as I have argued on more than one occasion, remains invested in an idealist conception of the literary text as ‘“rising above” its conditions of production and reception’ (Sinfield, 2004: 31). One might venture that there is no greater proof of this belated investment than the excessive amount of scholarly ink that has been spilled – and that, as this volume testifies, continues to be spilled – over the manifesto ‘Pour une “litterature-monde” en francais’ since its publication by Michel Le Bris, Jean Rouaud et consortes in March 2007. What, we might well ask, is at stake in their (our) continuing investment in the salvific virtues of ‘literature’ – a word that might, at first glance, seem the least problematic component of a seductive buzz phrase like ‘world literature (in French)’? That is the question I want to address here, not by lingering over the actual manifesto and interrogating its purported deconstruction of the French/Francophone binary (authentic act of literary decolonization or yet another instance of Franco-phony rhetoric? … readers will have little difficulty identifying where I stand on that score), but by focusing on two Caribbean-born writers who contributed to the eponymous follow-up collection of essays published later that year by Gallimard ( Pour une litterature-monde ). In zeroing in on Edouard Glissant and, especially, the Haitian novelist Lyonel Trouillot, both co-signatories of the original manifesto, I aim to draw out the ‘post-political’ dimension of the manifesto's commitment to a ‘retour aux puissances d'incandescence de la litterature’ [return to the incandescent powers of literature] and of its insistence that this retour is part and parcel of the equally felicitous ‘effondrement des grandes ideologies’ [collapse of grand-scale ideologies] symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall (‘Pour une “litterature-monde” en francais’, 2007).

Randall M. Livingstone

Although I'm a rich white guy, I'm also a feminist anti-racism activist who fights for the rights of the poor and oppressed. (Carl Kenner)Systemic bias is a scourge to the pillar of neutrality. (Cerejota)Count me in. Let's leave the bias to the mainstream media. (Orcar967)Because this is so important. (CuttingEdge)These are a handful of comments posted by online editors who have banded together in a virtual coalition to combat Western bias on the world’s largest digital encyclopedia, Wikipedia. This collective action by Wikipedians both acknowledges the inherent inequalities of a user-controlled information project like Wikpedia and highlights the potential for progressive change within that same project. These community members are taking the responsibility of social change into their own hands (or more aptly, their own keyboards).In recent years much research has emerged on Wikipedia from varying fields, ranging from computer science, to business and information systems, to the social sciences. While critical at times of Wikipedia’s growth, governance, and influence, most of this work observes with optimism that barriers to improvement are not firmly structural, but rather they are socially constructed, leaving open the possibility of important and lasting change for the better.WikiProject: Countering Systemic Bias (WP:CSB) considers one such collective effort. Close to 350 editors have signed on to the project, which began in 2004 and itself emerged from a similar project named CROSSBOW, or the “Committee Regarding Overcoming Serious Systemic Bias on Wikipedia.” As a WikiProject, the term used for a loose group of editors who collaborate around a particular topic, these editors work within the Wikipedia site and collectively create a social network that is unified around one central aim—representing the un- and underrepresented—and yet they are bound by no particular unified set of interests. The first stage of a multi-method study, this paper looks at a snapshot of WP:CSB’s activity from both content analysis and social network perspectives to discover “who” geographically this coalition of the unrepresented is inserting into the digital annals of Wikipedia.Wikipedia and WikipediansDeveloped in 2001 by Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and academic Larry Sanger, Wikipedia is an online collaborative encyclopedia hosting articles in nearly 250 languages (Cohen). The English-language Wikipedia contains over 3.2 million articles, each of which is created, edited, and updated solely by users (Wikipedia “Welcome”). At the time of this study, Alexa, a website tracking organisation, ranked Wikipedia as the 6th most accessed site on the Internet. Unlike the five sites ahead of it though—Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube (owned by Google), and live.com (owned by Microsoft)—all of which are multibillion-dollar businesses that deal more with information aggregation than information production, Wikipedia is a non-profit that operates on less than $500,000 a year and staffs only a dozen paid employees (Lih). Wikipedia is financed and supported by the WikiMedia Foundation, a charitable umbrella organisation with an annual budget of $4.6 million, mainly funded by donations (Middleton).Wikipedia editors and contributors have the option of creating a user profile and participating via a username, or they may participate anonymously, with only an IP address representing their actions. Despite the option for total anonymity, many Wikipedians have chosen to visibly engage in this online community (Ayers, Matthews, and Yates; Bruns; Lih), and researchers across disciplines are studying the motivations of these new online collectives (Kane, Majchrzak, Johnson, and Chenisern; Oreg and Nov). The motivations of open source software contributors, such as UNIX programmers and programming groups, have been shown to be complex and tied to both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, including online reputation, self-satisfaction and enjoyment, and obligation to a greater common good (Hertel, Niedner, and Herrmann; Osterloh and Rota). Investigation into why Wikipedians edit has indicated multiple motivations as well, with community engagement, task enjoyment, and information sharing among the most significant (Schroer and Hertel). Additionally, Wikipedians seem to be taking up the cause of generativity (a concern for the ongoing health and openness of the Internet’s infrastructures) that Jonathan Zittrain notably called for in The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. Governance and ControlAlthough the technical infrastructure of Wikipedia is built to support and perhaps encourage an equal distribution of power on the site, Wikipedia is not a land of “anything goes.” The popular press has covered recent efforts by the site to reduce vandalism through a layer of editorial review (Cohen), a tightening of control cited as a possible reason for the recent dip in the number of active editors (Edwards). A number of regulations are already in place that prevent the open editing of certain articles and pages, such as the site’s disclaimers and pages that have suffered large amounts of vandalism. Editing wars can also cause temporary restrictions to editing, and Ayers, Matthews, and Yates point out that these wars can happen anywhere, even to Burt Reynold’s page.Academic studies have begun to explore the governance and control that has developed in the Wikipedia community, generally highlighting how order is maintained not through particular actors, but through established procedures and norms. Konieczny tested whether Wikipedia’s evolution can be defined by Michels’ Iron Law of Oligopoly, which predicts that the everyday operations of any organisation cannot be run by a mass of members, and ultimately control falls into the hands of the few. Through exploring a particular WikiProject on information validation, he concludes:There are few indicators of an oligarchy having power on Wikipedia, and few trends of a change in this situation. The high level of empowerment of individual Wikipedia editors with regard to policy making, the ease of communication, and the high dedication to ideals of contributors succeed in making Wikipedia an atypical organization, quite resilient to the Iron Law. (189)Butler, Joyce, and Pike support this assertion, though they emphasise that instead of oligarchy, control becomes encapsulated in a wide variety of structures, policies, and procedures that guide involvement with the site. A virtual “bureaucracy” emerges, but one that should not be viewed with the negative connotation often associated with the term.Other work considers control on Wikipedia through the framework of commons governance, where “peer production depends on individual action that is self-selected and decentralized rather than hierarchically assigned. Individuals make their own choices with regard to resources managed as a commons” (Viegas, Wattenberg and McKeon). The need for quality standards and quality control largely dictate this commons governance, though interviewing Wikipedians with various levels of responsibility revealed that policies and procedures are only as good as those who maintain them. Forte, Larco, and Bruckman argue “the Wikipedia community has remained healthy in large part due to the continued presence of ‘old-timers’ who carry a set of social norms and organizational ideals with them into every WikiProject, committee, and local process in which they take part” (71). Thus governance on Wikipedia is a strong representation of a democratic ideal, where actors and policies are closely tied in their evolution. Transparency, Content, and BiasThe issue of transparency has proved to be a double-edged sword for Wikipedia and Wikipedians. The goal of a collective body of knowledge created by all—the “expert” and the “amateur”—can only be upheld if equal access to page creation and development is allotted to everyone, including those who prefer anonymity. And yet this very option for anonymity, or even worse, false identities, has been a sore subject for some in the Wikipedia community as well as a source of concern for some scholars (Santana and Wood). The case of a 24-year old college dropout who represented himself as a multiple Ph.D.-holding theology scholar and edited over 16,000 articles brought these issues into the public spotlight in 2007 (Doran; Elsworth). Wikipedia itself has set up standards for content that include expectations of a neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and the publishing of no original research, but Santana and Wood argue that self-policing of these policies is not adequate:The principle of managerial discretion requires that every actor act from a sense of duty to exercise moral autonomy and choice in responsible ways. When Wikipedia’s editors and administrators remain anonymous, this criterion is simply not met. It is assumed that everyone is behaving responsibly within the Wikipedia system, but there are no monitoring or control mechanisms to make sure that this is so, and there is ample evidence that it is not so. (141) At the theoretical level, some downplay these concerns of transparency and autonomy as logistical issues in lieu of the potential for information systems to support rational discourse and emancipatory forms of communication (Hansen, Berente, and Lyytinen), but others worry that the questionable “realities” created on Wikipedia will become truths once circulated to all areas of the Web (Langlois and Elmer). With the number of articles on the English-language version of Wikipedia reaching well into the millions, the task of mapping and assessing content has become a tremendous endeavour, one mostly taken on by information systems experts. Kittur, Chi, and Suh have used Wikipedia’s existing hierarchical categorisation structure to map change in the site’s content over the past few years. Their work revealed that in early 2008 “Culture and the arts” was the most domin

Caroline Ayres Teichner

The Federal Circuit's liberal treatment of the patent false-marking statute, 35 U.S.C. § 292, has created a climate in which opportunistic qui tam plaintiffs facing a low burden of proof can recover potentially enormous sums of money under the statute with no showing of competitive injury. This note argues that the Federal Circuit erred by ruling that plaintiffs must prove the key element of false-marking claims—namely, intent to deceive the public—by a mere preponderance of the evidence, and further contends that the court should have adopted the clear and convincing standard instead. Support for this elevated burden of proof can be found in courts' historical treatment of the false-marking statute, the legislative history and policy rationales underlying § 292, and analogous legal contexts. More crucially, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment mandates a higher burden of proof to protect the important interests at stake for false-marking defendants.

Héctor Pastén, Thanases Pheidas, Xavier Vidaux

No abstract is available for this record.

Helga Varden

Kant's example of lying to the murderer at the door has been a cherished source of scorn for thinkers with little sympathy for Kant's philosophy and a source of deep puzzlement for those more favorably inclined. The problem is that Kant seems to say that it is always wrong to lie—even to a murderer asking for the whereabouts of his victim—and that if one does lie and despite one's good intentions the lie leads to the murderer's capture of the victim, then the liar is partially responsible for the killing of the victim. If this is correct, then Kant's account seems not only to require us to respect the murderer more than the victim, but also that somehow we can be responsible for the consequences of another's wrongdoing. After World War II our spontaneous, negative reaction to this apparently absurd line of argument is made even starker by replacing the murderer at the door with a Nazi officer looking for Jews hidden in people's homes. Does Kant really mean to say that people hiding Jews in their homes should have told the truth to the Nazis, and that if they did lie, they became co-responsible for the heinous acts committed against those Jews who, like Anne Frank, were caught anyway? Because this is clearly what Kant argues, the critics continue, his discussion of lying to the murderer brings out the true, dark side not only of Kant's universalistic moral theory but also of Kant himself. We get the gloomy picture of a stubborn, old academic who refuses to see the inhumane consequences of his theory, and instead grotesquely defends the inhumane by turning it into an a priori, moral command. In this paper, I argue that Kant's discussion of lying to the murderer at the door has been seriously misinterpreted. My suggestion is that this is primarily a result of the fact that the Doctrine of Right with its conception of rightful, external freedom has been given insufficient attention in Kant interpretation. It is in the Doctrine of Right that Kant discusses rightful interaction in the empirical world. Hence it is in this work we find many of the arguments needed not only to understand his analysis of lying to the murderer in “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy,” but also to analyze the added complexity the Nazi officer brings to the example. When we interpret lying to the murderer in light of Kant's discussion in the Doctrine of Right, we can make sense of why lying to the murderer, although a wrong, is not to wrong the murderer, why we become responsible for the bad consequences of the lie, and finally why lying is to do wrong in general. The account of rightful freedom provided in the Doctrine of Right also makes it possible to see why replacing the murderer with a Nazi officer adds philosophical complexity rather than just one more reason to reject Kant's view. The introduction of the Nazi officer requires us to consider the role of a public authority in ensuring rightful relations in general and what happens to the analysis of lying when rightful interactions as a matter of fact are no longer possible. We will see that the only time doing wrong in general by lying is legally punishable is when we lie to or as a representative of the public authority. The Nazis, however, did not represent a public authority on Kant's view and consequently there is no duty to abstain from lying to Nazis. Two further strengths of Kant's account, I propose in the final sections of the paper, lie in its ability to critique how European legal systems aimed to deal with the Nazis after the and in its to our of the of Kant's “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Right to is a to a by in Kant by to The moral is a duty to the if and make We have of this in the consequences from this by a who as to that it be a to lie to a murderer who us a of is has in our It is a duty to the The of duty is from the of duty is that on the of one to the of there are no there are no the truth is a but only to one who has a to the no one has a to a truth that against Kant that if it is always wrong to lie, then is by I that it be to against In or not lying is wrong on the that to we are do not have a to the truth and no one has the duty to the against lying to should not be a The of Kant in the introduction is in line with general on In of it Kant's to in the Right to as more for the if one were to a of Kant's that to the one is to the if have by a lie just on from the then are legally for the consequences that from if have to the then public can against the consequences It is possible after have to the murderer's as to his is at the has out that not the murderer and the not be but if and that is not at and has out are not of that the murderer and his on then can by be as the of his if told the truth to the of then have and the murderer the for his and the have been one who a lie, be responsible for its consequences even a and the for they have for is a duty that be as the of to be on the of is made and if even the to it is be in is a of reason one not to be by to the we should view Kant's to the provided for his account of the moral in In this we that moral be on a that can be and that we do the it is the to from When this the Right to like the one is as it how one to lie as the of lying be and it out the of this moral with to people's and against one Because lying is not a Kant is as lying to the murderer is a of it is this mean not only that one lie to a of the murderer at the but also not to the of as the Nazis. to Nazis is also a are no to the truth be make even in the Kant can be as that if lie despite the of doing are also legally responsible for the bad consequences of the for if the hiding in out are lying to the and as the Nazi from the then are partially responsible for what happens to the even if it not this analysis is clearly absurd and If this is Kant has to say the the critics then the with of reason is the of the of Kant's argument in the Right to and despite the of I it be it seems that an that on of general is wrong, Kant the that is the argument to a discussion of or what Kant in the in the Kant discusses only how lying to the murderer should be from the of view of how public should to Kant discusses and from in this In the only Kant to and to that is not with but only with or in The of Kant of and of and the that is an of general in the and the Kant as with people's of and of their in the people's of on from is to what can in be of external and in the is to what in be of what is one to do although external freedom and freedom freedom as for the view that is an of our or a of our one example of example I to the of lying is not Kant the that not lying or truth as is an duty of the reason is that do in have the fact that and the make Kant as an also a if Kant is wrong, it is that of philosophy that the as a of his theory as The will be to Kant an interpretation. is there an more of Kant on the of turning to what I is the and also and more of Kant's on why of Kant's account of the problem of lying to the murderer are by the one that on Kant's account have to people's just they is to from the the murderer to as it is of his who is in his The is that Kant's account of truth that one has a duty to to just to and that one has no to it is to to the problem by that on Kant's account we can is in the but are not into The then by that if the murderer has with the and the matter of in a public of it is that do not us to that we can lie to the murderer at the are out by the in Kant the example. 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capture the the if makes it possible for the murderer to get to his victim, then are legally responsible can by be for bad It after be the that the who into is on to the and the murderer is the to make to to a for the murderer and his victim, even the of the of by that for the bad see more clearly Kant is we the of the who has in from to lie is not a of the consider the in the can in and will lie for to but in fact have do not to lie for In this become an in the when the murderer lie to one's that one will lie to the the truth to the murderer the and then that one told the truth to the murderer, one is not legally responsible for the bad consequences of the lie to one's is not a in one's to out of a be for there be truth the in to out of as that the that will lie, but as a matter of it out to with the murderer, are that the I that Kant say that are not to be also in this to lie on of a be as legal have the against that that are wrong in as even if not be to with the lie is a that by 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complexity when the murderer is a it is also to Kant's that to in the of is to do wrong in the Because rightful is as in the of the of is a of wrongdoing. to in this is to reject the of rightful interaction and is why can be to the of it is to that if of the to then they do not wrong one by to in this Because no to with the they to in that are at of is to if happens to on and is then their interactions are of if they do on and to their with then there is of or not there are and by to in rightful by to a public they the of to do the of rightful to do wrong in the if but one to and the one is to the to do then those who to wrong the one and do wrong in the the the to be and to in the of is not as the one does not have the to be or to in this The one to but In this the one does not have for one is to against who with The final of needed we can to the of the Nazi officer Kant's account of public The in the public of the Doctrine of Right is to the of and the in Kant's account of does not 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their their and their In the of the public authority as a is made with the of The Nazi not a on it and public to of the the it to a legal that not only the of but also the of to their The Nazi did not represent but no one in by on the the and as it not a public authority. is to Nazi not but at Kant in the from a of the or is with freedom and in is and Nazi at its this in to be to the Nazi Kant further from an even is freedom and that the Nazi after the not only not a but is than the the Nazi but aimed at the of rightful for the is not a of one a against as those who in the Nazi in an to rightful relations as It an to a in there is no to freedom at on the is at its as the Nazis were in the of and the European not only in a of but in a of the lying or not to wrong is in fact than the of rightful in by the Nazis in fact of or like the Nazis The analysis does not however, as it is to be that from the of view of the Doctrine of Right the rightful of the of European by the Nazis the that the even the of the of the the were the that interactions the of that the European their rightful in the the of the European legal systems to the of by those who the The and to the were the as those that been and the of the analysis is that it the for a critique of what the European legal systems aimed to the to the of by the committed this by Nazis or as those who in the Nazi and committed public against the the one a Nazi or be legally for committed against the in line with Kant's account the European legal systems did not the Nazis as the and consequently the of against were as of one against the those in the Nazis were punishable for in a against the is to say that they were also to be with their public against the Because the public of in a to the rightful is the of public Kant it for the is no European legal after of its responsible for not in the against the Nazis, for not lying to Nazis. who to out of it by the truth when were and to Kant should not have The reason those who to by were not is that people be legally to to or for to do that are wrong in as lying and I like to by out what I to be further of Kant's our of It is to that there is no to by moral is an of and a duty of and not a duty of to the of however, of acts against a the of as a The people in the in were their by against the Nazis in an to the that rightful were possible in the this is a duty of a duty of to a is not can be legally or to is why many of those who in the were of of after the Kant's account makes sense of why we see as or and that this analysis brings to light an of that more to make good sense to more to are and to capture the moral or those who against it is a fact that of with and and on in the more this is at the After did what they by the on the more it seems that or even to good what one has a of people as good as they or In the view I have can make sense of this to the a of reason why of find their to deal with from their of committed against the Nazis, the did not wrong the Nazis, but they did wrong in the by against rightful interaction and rightful as by a public authority and public they were in their only to with a rightful although they no or for their as they were into their by the Nazis the is at a in the sense of we can be into from there are no even if we to by the there is a moral as it in with rightful many of the their to with is not a of their of but rather a of their to and in rightful interaction I like to and the at the for for their on the and of this also to the at the and to the and at the for their to of this

Myriam Senn

No abstract is available for this record.

Iraj Saniee, Ulrich Barth

Man-made self-organizing systems date back to antiquity; for example, elaborate water clocks found from Alexandria (Ctesibius's clepsydra) to Seoul (King Sejong's Chagyongnu) were designed to keep constant rates or strike at regular time intervals without human adjustment. More modern examples include Watt's centrifugal governor, Black's negative feedback amplifier, and Nyquist's stability test, which enabled engineered systems to stabilize themselves. These and numerous innovations in control theory and engineering optimization have contributed much to modern communications technology. But there is a need for advances in both methods and applications beyond what has been achieved in the precise settings of mechanical, electronic, and optical switching and transmission towards the self-management and control of large-scale systems with many interacting and semi-autonomous components. Natural phenomena may be a guide for us, a model for self-organized decentralized systems. Spontaneous magnetization, crystallization, lasers, and superconductivity are examples of structural self-organization in physics where cohesive behavior emerges from initial disorder. In self-assembly and auto-catalytic networks in chemistry, molecules organize themselves in well-ordered arrangements without external action, and in biology, we observe highly complex coordinated action as in the folding of proteins, homeostasis, and flocking.

purwoko purwoko

There are many problems in the implementation of decentralization and local autonomy in Indonesia, in terms of: (1) Authority and responsibility between central, provincial, regencial/municipal, village government; (2) Local leadership; (3) Representative/ Legislative and political party; (4) Local finance; (5) Democracy and village autonomy. Besides, there are many flaws, uncertainties, and anxieties in the concept of local autonomy, the function of central government and its organs, authority, organization structure and working order, local arrogance, leadership by the local- people, People’s Assembly, financial management, local financial management, and policy inconsistency. These problems have to be solved by among other shifting paradigm, from constructional paradigm to empowerment, to create self-reliance through social learning. The right implementation of decentralization and local autonomy will be beneficial for the central government, empower the society/government, guarantee heterogeneity and local plurality, create democracy, and enhance the people’s self-reliance and participation in development activities, besides enhancing the government’s responsiveness.

Philip Brown, Wendy Beekes, Peter Verhoeven

No abstract is available for this record.

Sam Kerr, Michael S. Kirkpatrick, Elisa Bertino

As users have to manage an increasing number of accounts, they have to balance password security and password usability. As such, many users use insecure passwords resulting in their accounts and data being vulnerable to unauthorized accesses. In this paper, we present Physically Enhanced Authentication Ring, or PEAR, a system that alleviates this problem. We leverage Physically Unclonable Functions (PUF) to create unclonable hardware devices, which users use to authenticate. Using a hardware device, our system uses zero-knowledge proofs, which provide better security than traditional passwords, yet users must only enter a simple PIN. As such, our system is very usable and imposes little to no burden on end users and service providers. We present transaction levels on top of PEAR of as an extension and then discuss some other work that could be done in the future.

Honoratha Mushi, K. Mullei, J. Macha, Francis Wafula · 7 authors

Health worker training is a key component of the integrated management of childhood illness (IMCI). However, training coverage remains low in many countries. We conducted in-depth case studies in two East African countries to examine the factors underlying low training coverage 10 years after IMCI had been adopted as policy. A document review and in-depth semi-structured interviews with stakeholders at facility, district, regional/provincial and national levels in two districts in Kenya (Homa Bay and Malindi) and Tanzania (Bunda and Tarime) were carried out in 2007-08. Bunda and Malindi achieved higher levels of training coverage (44% and 25%) compared with Tarime and Homa Bay (5% and 13%). Key factors allowing the first two districts to perform better were: strong district leadership and personal commitment to IMCI, which facilitated access to external funding and encouraged local-level policy adaptation; sensitization and training of district health managers; and lower staff turnover. However, IMCI training coverage remained well below target levels across all sites. The main barrier to expanding coverage was the cost of training due to its duration, the number of facilitators and its residential nature. Mechanisms for financing IMCI also restricted district capacity to raise funds. In Tanzania, districts could not spend more than 10% of their budgets on training. In Kenya, limited financial decentralization meant that district managers had to rely on donors for financial support. Critically, the low priority given to IMCI at national and international levels also limited the expansion of training. Levels of domestic and donor support for IMCI have diminished over time in favour of vertical programmes, partly due to the difficulty in monitoring and measuring the impact of an integrated intervention like IMCI. Alternative, lower cost methods of IMCI training need to be promoted, and greater advocacy for IMCI is needed both nationally and internationally.

James Alm, H. Spencer Banzhaf

Abstract When external effects are important, markets will be inefficient, and economists have considered several broad classes of economic instruments to correct these inefficiencies. However, the standard economic analysis has tended to take the region, and the government, as a given; that is, this work has neglected important distinctions and interactions between the geographic scope of different pollutants, the enforcement authority of various levels of government, and the fiscal responsibilities of the various levels of government. It typically ignores the possibility that the externality may be created and addressed by local governments, and it does not consider the implications of decentralization for the design of economic instruments targeted at environmental problems. This paper examines the implications of decentralization for the design of corrective policies; that is, how does one design economic instruments in a decentralized fiscal system in which externalities exist at the local level and in which subnational governments have the power to provide local public services and to choose tax instruments that can both finance these expenditures and correct the market failures of externalities?

Luciane Cristina Feltrin de Oliveira, Marluce Maria Araújo Assis, André Renê Barboni

This study of theoretical revision discuss the Pharmaceutical Assistance in the Basic Units of Health, rescuing briefly the history of the National Drug Policy, the mechanisms of financing in the process of health decentralization and Pharmaceutical Assistance on the Basic Attention to Health. The expansion of the population access to the health system has demanded changes on drug distribution in order to increase the coverage and at the same time to reduce costs. It was identified advances in legal and institutional structures: the management decentralization of actions on pharmaceutical assistance; the expansion of the population access to essential medicines; and the establishment of the pharmaceutical assistance in some cities. However, it still persists priority actions in relation to the financing and population coverage, in detriment of quality processes. The conclusion is that, many Brazilian cities has low availability and discontinuity of essential medicine offer; dispensation by workers without qualification; inadequate conditions of storage that compromise the quality of medicines; medicine prescription that does not belong to the National Reference of Essential Medicines; and problems related to the access of users to the pharmacotherapy.

Helen K. R. Williams

Helen Williams of the London School of Economics attended the recent Talis open day covering all things semantic and how to apply these tools and structures in a library setting. Helen has included links to all the presentations from the day that covered a wide range of topics from making library resources web3 ready and the frameworks and schemas used in the Linked Data movement.

P. Trucco, Diana Tussie

No abstract is available for this record.

Franz Mathis, Joseph L. Cavinato

Abstract This article investigates a growing desire by companies to better manage the financing of the global Management Action supply chain and explores best practices. Supply‐chain managers and finance or treasury managers, however, live in different worlds, and integration does not come easily. The article argues that decentralized finance functions lead to financial inefficiencies. The authors identify five subarchitectures to competitive supply chains and argue that visualizing the supply chain financially is the first step to controlling and improving it. Finance is embedded in every step of the supply chain — and business model. Management guidelines of what to change, what to eliminate, and what to adapt are presented along with the new starting points of strategy and customers' ever‐changing needs. Consequently, the end game is profit maximization rather than only cost minimization, and both within acceptable risk parameters. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Max Joseph Herman, Rini Sasanti Handayani, Yuyun Yuniar

Drug is one of the essential elements in healthcare that should be effectively and efficiently managed. Following the decentralization in 2001 in Indonesia, drug management has changed in district drug management units and also in District General Hospitals. Certainly this condition influences the sustainability of drug access in primary health care such as in Community Health Center and District General Hospital, especially in drug financing policy. A cross sectional descriptive study to obtain information on drug management in public healthcare in district had been carried out between July and December 2006 in 10 District Public Drug Management Units from 10 district health offices and 9 district general hospitals as samples. Data were collected by interviewing heads of Drug Section in District Health Offices and heads of Hospital Pharmacies using structured questionnaires and observing drug storage in District Drug Management Units, Community Health Centers, and Hospital Pharmacies. Results of the study show that drug planning in District Health Offices and General Hospitals did not meet the basic real need in some districts nor District Hospitals. The minimum health service standards had not been achieved yet. Furthermore, drug procurement, storage and recording as well as reporting was not good enough either, such as shown by the existence of expired drugs. Lead time for drug delivery to community health centers in some districts was longer than the average of lead time in the past 3 years.

Giovanni Di Crescenzo, Javier Herranz, Germán Sáez

No abstract is available for this record.

Qinglei Hu, Bing Xiao

No abstract is available for this record.

Gerald K. Helleiner

Decentralization to regional bodies and consolidation of short-term and developmental finance together constitute the best hope for governance reform in international financial institutions.

Sukriti Bhattacharya, Agostino Cortesi

Abstract. This paper proposes a novel method for watermarking C source code by exploiting the programming language features.The key idea of our watermarking scheme is a semantics-preserving program transformation, based on a hidden permutation of local identifiers, followed by another hidden permutation of the functions defined in the source code. This last permutation allows to encrypt the prove of ownership, in the framework of interactive zero-knowledge proof system. The proposed watermarking scheme is invisible to compilers and does not reveal any information about the watermark, its nature and its location into the program, since the zero knowledge proof is independent of the encoding and of the embedding. Finally, we introduce a third party Trusted Time-Stamp Service into the system to prevent invertibility/ambiguity attacks.

DAVID SOCHER

No abstract is available for this record.

Parul Saini, Ajay.K. Sharma

No abstract is available for this record.

Agus Tri Basuki

By autonomy, most of resources that managed by central government becomes managed by local government. By decentralization, services to the society will be more efficient and effectively. This paper will analyze how far the response of local income because of change in Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP,) and also the ability of regional finance in regional autonomy era. The result of this paper shows that the coefficient of elasticity of regional income more than one, it means that if Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) increase one percent, it will increases local income more than one percent. The role of domestic income to local income decrease, it means that the local government has to look for a forward alternative how lo increases the role of domestic income to local income.