Blockchain Papers

Kamesh Namuduri

Trust is a fundamental concept that enables cooperation and collaboration among the nodes in any network. Formal trust models are necessary for sharing information in a collaborative environment. Trust assessment methods that are commonly used in network applications or in social networks passively gather information about other nodes and take significant amount of time for assessing trust. Such models are not convenient for applications such as tactical airborne networks which are typically deployed for short durations of time.

Richard C. Hunter

This article reviews educational initiatives of state and federal government that were designed to remedy the effects of racial segregation on Black public school students in the United States after the famous Brown v. Board of Education decisions. Several policy and legal initiatives are reviewed, including school desegregation, compensatory education, decentralization, school reform and restructuring, school finance litigation, state accountability models, school district takeovers, vouchers, charter schools, No Child Left Behind, and privatization.

Steven L. Shafer

SCIENTIFICALLY based professionals face the dilemma described by James Oberg, National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineer and space journalist: “You must keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.”1Startling advances, such as the role of Helicobacter pylori in the etiology of stomach ulcers,2remind us of the need to be receptive to unexpected discoveries that challenge our beliefs.As practitioners of a science-based profession, physicians have a responsibility to patients to (1) critically interpret their medical history, (2) critically read and evaluate the scientific literature, and (3) critically plan their therapy using evidenced-based medicine. How well do we meet this standard?Anesthesiologists are arguably the most experienced practitioners of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. For example, my general anesthetics typically start with a ventilatory arrest (usually by intent), followed by need for cardiovascular support. The 2005 American Heart Association guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation assess the evidence for “best practices” in resuscitation.3Class I recommendations describe interventions that unambiguously improve outcome and should always be provided. These include defibrillation, tracheal intubation, and (remarkably) taping the endotracheal tube. Class IIa recommendations, whose benefits almost always exceed risks, include many widely accepted interventions, such as administering oxygen, confirming carbon dioxide returning from the airway, the use of various airway maintenance devices, proper use of a defibrillator, magnesium for the treatment of torsade de pointes, fibrinolysis for suspected pulmonary embolus, and use of the impedance threshold device to improve recovery.In all probability, you have never heard of the impedance threshold device, also a class IIa recommendation, despite the fact improved outcome has been demonstrated in more than 50 animal and clinical trials of resuscitation. The device is a special valve that attaches to a facemask or advanced airway device (fig. 1). In the absence of a positive-pressure breath, it seals off the airway when the chest recoils during the decompression phase of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, thereby generating more negative pressure in the thorax to draw more blood into the great vessels and heart. This also decreases intracranial pressure. The device doubles cardiac output during cardiopulmonary resuscitation. According to a recent meta-analysis, the impedance threshold device nearly doubled short- and long-term survival after cardiac arrest, at a cost of approximately $99 per unit.The American Heart Association Guidelines characterize epinephrine and amiodarone as class IIb recommendations, meaning that benefit may exceed risk. Lidocaine and atropine are class III recommendations, indicating insufficient evidence. What does it mean that few anesthesiologists have ever used the impedance threshold device, which roughly doubles survival at nominal cost, and has stronger evidence for benefit than epinephrine, amiodarone, lidocaine, and atropine, mainstays of current practice? In my view, it means that we are not as scientifically based in our practice as we would like to believe. Instead, our clinical practice reflects traditions and beliefs instilled during training, which only gradually adapt to scientific progress.As practitioners of a science-based profession, we also have a responsibility to the society in which we live to function as role models for critical thinking. The public is surprisingly naive about the scientific method. How else can one explain the marketing of such unlikely marvels as running your car on water,†a heater that produces more energy than used,‡or curing cancer with magnets?§Consider the following urban legend: A businessman in New Orleans meets a prostitute in a bar. They go to her hotel room, where he blacks out. The next morning he awakens in a bathtub, with a note telling him to call 911. The dispatcher tells him to feel for a tube protruding from his lower back. He finds one, and is told his kidney has been stolen.Clinicians will readily dismiss this story because of the impossibility of performing a donor nephrectomy in a hotel room, and the sheer weirdness of awakening from surgery and anesthesia in a bathtub with a tube in your back. However, the claim has been so widely circulated that the National Kidney Foundation issued a formal repudiation.∥However, when this “innocent” urban myth circulated in South America, there was a 90% decrease in cadaveric kidney donations.4Considering that many individuals waiting for transplants die before receiving a transplant, this “harmless” urban legend may have resulted in significant morbidity and mortality. Ignorance has consequences!You have likely received e-mails promising fortunes in exchange for some nominal effort, such as helping transfer money from Nigeria or contacting an agency that has chosen your e-mail address in a previously unknown lottery. When the victim attempts to procure the money, he or she is instructed to pay increasingly large advance fees to facilitate the transaction. Such transparently bogus schemes net billions of dollars every year from gullible individuals.#Millions of gullible individuals firmly believe in alien abductions, crystal healing, channeling, psychic power, touch therapy, and implausible dietary wonders because they do not have the intellectual tools to evaluate fraudulent claims. More broadly, our political process, our allocation of national resources, our foreign policy, and our stewardship of the planet all suffer from an endemic resistance to think critically as a society. As physicians, we need to lead by example.If we are to be role models of critical thinking, we need to understand how to evaluate claims based on evidence. James Lett, Professor of Anthropology at Indian River Community College, proposed a taxonomy of six essential elements for reasoning from evidence: falsifiability, logic, comprehensiveness, honesty, replicability, and sufficiency (table 1).5Falsifiability refers to whether a claim can be disproved by evidence. If the truth of a claim is completely immune from all evidence against it, the claim cannot be evaluated scientifically. For example, some cultures believe that everything has a spirit, including the rocks, the trees, and even the wind. This belief does not yield any testable predictions. How can you disprove that the wind has a spirit? As these beliefs cannot be proved or disproved from evidence, they are simply beyond the realm of science.A lot of “new age” thinking suffers from lack of falsifiability. Can people really channel their thoughts through crystals? If this leads to testable predictions, then it can be prospectively evaluated. If not, the claim is scientifically meaningless. The same is true for many claims from practitioners of “alternative medicine.” How can one evaluate a treatment that promises to “improve your well-being”? If that cannot be defined, it cannot be tested.Infinite excuses are often used to protect pseudoscientific viewpoints from falsifiability. For example, creation “scientists” hold that God created the earth and its life forms based on literal reading of the Bible. The mountain of evidence for evolution through natural selection, drawn from epidemiology, evolutionary biology, comparative biology, geology, statistical modeling, paleontology, molecular biology, and genetics, including the sequencing of the genomes of many species, is entirely dismissed. Why are dinosaur bones buried in the earth? “God wanted it that way!” Not only is creation “science” devoid of falsifiable propositions, but infinite excuses preclude rational debate about the merits of creationism.Similarly, believers that the earth has been visited by extraterrestrials answer all criticism regarding the complete lack of evidence for extraterrestrial visitation on the basis that the evidence is suppressed by the government. It is all kept under lock and key in Area 51! This permits infinite excuses and prevents falsifiability of the claims. This is the essence of junk science.Logic involves valid methods of inference. Some methods are self-evident. If I say that all dogs have fleas, and Roxy is a dog, it follows that Roxy has fleas. However, if I say that all dogs have fleas, and Roxy has fleas, it does not follow that Roxy is a dog. Roxy could be the neighbor’s kid.Logic can be devilishly confusing. Consider the 1960s television game show Let’s Make a Deal hosted by Monty Hall. This show was based on a stage with three doors. Behind one of the doors was a valuable prize, frequently “Monty’s Cookie Jar” stuffed with money. Behind the other two doors were joke prizes, typically goats. The contestant was instructed to pick one of the doors. Let’s assume the contestant picks door 1.At this point in the show, Monty would typically open one of the two doors not chosen by the contestant, invariably revealing a goat to howls of inexplicable laughter from the audience. (Since Monty knew where the cookie jar was, did they think that Monty would reveal the cookie jar and spoil the game?) Let’s assume that Monty has opened door 3, revealing the goat. Ha ha! At this point the contestant is offered a choice: stay with door 1, the original selection, or switch to door 2. Nearly all contestants chose to stay with door 1.The logic could not be simpler: There are just three doors, and one question: stay or switch? It is remarkably nonobvious that the probability of winning Monty’s Cookie Jar is doubled by switching to door 2. The reason is that in opening door 3, Monty has told the contestant nothing about door 1. There was a one-third probability that this was the correct choice when the choice was made, and there is still a one-third probability after door 3 is opened. There was a two-thirds probability that Monty’s Cookie Jar was behind doors 2 or 3, and that is still the case. However, because there is zero chance that Monty’s Cookie Jar is behind door 3, there is a two-thirds probability that it is behind door 2. Therefore, the probability of winning Monty’s Cookie Jar is doubled by switching.**The same problem has confounded research in psychology for several decades. In studies of cognitive dissonance, a monkey is offered a choice between a red and a blue M&M. Let us assume that the monkey selects red. The monkey is then given a choice between a blue and a green M&M. The monkey is approximately twice as likely to pick green. Assuming that there was a 50:50 chance that the monkey would pick either color, the preference for green was assumed to represent “cognitive dissonance,” psychological angst over the selection of the previously rejected blue M&M. This has been the basis of decades of research in cognitive dissonance.However, there is not a 50:50 chance of the monkey picking a green M&M versus blue M&M. As pointed out by Keith Chen,6this is the Monty Hall problem. Assume that the monkey has a true preference among the three colors. Figure 2shows the six possible preferences. The monkey’s preference for the red M&M over the blue M&M rejects half of the possible preferences, shown as a line through three of the six possible preferences in figure 2. Among the remaining three possible rank orders, green is preferred over blue in two cases, and blue is preferred over green in one case. Therefore, the animal is twice as likely to pick the green M&M as to pick the blue M&M, not 50:50 as was assumed. The Monty Hall and monkey M&M choice problems are striking for the nonobviousness of the correct answer, which is particularly remarkable given the exceedingly simply structure: three doors or three M&Ms.Logic can be distorted by the ambiguity in our language. For example, many would agree that a ham sandwich was better than nothing. It is similarly evident that nothing is better than eternal happiness. If both statements are true, does it not logically follow that a ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness?Logic also involves statistics. 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Tony Ward

The reluctance of English and other common-law criminal courts to admit expert evidence of witness credibility is rooted in two main objections: that such evidence needlessly complicates the jury's task and that it threatens to ‘usurp’ the jury's role. The ‘usurpation’ objection can be understood as referring to a risk that the expert will be accorded unwarranted epistemic authority on matters which it is important for the jury to decide for itself. These objections have substance, and although they apply to expert evidence in general they have particular force when applied to evidence of credibility. But the jury, as a responsible fact-finder, also has a duty to attend to expert evidence that will help it avoid ‘epistemic injustice’. Particularly in rape and sexual abuse cases, there are good reasons for admitting some forms of expert evidence of credibility, and concerns about ‘usurpation’ do not justify the British government's apparent abandonment of proposals to make such evidence more widely admissible in rape trials.

Puwen Wei, Guoyan Zhang, Lijiang Zhang, Xiaoyun Wang

This paper shows that the protocol presented by Goyal et al. can be further simplified for a one-way function, with the simplified protocol being more practical for the decisional Diffie-Hellman assumption. Goyal et al. provided a general transformation from any honest verifier statistical zero-knowledge argument to a concurrent statistical zero-knowledge argument. Their transformation relies only on the existence of one-way functions. For the simplified transformation, the witness indistinguishable proof of knowledge protocols in “parallel” not only plays the role of preamble but also removes some computational zero-knowledge proofs, which Goyal et al. used to prove the existence of the valid openings to the commitments. Therefore, although some computational zero-knowledge proofs are replaced with a weaker notion, the witness indistinguishable protocol, the proof of soundness can still go through.

Benedict S. Jimenez

Decentralization and autonomy can potentially increase public sector efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability, as well as fulfill a conflict‐mitigating role. There is no guarantee, however, that decentralization, once implemented, would automatically produce the expected benefits. Using the case of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in the Philippines, this article explores the importance of organizational capacity and the cultural, political, and social conditions in the region to explain the performance of the autonomous government. The article concludes that for autonomy to work, the administrative and institutional capacity of the regional government should be revitalized and the current politico‐administrative structure redesigned to accommodate local customs and practices and facilitate a consultative and collegial local governance arrangement.

Barbara Whitener

No abstract is available for this record.

Ivan Damgaard, Carolin Lunemann

In this paper, we prove classical coin-flipping secure in the presence of quantum adversaries. The proof uses a recent result of Watrous [Wat09] that allows quantum rewinding for protocols of a certain form. We then discuss two applications. First, the combination of coin-flipping with any non-interactive zero-knowledge protocol leads to an easy transformation from non-interactive zero-knowledge to interactive quantum zero-knowledge. Second, we discuss how our protocol can be applied to a recently proposed method for improving the security of quantum protocols [DFL+09], resulting in an implementation without set-up assumptions. Finally, we sketch how to achieve efficient simulation for an extended construction in the common-reference-string model.

Fred Nelson

Biodiversity conservation outcomes are closely related to the rules and institutions governing resource use. Creating local incentives for conservation through more secure resource tenure is central to conservation outcomes on private and communal lands, where the preponderance of biodiversity occurs. Conservation efforts in sub-Saharan Africa are therefore centrally concerned with governance dynamics and institutional reform processes, such as the decentralization of property rights, and how best to achieve such reforms. Traditional mechanisms for financing conservation efforts in Africa rely heavily on funds channeled through multilateral and bilateral aid agencies. The history of development aid highlights a range of constraints these aid agencies face in terms of working toward more effective resource governance arrangements and promoting reforms. Government aid agencies possess incentives for promoting large-scale and short-term projects that maximize expenditure volumes and tend to define issues in technical rather than political terms. The history of development aid suggests that these and other characteristics of aid agencies impedes their ability to influence governance reform processes and that aid funding may discourage the adoption of reforms. Greater emphasis in African conservation financing needs to be placed on flexible, small-scale investments aligned to local interests and constituencies that prioritize innovation, learning, and experimentation. Additionally, more research is required that explores the linkages between conservation funding, donor decision-making processes, and governance reforms.

Thierry Lang, Monique Kaminski, Annette Leclerc

Seen from France, this report underlines how far we still have to go in our country to reduce social inequalities in health. France is not one of the partner countries of the Commission1 and the conceptions of health determinants which are developed in the report appear far removed from the paradigm which predominates in our country. We can no longer say that France is at the ‘pre-contemplative’ stage:2 data exist, the phenomenon of social inequalities in health is known and well documented for numerous states of health. But these efforts, which issue largely from the world of research, have not resulted in a system of routine statistical surveillance. Furthermore, at this ‘contemplative’ stage, there is no explicit public policy and no objective written down in law. In the law on public health policy of 2004, objective 34 touches on this question, but restricts it to the state of health of the most precarious populations. As stated in the report, reduction of social inequalities in health is above all a political problem, but it is essential to provide evidence. In this respect, the report lends support to those who, in France, think that it is important to continue to increase our knowledge of the subject, but that the most pressing question is how we can move on to the active stage. It is strange to see how our country, always ready to give others lessons on human rights, tolerates a problem as well documented as social inequalities in health. Although the right to optimal health is laid down in a number of texts, this question of social justice and ethics does not mobilize opinion. This is so in France, but also throughout the world. The question thus remains to find out on what basis opinion and the decision makers can be mobilized. Though today it is unfortunately a fragile argument, it seems to us that the ethical imperative put forward in the report must remain central. The fact that the reduction of social inequalities can be a source of economic gain, as shown in a Canadian report,1 is an argument to be developed in order to remove economic objections, but it cannot be the central argument for mobilization. This report may well enjoy less popularity in France than a previous WHO report.3 In its World Health Report 2000, the World Health Organisation had no hesitation in describing the French health system as one of the best in the world. In that report, the conception of health determinants was in line with the prevailing conception in France. The health system was described as being the essential factor of the good health of a country. ‘If Sweden enjoys better health than Uganda—life expectancy is almost exactly twice as long—it is in large part because it spends exactly 35 times as much per capita in its health systems.’3 On the basis of this analysis, since 1945 France has enjoyed a system of social protection which proclaims, among its objectives, the improvement of the population's level of health. Within this system of social protection, the general health insurance system, completed by specific schemes for the poorest among the population, should allow widespread access to health care. The number of French people who have the benefit of insurance against ill health has constantly increased over the years and now almost the entire population is covered. In 2002, according to the Health and Social Protection survey, 91% of residents in France also had complementary coverage.4 At the same time, the mortality statistics remind us that in this country social inequalities in health are particularly marked in comparison with our European neighbours. This apparent paradox calls into question such a conception of health. The 2008 report puts the determinants back into perspective in a most useful way. On a world-wide scale, access to drinking water, to a diet which prevents malnutrition, protection against the vagaries of the climate are the major decisive factors in social inequalities in health. In line with this analysis, the report emphasizes actions which target determinants outside the health system and the need for a coherent policy in order to achieve health equity. A large number of spheres are involved, some of which seem a priori far removed from health: these are not only education, but also access to employment, working conditions, the age of retirement, the housing policy and lastly policies of redistribution, through taxation and direct financial aid. These are all relevant to social inequalities in health in France. The impact of investments concerning children at the very start of life and young people, in particular relating to education and training, is strongly pertinent to social inequalities in health, especially because of the links between education, qualification and health later in life. The role of unemployment and working conditions1 and of housing and transports are emphasized. In agreement with studies which have shown the protective influence of social networks and social support, and the role that a sense of control over one's life can play, citizens are encouraged to participate actively in decisions related to health—and this theme is a far-reaching one. Behaviour change is not mediated only by individual approaches to health education. The prices of food products, the industrial processing of foods, institutional catering, advertising, legislative measures and regulations are all paths to be explored. We must thus be delighted that the report stresses the intersectoral aspect of the fight against social inequalities in health, as this is a key issue. For example, the report points out the contradictions which were observed in certain Northern European countries when the common agricultural policy of the European Union came to thwart the efforts of the health authorities, themselves supported by the government.5 It thus will help to promote an intersectoral approach to health, at a national and at a European level, a choice which involves fundamental policy choices. For example, the increase in precarious employment, obligatorily part-time work, poorly paid jobs and their detrimental effects clearly shows that what is at stake here is the choice between a potential political determination and the predominantly economic (and short term) approach which is that of the liberal ideology. Just as for the issue of climate change, the fight against social inequalities in health is clearly revealed here as a global combat implying a choice of development strategy. Measurement and surveillance are one dimension of the solution. With the partial exception of death certificates and of a longitudinal survey of mortality based on the Permanent Demographic Sample, in France social characteristics are ignored by nearly all routine statistics, whether hospital information systems, health insurance data or registers of specific diseases. The data produced by research studies, generally based on one-off surveys or at best surveys repeated every few years, do not allow us to grasp changes in inequalities over time. The proposals for a minimum statistic system and a system which covers social determinants are important and should be developed in France. The information systems of healthcare institutions, starting with those of hospitals, are silent as to the social situation of those who use them, and this evidently restricts their ability to adapt their services to the needs of these persons. Naturally, the report does not elude the question of healthcare and advocates universal access to quality care. At a time when health expenditure is strictly limited, it is important to examine the question of patients’ share in these expenses and its effects on care consumption and health in the light of health inequalities. The Rand Corporation study,6 carried out in the 1970s in a sample of American families, followed for 3–5 years and randomly assigned to health insurance plans which differed by levels of reimbursement and the share to be paid by the household, is still topical. The conclusions of this randomized study showed that the amount of care consumed decreased markedly as soon as >25% of the cost was borne by the patient. No difference in state of health was observed in the population as a whole. But the impact of the cost to be borne made itself felt as soon as the poor population was concerned. It is interesting to point out that the share borne by the patient in France has been around 25% during the last 20 years, a proportion which has tended to increase. But the tendency in France is to increase the participation of households in health expenses, including (particularly) persons who are in a precarious situation because of their state of health, with in due course an impact on social inequalities in health. The report stresses the need for health systems to be proactive. Taking the need for proactivity into account is particularly pertinent in France, where the system is still widely based on a logic of offer. Issues related to secondary access to care are somewhat briefly dealt with in the report, which is strongly centred on primary access. But to ensure that this first phase is well organized is not sufficient if the system is ineffective in other respects, or if its malfunctions concern mainly the most disadvantaged patients.7 The report suggests that the role of the healthcare system goes beyond the treatment of diseases. Physicians and the other health professionals are leaders of opinion, who influence conceptions and representations of health. Finally, this is where analysis of health determinants is put together and where the directions taken by public health and research are given value. This last remark underlines the importance of giving professionals training on social determinants of health. Their commitment is undoubtedly essential to negotiate the turn towards less biological or medicinal concepts of health. The way in which behaviours are conceptualized in fact determines the way in which they will be taken into account by public health. In agreement with what we have said above, the presentation in the report of the aims of research in public health is particularly pertinent: research on the causes of social inequalities in health, on interventions aiming to reduce them, analysis of public policies and lastly statistical measurement and surveillance. In view of the issues at stake and of the nature of the determinants, research on health should be more interdisciplinary and should integrate social determinants. Redressing the balance towards these objectives should enhance their value, unlike a primarily biological or disease-oriented approach. The complexity of the interventions and so of the methods used to evaluate them justifies not only the interdisciplinary approach, but also a reflection on the notion of proof. Going beyond randomized trials, the question is how to make use of qualitative as well as quantitative data. Evaluation of interventions and strategies to reduce social inequalities in health raises a difficult problem, particularly when these are interventions of a structural type or which aim at long-term modifications. Assessing a research programme carried out in the Netherlands on social inequalities in health, it was found that the interventions subsidized by the programme had been specific, targeted interventions that were easy to evaluate. The projects evaluated were all of this type, to the exclusion of any wide ranging, far-reaching public policy.8 The causes of inequalities are multiple, and several levels of explanation coexist, proximal and fundamental causes. We pay tribute to the very ambitious nature of this report, which runs counter to the policies of international bodies (WTO) and so underlines the most fundamental causes of health inequalities. The main messages of the report are all the more essential as the financial and economic crisis may worsen inequalities by affecting the weakest first. Can health be the theme to mobilize us towards humane objectives, not only economic ones? The report stresses that the sector of health and healthcare professionals, including the minister or ministers responsible, could take position as defenders of wide societal objectives giving health and health equality their rightful place as a marker of progress. This supposes that professionals and politicians become aware of the importance of social determinants of health. This task is a particularly important one in France, and it is without doubt one of our primary challenges.

Sujatha Fernandes

Abstract This chapter examines the contemporary relationship between politics and evangelical activity. Focusing on the northeast Indian state of Manipur, it makes comparisons with Mizoram, Nagaland, and Meghalaya and draws out the implications of the historical data for the contemporary political climate. The first section explores the interaction among Christian missionaries, tribals, and the British state in the colonial context, showing how the attempt of missionaries to build an autonomous tribal leadership was hampered by the diversity of tribal groupings and the ties of the missionaries to the colonial state. The second section focuses on two themes: how evangelical practices of congregationalism have given expression to diversity, but also how, in a context of ethnic violence and rivalry, this decentralized organization leaves the church unable to overcome fragmentation. The final section explores a third theme, suggesting that the evangelicals' desire for stability in the region has impeded their ability to foster social movements for justice and equality, leaving the space open for insurgent and terrorist organizations.

Hadi Sumarsono

One way to assess the capability of an autonomous region in implementing its autonomy is by measuring the performance of the region in managing decentralized fiscal and the degree of inde-pendency toward the central government. There are six main variables which considered being the performance indicators of the capability: fiscal need, fiscal capacity, fiscal effort, degree of fiscal decentralization, and elasticity coefficient of PAD (regional revenue) compared to PDRB. By ana-lyzing panel data from 1999 to 2004 of Malang City, this simple empirical research shows that ef-ficiency in public finance is relatively high, while trend of PAD toward PDRB is inelastic. This means that in the long run Malang City will have some degree of a positive trend of PAD and PDRB growth if the government could maintain the independency policy in terms of preference to local investment incentives. Keywords: regional autonomy, regional finance, regional revenue, fiscal decentralization and independency policy __________________________________________________________________________________________

James Alm, Jorge Martínez-Vázquez

The design of any system of transfers is a complex matter, and in practice very few countries are able to get it right, especially at the start of a process of decentralized system of finance. It is quite obvious that South Africa has made great strides in the design of its transfer system, primarily comprised of: an unconditional grant distributed by formula, the “Provincial Equitable Share” (PES); a system of conditional grants; and several other non-conditional transfers. In this report we focus exclusively on the analysis of the existing PES transfer and also on possible options for its reform. Our report consists of three main parts. We first summarize the main features of the PES. We then focus on what may be lacking with the current system. We finish with options for reform.

Jianwei Ye, Xu-lu Jiao, Yuge Zhang

Based on the verifiable encryption and zero-knowledge proof protocols of Jarecki and Shmatikov and Pedersen’s verifiable threshold secret sharing scheme, this paper proposes a new full fair secure two-party computation protocols. For getting full fair, the new protocol employs a group of third-party servers. We prove that when more than two-thirds of the third-party servers are honest, the new protocol guarantees that two parties can get their correct outputs full fairly. In the new protocol, the computation is performed in the form of garbled circuit, and only two added interaction rounds are needed for full fairness.

MaryAnn Foote

No abstract is available for this record.

Pierre Villa

The paper deals with the equivalence between taxation and emission permits according to different viewpoints: the first one sets prices, the second one quantities. But equivalence is more formal than substantial: taxation is the generating fact, the market of permits does not exist spontaneously. Its price is unstable because supply is not independent from demand. It is manipulatable either ex ante when free allowances are allocated or ex post during the period of compliance through Walrasian tatonnement. A real economic determination of prices exists only when there are unit taxes or penalties on emissions exceeding the quotas. In order to avoid these drawbacks, pay-as-bid auctions must be used and free allowances avoided. Taxation or the price of emission permits are the real option value of changing techniques. An assignment rule is proposed : taxes are assigned to reduce average emissions and permits to reduce marginal emissions. In order to transform the cost into a real change of techniques, it is necessary to finance the sector of research and development of an amount greater than the taxes levied on pollution, which serve at paying the rent of innovation. These extra subsidies are used to move factors of production as capital from industry towards the innovation sector. The tax equivalence is ternary and concerns the taxes on pollution, capital and energy, because extracting fossil fuels is similar as innovation. Decentralization through market schemes induces that depollution has a marketable cost.

Mark S. Davis

Modern industries are handling the forces of nature on a stupendous scale.…Woe to the people who trust these powers to the hands of fools! Then wealth is destroyed, homes are overwhelmed, and loved ones killed. John Wesley Powell, “The Lesson of Conemaugh” The storm was not a surprise. We could see it coming. In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina was strong and massive as it approached the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. We knew that rising seas, sinking lands, and the loss of the wetlands and barrier islands that historically had buffered our cities and towns made us increasingly vulnerable to storms. We even knew, if we were paying attention, that it would overwhelm some of our levees and pumps leaving some of our neighborhoods flooded and our outlying areas devastated. We knew that. But we also believed some things. We believed that, bad as it might be, the levels of flooding, in New Orleans at least, would be limited to a few feet and most likely a few days. We believed that the levees and flood walls would hold and that the City would clean up, mop up, and move ahead with life as it always had. After all it had happened before – at least 38 times hurricanes have reached New Orleans – and besides, this is America and we do not let our engineering and public rhetoric get bested by nature. We believed that. We were wrong. The aftermath of Katrina, and its sister storm Rita, left us, the nation, and even much of the world stunned. How could such a thing have happened? What lessons did it teach? More importantly, have any lessons been learned? There will probably never be final answers to those questions but a few important things are already clear. Hurricane Katrina happened because it was inevitable. Storms are a natural part of this landscape the same way fires are to prairies and forests. We could not have prevented Katrina and will not be able to prevent the next storm. The death, destruction and dislocation that resulted from the storms are a different matter. They were not so inevitable. It was not a hurricane that wrecked New Orleans but rather a combination of trade-offs, compromises and decisions that turned powerful natural events into human tragedy. This is the central lesson, the central tragedy of Katrina. New Orleans, like most major port cities, was a hard bargain with nature from the get-go, but a bargain that had to be made. Its vulnerabilities to storms, flooding and disease were appreciated by its founders but more than offset by its strategic and commercial value. The city grew and prospered as a result of its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River and the attendant risks were managed through its infrastructure, architecture, and grit. Without the benefit of federal flood protection or flood insurance the city grew to greatness, its population reaching its zenith of nearly 650,000 in the early 1960s. Ironically, the seeds of Katrina's destruction of New Orleans were sown in large part by federal and local programs and public works projects intended to spur economic development and provide flood protection. Concerns about how navigation channels, oil and gas activity, drainage projects, and levees might degrade wetlands or increase flood risk were trumped by the prospect of growth and economic gain. Public funds were used to build levees around wetlands to induce development instead of increasing the protection for existing neighborhoods. State and federal involvement in the flood and property and casualty insurance business induced people to build and live in places and in ways that would have been unthinkably risky before. In short, people were in harm's way because it was, in effect, policy to put them there – the unintended but very real result of compartmenta-lized planning and decision making married to a pronounced practice of overestimating benefits and undervaluing risks and costs. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of the hurricane protection system surrounding New Orleans. Hurricane protection for New Orleans, and as a responsibility of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is a fairly recent development. New Orleans has had levees on the Mississippi Rivers since the time of French settlement. For most of its history, New Orleans was open to periodic hurricane flooding. By concentrating its development on higher ground and by elevating structures the city not only survived but thrived. Storms still came, but flood waters would drain, buildings would dry out, losses would be mourned and life would go on. Growth pressures fueled land reclamation projects in the 1930's along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain that drew residential development to the lake front and effectively created a levee, but it was one with houses on top of it, not one to protect what was behind it. Things changed dramatically in 1965 when Hurricane Betsy hit, the storm against which all others would be measured until Katrina. The flooding in some neighborhoods was much like that in Katrina. The response was anything but. In those days the nation's appetite for public works was much greater than it is today and President Lyndon Johnson spurred Congress to authorize a massive federal hurricane protection system for the entire New Orleans area that would guard it against the worst storm that might reasonably be expected. That was thought to be what we would now call a once in 200-300 year storm event1. It turned out that something very different was built. The system that was built – the system that failed – was the product of political and budgeting compromises, the failure to adapt to changing conditions and knowledge, and human error. That system, combined with the shifting of risk made available by the flood insurance program, led to changes in expectations and behavior. Low-lying areas were drained and developed, homes were built on slabs instead of being elevated, and less water resistant building materials were employed. The importance of natural defenses and individual and local responsibility were largely lost. After all, the federal government was providing protection and shouldering most of the burden. The perverse result of this was a city that gained protection but lost resilience. The net effect was a city at higher risk. The notion that decades of work and billions of dollars actually exacerbated risk is not an easy thing to accept. Harder still is the fact that the tens of billions of dollars that have been committed to patching the failed system and rebuilding the devastated communities since Katrina could have the same effect if important changes don't occur in the way protection, resilience, and community vitality are approached. First and foremost, before embarking on any flood or storm protection effort it is crucial to ask two questions: How safe do we want to be? What values do we want to enhance or secure in the process? The failure to ask these questions or to slough the answers, as happened in New Orleans, can be the difference between vitality and calamity. Admittedly, these are very subjective questions, but life is a subjective undertaking. The suggestion, often made, that we can or should leave these matters to objective scientists and engineers is a dodge. The best of our objective knowledge can inform our judgments and define our tradeoffs but they cannot set our purposes or make our decisions for us. This is particularly so when the key decisions are not technical in nature, but rather are legal or policy matters. This is what makes New Orleans's Katrina experience so instructive. But to understand the lesson, one first needs a little history. The vulnerability of New Orleans to hurricanes was well known. The Army Corps of Engineers had begun studying protection options pursuant to a Congressional study authorization in 19552. Those plans, still under development, took on a level of importance and urgency when Hurricane Betsy struck in 1965. Shortly thereafter, Congress directed the Army Corps of Engineers to develop a hurricane protection plan for the New Orleans region to combat a “hurricane that may be expected from the most severe meteorological conditions reasonably characteristic in the region”3. Roughly speaking, that meant a storm equivalent to a Category 3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Scale or, as noted earlier, a once in 200-300 year event. Hurricane Katrina, a Category 3 storm at landfall in Louisiana, was in the range of storms that New Orleans was supposed to be protected against. Leaving aside the very real possibility of negligence and human error, the fact that those constructed protections not only were overwhelmed but failed is less a matter of having the know-how to have built a more robust and resilient system than it was of not having the will and wisdom to build that system. Such a system is more than a network of levees, gates and pumps. It is a purposeful and methodical approach to living with water that includes wetland conservation and restoration, land use controls, evacuation plans, adaptation to changing conditions (e.g., sea level changes and improved knowledge), and finally levees, gates, and pumps. There is nothing really new here. The importance of wetland and barrier buffers, flood-proofing, and land use planning and regulation were clearly recognized in the 1966 report of the Task Force on Federal Flood Control Policy and President Lyndon Johnson's message transmitting the report to Congress4. While urging greater federal involvement in flood protection, President Johnson wrote, “I cannot overemphasize that very great responsibility for success of the program rests upon State and local governments and upon private property owners in hazard areas. The key to resolving the problem lies, above all else, in the intelligent plan for and State and local regulation of use of lands exposed to flood hazard.” (Emphasis added)5. Despite that clear awareness, the prospect of levees spurred more development in low, wet areas and the construction of unelevated structures and the use of unresilient building materials. The over reliance on structural flood protection actually created new vulnerability and each year that passed without a major storm fed a growing belief, a complacency, that all was well and life inside the levees could go on without worry. Indeed, prior to Hurricane Georges (1998) New Orleans was not a place to evacuate from but a place to evacuate to. In and around New Orleans the appearance of protection had become confused with the fact of protection. That was never an intentional deception, it was one arrived at gradually through a series of compromises, tradeoffs, and mistakes. Rainwater flooding concerns trumped storm flooding risks. The need for land use controls and hurricane building codes were trumped by the desire for low-cost, quick housing and the assumption that the levees had eliminated the risk. Wetland conservation and restoration were trumped by economic development and private property rights pressures. And the need to adapt to improved knowledge about hurricanes, sea level rise, and coastal land loss was trumped by the pressure to build what had been planned and politically promised. The idea that just building something was better than nothing was irresistible. The foolishness of those tradeoffs is as apparent now as were the lessons of the Johnstown flood (Conemaugh) to John Wesley Powell6. But the pressures that led to them were predictable, just as it is predictable they will recur. Indeed if there is one common theme in humankind's reaction to great disasters it is the tendency to try to become ignorant of their lessons as quickly as possible. That instinct may have had utility in a distant past when human society had a more passive relationship with nature, but it is dangerous folly today. New Orleans is a portent of the challenges that face many places. We can muddle along, content to be victims of change, or we can use the best of our abilities – our science, our engineering, our laws, arts, ethics, and our policies – to be purposeful managers or stewards of change. There is scant middle ground. The central lesson of this tale is that the tradeoffs we make matter and there is hell to pay when we get it wrong. It is lesson well taught. Whether it is a lesson well learned remains to be seen. There is at least some evidence it is being learned. Wetlands restoration and accommodating sea level rise are now broadly recognized as essential components of flood protection and the sustainability of the region. The state has recognized the need for smarter land use choices and has adopted a state-wide building code. The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet has been deauthorized. The Army Corps of Engineers has shifted from providing a levee system with a high protection target (against 1-in-300 year events) with a low confidence level to a lower level of protection (1-in-100 year events) with a higher confidence factor. Much more will be needed however. The real proof will come when the hard choices are made about which communities will get higher levels of protection – and when. It will come when the decisions are made whether to fully commit to conserving and enhancing Louisiana's coastal wetland landscape. It will come when land use planning is made a priority with the force of law. And it will come when the state and the nation decide to develop and implement effective strategies for contending with climate change and rising seas. None of this will be easy, but neither will it be easy to live with the consequences of standing pat. At stake in Louisiana and elsewhere is the fundamental tradeoff question: Are we as a people willing to make the laws, polices, investments, and commitments necessary to give ourselves a shot at a vibrant and sustainable future? The stakes are high and time is shorter than many think. Mark Davis is a Senior Research Fellow at Tulane University Law School and Director of the Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy at the Law School. He can be reached at msdavis@tulane.edu or 504-865-5982.

一郎 加藤

No abstract is available for this record.

Amin Pujiati

Every regions goverment must be able increasing their own regional income. The finance of resources in fiscal decentralization era, such as: regional original income, general allocation funds and natural resources revenue sharing and tax revenue sharing This research aims to analyze the fiscal decentralization impact to economic growth at regional district in sub provinsi Semarang. The tools of analisis is regression using panel data with Generalized Least Square (GLS) method and Fixed Effect model. It uses district-level data and supplied by the Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics during 2002 - 2006 The regression result shows that regional income, natural resources revenue sharing and tax revenue sharing, and labour forces have positive impact on economic growth at regional district in sub provinsi Semarang.General allocation funds has negative effect towards economic growth at regional district in sub provinsi Semarang. Fiscal decentralization brings more advantages for regions to manage their own fiscal capacities. The regions governments must be have informational advantages concerning resource allocation with optimal Keywords: Fiscal Decentralization, economic growth, Fixed Effect Model

Judy Lewent, Joe Fuller, David Scharfstein, Rick Passov · 9 authors

In light of the challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry, a distinguished group of pharma executives and strategic and financial advisers discusses the following corporate decisions: Strategy : What business model is most likely to maximize long‐term shareholder value? For example, is diversification by big pharma into areas like consumer healthcare and generics a reliable way to create sustainable value? Capital allocation : What are the best methods for evaluating investments in pharma R&D, and for deciding which programs should be terminated and which assets divested? If conventional DCF isn't much help in a world where R&D outcomes are so uncertain, what about proposed models like real options? Corporate governance and incentive systems : Should big pharma continue to outsource ever more of its R&D functions to biotech and venture capital? Or can it overcome the problems associated with size by creating more decentralized business units and trying to replicate the accountability and incentives of smaller biotech firms? Capital structure and payout policy : Are the large cash and equity positions and minimal payouts of big pharma, typically justified as cushioning the uncertainties associated with pharma R&D, likely to be the value‐maximizing capital structure in the future? With many biotechs struggling and venture capital scarce, where are the new sources of capital for the industry? And can future deals be structured in ways that help bring about higher returns for big pharma as well as the R&D providers? Disclosure : What should management tell investors to help ensure that their companies' policies and promising investments are reflected in their stock prices?

Takero Doi, Toshihiro Ihori

This book presents a comprehensive, theory-based analysis of Japan’s public sector. Particular emphasis is directed at developing tools that can be applied to theoretically and empirically clarify essential economic concerns in Japan’s public sector. These include macroeconomic incidence of fiscal decentralization, dependence on government bonds for covering financial deficits, and social security reform. In analyzing Japan’s underperforming public sector, the authors develop and recommend policy solutions aimed at achieving Japan’s growth potential, improving the quality of the public sector, and strengthening the sector’s contribution to the Japanese economy.

Takero Doi, Toshihiro Ihori

This book presents a comprehensive, theory-based analysis of Japan’s public sector. Particular emphasis is directed at developing tools that can be applied to theoretically and empirically clarify essential economic concerns in Japan’s public sector. These include macroeconomic incidence of fiscal decentralization, dependence on government bonds for covering financial deficits, and social security reform. In analyzing Japan’s underperforming public sector, the authors develop and recommend policy solutions aimed at achieving Japan’s growth potential, improving the quality of the public sector, and strengthening the sector’s contribution to the Japanese economy.

Alex Abramovich

Midway through the dark woods of the 1960s, Bob Dylan took his Triumph motorcycle for a country ride and lost his balance, or hit an oil slick, or (according to the mythopoetic account Dylan himself would give) stared too long into the sun and found himself momentarily blinded. The specific circumstances are cloudy. But we do know that Dylan was burned out after nine months of a grueling, seemingly endless, still-ongoing tour; that the proofs of his first novel, Tarantula , had arrived and that Dylan, who seems to have written the book in a methamphetamine haze, recognized them to be unreadable and embarrassing; that there were hundreds of hours of films to edit for a forthcoming documentary, and constant demands for new recordings. Dyan's responsibilities had multiplied exponentially, and vast sums of money were at stake. We can only imagine the toll these expectations, and others, took on his central nervous system: “Different anachronisms were thrust upon me . . . ” Dylan wrote in his 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One . “Legend, Icon, Enigma (Buddha in European Clothes was my favorite) - stuff like that, but that was all right. These titles were placid and harmless, threadbare, easy to get around with them. Prophet, Messiah, Savior - those are tough ones” (124). Bob Dylan was 25 years old. Dylan crashed his Triumph in July of 1966. His close friend, the folksinger and novelist Richard Fariña, had died in another motorcycle crash a few months earlier. The carousel was out of control.

Jonathan Hopkin

This article addresses the relationship between political decentralization and the organization of political parties in Great Britain and Spain, focusing on the Labour Party and the Socialist Party, respectively. It assesses two rival accounts of this relationship: Caramani's `nationalization of politics' thesis and Chhibber and Kollman's rational choice institutionalist account in their book The Formation of National Party Systems. It argues that both accounts are seriously incomplete, and on occasion misleading, because of their unwillingness to consider the autonomous role of political parties as advocates of institutional change and as organizational entities. The article develops this argument by studying the role of the British Labour Party and the Spanish Socialists in proposing devolution reforms, and their organizational and strategic responses to them. It concludes that the reductive theories cited above fail to capture the real picture, because parties cannot only mitigate the effects of institutional change, they are also the architects of these changes and shape institutions to suit their strategic ends.