Contracting is one of the tools increasingly being used to enhance the performance of health systems in both developed and developing countries; it takes different forms and cannot be limited to the mere purchase of services. Actors adopt contracting to formalize all kinds of relations established between them. A typology for this approach will demonstrate its diversity and provide a better understanding of the various issues raised by contracting. In recent years the way health systems are organized has changed significantly. To remedy the under-performance of their health systems, most countries have undertaken reforms that have resulted in major institutional overhaul, including decentralization of health and administrative services, autonomy for public service providers, separation of funding bodies and service providers, expansion of health financing options and the development of the profit or nonprofit private sector. These institutional reshuffles lead not only to multiplication and diversification of the actors involved, but also to greater separation of the service provision and administrative functions. Health systems are becoming more complex and can no longer operate in isolation. Actors are gradually realizing that they need to forge relations. The simplest way to do that is through dialogue, although some prefer a more formal commitment. Interaction between actors may take various forms and be on different scales. There are several types of contractual relations: some are based on the nature of the contract (public or private), others on the parties involved and yet others on the scope of the contract. Here they are classified into three categories according to the object of the contract: delegation of responsibility, act of purchase of services, or cooperation.
The paper deals with hybrid systems, where human actors and non-human agents meet and interact. Different from most of the literature on autonomous technology, which mainly deals with the question of agency of non-humans, the paper puts forward the assumption that the release of smart technology may lead to a deconstruction of order or even a regime change, thus raising the question of how order emerges in hybrid systems. Discussing different sociological concepts, the paper identifies two modes of governance: central control and decentralized selforganization. However, smart technology allows implementing different system's architectures, some of which may go beyond this traditional distinction. Referring to a case study on collision avoidance in aviation (and especially the mid-air collision at Ueberlingen in 2002), the paper shows that hybrid systems create new opportunities, but entail new risks as well. The release of smart technology seems to intensify well-known problems of automation, especially when systems get out of control. Aviation is one of the societal fields, where experiments with new modes of governance currently take place that combine features of central control and decentralized self-organization.
I am particularly honoured by your invitation to this Second Biennial Conference of the European Society of International Law. Indeed, I am both honoured and pleased, not only because I am in Paris, but above all because I support the ESIL project, one of the objectives of which is to develop a deeper understanding of trade law and to promote closer cooperation among all those working in the field of international law. Admittedly, I have only distant memories of the Hague Academy of International Law where I once worked on estoppel, but the general theme of this conference – International Law: Do We Need It? – convinced me that there was room, this evening, for a non-specialist. It is in that capacity that I will be speaking to you, in the hope that I can contribute the views of a practitioner on the role and place of WTO law within the international legal order. In doing so, I am seeking to establish a constructive dialogue between doctrine and practice with the aim of improving normative and institutional coherence within the international legal order. Trade is to be found at the origin of entire segments of public international law, and it accounts for one of its main sources: the treaty. Indeed, one of the first international legal instruments to leave a trace in history was the commercial treaty between Amenophis IV and the King of Alasia (Cyprus) in the 14th century BC. This treaty exempted Cypriot traders from customs duty in exchange for the importation of a certain quantity of copper and wood. Nothing has fundamentally changed since then: at the beginning of the 21st century we still have bilateral trade agreements. But they now have to be reported to the WTO, so that they may be checked for consistency with international trade rules. The international legal order, on the other hand, has evolved dramatically. The great empires have disappeared into the annals of history. Philippe le Bel and Jean Bodin’s jurists progressively conceptualized the notion of sovereignty; the treaties of Westphalia ushered in a society defined by the pre-eminence of sovereign states, the 1815 Congress of Vienna laid the foundations of multilateralism, and the 19th century saw the first international organizations come to light. With the creation of the League of Nations, followed by the United Nations system and, finally, with the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc, the 20th century witnessed the evolution from traditional international law between states towards a contemporary and universal international law open to new players, including international organizations and non-governmental organizations. Thus, the international legal order has experienced a number of upheavals. But its evolution has been neither linear nor homogeneous – which is why international society still bears the marks of several historical stages in the process. As a metaphorical illustration, let us take the three physical states of matter: gas, liquids and, finally, solids. Today’s international legal order is simultaneously composed of these three states. Gas is the coexistence of particles devoid of any hierarchical differentiation: the Westphalian order made up of sovereign states organized according to an essentially ‘horizontal’ logic with a decentralized responsibility mechanism. The solid state is reflected in the European Union, the perfect example of an international integration organization which produces rules that it interprets ‘autonomously’ and whose primacy and direct applicability is guaranteed through a system of judicial remedy. The judicialization of responsibility of Member States for violations of Community law is a cornerstone of this integrated legal order. Between the gaseous state and the solid state, there remains the liquid state. It is to this category that the World Trade Organization belongs. Neither entirely vertical nor entirely horizontal in essence, resembling an organization for intergovernmental cooperation in certain respects while being closer to an international integration organization in others, the WTO represents a unique legal order or system of law. At the risk of oversimplification, in fact, I will draw no distinction between a system of law, a legal system and a legal order. The reason why the international legal order exists in several physical states is that it is evolving; and the WTO is both a product and a vehicle of that evolution. Indeed, the WTO is an international organization that brings together two concepts of international law. Leaving aside one or two specificities, it is a permanent negotiating forum between sovereign states and is therefore a cooperation organization akin to international conferences traditional international law. But it a which it an integration in contemporary international law. In the it a the WTO a legal order. we take up Jean of rules of law a system and a society or we that there within the international legal order, a WTO legal order. The WTO system has two rules and But the that it is not that it is or the two that I will be in an to this legal system into the international legal order and, it in with the other legal us with the first and the WTO a unique legal system within the international legal order. 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China has experienced more than 25 years of extraordinary economic growth. Underlying this growth has been a decentralized fiscal system, in which provinces and large cities are given the freedom to make infrastructure investments to stimulate local development, and are allowed to retain a large part of the fiscal revenues that are generated from economic activity. Although successful as a growth strategy, this policy created two problems for national fiscal management. First, it significantly reduced the central government's share of fiscal revenues, which fell from 34.8 percent in 1980 to 22 percent in 1992. Second, it widened economic and fiscal disparities between the rapidly growing urban coastal region and the rest of the country. Rapid growth in subnational debt (which rose 23-fold in a decade) and subnational nonperforming loans (estimated by the authors to range between US$100 billion and US$150 billion) has placed pressure on China's financial system. Traditionally, China has favored bank lending as a source of finance because the banking system has provided a vehicle for central political control over local debt. But as China's financial system matures, creditworthiness standards must become more important. The authors recommend greater use of the revenue streams from infrastructure assets as a financing source, and gradual relaxation of central political control over subnational debt. One step in this direction would permit leading cities to issue municipal bonds based on objective financial standards.
Federated Identity Management (FIM) allows for securely provisioning certified user identities and attributes to relying parties. It establishes higher security and data quality compared to user-asserted attributes and provides for stronger user privacy protection than technologies based upon user-side attribute certificates. Therefore, industry pursues the deployment of FIM solutions as one cornerstone of the WS-Security framework. Current research proposes even more powerful methods for security and privacy protection in identity management with so called anonymous credential systems. Being based on new, yet well-researched, signature schemes and cryptographic zero-knowledge proofs, these systems have the potential to improve the capabilities of FIM by superior privacy protection, user control, and multiple use of single credentials. Unfortunately, anonymous credential systems and their semantics being based upon zero-knowledge proofs are incompatible with the XML Signature Standard which is the basis for the WS-Security and most FIM frameworks. We put forth a general construction for integrating anonymous credential systems with the XML Signature Standard and FIM protocols. We apply this method to the WS-Security protocol framework and thus obtain a very flexible WS-Federation Active Requestor Profile with strong user control and superior privacy protection.
A multi-signature scheme enables a group of signers to produce a compact, joint signature on a common document, and has many potential uses. However, existing schemes impose key setup or PKI requirements that make them impractical, such as requiring a dedicated, distributed key generation protocol amongst potential signers, or assuming strong, concurrent zero-knowledge proofs of knowledge of secret keys done to the CA at key registration. These requirements limit the use of the schemes. We provide a new scheme that is proven secure in the plain public-key model, meaning requires nothing more than that each signer has a (certified) public key. Furthermore, the important simplification in key management achieved is not at the cost of efficiency or assurance: our scheme matches or surpasses known ones in terms of signing time, verification time and signature size, and is proven secure in the random-oracle model under a standard (not bilinear map related) assumption. The proof is based on a simplified and general Forking Lemma that may be of independent interest.
Fundamental challenges in designing environments with media-rich ambient services involves not only the development of appropriate sensing technologies, but as importantly, the implementation of a distributed media processing system which can process, integrate, and leverage the sensed data in real time to provide the various services. In recent years, a great deal of progress has been made in media service workflow processing systems. In most existing solutions, however, the workflow nodes, which operate on the data, are selected out of a centrally assigned candidate pool. These candidate organizations cause either extensive resource provisioning or poor-quality operator mapping between logical workflow nodes and the available physical resources nodes. Consequently, instantiating a media processing workflow to the underlying hardware before the workflow execution begins does not lends itself to adaptive and autonomous operation of the workflow, scalable to resources and demand.In this paper, we propose a novel decentralized multimedia workflow processing system, DANS, in which operators defined in workflows are mapped into (distributed) physical nodes through Distributed Hash Table (DHT)-based overlay substrate in a purely decentralized and adaptive manner. The redundancy in the system, in terms of availability of multiple nodes able to perform the same task, enables the system to scale with demand. Furthermore, physical workflow nodes (operator instances) are able to locate and select the next filter or fusion operator instance autonomously, while ensuring the correct execution of the workflow.
A zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) is an interactive proof that allows a prover to prove the knowledge of a secret to a verifier without revealing it. ZKPs are powerful tools to deal with critical applications in security e-commerce. Existing ZKPs are iterative in nature; their protocols require multiple communication rounds. The cost of iteration makes ZKPs unsuitable in practice. We propose a new protocol that meets all the requirements of ZKPs, yet runs in one round. The new approach substantially reduces computation and communications costs. It makes ZKPs more suitable for practical cryptographic systems for both government and commercial applications.
This paper is devoted to the identification of a pollution source in a river. A simple mathematical model of such a problem is given by a one-dimensional linear advection-dispersion-reaction equation with a right hand side spatially supported in a point (the source) and a time variant intensity, both unknown. The identifiability of the distributed system was established for two points of observations one upstream, the other downstream from the source provided the pollutant flow rate is zero on an interval [T, T + deltaT] (T > 0). But the distributed system has to be discretized in order to do a numerical estimation of the unknown parameters. It is why this paper is devoted to the identifiability of the differential system obtained by using a semi-discretization scheme in space. The proof of the identifiability does not require the restrictive assumption about the pollutant flow rate but the knowledge of the initial condition and one observation located upstream from the source. Moreover, from this study, a numerical procedure is deduced for estimating the unknown parameters. It does not necessitate a priori knowledge about the parameters and the unknown function is not expanded on a basis of special functions. Both aspects play an important role in the real applications
Stability and Controllability of Differential Equations
In Bertolt Brecht's The Life of Galileo , the ongoing conflict between rationalism and religious authority is portrayed through Galileo Galilei's epic battle with the might of the Vatican. The play depicts the later years of the Italian astronomer's life as he struggles to promote the ideas of Copernicus in the face of fierce opposition from the Catholic Church. In the 17th century, claiming that the Earth rotates around the Sun was tantamount to heresy; as the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno found out to his cost in 1600, when he was burned at the stake for refusing to recant his heliocentric beliefs. According to Brecht's Galileo, Bruno's only mistake was that he had no proof.
The notion of correlation intractable function ensembles (CIFEs) was introduced in an attempt to capture the unpredictability property of random oracles [12]: If O is a random oracle then it is infeasible to find an inputx such that the input-output pair (x,O(x)) has some desired property. In this paper, we observe relationships between zero-knowledge protocols and CIFEs. Specifically, we show that, in the non-uniform model, the existence of CIFEs implies that 3-round auxiliary-input zero-knowledge (AIZK) AM interactive proofs exist only for BPP languages. In the uniform model, we show that 3-round AIZK AM interactive proofs with perfect completeness exist only for easy-to-approximate languages. These conditional triviality results extend to constant-round AIZK AM interactive proofs assuming the existence of CIFEs, where multi-input means that the correlation intractability is satisfied with respect to multiple input-output pairs. Also, as a corollary, we show that any construction of uniform CIFEs from uniform one-way functions proves unconditionally that constant-round AIZK AM interactive proofs with perfect completeness only for easy-to-approximate languages.
Let Lambda : {0, 1}ntimes {0,1}mrarr {0,1} be a Boolean formula of size d, or more generally, an arithmetic circuit of degree d, known to both Alice and Bob, and let y isin {0,1}mbe an input known only to Alice. Assume that Alice and Bob interacted in the past in a preamble phase (that is, applied a preamble protocol that depends only on the parameters, and not on Lambday). We show that Alice can (non-interactively) commit to y, by a message of size poly(m, log d), and later on prove to Bob any N statements of the form Lambda (x1, y) = z1,..., Lambda(xN,y) = zNby a (computationally sound) non-interactive zero-knowledge proof of size poly(d, log N). (Note the logarithmic dependence on N). We give many applications and motivations for this result. In particular, assuming that Alice and Bob applied in the past the (poly-logarithmic size) preamble protocol: 1. given a CNF formula Psi(w1,..., wm) of size N, Alice can prove the satisfiability of Psi by a (computationally sound) non-interactive zero-knowledge proof of size poly(m). That is, the size of the proof depends only on the size of the witness and not on the size of the formula. 2. Given a language L in the class LOGSNP and an input x isin {0, 1}n, Alice can prove the membership x isin L by a (computationally sound) non-interactive zero-knowledge proof of size polylog n. 3. Alice can commit to a Boolean formula y of size m, by a message of size poly(m), and later on prove to Bob any N statements of the form y(x1) = z1,..., y(xN) = zNby a (computationally sound) non-interactive zero-knowledge proof of size poly(m, log N). Our cryptographic assumptions include the existence of a poly-logarithmic symmetric-private-information-retrieval (SPIR) scheme, as defined in (C. Cachin et. al, 1999), and the existence of commitment schemes, secure against circuits of size exponential in the security parameter
In recent years, decentralization and regional autonomy measures have figured prominently in negotiations designed to end some of the world's most important conflicts, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan. Reforms that shift powers to subnational units deserve the attention of those who are trying to promote security via institutional design, but the risks associated with these territorial reforms are considerable. When political and economic resources are transferred to subnational governments in the attempt to create meaningful access to the political system for former combatants, the great risk is that these same resources can be used to finance a continuation of the armed struggle instead. In response to the popularity of territorial reforms in many post-conflict settings, this paper sounds a cautionary note by evaluating the negative impact of decentralization on security in Colombia, site of Latin America's longest and deadliest armed conflict. After analyzing the design decisions of reformers who hoped that decentralization would help end the conflict, I argue that decentralization in fact financed the expansion of armed clientelism by illegal groups on both the left and right. Thanks to the weakness of the police in much of the national territory, guerrillas and paramilitaries have been able to use decentralized resources to destabilize the state, limiting even further its monopoly over the use of force and creating what are in effect parallel states on the left and right.
Open access
History and Politics in Latin America
Political Conflict and Governance
Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
Juan Ramón Troncoso-Pastoriza, Fernando Pérez‐González
Current zero-knowledge watermark detectors are based on a linear correlation between the asset features and a given secret sequence.This detection function is susceptible of being attacked by sensitivity attacks,for which zero-knowledge does not provide protection.In this paper a new zero-knowledge watermark detector robust to sensitivity attacks is presented,using the Generalized Gaussian Maximum Likelihood (ML)detector as basis.The inherent robustness that this detector presents against sensitivity attacks,together with the security provided by the zero-knowledge protocol that conceals the keys that could be used to remove the watermark or to produce forged assets,results in a robust and secure protocol.Additionally,two new zero-knowledge proofs for modulus and square root calculation are presented;they serve as building blocks for the zero-knowledge implementation of the Generalized Gaussian ML detector,and also open new possibilities in the design of high level protocols.
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
A new approach of coordination of decisions in a multi site system is proposed. It is based this approach on a multi-agent concept and on the principle of distributed network of enterprises. For this purpose, each enterprise is defined as autonomous and performs simultaneously at the local and global levels. The basic component of our approach is a so-called Virtual Enterprise Node (VEN), where the enterprise network is represented as a set of tiers (like in a product breakdown structure). Within the network, each partner constitutes a VEN, which is in contact with several customers and suppliers. Exchanges between the VENs ensure the autonomy of decision, and guarantiee the consistency of information and material flows. Only two complementary VEN agents are necessary: one for external interactions, the Negotiator Agent (NA) and one for the planning of internal decisions, the Planner Agent (PA). If supply problems occur in the network, two other agents are defined: the Tier Negotiator Agent (TNA) working at the tier level only and the Supply Chain Mediator Agent (SCMA) working at the level of the enterprise network. These two agents are only active when the perturbation occurs. Otherwise, the VENs process the flow of information alone. With this new approach, managing enterprise network becomes much more transparent and looks like managing a simple enterprise in the network. The use of a Multi-Agent System (MAS) allows physical distribution of the decisional system, and procures a heterarchical organization structure with a decentralized control that guaranties the autonomy of each entity and the flexibility of the network.
Introduction 1. The Currency of Change: World Bank Lending and Learning in the Wolfensohn Era Part 1: Policy Change Inside 'the Black Box' 2. Development Ethics and Human Rights as the Basis for Poverty Reduction: The Case of the World Bank 3. The Art of Fine Balances: The Challenge of Institutionalizing the Comprehensive Development Framework Inside the World Bank 4. From 'Safeguards' to 'Sustainability': The Evolution of Environmental Discourse Inside the International Finance Corporation 5. Explaining Change in the World Bank's Forest Strategy and Operational Policy 6. The World Bank and Pension Reforms 7. Change in International Organizations: Innovation or Adaptation? A Comparison of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund Part 2: Confronting the Outside 8. The Poverty of Amnesia: PRSPs in the Legacy of Structural Adjustment 9. Becoming Green: Diffusing Sustainable Development Norms throughout the World Bank Group 10. Partnership and the International Aid Reform: Challenging Citizenship and Political Representation? 11. The World Bank as Conveyor and Broker of Knowledge and Funds in Argentina's Governance Reforms 12. The Missing Link in Development Cooperation Integrative Frameworks: Revelations from Lebanon's Post-War Experience in Donor-Assisted Administrative Reform 13. Fiscal Decentralization in Transition Economies: The World Bank in a Learning Process
O sistema de financiamento da educação no Brasil se caracteriza por uma estrutura complexa, com problemas de eficiência, eficácia e eqüidade, ao tempo em que se apresentam algumas iniciativas novas como possíveis soluções para as dificuldades enfrentadas. Estas características têm sido objeto de interesse crescente por parte de estudiosos e formuladores de políticas, tanto pela percepção das limitações do sistema vigente como pelas mudanças administrativas e fiscais promovidas pela Constituição de 1988 e, mais recentemente, por alguns governos estaduais e municipais. Este artigo analisa o referido sistema, examinando cada um dos aspectos acima mencionados. O texto inicia descrevendo a organização e estrutura do sistema, fornecendo, a seguir, um panorama das despesas em educação; identifica os problemas principais e descreve algumas experiências recentes que, de forma ainda parcial, tentam solucioná-los. Na sua conclusão, os autores argumentam que, para que se efetive as recentes mudanças, há necessidade de implementar-se procedimentos de avaliação e acompanhamento de forma a saber em que medida os remédios combatem as doenças ou os primeiros podem ser aperfeiçoados. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: educação; finanças públicas; sistema educacional; despesas em educação; municipalização; descentralização. Financing public education in Brazil: A political-economical perspective The system of financing education in Brazil is characterized by a complex structure, with efficiency, efficacy and equity problems, while presenting some new initiatives as possible solutions for the difficulties that are being faced. These characteristics have been the object of growing interest on the part scholars and policy makers, in terms of the perceived limitations of the system, as well as by the fiscal and administrative changes promoted by the 1988 Constitution, and more recently by some state and municipal governments. This article analyses the system, beginning with its organization and structure, and then provides an overview of education expenditures. It identifies the major problems and describes some recent experiences, trying to solve them in a partial way. In its conclusion the authors discuss that to put the recent changes into practice it is necessary to implement evaluation and assessment procedures that enable the identification and improvement of the most effective initiatives. KEY WORDS: education; public finances; educational system; expenses on education; municipality issues; decentralization. Publicação Online do Caderno CRH: http://www.cadernocrh.ufba.br
In the past five years most of the countries have begun or are continuing with processes of health sector reform which are intended to modify the management and financing of health services provision. Most of the legislative changes relating to health have altered the balance between private and public health services. There has also been some degree of re–establishing the role of the state as provider and regulator, with decentralizing of services management, promotion of the private sector and the control of escalating costs.
Many electronic voting systems, classified mainly as homomorphic cryptography based, mix-net based and blind signature based, appear after the eighties when zero knowledge proofs were introduced. The common ground for all these three systems is that none of them works without real time cryptologic calculations that should be held on a server. As far as known, the agent-based approach has not been used in a secure electronic voting system. In this study, an agent-based electronic voting schema, which does not contain real time calculations on the server side, is proposed. Conventional cryptologic methods are used in the proposed schema and some of the requirements of an electronic voting system are constructed within the schema. The schema seems quite secure if the used cryptologic methods and agents are secure. In this paper, proposed schema will be explained and compared with already known electronic voting systems.
It could be argued that enough has already been written about the book edited by S. Franklin and E. Widdis, which has become the object of a lively discussion, a discussion where emotional reactions seem occasionally to dominate, even though the questions at stake deserve to be treated in a scholarly and dispassionate way. Understandably, these questions are not just scholarly; they are at the same time the depository of proofs, arguments or counter-arguments for sought after, imagined or historically real self-identities. Ironically, the discussion is about a book that is neither among the most important nor the best in the last years. A reader will find interesting pages and information here, but the authors often offer several different interpretations of the same fact, failing to provide proofs for the correct one. Let me mention the in the lands in the film Aleksandr Nevskij, which has nothing to do with the betrayal of Christ (p. 113): the Judas par excellence in Russia was (is?) Mazepa, who also passed to the German (Swedish) camp. The allusion to mazepynstvo is quite obvious in the film. As to the bank notes of the 1990s, I do not think that they lend themselves to a double interpretation, namely, as either overlapping Soviet images or being a challenge to them (pp. 24-28): in my opinion, by 1996, they were already a symbol of of the new state and challenged the Soviet/Russian interpretation of the Kyivan past. Incidentally, the notes were considered state symbols already by Andrew Wilson in his book The Ukrainians: Unexpected nation (2001; cf. pp. 227-228). The Greek ruins on the same notes do suggest the 2000 year old history of the Ukrainian lands: this may be considered a manifestation of silly nationalism, but let us recall that the first person who stated the same idea for Russia was V. Tatishchev. Thus, today myths of antiquity are as silly as the ones-although that is not often appreciated nor recognized as dangerous.Although the book contains only minor errors,2 I am skeptical about its usefulness. It is a hybrid product of post-modernist and late-structuralist criticism, trying to unite various specialties, ranging from philology and language to history (spanning a time-frame from the early-medieval to the present), from modern cultural studies to questions of nation-building, not to mention issues of identity of the self and/or the other. As a result, the first surprise is that the book is 'only' 244-pages long. Brevity is often a virtue, but it can become a handicap when one tries to include everything just to suggest the endless contradictions and fluidity (as the editors say in the Preface) of all the parameters that make up National Identity and Russian Culture. It is hard to find a more difficult and broader subject in all of the human sciences, and to distil them into a short book requires enormous skill and clarity of vision. Unfortunately, the current book is a hybrid product designed for only a vaguely identified audience. Scholars will find it more or less useless because of the oversimplifications-and will treat the book as redundant. On the other hand, it is hard to recommend the book to non-specialists or students (the intended audience), since it lacks basic historical, cultural and linguistic data that might allow that type of reader to follow the culturological discourse that the editors tried to initiate. To give one example: B. Gasparov's analysis of the linguistic situation in Old-Rus', in Muscovy, and then in the empire, the USSR and even in contemporary Russia is hardly profitable for a student that has not taken courses in the history of the language and medieval literature, or digested books and articles by people like B. Uspenskii and V. Zhivov. On the other hand, for a specialist, Gasparov's short overview of such radically different works (both in terms of language and socio-cultural background) as Monomakh, Epifanii the Wise, Avvakum, and Zyzanii only provides evidence of the superficiality of his approach. …