Blockchain Papers

Laksono Trisnantoro

Background: Health system in Indonesia is experiencing a reform due to decentralisation policy. This policy causes a big change on public and private sector's roles in health services. The great impact will be on the regional economy. In turn the regional economy change will influence local health system. This study aims to make a projection on the influence of decentralisation policy to the regional health system due to the change of regional economy.\nMethods: This study is a case study with 7 provinces in Indonesia, including their districts, as the subjects of the study. The simulation of change in district economic situational as the impact of decentralization in 7 provinces is shown by secondary data.The local government economic strength is determined based on Regional Original Revenue (PAD), General Allocation Fund (DAU), and the simulation of Local Shared Fund (Dana Bagian Daerah). The community economioc strength is determined by Gross Domestic Regional Income (PDRB).\nResults: This study shows that there will be 4 groups of region based on their economy strength. The results shows that there are four types of district government and community situation: (1) strong district government financial resources with strong community finance

Sukarjo Kasut, SU Kristiani

No abstract is available for this record.

Jeffrey P. Cohn

In June the Office of Management and Budget proposed new, congressionally mandated guidelines to ensure the quality of the data gathered and disseminated by federal agencies. The new law augments the Paperwork Reduction Act, which already requires federal agencies to adopt processes to ensure data quality. Many scientists, however, worry that the guidelines—which require agencies to devise and implement procedures that make it possible for individuals to challenge the accuracy of agency information—could impede or prevent the flow of scientific information and undermine the peer review process. Comments submitted to OMB by 55 scientific societies and academic institutions, including the American Institute of Biological Sciences, supported the intent of the law. “As biomedical researchers whose work depends on the excellence of our own data, we are acutely aware of and sensitive to the importance of accurate data,” wrote Robert Rich, M.D., president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). The problem, scientists say, is not with the intent of the law but with the vagueness of the guidelines OMB proposes for implementing it. In particular, scientists argue that challengers seeking a correction of an agency's data should have expertise in the subject matter and should disclose any financial interest at stake in the outcome of the challenge. There should be a clear burden of proof on the person or group who made the initial charge to demonstrate why the data being challenged are inaccurate or wrong, added Elaine Hoagland, national executive officer for the Council on Undergraduate Research. Further, the OMB rules should contain adequate safeguards against frivolous challenges of scientific information. Those safeguards should allow government agencies to insist on the same degree of rigor and objectivity required of the original science, says Stephen Heinig, senior staff associate at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). “Scientists can fight out issues of data and methodology in the literature,” Heinig says. “That's the standard. We don't see any reason to change it.” And, noted AAMC President Jordan Cohen, the procedures mandated by the guidelines will be burdensome to agencies, whose staff—already struggling to meet core missions—will have to shoulder supervisory and reporting tasks that contribute little to the agencies' missions. Citing “errors” in Environmental Protection Agency data, as well as the sheer volume of information that EPA and other government agencies post on the Internet, Jim Tozzi explains that “we felt the need to ensure the quality of government data.” Tozzi, a former OMB official who is now a board advisor to the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, an independent policy group that helped draft the new law, calls the debate over OMB's data quality proposals “a big hullabaloo over nothing.” Not so, say Washington's scientific and educational groups. “There is plenty of potential here for mischief,” notes Richard Harpel, director of federal relations for the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. In part, that is because the draft guidelines are very subjective, says Joanne Carney, director of the Center for Science, Technology and Congress at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. Robert Wells, president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, expressed the views of many scientific societies when he pointed out that key terms in the guidelines are not defined: “OMB asked for comment on the definitions of the terms ‘quality,’ ‘utility,’ ‘objectivity,’ and ‘integrity’…· [but] we are unable to find any definitions of these terms in the proposed guidelines…·. It may seem to the drafters of this proposal that these terms are self-explanatory, but in fact they are not, at least as far as science and regulatory policy are concerned.” It isn't even clear who will be covered by the guidelines, which are silent on the question of applicability to federal grant recipients. “Any attempted federal restriction on dissemination of academic research would be wholly unacceptable in principle and would likely raise First Amendment considerations,” Heinig wrote. The guidelines “should specifically exclude academic and other non-federal institutions performing research under federal grants.” FASEB's Rich questioned OMB's proposal that government data “be substantially reproducible upon independent analysis.” “Who will conduct these [independent] studies and who will pay for them?” he wondered. “How can research studies [that] may have taken place over a period of years and used biological substances be ‘substantially reproduced’?” Rich also faulted OMB's proposal that federal agencies report the number and nature of complaints regarding their compliance with the guidelines. “The number of complaints received rather than the validity of the complaints could unfairly impact the reputation of an agency and//or its funded investigators,” he wrote. “A large number of complaints on a scientific matter could simply reflect a controversial issue…·rather than the excellence of the science.” The bottom line, Harpel says, is that by seeking to ensure high-quality scientific data, OMB could interrupt ongoing research and leave government agencies and their researchers open to harassment by special interests. That, he states, would “make it harder to be a scientist.”

Imrana Qadeer, Kasturi Sen, Kesavan Rajasekharan Nayar

Introduction PART ONE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT Landmarks in the Development of Health Services in India - Debabar Banerji Structural Adjustment and the Poor in Pakistan - Jennifer Bennett Donor-Driven Family Planning Services in Bangladesh - Farida Akhter Impact on Women's Health Changes in Health Care Systems in Europe - Meri Koivusalo Focus on Finland Structural Adjustment Policies and Health in the Plantation Sector in Sri Lanka - Indira Hettiarachchi Dilemmas for Research in Primary Health Care in the Era of Reforms - Marc De Bruycker PART TWO: CONCEPTS AND EVIDENCE Impact of Structural Adjustements Programs on Concepts in Public Health - Imrana Qadeer Health Reforms and Developing Countries - Kasturi Sen A Critique Disability Adjusted Life Years as a Tool for Public Health Policy - Ritu Priya A Critical Assessment Re-Thinking Public Health - Sheila Zurbrigg Food, Hunger and Mortality Decline in South Asian History Biological Stress and History from Below - Lalita Chakravarty The Millet Zone of India, 1970-92 PART THREE: SHIFTS IN HEALTH SERVICES AND HEALTH FINANCING Health Sector Reforms and Structural Adjustment - Rama V Baru A State-Level Analysis Reforms and Their Relevance - V Raman Kutty The Kerala Experience Health Sector and Economic Reforms - K Seeta Prabhu A Study of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu Structural Adjustment and Economic Slowdown - S Akbar Zaidi Likely Impact on Health Outcomes in Pakistan Health Services in Bangladesh - A Q Khan Development and Structural Reforms Structural Adjustment Programs and Health Care Services in Sri Lanka - Dulitha N Fernando An Overview Evolution of India's Leprosy Program from Control to Elimination - B R Chatterjee Tuberculosis Program in India - A K Chakraborty Current Operational Issues PART FOUR: DECENTRALIZATION IN HEALTH CARE Politics of Decentralization - K R Nayar Lessons from Kerala Promises and Problems of Panchayati Raj - Anwar Jafri Experiences from Madhya Pradesh An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Decentralization of Health Services in Sri Lanka - Nimal Attanayake People's Health Care Initiative in Chhattisgarh District, Madhya Pradesh - Binayak Sen PART FIVE: PERSPECTIVES OF CLINICIANS Prescribing Practices - Anant R Phadke A Comparison of Public and Private Sectors Revisiting the Community Health Worker - Shyam Ashtekar Disturbing Trends in the Treatment of Malaria - Yogesh Jain Public Health in Vellore - Anand Zachariah Experiences with Malaria and Cholera The Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program - Anurag Bhargava A Critical Perspective PART SIX: EXPERIENCES AT THE MICRO-LEVEL The Plague, the Poor and the Health Services - Ghanshyam Shah Public Health Issues of Small Towns - K S Sebastian The Case of Alleppey The Labor Process and Its Impact on the Lives of Women Workers - Meena Gopal The Reproductive Health Package - Alpana Sagar A Chimera for Women's Health The Rhetoric of Reproductive Rights - Mohan Rao Quinacrine Sterilization in India

Cary Deck

Trade developed through barter, an institution requiring the double coincidence of wants. Fiat money subsequently arose to provide traders with a mechanism for exchange in decentralized markets while avoiding the problems associated with commodity monies. Currently, every major modern economy uses fiat money and numerous Internet economies are developing private fiat monies, yet traditional economic theories, such as general equilibrium or Walrasian models, provide little insight. This work develops the concept of a coordination equilibrium model, which maintains fiat money's role as a medium of exchange. The potential instability of fiat money is apparent from observed hyperinflationary episodes. Civil unrest and real purchases financed by printing money are also associated with hyperinflations. These factors lead to an experimental design addressing the stability of intrinsically valueless money. Via controlled laboratory experiments, subjects trade fictitious commodities for fiat money in a circular flow economy. The experimental results indicate that under a long trading horizon with no money creation, fiat money provides a stable medium of exchange and the economy realizes almost maximum efficiency, a result consistent with the coordination equilibrium model but not with standard economic models. Shortening the trade horizon causes a decrease in efficiency. However, the ability to create money leads to hyperinflationary trade patterns independent of the horizon. Further, the experimental results demonstrate that the collapse is not caused by an increasing money supply but rather the result of interference in the real price discovery process. As the party issuing money is often an active participant, this economic instability creates a problem in the design of decentralized economic systems. Forcing the monetary authority to balance fiscal spending with the level of tax collection is a potential solution. Experimental evidence demonstrates that a balanced budget results in a pattern of market activity similar to that observed in fiat money economies when the government is inactive. This level of trade is achieved by private agents "crowding out" the government. Further, this effect is not due to the introduction of inside money, money that derives value within the system as tender for tax payment.

Ivan Damgård, Eiichiro Fujisaki

No abstract is available for this record.

Massimo Pigliucci

Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach about Evolution Is Wrong. Jonathan Wells. Regnery, Washington (DC), 2000. 338 pp. $27.95 (ISBN 0895262762 cloth). Because there are omissions, simplifications, and inaccuracies in some general biology textbooks, obviously the modern theory of evolution must be wrong. This is the astounding line of reasoning that is the backbone of Jonathan Wells's Icons of Evolution. It is the latest book in a series of neocreationist productions (this one dressed with the slightly more respectable label of “intelligent design theory” [Pigliucci 2000a]) to drive a stake into the perceived perniciousness of modern science, and of biology in particular. This is another astonishing example of the fact that evolution deniers seem to consider attacks on science popularizing to be genuine intellectual feats, as if they had found huge holes in the primary literature that constitutes the core of any respectable science. Wells is a fellow of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, which has been at the forefront of the neocreationist assault on science over the last few years. Predictably, his book is endorsed by other fellows of the same institution and by luminaries of the evolution-deniers movement such as Michael Behe (author of Darwin's Black Box), Phillip Johnson (Darwin on Trial and The Wedge of Truth, among others), and Dean Kenyon (Biochemical Predestination and Of Pandas and People). Wells himself seems particularly well positioned to engage in this never-ending debate, given his double PhD in theology and molecular biology. Alas, Icons falls far short of a critique of evolutionary theory, or indeed of any significant contribution to the “evolution wars.” Wells's idea is simple: In the 10 chapters that make up most of the book, he tackles an equal number of what he calls “icons”—that is, myths—of evolutionary biology, attempting to show that biology textbooks don't tell the whole story, are out of date, or oversimplify what is known. From there he concludes that because these icons are the best “proofs” of evolution, biologists don't have a leg to stand on and they should once and for all abandon their ideological positions and open their minds to a truer and better science, which of course must include the possibility of intelligent supernatural design (Dembski 1998). There are several flaws with this line of reasoning, which I shall examine in turn. First, textbook examples are no proof of anything. Second, Wells's critique of the ten icons is much less devastating than he seems to think. and third, science simply doesn't work the way Wells apparently conceives it. The fact that science (not only biology) textbooks contain plenty of oversimplifications and inaccuracies, and occasionally even major conceptual errors, is not news to anybody and has always been decried by professional scientists and educators. There are sadly understandable reasons for this state of affairs. For one thing, general science textbooks are written by people who either are not practicing scientists or are directly competent in only a fraction of the topics covered. Even when several authors collaborate, the situation does not improve significantly. Second, textbooks (unlike technical research books) are written largely to make money, both for publishers and for authors, and academic rigor sometimes gets sacrificed to accommodate more pressing matters, such as publishing deadlines. Third, pedagogical efficacy is often considered—rightly or not—more important than scientific rigor; after all, the audience is made of young students with little background in the discipline to be studied, not of professionals who understand the subtleties of the subject matter. Regrettable as these facts may be, to conclude from them that evolutionary biology is a big lie constructed on thin evidence is analogous to the preposterous suggestion of abandoning, say, quantum mechanics because many physics textbooks do not portray it accurately or may even make egregious conceptual mistakes in explaining it. It just doesn't follow, and it is pure wishful thinking on Wells's part to pretend otherwise. As for the icons themselves, I will limit myself to a brief discussion of a couple of them (I provide a more detailed, chapter-by-chapter analysis at the Web site fp.bio.utk.edu/skeptic/Debates/Wells%20guide.htm). Let me therefore consider the first and last—and perhaps the most important—of the icons: the Miller–Urey experiments on the origin of life, and the current status of the research on the origin of humans. As is well known, in 1953 Stanley Miller—at the time a student of Harold Urey—published a historic paper in which he demonstrated the possibility of the inorganic synthesis of some of the fundamental building blocks of life, given conditions that were thought to resemble those of the ancient earth. This experiment is still presented in many textbooks as the scientific answer to the question of the origin of life. and Wells is right in maintaining that it shouldn't be. For one thing, even if we do accept Miller's results at face value, they are far from constituting an answer to the origin-of-life question. At most they provide an interesting beginning. More important, the recent consensus among geochemists is that the ancient earth atmosphere was essentially chemically neutral, not reducing like the one Miller simulated. However, textbooks should still devote space to Miller's experiment for its historical (and pedagogical) value: It was not only the first modern piece of empirical research on the origin of life, thus moving the whole field out of metaphysical speculation, but also a great example of how science progresses by questioning its own assumptions and results. As for this being an icon of evolution in Wells's sense, there are two problems with his position. First, Wells gives his readers the completely misleading impression that the field of research on the origin of life is still at the level of Miller's 1953 experiment and that, given the questionable validity of the latter, the whole enterprise is in disarray. Au contraire, this is an area of extremely fecund theoretical and empirical activity, with new hypotheses, findings, and experiments being published at a very rapid pace (Lahav 1999, Fry 2000). More to the point of the creation–evolution debate, the Miller experiments and the whole question of the origin of life have nothing to do with the truth, or lack thereof, concerning evolutionary theory. By definition, evolution is something that happens after life originates on a planet and cannot be invoked to answer the question of how this happened. By the same token, evolutionary theory cannot be blamed for not being able to answer the questions of the origin of life, even if that question might remain a mystery forever. It is certainly true, as creationists are fond of saying, that evolution requires life to have originated, but the two are entirely discrete scientific questions addressed by different fields of research. For that matter, evolution also requires a universe to exist beforehand, but nobody would say that failure to understand the origin of the universe deals a fatal blow to Darwinism (actually, naive young-earth creationists such as Duane Gish do, but that is another story; Pigliucci 2000b, Chapter 11). The “ultimate” icon in Wells's book concerns the story of human descent. This is perhaps one of the most peculiar chapters in the entire book, because even Wells is forced to concede ample ground to the evolutionists! He begins the chapter with the usual complaint about the naive scientists that were fooled by the Piltdown man hoax in 1912. I know of several scientists who feel the sting of shame—which Wells wants them never to forget—because science was duped by a fraudulent fossil. But Piltdown man was neither the first nor the last practical joke scientists will ever face. Furthermore, it is yet another beautiful example, one that textbooks should promote, of how science really works. It is true that this alleged missing link between humans and chimps was more or less accepted (though not without challenge) for several decades. However, it is also true that the human fossil record at the time was so scant that it was very difficult to raise substantive objections to the Piltdown findings. More important, scientists—not creationists—uncovered the hoax, a development prompted by the very fact that more and more discoveries of genuine human and protohuman fossils made it quite clear that Piltdown didn't fit anywhere in the emerging picture. Because science works through consilience of evidence (Wilson 1998), it was the progress of science in virtue of its self-correcting mechanisms that prompted evolutionists to reject Piltdown and eventually uncover the fraud. I have yet to find a similar example of acknowledgment of error in the evolution-denying literature, despite the fact that such errors have been ubiquitous in that literature. Wells, as much as he desperately tries to debunk what to him is the most crucial component of evolutionary theory—the history of human descent—is backed against a wall by his own knowledge of biology. Unlike more naive creationists, he has to grudgingly admit that “many human-like fossils have been found since 1912, and unlike Piltdown they appear to be genuine. Some have distinctively ape-like features, while others are more human-like” (p. 218), and that “obviously, the human species has a history” (p. 223). So much for destroying the ultimate icon. But perhaps the most damning point about Wells's book is the general conception of science that emerges from it. Given his scientific training, Wells should have known better. It is clear that the education system at Berkeley has failed in his case or that Wells does indeed have an ideological agenda (which he was forced to admit in a public debate with me at the University of Tennessee; see http://burns.tns.utk.edu/research/cb/evdebate.htm). Wells's whole argument hinges on the idea of the crucial proof of a scientific theory. If that pillar fails, the whole enterprise is useless. Now, Wells is far from showing that any of the icons are in fact fundamentally flawed or represent an insurmountable obstacle for evolutionists. But even if he succeeded, Wells's conception of science is so simplistic as being labeled by philosophers of science as naive falsificationism. Falsificationism, it may be recalled, is the idea proposed by philosopher Karl Popper (1968) that no amount of positive evidence is enough to sustain a theory unless such theory also makes predictions that could—in principle—be demonstrated to be wrong, that is, the theory is potentially falsifiable. Popper, however, did not advocate discarding a scientific theory at the first sign of trouble. Indeed, Thomas Kuhn (1970) clearly showed that real science is a lot more messy and that before switching paradigms the amount of trouble has to be substantial, or one risks living in a perennial state of flux in which no progress is actually possible. The real “evidence” for evolution is not to be found in individual experiments, and it is certainly not to be expected in textbooks for beginning students. Rather, it is found in the plethora of facts about the biotic world that accumulate every year in the primary literature, facts that make no sense outside of the evolutionary paradigm. Components of this paradigm are constantly being tested in countless laboratories around the world, and—for the most part—the theory has withstood the test of time. More important, this is the way science really works, regardless of Wells's naive and ideologically motivated views that it should be otherwise (he admits in an online article, available at http://www.tparents.org/library/unification/talks/wells/DARWIN.htm, that he enrolled in his second PhD program—in molecular biology—for the express purpose of “destroying Darwinism”). What have we to learn from this latest attempt at debunking evolution? Two things. First, that it is indeed a good idea to pay more attention to how our textbooks are written. This is not just so that individuals like Wells will not be able to use their cheap ammunition in a public debate, but because the so-called icons can be properly used to show students that science is an engaging and ever-changing enterprise, not a monolithic block of static knowledge. Second, we should finally get the message that evolution deniers are always at work, and that they are making inroads with both the public and politicians. How long until we climb down from the ivory tower and start defending—and doing a better job of teaching—reason and science? I wish to thank the following people for a critical reading of this manuscript and for providing me with valuable insights and suggestions: Wesley Elsberry, Jim Foley, Carl Johnson, Niall Shanks, Frank Steiger, and Dave Ussery.

Zhai Xin

Through the analysis of geotechnical section of the drilled holes, the results of the shear wave velocity tests, the background,active rift and effects of the earthquake geology and the main earthquake proof parameter,the authors consider that construction site of the university belongs to medium soft soil which does not have the possibility of liquification and type of site can be classified as Type Ⅱ. At the same time,the authors hold that 6 or less than 6 degrees earthquake background exists in the neighborhood and its earthquake intensity can be estimated as seven degrees. In view of this,the authors suggest a series of earthquake proof measures:foundation of the site can be reinforced by changing soil cushion;a large diameter concentrated stake base and frame pillars, one pillar with one stake may be used for high buildings;base roof beams should be set for shear wall;the building should be properly set in the earth and basements should be built.

Wenbo Mao

Let n be a large composite number. Without factoring n, the computation of a 2 t (mod n)given a, t with gcd(a# n) = 1 and t!n can be done in t squarings modulo n.For t n (e.g., n?2 1024 and t!2 100 ), no lower complexity than t squarings is known to fulfill this task. Rivest et al suggested to use such constructions as good candidates for realising timed-release crypto problems. We argue the necessity for a zero-knowledge proof of the correctness of such constructions and propose the first practically efficient protocol for a realisation. Our protocol proves, in log 2 t standard crypto operations, the correctness of (a e ) 2 t (mod n) with respect to a e where e is an RSA encryption exponent. With such a proof, a Timed-release Encryption of a message M can be given as a 2 t M (mod n) with the assertion that the correct decryption of the RSA ciphertext M e (mod n) can be obtained by performing t squarings modulo n starting from a. Timed-release RSA signatures can be constructed analogously. Keywords Timed-release cryptography, Time-lock puzzles, Non-parallelisability, Efficient zero-knowledge protocols. 1

Russell A. Eisenstat, Nathaniel Foote, Jay R. Galbraith, Danny Miller

Corporate organization's future lies in the ability to work across business units. Opportunity-based organizational design may help you succeed. Economic logic is driving two clear organizational trends. The need to be entrepreneurial and responsive to markets favors agile and focused companies. However, an unprecedented $3.4 trillion in corporate mergers and acquisitions around the world during 1999 is powerful testimony to the benefits of scale and scope. [1] Corporations are increasingly unwilling to sacrifice size and breadth for market responsiveness or vice versa; companies are now organizing to realize the benefits of both. IBM, for example, seeks to foster the entrepreneurial spirit of their employees by encouraging people in their lower reaches to show initiative. And companies such as British Petroleum, having disaggregated themselves into focused units, don't hesitate to grow larger through acquisitions. Nevertheless, many companies are still struggling to create entrepreneurial focus and to leverage and integrate their far-flung resources at the same time. One of the most important benefits of scale and scope is the ability to give employees privileged access to a wide range of resources throughout an organization. A global entity like Citigroup, for instance, boasts a considerable array of resources--including people, knowledge, products, and even relationships with outside partners--residing in functional, product, industry, and geographic units. But integrating such resources to serve a corporate client about to do business in, say, Thailand would inevitably require far more lateral work across hierarchical lines than traditional management precepts and designs envision. Using opportunity-based design Some companies do, however, seem to be getting it right. Rather than viewing the corporation as a portfolio of business units, their managers regard it as a portfolio of resources and of opportunities to create value. This opportunity-based design perspective gives these companies the flexibility to bring the most useful resources to bear on the most promising opportunities. But the resulting organization is more complex and poses new managerial challenges (exhibit). We have studied some two dozen companies that have adopted an opportunity-based design. Many of their managers, often working deep within operating units, discover opportunities in key global accounts, tightly defined market segments, or tailored product solutions. To exploit such opportunities, these entrepreneurs, regardless of their positions in the corporation, are authorized to mobilize whatever resources they need, such as product experts to create an integrated solution or functional and industry specialists, from a variety of countries, to serve a key global account. Opportunity-based design helps established companies emulate the market responsiveness of start-ups without sacrificing the advantages of scale and scope. Consider ABB, an engineering company long known for its decentralized structure, in which dozens of quasi-autonomous businesses are loosely linked to a wafer-thin corporate center. Increasingly, both the sourcing and the scope of ABB's projects around the world have cut across these units. Oslo's new airport was one such project. In 1994 the government of Norway suddenly gave the go-ahead for this long-mooted scheme. ABB's country manager immediately appointed an airport project leader, who persuaded all of ABB's more than 20 businesses in the country to work under his aegis. Together, these businesses and their external networks offered the complete set of resources needed for the project. Because the project leader--the owner--was empowered to coordinate these resources, and because the heads of ABB business units and functions--the resource owners--were willing to dedicate them to an opportunity that others had identified, ABB won 70 airport contracts, with a total worth of more than $300 million. …

Tzafrir Cohen, Joe Kilian, Erez Petrank

No abstract is available for this record.

Taekyoung Kwon

This paper presents a new password authentication and key agreement protocol called AMP in a provable manner. The intrinsic problem with password authentication is a password, associated with each user, has low entropy so that (1) the password is hard to transmit securely over an insecure channel and (2) the password file is hard to protect. Our solution to this complex problem is the amplified password proof idea along with the amplified password file. A party commits the high entropy information and amplifies her password with that information in the amplified password proof. She never shows any information except that she knows it for her proof. Our amplified password proof idea is similar to the zero-knowledge proof in that sense. A server stores amplified verifiers in the amplified password file that is secure against a server file compromise and a dictionary attack. AMP mainly provides the passwordverifier based authentication and the Diffie-Hellman based key agreement, securely and efficiently. AMP is simple and actually the most efficient protocol among the related protocols.

Antoine Faure‐Grimaud, Jean‐Jacques Laffont, David Martimort

No abstract is available for this record.

Stephen B. Lawton

Both U.S. states and Canadian provinces have moved to enhance educational choice within their educational systems in order to improve educational productivity. In spite of this similarity of purpose and means, the two nations are taking very different approaches. Most Canadian provinces have moved to full provincial financing of schools and to the allocation of school choice based on group rights assigned to French-speaking and English-speaking citizens. In contrast, U.S. states have decentralized authority via charter schools, vouchers or tax deductions, thereby enhancing individual rights. Both nations also have adopted federal and state/provincial assessment systems. Eventually, we may be able to assess the educational, financial and political success of two distinctive models, one driven by centralized institutions and the other by markets.

Tomas Sander, Amnon Ta‐Shma, Moti Yung

No abstract is available for this record.

Oded Goldreich

Following Dwork, Naor, and Sahai (30th STOC, 1998), we consider concurrent execution of protocols in a semi-synchronized network. Specifically, we assume that each party holds a local clock such that a constant bound on the relative rates of these clocks is a-priori known, and consider protocols that employ time-driven operations (i.e., time-out in-coming messages and delay out-going messages). We show that the constant-round zero-knowledge proof for NP of Goldreich and Kahan (Jour. of Crypto., 1996) preserves its security when polynomially-many independent copies are executed concurrently under the above timing model. We stress that our main result establishes zero-knowledge of interactive proofs, whereas the results of Dwork et. al. are either for zero-knowledge arguments or for a weak notion of zero-knowledge (called ffl-knowledge) proofs. Our analysis identifies two extreme schedulings of concurrent executions under the above timing model: the first is the case of parallel execution of polynomially-many copies, and the second is of concurrent execution of polynomially-many copies such the number of copies that are simultaneously active at any time is bounded by a constant (i.e., bounded simultaneity). Dealing with each of these extreme cases is of independent interest, and the general result (regarding concurrent executions under the timing model) is obtained by combining the two treatments.

Paula Donnelly-Roark, Karim Ouedrago

The note focuses on the leading role of
\n local level institutions (LLIs) in Burkina Faso, in rural
\n decentralization, and poverty eradication, to enhance
\n equitable prosperity. It is based on the study undertaken by
\n the National Decentralization Commission in Burkina Faso,
\n which draws on case studies in Sanmatenga, Sissili, Houet,
\n and Yatenga, and, presents sociological evidence that
\n certain high-performing LLIs contribute to equitable
\n economic development. Economic findings support this,
\n showing that both lower inequality levels, and lower poverty
\n levels, are linked to a high degree of internal village
\n organization. Contextually, LLIs surround, connect, and
\n manage communities, incorporating many different kinds of
\n indigenous organizations, and functions. Three categories of
\n institutions active at the local level are identified: value
\n institutions, which focus on activating, and maintaining the
\n stability of local governance, and values of the society;
\n production institutions, focused on accessing resources from
\n the national government, so as to increase productivity;
\n and, service-asset management institutions, which integrate
\n productivity, and growth values, focused on managing, and
\n expanding local assets for sustainable development. External
\n aid will need to map these LLIs to guide pro-poor
\n investment, and financing of community driven development,
\n and encourage local governments to formalize participation.

Akitoshi Shimura, T. Aizono, M. Shioya

The Telecommunications Advancement Organization of Japan (TAO) has put the concept of the Smart Gateway (SG) forward as a way of realizing safety and comfort for the drivers of Japan. The system will provide a variety of information, such as multimedia information that doesn't require a guarantee of transmission within a particular period, and cruising assistance information that does require a guarantee of transmission within a particular period, for driver's safety. The roadside system that is a component of the SG is discussed here. There are two requirements for this system: the first is step-by-step construction, because implementing it all at once would be both difficult and expensive. The second is an urgent-message guarantee that ensures the delivery of emergency information such as cruising-assistance information, etc., to drivers in real time. An autonomous decentralized system (ADS) will be used to meet the first requirement. A highly reliable Quality of Service (HQoS) control method that dynamically determines the priority level of data in response to drivers' needs and then supplies information, is proposed to meet the latter requirement. The architecture of this roadside system, and the HQoS control method based on ADS concepts, is discussed in this paper.

Yi Yang

A new electronic cash scheme based on zero knowledge proof is proposed Unlike the other proposed schemes,our electronic cash scheme is not based on any specific scheme Thus we have provided an approach to construct electronic cash with any blind signature scheme or zero knowledge proof system The security of our scheme is proved based on some cryptographic assumptions

Boaz Barak, Oded Goldreich, S. Goldwasser, Yehuda Lindell

Resettably-sound proofs and arguments maintain soundness even when the prover can reset the verifier to use the same random coins in repeated executions of the protocol. We show that resettably-sound zero-knowledge arguments for NP exist if collision-free hash functions exist. In contrast, resettably-sound zero-knowledge proofs are possible only for languages in P/poly. We present two applications of resettably-sound zero-knowledge arguments. First, we construct resettable zero-knowledge arguments of knowledge for NP, using a natural relaxation of the definition of arguments (and proofs) of knowledge. We note that, under the standard definition of proof of knowledge, it is impossible to obtain resettable zero-knowledge arguments of knowledge for languages outside BPP. Second, we construct a constant-round resettable zero-knowledge argument for NP in the public-key model, under the assumption that collision-free hash functions exist. This improves upon the sub-exponential hardness assumption required by previous constructions. We emphasize that our results use non-black-box zero-knowledge simulations. Indeed, we show that some of the results are impossible to achieve using black-box simulations. In particular, only languages in BPP have resettably-sound arguments that are zero-knowledge with respect to black-box simulation.

Alfredo De Santis, Giovanni Di Crescenzo, Rafail Ostrovsky, Giuseppe Persiano · 5 authors

. Non-Interactive Zero Knowledge (NIZK), introduced by Blum, Feldman, and Micali in 1988, is a fundamental cryptographic primitive which has attracted considerable attention in the last decade and has been used throughout modern cryptography in several essential ways. For example, NIZK plays a central role in building provably secure public-key cryptosystems based on general complexity-theoretic assumptions that achieve security against chosen ciphertext attacks. In essence, in a multi-party setting, given a fixed common random string of polynomial size which is visible to all parties, NIZK allows an arbitrary polynomial number of Provers to send messages to polynomially many Verifiers, where each message constitutes an NIZK proof for an arbitrary polynomial-size NP statement. In this paper, we take a closer look at NIZK in the multi-party setting. First, we consider non-malleable NIZK, and generalizing and substantially strengthening the results of Sahai, we give the first construction of NIZK which remains non-malleable after polynomially-many NIZK proofs. Second, we turn to the definition of standard NIZK itself, and propose a strengthening of it. In particular, one of the concerns in the technical definition of NIZK (as well as non-malleable NIZK) is that the so-called "simulator" of the Zero-Knowledge property is allowed to pick a different "common random string" from the one that Provers must actually use to prove NIZK statements in real executions. In this paper, we propose a new definition for NIZK that eliminates this shortcoming, and where Provers and the simulator use the same common random string. Furthermore, we show that both standard and non-malleable NIZK (as well as NIZK Proofs of Knowledge) can be constructed achieving this stronger definition. We call...

Roman Inderst, Holger M. Mueller

No abstract is available for this record.

Vijayalakshmi Atluri, Soon Ae Chun, Pietro Mazzoleni

Workflow systems are gaining importance as an infrastructure for automating inter-organizational interactions, such as those in Electronic Commerce. Execution of inter-organiz-ational workflows may raise a number of security issues including those related to conflict-of-interest among competing organizations. Moreover, in such an environment, a centralized Workflow Management System is not desirable because: (i) it can be a performance bottleneck, and (ii) the systems are inherently distributed, heterogeneous and autonomous in nature. In this paper, we propose an approach to realize decentralized workflow execution, in which the workflow is divided into partitions called self-describing workflows, and handled by a light weight workflow management component, called workflow stub, located at each organizational agent. We argue that placing the task execution agents that belong to the same conflict-of-interest class in one self-describing workflow may lead to unfair, and in some cases, undesirable results, akin to being on the wrong side of the Chinese wall. We propose a Chinese wall security model for the decentralized workflow environment to resolve such problems, and a restrictive partitioning solution to enforce the proposed model.

Helger Lipmaa

A family $(S_t)$ of sets is $p$-bounded Diophantine if $S_t$ has a representing $p$-bounded polynomial $R_{S,t}$, s.t.~$x\\in S_t \\iff (\\exists y)[R_{S}(x;y)=0]$. We say that $(S_t)$ is unbounded Diophantine if additionally, $R_{S,t}$ is a fixed $t$-independent polynomial. We show that $p$-bounded (resp., unbounded) Diophantine set has a polynomial-size (resp., constant-size) statistical zero-knowledge proof system that a committed tuple $x$ belongs to $S$. We describe efficient SZK proof systems for several cryptographically interesting sets. Finally, we show how to prove in SZK that an encrypted number belongs to $S$.