Blockchain Papers

S J Dyke, B F Spencer, M K Sain, J D Carlson

No abstract is available for this record.

Maurice J. Bessman, David N. Frick, Suzanne F. O'Handley

No abstract is available for this record.

George E. Peterson

This report provides a background for the financing of local infrastructure investment in Romania. It summarizes the U.S. Agency for International Development's strategic context, discusses municipal creditworthiness and decentralized creditworthiness, and provides specific findings related to developing a municipal credit facility for Romania.

천경욱, 최양희

여러개의 개별 객체를 모아 하나의 새로운 객체를 생성할 때 각 객체별로 사용자의 접근을 제어하거나, 사용자에 따라 접근 정도를 지정할 필요가 있다. 이 때 가능한 한 사용자 입장에서는 투명하게 동작하도록 하여 사용자로 하여금 자신이 사용하는 각 개체에 어느 정도의 접근이 가능한지를 사전에 알지 않아도 되어야 한다. 본 논문에서는 여러 객체가 혼합된 정보를 검색할 때 개별 객체 수준에서 접근을 제어할 수 있는 방법을 제시한다. 또한 공용키 시스템을 사용할 때 발생하는 공용키 인증문제와 여러 가지 암호를 사용할 때 일어나는 불편한 사용자 인터페이스를 해결하기 위해 Zero-Knowledge Proof 방식을 도입하고, 브라우저 중심의 사용자 인증방법을 제시한다.

William J. Coffey, Mario Polèse, Réjean Drolet

Much recent North American research has focused on the decline of the central business district (CBD) as the economic core of metropolitan areas, and the corresponding rise of suburban employment centres. According to the literature, this trend is particularly evident in the case of high-order service functions: business services, finance, insurance, and real estate services, and head offices. In this paper, we argue that the decentralization of high-order service activities and the corresponding CBD decline may be neither as strong a trend nor as universal a phenomenon as certain authors have indicated. Rather, the growth of suburban office employment may reflect a strong CBD whose economic base is becoming increasingly specialized. Using data from the Montreal metropolitan area, we first examine intrametropolitan decentralization in a shift-share framework, then document the mobility of establishments and employment. Our findings suggest that, in spite of a certain level of intrametropolitan decentralization, the CBD continues to be the primary locus of high-order services.

Emmanuel Jiménez, Vicente Paqueo

No abstract is available for this record.

Mun C. Tsang

No abstract is available for this record.

Donald R. Winkler, Taryn A. Rounds

No abstract is available for this record.

C N Connolly, J R Wooltorton, T G Smart, S J Moss

gamma-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA) receptors are the major sites of fast synaptic inhibition in the brain. They are constructed from four subunit classes with multiple members: alpha (1-6), beta (1-4), gamma (1-4), and delta (1). The contribution of subunit diversity in determining receptor subcellular targeting was examined in polarized Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells. Significant detection of cell surface homomeric receptor expression by a combination of both immunological and electrophysiological methodologies was only found for the beta 3 subunit. Expression of alpha/beta binary combinations resulted in a nonpolarized distribution for alpha 1 beta 1 complexes, but specific basolateral targeting of both alpha 1 beta 2 and alpha 1 beta 3 complexes. The polarized distribution of these alpha/beta complexes was unaffected by the presence of the gamma 2S subunit. Interestingly, delivery of receptors containing the beta 3 subunit to the basolateral domain occurs via the apical surface. These results show that beta subunits can selectively target GABAA receptors to distinct cellular locations. Changes in the spatial and temporal expression of beta-subunit isoforms may therefore provide a mechanism for relocating GABAA receptor function between distinct neuronal domains. Given the critical role of these receptors in mediating synaptic inhibition, the contribution of different beta subunits in GABAA receptor function, may have implications in neuronal development and for receptor localization/clustering.

Steven C. Albers, John A. McGinley, Daniel L. Birkenheuer, John R. Smart

No abstract is available for this record.

Oded Goldreich

Various types of probabilistic proof systems have played a central role in the development of computer science in the last decade. In these notes, we concentrate on three such proof systems -- interactive proofs, zero-knowledge proofs, and probabilistic checkable proofs

Charlotte Leighton

No abstract is available for this record.

Albert Park, Scott Rozelle, Christine Wong, Changqing Ren

Central-local budgetary arrangements have undergone numerous changes since the 1960s as the Chinese government in its quest for modernization has sought to balance the needs of central control and local autonomy. During the reform period, the falling tax share of GNP and a commitment to greater decentralization of the planning system led to major changes in the public finance system that have devolved expenditure responsibilities and financial authority to local governments. Fiscal decentralization has been credited with hardening budget constraints for local publicly controlled enterprises and government agencies. New budgetary relations have instilled fiscal discipline, allowing local governments to disburse more expenditures only if they generated more revenues. These reforms have helped unleash the entrepreneurial spirit of local bureaucrats, fuelling the rapid growth of rural industry.

J.M. Deniau, A. Menetrey, S. Charpier

No abstract is available for this record.

H.H. Fernholz, P.J. Finleyt

No abstract is available for this record.

Teresa Iwasita, Xinghua Xia

No abstract is available for this record.

R.A. Brealey, E.C. Kaplanis

No abstract is available for this record.

Steve Mann

No abstract is available for this record.

Gabriel E. Aghón, Leonardo Letelier

This paper is intended to analyze, in a comparative perspective, the financing mechanisms of urban local governments in two groups of countries. The first group refers to a sample of OECD countries. They are rather decentralized, and have institutional features which date back many years from now. The scope of responsibilities faced by these countries. The second group is constituted by a number of Latin American countries. They are, in general, less decentralized and have the characteristic of not having a well established institutional structure. This has experienced various changes over the recent years, one of them being a process of transferring responsibilities to local tiers of governments, a tendency which in general, has not been accompanied by an increasing capacity to get resources neither from the central government nor from the local financial market.

Paul Smoke, Blane D. Lewis

No abstract is available for this record.

Robert Elman

This article provides an historical overview of the politicization of sexual harassment and legislative remedy in the United States and Sweden. While the American state formally recognizes the existence of sexual harassment and has taken steps against it, the Swedish state has been reluctant to provide legal remedy. This difference can be attributed to Sweden's centralized state and the strength of labor, which had the organizational capacity to effectively dismiss issues pertaining to women's sexual inequality. By contrast, American women benefitted from an autonomous feminist movement and a decentralized state that proved more permeable to feminist demands. Sweden's lack of legislative recognition of sexual harassment provides one of the most compelling challenges to the conventional characterization of the Swedish state as interventionist, innovative and egalitarian. While Sweden prides itself on the adoption of its most recently revised Equal Opportunities Act (1994), intended to promote equal rights for women with respect to employment, it has failed to mitigate effectively a central condition at work which is highly disadvantageous to women, sexual harassment.

Francis M. Dunn

Abstract In the epigraph to this chapter, Shaw registers annoyance at those who assume Eliza will marry Higgins for two reasons. The first is the ending itself: if we consider Eliza’s self-interest and her instincts (Shaw assures us), and if we ask what she might do when faced with the choice between a lifetime of fetching Higgins’s slippers and a lifetime of Freddy fetching hers, “there can be no doubt about the answer.” Given a woman like Eliza who knows what she wants, the sequel is clear and to remove any possible doubts, Shaw spends fourteen pages describing Eliza’s choices, her marriage, her later contacts with Higgins, and the flower stand she eventually opens in Covent Garden. But there is more at stake than simply correcting the record. Shaw’s second reason has to do with what the ending implies: a hand-me-down ending can only come from the ragshop of romance. Pygmalion advertises itself as “A Romance in Five Acts,” according to the subtitle, but does so with typically Shavian irony. The mythical conceit of the title and the dramatic conceit of a play about phonetics make it clear that this is no ordinary romance, and Shaw drives the point home in his epilogue, contrasting the expectations of feeble imaginations with the calculus of benefits in real life. “Complications ensued; but they were economic, not romantic.. . . But when it comes to business, to the life that she really leads as distinguished from the life of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins and Mr Doolittle.” The stakes are high indeed. If Shaw cannot convince us of his realistic sequel, he cannot convince us that his play, like all great art (and unlike ordinary romance) is “intensely and deliberately didactic.” The proof of the play is in the ending.

Michael Aitken, Philip Brown, Christine Buckland, H.Y. Izan · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Bhagwan Chowdhry, Ann Sherman

No abstract is available for this record.